Tokyo Babylon Fan Fiction / X/1999 Fan Fiction ❯ A Perfect Circle ❯ Crossing a Schism ( Chapter 15 )

XV. Crossing a Schism

“I still don’t understand why you need these things.” Nataku leaned on the inside of the Diet Building doors. He was hoisting a cardboard box of plastic explosives, watching security guards run around frantically trying to create a makeshift security protocol for the blackout. As Nataku had an amazing ability to avoid notice, they were paying him no mind. “But they are all here. I hope I was punctual, but you could have called ahead of time—”

Satsuki snatched the box from Nataku’s arms and sprinted along the wall toward the stairwell. “—might I ask—” he continued.

“No, not much time,” said Yuuto, who ran after Satsuki. Nataku followed on his heels. “Yes, we cleared it with Papa and Kanoe and everybody else you’re going to ask about. I hope the SDF didn’t give you much trouble.”

“Their security systems were down. It was small work.”

“…ah, that’s why the cops weren’t out…”

“What?”

“You might want to take cover.” Yuuto threw open the heavy, metal stairwell door and charged down the concrete stairs. “Get Kanoe and pretty much anybody else out of here. This entire place is going to blow in a few minutes.”

Nataku shoved the closing door open and ran through. “…what?”

“You do know what explosives are, don’t you?” Yuuto grasped the metal handrail on the concrete wall dividing the fold in the coiled stairs and vaulted to the lower incline. “They basically do what you do to buildings, but bigger and with a lot more fire.”

“What on earth—” Nataku vaulted after Yuuto.

“Elevators aren’t working. Come along, get Kanoe, and get out.”

“Yuuto-san, I don’t understand—”

“Oh, it’s easy. The foundation’s going to blow, then the whole building after it. BANG. CRASH. Down to the earth. Now, do as I told you and scatter if you want to keep your pretty little head intact. There’s a good boy—thing.”

“You didn’t clear this with Kanoe-san, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“But you just said—”

“Which is why she has no idea and needs to clear out. Now, if you please, Nataku-san…”

Yuuto darted around the wall, out of Nataku’s vision, and continued down the stairs always just a hair around the bend ahead, though Nataku was running at top speed. He moved his lips silently, trying to formulate a question, when he rounded the corner just in time to see the metal door to the faux storage closet slam at the bottom of the stairwell. He neatly jumped the final flight of stairs and landed in front of the door clearly marked for everybody to keep the hell out when the door slammed open in his face, smashing his nose.

Nataku yelled and covered his nose.

“Nataku! What the hell is going on?” asked Kanoe.

I have no idea. “…Yuuto-san and Satsuki-san are going to use explosives on the foundation.” Nataku pulled his hand away from his nose long enough to see crimson blood smeared across his white skin, winced, and shoved his palm back into his nose. Blood dripped down his neck and spattered his lavender Mandarin collar. “I think they are up to something suspicious.”

“No kidding, Nataku. Where did they get explosives?”

“They said—”

“You got them?”

“Yes, but—”

“Never mind. Get in here.” Kanoe threw the door open and charged into the closet, whose back wall was already swung on a center-point to reveal the Dragon of Heaven headquarters. “Yuuto! Satsuki! Get back here!”

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We can understand one another, but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone. [1]
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BEAST’s chamber was pitch black and silent. Satsuki set the box of plastic explosives down and picked up the emergency flashlight she had set on top of the packages while in the “storage closet”. She swept the flashlight beam across the silent hull and sighed, holding her collar over her nose. The cooling systems had shorted out, so the room was unusually warm (or rather, for once, unusually tolerable), and the room smelled noxiously of burned rubber. BEAST at least had the control to short out only its breakers and not itself, which both made the room clear of poisonous gas and still rendered BEAST a threat as soon as power was restored. Poisonous gas or no, the room was still heavy with smoke, which in itself was a problem. Thankfully the power surge had shocked the door in the unlocked position, so it stayed open without being wedged.

Satsuki nudged the box across the concrete floor with her instep and continued to survey BEAST’s massive, still hull. She heard Yuuto run down the hall into the room and start coughing. Kanoe was not far behind him, screaming.

“God, that’s thick smoke, Satsuki-chan,” said Yuuto.

“Hold the flashlight.” Satsuki handed Yuuto the flashlight and noted over her shoulder that he was covering his mouth with his jacket. “Follow me with it. We don’t have much time.”

“Satsuki!”

Satsuki turned around and watched Kanoe run up to her, coughing and sputtering. Since she was dressed for secretarial work she had enough cloth around her neck to be able to shield her nose and mouth while grabbing Satsuki’s arm with her opposite hand. Satsuki jerked violently and winced. Kanoe was much stronger than she remembered. Yuuto grabbed Kanoe’s wrist with his free hand and peeled her hand off of Satsuki’s arm, freeing Satsuki to scale the iron-bar ladders crossing BEAST’s hull. Satsuki coughed; the smoke was thicker the higher she climbed.

Satsuki blocked out Yuuto and Kanoe’s escalating argument, Kanoe screaming and Yuuto replying with restrained calm, and concentrated on placing the explosives strategically, connecting their fuses, and scaling up and down with more materials from the box one-handed while the glaring flashlight followed her across the hull. She gave up on trying to both cover her mouth and carry explosives while climbing, so she breathed lightly. She shoved the lingering, languid memory of kissing Yuuto—the second time, properly—to the back of her mind and concentrated on her work. She was dangerously prone to languishing for several minutes, cheeks burning and mind shot, if she thought on it at all. Even though his mouth was so warm and delicious, lapping, and he played with my hair—STOP IT. Stupid, rambling, lustful girl; you have a job to do. Satsuki pushed her glasses up her nose distractedly and leaned down to stare at the explosive she was wiring. The light is burning my cheeks. So hot—so damn hot—

It was disorienting to be on BEAST’s hull while he was so silent. There were no rhythms and moods coursing beneath his shell, no complex and brilliant messages and infinitely layered codes. Unlike humans, whose consciousness was so vague and illogical that thoughts could not cleanly be separated into analytical components, BEAST’s ideas could be separated into logical and complete, interconnecting parts.

Of course I’m more comfortable around BEAST. He’s just that much easier to understand. Even his jealousy is simplistic, though that simplicity in itself is difficult to understand. Satsuki held a fuse between her teeth and mashed one of the explosives into place. I guess it’s cowardice, in a way, to have spent my life hiding around something I can understand. Humans, huh? Boring, slow creatures, most of them, but unpredictable. I’m destroying the one thing I fully understood. Thought I understood, anyway. Everything else out there is unpredictable.

Satsuki remembered one conversation she had with BEAST about two girls in her class, best friends, who had gotten into a serious fight over who had the right to ‘have’ an anime character. It was one of BEAST and Satsuki’s typically analytical and psychological conversations that reached several forced conclusions, all of which seemed good enough just to end the argument and get some kind of closure. But, as with all of their arguments, the conclusions seemed incomplete and flawed to Satsuki—a stretch riddled with holes—something she silently attributed to a feared lack of intelligence on her part. The inability to understand something had always terrified her. Yuuto claimed that she over-thought things when all she was trying to do was understand things, completely and fully, to which Yuuto merely replied that there were some things that she could not fully comprehend with analysis. Some things you just had to understand as a whole picture. They just were. You couldn’t rip them into neat little categories and compartments like a puzzle or a formula. If you did, they lost their meaning, and meaning itself couldn’t be dissected.

Synchronicity. Quantums. Everything. No, explosives. What was the point of that? Satsuki was down on the floor at this point, Kanoe’s protests nothing but dull noise behind her thoughts. She was still running her tongue on the roof of her mouth in a vague attempt to lap up vestiges of Yuuto’s kiss. The persistent memory was still tickling the edge of her reason. She clicked her tongue sharply in self-reproach, picked up more explosives, and darted back up the hull, breathing lightly as possible and thinking. One thing that stuck with her most from that particular conversation with BEAST about the two girls was a differing conclusion they had reached: Satsuki thought that they paid so much attention to that celluloid idealization because real boys were merely not as perfect, but BEAST argued that they also loved the character because, since he existed in their heads, they fully understood him. They knew what his confusing gestures meant, knew what he was really thinking, deep down, and knew how he would feel and react to certain issues. They knew that he would be just fine with their obsession with yaoi and their own bisexuality, no questions asked, and would never try to change them. Though it seemed a trivial matter to Satsuki, it was of prime importance and comfort to the girls that the boy in question himself would be interested in men as well as women. Satsuki never understood that requirement. The girls’ imaginary boyfriends would love all of their quirks and indulge their idiosyncratic fantasies. Real people, however, they did not understand fully, might not agree with them on all issues, and were, of course, also less than ideal. They did not know what real boys’ expressions meant, nor did they intimately know what they were thinking or what they really thought about things. Real people were not indulged fantasies within and without. Besides, real boys could break their hearts. Beyond just not-being-real, characters would not.

That rift is frightening, not knowing what other people are really thinking. People can lie to you, manipulate you, or just plain not understand you. You can never fully understand another person. There will always be a mental rift. Satsuki tapped her fingernails on BEAST’s hull for a moment, slowing, hunched over the final explosive. The girls had never paid attention to a real boy, no matter how nice he was or how much they connected in their conversations, and ended up dating each other because, as BEAST postulated, they had a connection in their fantasy lives, which must mean the closest correspondence in mentality. It was the safest. It was also the only basis for their relationship, but they never broke up for the comfort factor. They had gotten an unpleasant shock when they realized that each partner wasn’t exactly as the other partner had imagined her, and that there were far more misunderstandings and miscommunications than they had bargained for. Each partner wasn’t a fantasy; each one had a will of her own.

Being with BEAST had been predictable and comfortable. Satsuki fully understood him. He was logical, and she always knew what he was really thinking, insofar as he could “think”. Though Yuuto was calling to her from the floor, voice muffled behind his jacket, she could not bring herself to face him.

Yuuto, or BEAST? BEAST was safer in the ‘understanding’ sense and, as long as she was faithful to him, he would never try to change her, and she would always understand him. Or, she would as long as she remained analytical and cold. Yuuto was a flesh-and-blood human. Sometimes he was dumb. Sometimes he was dull. He wasn’t as quick as bright as Satsuki, though he had a certain intuitive grasp of things that allowed him to easily understand things Satsuki could not take on faith. He was often right about those things, too. He was spontaneous, romantic, deeply affectionate, irreverent, obnoxious, wrong, flawed, lazy, worthless, hedonistic to a fault, free-flowing, and unselfish.

BEAST was selfish. BEAST would never let her go. Yuuto would. BEAST gave her no free will. Yuuto did. BEAST got irritated when she had internal emotional conflicts, which he considered illogical and pitiful. Yuuto encouraged her humanity. So, which one really is the more accepting, Satsuki? Satsuki shielded her eyes with her forearm and glared down into the flashlight beam. Yuuto’s silhouette was an ink-black eclipse, though Satsuki could tell that he was staring up at her, and Kanoe was barely visible as a struggling shadow.

You have one last chance, Satsuki. Yuuto, or BEAST?

She and Yuuto would not always understand each other, and might often feel lonely because of it. She and Yuuto would miscommunicate, argue, hurt one another, confuse one another, and make each other cry. They might end up with broken hearts and nothing else to show. They would know enough about each other’s faults to exploit them in the heat of an argument. They would say unforgivable things and snipe at one another in spite. They would both be vulnerable, frightened, and sometimes quite unstable. They were both going to have to learn to let down their defenses and trust, even if that trust was sometimes broken. They were going to lie to each other.

Are you a coward, Satsuki? Are you going to end up like those girls?

In the end, it might be worth it. BEAST could never offer that chance.

… BEAST is just a coward, like me. It’s so much harder to accept people when you don’t fully understand them than when you do. Yuuto isn’t a coward like us. Yuuto really is… accepting. That’s what acceptance is, isn’t it? Accepting something even if you don’t fully understand it? Respecting it?

“Satsuki?” yelled Yuuto.

Maybe I’ll learn to be comfortable with that someday, like Yuuto. Hell, he seems a lot happier than either of us.

“Satsuki! Get down here—”

I’ve made up my mind, BEAST. Good bye.

“Satsuki! The power!”

Satsuki swore and lodged the final fuse into its putty decisively. Though she knew it felt like far more time had elapsed than actually had—probably a few minutes at most—it might be the determining factor of Yuuto’s survival. She stared at BEAST’s silent hull, dismayed by their sudden anticlimactic breakup without even one last chance at a conscious word, and brushed aside a vague urge to give BEAST one last kiss. She scaled down the hull, snatching the joystick-shaped trigger out of the cardboard box and Yuuto’s hand with her other hand, and pulled him out the door after her, half-dragging Kanoe in the process.

“Come on!”

Kanoe stumbled over her high-heels and cursed , still protesting. Satsuki brushed past Nataku, who had been eavesdropping in the doorway and covering his nose with his jacket both to stop his bleeding and shield smoke, and yelled for him to follow them if he wanted to live. Nataku followed and caught Kanoe as she almost fell once again.

The lights in the narrow hallway flickered on.

“…GO!” Satsuki yanked on Yuuto’s arm, trying to haul him in front of her, and awkwardly maneuvered behind him as he tried to oblige her. He dropped Kanoe and stumbled forward as Satsuki pushed him up the hallway. “GO! RUN!”

Yuuto ran. BEAST’s machinery started to whine to life down the hallway, barely audible through its concrete bunker. A blast of cold, pearly air gushed down the hallway; the cooling system was back on. Nataku supported Kanoe on his shoulder, the latter of whom brushed him off impatiently and grabbed Satsuki by the collar.

“What the hell is—”

“DON’T TAKE THE ELEVATOR!” Satsuki yelled after Yuuto, twisting her face away from Kanoe.

“Satsuki!”

“I am going to push this trigger with or without us down here as soon as Yuuto gets out of the building, do you understand?” Satsuki swallowed. The adrenaline rush masked out an impending stomachache. She knew that she was bluffing, but Kanoe never responded well to bluffs under stress. She forced her voice to be calm. “Now, you can harass me later. Let’s just get out of the building alive.”

“You two are quite a cute item, you know that?”

Satsuki watched Kanoe carefully. The latter was debating, furrowing her brows in thought and clutching Satsuki’s jacket collar more tightly. Satsuki looked around the hallway. BEAST’s machinery was whining to its usual pitch. She prayed that Yuuto had already cleared the building.

I have to be close to him. He can’t escape until I push the trigger.

She heard explosions on the above floors of what she assumed was wiring breaking free of concrete walls. She cursed loudly and kicked Kanoe in the stomach, breaking free as the older woman yelled and collapsed in pain, and bolted through the closet and up the stairwell.

The top floor of the Diet was spattered with concrete chips and dust, wiring ripped free of the walls like thick veins and splayed in the air sluggishly. People were screaming and running out of the building. Satsuki looked up, praying; Yuuto was not being held in the building—good—she looked outside—ah—the wires were attacking him outside, sleepy and sluggish but enough of a threat, but he was faring with impressive dexterity considering that his powers had been lost, dodging and jumping over wires that attempted to trip him. The car that they had driven onto the lawn and abandoned was still outside, yet untouched by the police.

As soon as BEAST got back to full power, Yuuto would have no chance. Satsuki glanced over her shoulder and noted that Nataku and Kanoe and had sprinted after her, Kanoe still nursing her stomach, and ran outside. They would follow. She was going to blow the basement now.

“Yuuto! Get away from the building!”

Yuuto ran toward the street and stumbled into screeching traffic. The power lines along the street crackled and broke free of their poles eagerly, whipping and aiming themselves at their target. They were getting more energetic.

“All right, little miss newfound humanitarian,” Kanoe hissed, drawing close to Satsuki as they rushed after Yuuto across the chaotic street. Cars that had not already stopped for Yuuto braked loudly for them amid more honks and insults. The power and phone lines snaked above their heads eerily. Most of the drivers had stopped or slowed down to observe the odd spectacle. “Are you really willing to kill thousands of innocent people for the sake of one man, who has killed people himself?”

“They won’t die.”

“But Yuuto-san said…” said Nataku.

“Do you know how far underground BEAST is?” Satsuki smiled grimly. “How reinforced his walls are? There’s a good reason for that. And besides, I never said that I was a newfound humanitarian, anyway.”

Satsuki steadied herself on the opposite sidewalk and stared across the street. Kanoe stopped beside her with Nataku, disheveled, and brushed her hair out of her flushed face.

“It wouldn’t stop you if it wasn’t, would it?”

“Nope.” Satsuki pressed the trigger. Kanoe stiffened, waiting for an impact. “I’m pretty selfish when it comes right down to it—”

The ground shook violently. Kanoe tripped into Nataku’s hands and screamed, cars squealed to a stop in panic and swerved to avoid the power lines that had suddenly stopped and were falling like thick snakes in the road. The Diet shuddered with the impact. Top-floor windows fell out and smashed on the gardens below, raining glass onto the fallen chords from the torn-out walls. The people running out of the building screamed and stopped, covering their heads with their jackets or briefcases.

Satsuki sighed heavily and turned her back on the chaos. Yuuto was kneeling on the sidewalk and shielding his head with scratched hands. Upon closer inspection, Satsuki could now see that he was bleeding along his flanks, shoulders, and legs, and that his suit had been neatly slashed in several bloody places from close scrapes. But, he was alive.

God, that was such a close call. The cloud of adrenaline was slowly wearing off, bringing the clarity of the situation back into focus. Satsuki sat back on her legs and cleaned her glasses on her uniform skirt numbly. So close. So damn close. I can’t believe he’s alive. I’m so glad that damn machine takes so long to boot.

Satsuki inwardly cursed herself. They would have made it out in better time if she had not dared to debate over BEAST and Yuuto; that was why Yuuto was curled up over there and bleeding. She still stared down at her glasses when Yuuto moved over to her and shielded the sunlight, unable to look at him. She could see blood leaking out of his pants onto his shoes.

“Wow…” Yuuto said quietly. “That was… impressive.”

“…let’s get you cleaned up.” Satsuki pushed her glasses back over her nose and stood up briskly, glancing briefly and severely at Yuuto and then at Nataku and Kanoe, the latter of whom was still shaking and staring at the chaos in front of the Diet. Sirens were becoming audible down the street above the cacophony of honking and screaming from people running out of the building. Bomb squad and paramedics should be here soon. “Nataku as well.”

“Our headquarters… the BEAST…” Kanoe jabbered and pointed at the building, eyes wide and bloodshot. “You—you—”

“We can discuss this later. Come on.”

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No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that—one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can…my story is not a pleasant one; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams—like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves… [1]
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Seishirou softly tapped the side of his spoon against the base of his chocolate milkshake glass, chin in his hand and starting out the restaurant window. Even in his stupor he had taken care to replace his usual calculating frown with a soft, preoccupied look, which he knew was further enhanced by his pedestrian attire. He had walked with Kamui and Fuuma to an all-night variety diner down the street from his office, one of those places that served breakfast and lunch foods at all hours of the day. Though it was late evening on a weeknight, the diner was packed with salarymen and students. Granted, any place with an open table was considered empty in Shinjuku. Kamui and Fuuma, who were across the booth, had grown curiously quiet, though they had been already been acting awkwardly enough all afternoon. Both looked exhausted. Kamui was resting his head on his folded arms, dozing, and Fuuma was staring out the window. Seishirou knew that Kamui hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours, nor had he changed or showered during that duration, and after his discussion that afternoon he knew that Fuuma had not slept or rested properly either. Seishirou had lost track of how much silence had elapsed, though since they weren’t questioning, he didn’t care; they could entertain themselves for a bit. His thoughts were wandering once again to the same topic that had been nagging him for a while now, always evolving and manifesting into different conclusions and revelations.

Meeting Fuuma at the veterinary office had been amusing enough. Seishirou had absentmindedly walked into the holding room for less-serious cases where Kamui and Fuuma had set up shop when they had met for the ‘first’ time, insofar as Fuuma was concerned. Seishirou felt a small jolt in his stomach at seeing the familiar tall, broad-shouldered form turned away from him when he entered the room. He had half-expected Fuuma to turn around and say something smartass, smirking and looking over the tops of his sunglasses, but Fuuma only turned looked Seishirou over quietly, obviously surprised at meeting another Japanese man who stood to his eye level, if not a bit taller, and with a false eye, no less. Seishirou had watched Fuuma cautiously for any signs of recognition, pretending to wait politely to be introduced and wondering if Kamui had spilled the story already, until Kamui had grunted and muttered, “Oh, this is Dr. Sakurazuka. Sakurazuka, this is Monou Fuuma. I’m sure you’re just delighted to meet him.” Fuuma had given Kamui a quizzical look at his tone, but had returned to observing Seishirou and extended his hand to shake, tilting his head and squinting as if looking for something familiar in Seishirou’s expression. Aside from that, though, Fuuma showed no sign that he remembered Seishirou at all, which was good. He had blinked at Seishirou’s false eye until Seishirou had made up a story about a car wreck, praying that Subaru had never talked to Fuuma about him beforehand.

You know, there was a time when you didn’t care who knew about your affiliation with Subaru. The world should know; it was their warning to stay away from my prey. Now I’m sworn to this damned secrecy. Cornered. Seishirou glanced at Fuuma, who was also looking out the window, though he could not properly focus his anger on him any longer. This “real” Fuuma was a broken joke of the old Dark Kamui; he was polite, reserved, preoccupied and scatterbrained, expressionless, and, so far, dull. He had stopped wearing sunglasses and overly-elaborate outfits in exchange for a school uniform, and now obviously spent much less time doing his hair, only slightly spiking it with gel and leaving it half-mussed and flat instead of preening. Traces of mild acne were starting to spot his cheeks once again; Dark Kamui had been far too vain to allow that sort of nonsense. Though, he still wore the same cologne. It was expected; during an argument on whose cologne smelled the best, Dark Kamui had told Seishirou that he wore the same cologne Fuuma had worn just to torture Kamui. Seishirou smirked; he knew that his own cologne had the same effect on Subaru. He wore a tad too much when he was planning on visiting the Sumeragi so that he could sneak around corners and watch the effect when Subaru noticed traces of his cologne in the air.

Those stalking days are done for now, though. You bastard, Fuuma. You know way too much for your own good. It’s still locked up in your head. I’m sure of it. Seishirou had no idea what Kamui saw in Fuuma, though he was not complaining. Whatever it was, it was keeping Kamui away from Subaru.

Seishirou sighed and took a drink of milkshake, absently sliding the crumpled straw wrapper up the table. He was wondering once again what the hell he was thinking as a fifteen-year-old when he had made the bet under the sakura tree. Adolescent thoughts seldom were supposed to have root in sense, but he knew that in that action there was a vital link to a basic question that had always been at the back of his mind. Perhaps it had been an act of defiance to his then-late mother, or perhaps he had merely wanted to play around with the cute little boy who had been sent into the lion’s den. No, that wasn’t it. He knew that wasn’t all of it. A nagging, persistent question he had not been able to word properly had been sparked by something he had felt—yes, he now knew it was felt, though he had not been willing to acknowledge that for a long time—when Subaru had asked if the people beneath the tree suffered.

Basically, on one hand, he had always wanted to know whether or not he was capable of loving, and on the other hand, he had always dodged any possible answers. It was a pathetically passive-aggressive paradox he had lived since his mother had first started instructing him in his role as the future Sakurazukamori. As a veterinary student he had done some side-research on psychology, wondering if he was a sociopath. He truly did not feel any pathos or love (well, if he had never felt them, how could he know?) toward anything, from the animals his mother had given him to slaughter to the humans he had killed later in life. His mother, Setsuka, locked him in the shrine’s garage as a small child with stray cats and birds and refused to feed him until he had killed them with his bare hands. He was perhaps three when this had first happened. Of course, at that age he was given animals that he could physically handle, like toads, but as he grew, so did his charges and their abilities to harm him. He spent most of his elementary school days until he learned to master onmyoujitsu clawed and scratched, wounds his mother would tenderly wash and wrap after he had finished his duty. He had the inclination to cry over killing animals beaten and starved out of him before he got into kindergarten, though by the time he was old enough to muse he had forgotten if he was crying over the animals’ pain, or only because he was hungry, tired, cold, and couldn’t figure out how to kill them.

Sakurazuka Setsuka had been a case. While Seishirou’s mother had been harsh and thorough with her training, she was loving and tender at other times. His mother had been breaking for as long as Seishirou could remember, growing weak in her role as the Sakurazukamori, and Seishirou was the cause of her weakness. Setsuka unflinchingly explained to Seishirou this weakening condition when he entered junior high school, making herself an example of the one downfall that warranted the Sakurazukamori a luxurious death. As soon as he reached puberty, Setsuka explained the rudiments of lust, sex, and the acceptable boundaries between a mere hunger for flesh and an emotional attachment to which the Sakurazukamori must adhere. By this time, though, Setsuka was preaching to the choir. Sex and love were two entirely different things to Seishirou, love being utterly foreign and associated with a distance he was never able to cross with any human being. It was impossible. Though, the evening after his mother’s first talk, which was the day after Seishirou was caught taking his semen-spotted sheets to the washing machine in the dead of night, embarrassed, she started coming to his room at night. At first, it was just heavy petting, fooling around nonsense with a great deal of tongue-kissing, but it soon evolved into full-blown intercourse.

Seishirou ran his pinky across his lips, still staring out the window and half wondering what was taking dinner so long. Yes, his mother had been a good lay, but nothing more. He felt no repulsion to sleeping with his mother, as he felt zero love or connection to her emotionally, though she confessed that she had finally fallen in love. As he had no concept of closeness or relationships, he had only an intellectual perception of the boundaries most people associated with different types of relationships.

Setsuka grew weird those last few weeks before her death. She had once confessed, laughing softly in the morning light and gazing down at her tousled son in his bed, that though she had obviously had intercourse before, she now considered Seishirou the breaker of her virginity. Seishirou didn’t know how the hell that made sense at the time, and it still did not even after he met Subaru, but he remembered the scene every time he noted that, after meeting Subaru, he no longer lusted after anybody else. His mother’s words were thrown in his face when Dark Kamui had scornfully called him a virgin just over a month ago, though he knew damn well that Seishirou was not. Yes, that bastard had a sick taste for irony and a stock of information far too large. Unknown to Seishirou, even Satsuki and Yuuto were mistaken about his lack of virginity, taking Fuuma’s words at face value and overanalyzing them to a false conclusion.

I didn’t love her when I killed her. It truly was like kicking a rock, and she knew that. Seishirou fingered the pack of Wild 7’s in his lab coat pocket and considered smoking, then pushed the thought away. The year of the bet had been odd, somewhat of a break of insanity. He had entered the bet curiously, honestly wondering if he could force himself to love another human being and nurse that spark he had felt when he had first met Subaru, though he suspected that it might just be a sick lust. Hell, if he didn’t see any problem with sleeping with his mother, why should lusting after a cute little boy be any different? It was all flesh; social bounds were alien to him. For the first months of the bet, try as he might, he couldn’t love Subaru. Subaru and Hokuto were still objects to him, trash he would not flinch at burning as soon as the year was up. He often sat alone on his couch in the dead of night wondering why he was following through with this childish bet, running in mental circles and chain smoking. Slowly, it evolved into far more than an arbitrary, ludicrous game. The ‘game’ became addictive and dangerous. There were moments when, in the pit of his chest, he felt the faintest of flutters when thinking about Subaru, his opposite in every way, the one who embodied everything that he was not. They were small, dull flutters, often forgotten and missed even when in Subaru’s company in place of the usual objectivity, but they grew frequent and often quite insistent at night. It was as if his heart was stuffed with cotton, and the flutters were a lone feather deep within the cotton, barely felt but somehow noted.

Even after revealing himself to Subaru (a few days early, as Fuuma had pointed out), Seishirou considered the ‘flutters’ insofar as Subaru was concerned mere focused lust, something he was more than willing to acknowledge. Seishirou had long ago acknowledged and even admitted to not only himself, but also Subaru, his lust and desire to possess Subaru and break him. But, Seishirou was still convinced that he did not love Subaru. The nagging idea was oppressed and latent, only manifesting itself when Seishirou was musing at his most raw and self-honest, often late at night while washing blood off his hands in the bathroom. As the years passed, Seishirou caught himself wondering what would happen without Subaru in his life. The idea was ludicrous, of course. Subaru was his opposite, destined to be ensnared. Every time he touched the idea of love he panicked and psyched himself back into believing that Subaru was a mere object of lust and possession, existing across an emotional gulf Seishirou could not cross even if he wanted to.

After Fuuma had told him that he was henceforth forbidden to communicate with Subaru in any way, he started to crack, and the null ideas and questions residing deep within his unconscious surged forward. It was that night, sitting in his kitchen and smoking, exhausted and staring at the ceiling, that he became aware of the fact that he was cracking, and had been for seven years. He pictured his mind as resembling a mirror he had punched out during the bet-year in one of his moments of weakness, cracking and reflecting his insane expression from every shattered angle. It was maddening. It was as though he had been seeing a solid piece of glass for many years, and then blinked only to see that it had been shattered all along. As during that night when he had felt himself slip close enough to the edge to punch the mirror, he was no longer boldly probing the idea that he could not love, but was running from the fear that he was loving, that Sumeragi Subaru had crossed the immeasurable, objective gulf. However, unlike the night when he punched the mirror, he did not wake up feeling fully self-assured and his detached self again. He woke feeling like hell, more confused than he had been the night before, and plagued by nightmares.

“If you didn’t have anything to fear, you wouldn’t. If you have to fight something off, even if you no longer notice that you are fighting, it exists.”

The voice that had spoken those words was now, in a much gentler tone, thanking the waitress for his food. Seishirou looked back at the table with only a slight, unnoticed grimace, as the waitress placed a plate of pastries in front of him – the “continental breakfast”. He unfolded the napkin around his silverware and spread the former in his lap.

“You go straight for the sweets, don’t you?”

Seishirou looked up from spreading jam on a cream cheese Danish and nodded at Fuuma, smoothing his face into a geeky smile. “I have an unparalleled sweet tooth. Someday I’m going to get monstrously fat. My dentist loves me half to death, though I take good care of my teeth, all things considered.”

For various reasons, he thought, pouring coffee. His jaw still twinged from Kamui’s assault, and he was still mentally kicking himself for submitting to that treatment. I really jumped off the deep end THAT evening, didn’t I?

“Yes, your dentist must love you,” Kamui said dryly. He was pouring salt on his hashed browns and scowling, head resting flat on his upper arm and eyeing the salt crystals falling onto his food and melting into the thick, brown shreds. Though Kamui was usually sour around him, Seishirou could tell that Kamui’s source of tension was coming straight from Fuuma this time, which was a nice change. It gave him some breathing room to think.

“She does, yes.” The dentist was dead, though. Though she was the best dentist in the district and had done an amazing job on the mess Kamui had made of Seishirou, the treatment had been unpleasant, and Seishirou was in such a poor mood that medical necessity was not a good enough excuse for the pain. For good measure, he had also ripped the head off of her daughter’s cat and had left it out in their yard at just the moment when the little girl had run outside looking for her kitty, distraught over her mother’s disappearance and wanting a little comfort and time away from the detectives in the house. It made for an amusing afternoon.

“Um… Dr. Sakurazuka?” said Fuuma. Kamui snorted softly and smeared catsup on his eggs with the back of his spoon.

“I told you, ‘Seishirou’ is fine.”

“Right. Um… thank you for taking us out here.”

“Oh.” Seishirou waved his free hand and took a bite of his Danish. “It’s no problem. You boys helped me a lot today. It’s the least I can do. Besides, I’m pretty hungry myself. Are you guys going to need a ride back to CLAMP Campus?”

“Don’t give a fuck,” muttered Kamui. Fuuma kicked him under the table.

“We’ll be fine on the subway. Thank you, though.”

“You sure? It’s pretty late, and I don’t mind.” I have some serious ass to kiss, so let me do it. Come on, boys. If you just let me do some things for you, you’d be surprised at how quickly you’ll trust me. Just let me close.

“We’re sure,” said Fuuma. Kamui gave Fuuma a sidelong glare from his resting place on the tabletop, sighed, and poked at his eggs.

“You’re rather tense today, Kamui. Something up?”

“Bite me.”

Fuuma glanced awkwardly at Kamui and then focused on eating, obviously famished. Seishirou shrugged. Kamui had spilled his guts in his office that afternoon regarding kissing Fuuma and had then proceeded to kick himself for trusting Seishirou enough to confide in him, which put Seishirou in a chipper mood for various obvious reasons. Seishirou had the opportunity to play mentor once again.

“All right, then.” He turned to Fuuma. “Hungry, are you? Must take a lot to feed a big guy like you. Well, I can relate, obviously. I remember being that age clearly. I ate my mother out of house and home.”

Dark Kamui would have pulled an innuendo out of that and made a smartass comment. Fuuma only nodded and swallowed, pouring gravy from a small side-boat on his mashed potatoes and saying that he hadn’t eaten all day. Seishirou smiled. You’re no fun.

“Are you part Caucasian?”

Kamui glanced at Seishirou. Fuuma narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, chewing. He swallowed. “…what?”

“Are you part white?”

“Oh, yeah. Mother’s side of the family, somewhere in the distant past. Why?”

“The hell kind of a question is that?” asked Kamui.

“I was just wondering. You look it.”

“My sister really did, more than I do.” Fuuma blinked, hard, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, resting the edge of his fork on the rim of his plate for a moment before resuming eating. Kamui glared at Seishirou, hard, before wolfing down a few bites of egg.

“I apologize,” said Seishirou. “I seem to have touched on a bad topic.”

Fuuma waved his hand and shook his head, swallowing. “Don’t worry about it. It’s all right.”

“…you boys look dead.” Seishirou folded his hands on the tabletop and tapped his fingers against his kuckles. “…that’s it. I’m going to give you a ride home. You’re too sleep-deprived to ride the subway at this hour. It’s still a madhouse from the spike, I bet.”

“No, really,” said Fuuma. “It’s fine…”

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I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? [1]
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“Can you drive at all with that eye?” asked Kamui.

“Of course.” Seishirou unlocked the vet-van by remote and slid the side door open. “I’ve been doing it for seven years. Hop in.”

Fuuma looked around the parking lot behind the veterinary office, still able to see the diner down the block. His thoughts were still half-taking a plunge toward Kotori and depression. He sighed and climbed into the dark van, forcing the thoughts out of his head until he got back to CLAMP Campus. He did not want to break down in front of Dr. Sakurazuka. Kamui climbed in after him and sat on the far side of the middle row.

The van was old and ragged, but clean. When Seishirou climbed into the driver’s seat, the sakura-shaped air freshener swung as the van dipped and sprang back up under his weight. It reminded Fuuma of an airport charter, for some reason, but smaller: the seatbelts were not flush against the seats, but hanging from the ceiling, and the van smelled strongly of cigarettes and traces of cologne and sakura.

Seishirou started the van, quickly backed out of the parking space, jerked into drive, and swerved onto the street. Fuuma clutched the armrest and made a small nose of surprise. Kamui, who had not buckled his seatbelt, slammed into the side of the van and cursed loudly.

“You might want to buckle up,” Seishirou said cheerfully.

“Are you psycho? What the hell are you doing?”

“Driving you home, of course.”

“But you’re—oh my god LOOK OUT.”

Fuuma gritted his teeth and winced, waiting for an impact. Seishirou swerved his car back into his lane, narrowly missing ramming sidelong into the Nissan Altima in the right lane. Kamui slammed into the side of the car once again and quickly buckled himself in, hands shaking.

“Are you BLIND?”

“Only half. Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this for years.” Seishirou waved his hand over his shoulder. Kamui was gaping. “I knew it was there.”

“Then why did you—”

“We didn’t hit, did we? Here.” Seishirou switched on the radio. “Let’s listen to some music.”

Rock music blared out of the unbalanced speakers. Seishirou said “Ah, I know this song!” and started singing with the radio, badly, swerving around a corner a second after the turn arrow turned red and shifting everybody violently again. Kamui straightened, groaned, and buried his head in his hands.

“We’re going to die…”

“It’ll be fine,” said Fuuma. He sighed and watched out the window, holding onto the door’s armrest and growing slightly carsick. He wondered, vaguely, how Seishirou had known that Kotori was a bad topic upon which to touch, though he might be assuming too much; Seishirou may have merely seen Fuuma’s expression change, and the veterinarian did not specifically mention his sister anyway. He knew that Kamui had been going to Seishirou’s office after school to talk, now. Kamui finally confessed that was where he had been going sometimes, but Fuuma wondered if Kamui had gone more than he let on when they talked while working with the animals. He had no idea who Seishirou was, though something about the man seemed as though it should be familiar. The answer was just out of mental reach. It was like trying to hold sand. The tighter he grasped at a fleeting memory attached to the man, the faster it slipped away.

I’ll have to ask him someday if we’ve met before, or something. You’d think I’d remember another man as tall as me, and with a fake eye. There’s also something distinctive about him. I don’t know what it is, but he seems memorable…

Fuuma watched out the window and mused on Seishirou and Kamui, alternately, until Seishirou stopped the car at the street corner two blocks from CLAMP Campus and turned the radio off. Fuuma noticed by the clock that they had been in the car almost an hour, though his carsickness had abated since he was no longer looking at the swerving sidewalks, and he had lost track of time. It was almost midnight, and Kamui had managed to fall dead asleep despite the wild ride, head back and mouth gaping.

“Why are we stopping?”

“I can’t go any further. I’m not welcome at CLAMP Campus.”

Fuuma blinked. Seishirou waved his hand over his seat again. “Don’t ask. Someday, perhaps, I will tell you, but for the time being I just can’t take you any further. I’m sorry. Do you mind walking?”

“No. It’s not far. Thank you very much for taking us this far.”

“Oh, it’s no problem. You’re very welcome.”

Fuuma nodded and unbuckled his seatbelt, then leaned over and shook Kamui’s shoulders. Kamui’s head shook limply, but he did not awaken. Fuuma shook harder. “Kamui, wake up.”

“He won’t awaken. I put him under a sleeping spell.” Seishirou turned around in his seat. “He was getting sick, and he hasn’t slept in over forty-eight hours, so I’ve put him in a deep, healing sleep. I know that you are also tired, but can you carry him? If not, I can wake him.”

“…spell?”

“Oh, yeah.” Seishirou removed his glasses and cleaned them on his white coat. “I have some basic magical powers, same as your friend. Now isn’t the time to talk about me or my past. I assume that you have a lot of questions, given how many odd things I have dropped in conversations. Someday, perhaps, I will get to know you well enough to tell you more, Monou-kun.”

“…you can call me ‘Fuuma’. And, yeah, I can carry him.” Fuuma opened the side door, unbuckled Kamui, and hefted him out of his seat, glad that his friend was so thin. He was tired enough that any greater of a burden would have been difficult. He gave Seishirou a last long, hard look, confused and still grasping at that slipping answer to his question. Who are you? Why do I feel like I know you? Not welcome at the Campus; what is all of this nonsense?

“Oh, and there is one more thing,” said Seishirou.

“Yes?”

“You know Sumeragi Subaru?”

“Yes. He lives with me.”

“Don’t mention me to him, ever. Please. Do not talk about us meeting or hanging out. Not a word to him or anybody. Do you understand? This is another one of those things I will have to explain later. I only ask for trust right now, difficult as that might be to give to some crazy stranger.”

…what in the…? “…all right.”

“Thank you.” Seishirou nodded to Fuuma and smiled. “If you ever want to talk or something, you know where to find my office. Kamui has my cell number.”

Fuuma backed out of the open door. “…all right.”

“I’ll close it.” Seishirou unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned back over the middle armrest, stretching until he was almost out of his seat to reach for the interior handle on the sliding door.

“You got it?”

“…ye-ah.” Seishirou grunted slightly and pulled the door handle into his grasp with his fingertips. “A-ha. You’d better get back to school. People are probably worried about you. Remember, not a word about me.”

“All right. Thank you.”

“No problem.” Seishirou tilted his head and smiled from his odd, stretched position. The streetlights glared off his glasses from the open doorway. “Get some rest, Fuuma-kun. Good night.”

“Good night, Dr… Seishirou-san.”

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[1] Hermann Hesse, Demian, Prologue and Introduction