Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Watch Me As I Fade Away ❯ The Remainders ( Chapter 9 )

"It's no use. He can't hear you anymore."

I spin around to see who spoke.

Right behind me, a man is leaning against the wall of the alleyway.

It seems as though I'm standing in the exact same place as before, only sans Yohji. No, wait. It is different. The alley seems…longer. I turn back around and take a better look at the direction I was initially facing. The alley goes on and on and on….No end is visible either way….

I turn back to the strange man. He has a mustache and is wearing a brown suit that has seen better days. I'd guess his age to be late fifty-ish or so….

"Where is this place?" I ask, and then panic starts to creep back up on me, and add, "what happened to Yohji?!"

"Calm down," the mans says, "This 'Yohji' of yours is exactly where you left him," he yawns, "though you're best off forgetting him, because there's almost no chance that you'll ever see him again. Heh-heh. At least not that 'Yohji'."

What? No! I grab the man by his collar, and just barely resist the urge to shake him.

"What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. ON?!"

He grabs my wrists and pushes me off. He's stronger than I'd have guessed from his shabby appearance.

"Hey now, don't kill the messenger. I'm in the same boat as you, you know. I'm just telling you like it is."

"Like WHAT is? What's going on?!"

"You're an excitable one, aren't you?" he says. I think he's enjoying keeping me in suspense, the bastard.

I give him the most evil glare I can manage.

"What's your name?" he asks.

"Ken Hidaka," I answer, and then wonder if maybe it wasn't so smart to give him my real name….

"Well then, Ken Hidaka, congratulations, you're the only one left."

Huh? What's that supposed to mean?

"The only what left?" I ask.

"The only Ken Hidaka," he replies, rolling his eyes.

Er, wasn't I always the only Ken Hidaka? "You mean other people named 'Ken Hidaka' or other, uh, me's?"

The strange man sighs and rubs his temple. "I wonder if the other Hidakas were as slow as you?" he mutters.

Hey! I resent that.

"Okay," he says, "I suppose I'm going to have to spell this out for you. Am I correct in assuming that this is not the first time things have, well, gone strange for you?"

"Yeah," I answer, "everything has changed about four times already."

"Right then. And in these 'changed places' you met people who were similar to ones you knew before, but not exactly the same, am I wrong?"

"Right, I met three of my friends," I say.

"But you didn't meet anyone like yourself, did you?"

"No…in fact…."

"In fact, your friends were surprised to see you alive, weren't they?"

"Yeah, they just about flipped out when they saw me."

"Well there you have it, Mr. Hidaka. Every Ken Hidaka that ever was is now dead, except for you. Congratulations, you're one of a kind. If you weren't you'd still be living a perfectly normal life, blissfully unaware of the way things really are."

"I still don't understand. Where are we?"

"We're not really anywhere," he says, maintaining his maddening vagueness, "it's a kind of 'in between' place. I like to call it 'the crossroads'."

"The crossroads?" I take another glance up and down the endless alley, "I only see one 'road' and it looks like it goes on forever."

He shakes his head. "You're one of those people who can't grasp things they can't see, aren't you?"

I start to object, but he cuts me off.

"Reality's what does the crossing, kid. You can get anywhere from this road."

I perk up at this comment, "you mean I can get home from here?"

He frowns. "Theoretically. I'm afraid I haven't been able to figure out how to control where you end up. Every time I've left this place I've wound up somewhere different."

My hopes fall. "Oh." Then something occurs to me, "then how do you get back here if you can't control it?"

"Because this is where everything comes together. There's so many worlds that you almost never come across the same one twice, but I found that this one comes up often. Maybe once in ten or so…though I once went three whole months without crossing it, but that was somewhat of a fluke, I think."

"Three months?! How long have you been, er, lost?"

He looks thoughtful, "Hm…gosh. I guess it must have been since….oh, 1918 maybe? There's not really any time here, so I have no idea how long it's been. After the first few years everything just kind of slides together, you know?"

Okay, I just about have a heart attack here, "1918?! How…how are you still so young?!"

He frowns again, "are you hard of hearing? I just told you, there's no time here. I haven't aged since 1931."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah," he yawns again, "that's what I thought at first, too."

"So is that why you're here?" I ask, baffled at the idea that someone would want to sit alone in an alley for 70 some years, "so you won't age?"

"No," he says, "I'm here because it's quiet. And I'm afraid that once I'm finished explaining all this to you, I'm going to have to kick you out. Nothing against you personally, I'm just not a people person, and I have first dibs here."

Right. Like I'd want to spend all eternity alone with this dude. Eeew.

"That's okay, I'd rather try and get home than stay here."

"Good luck, kid," he says, "I spent ten years trying to get home, before I realized I didn't even like my home and decided to pick somewhere else." He studies me for a minute, "I can see by your clothes you've passed through one of the separatist worlds. I'm rather fond of those, almost settled in one, you know."

"Why didn't you?"

"Two many people," he says, "besides, no matter how much one loves traditional values, it's just not possible to shed the Western influences you're raised on. I'd have stuck out like a sore thumb."

Um, I suppose.

"My advice to you, kid, is when you find a nice world that you don't hate too much, just stay there. You're not getting home, and the more worlds you see, the less you can fit into any of them. You'll just go crazy thinking you'll make it home again."

No. I can't believe that….

"For example, maybe you made some horrible mistake in your past, you've always regretted…I guarantee you, there was a version of you that made the other choice. You'll probably manage to find a place where you'll be happier than you were."

My, this man is quite the pessimist….

….but he has a point.

A world where there was no Weiß? That's a thought. A place where I was never disgraced from J-league, in fact, a place where I never played soccer at all, so if I were to go there there'd be nothing stopping me from playing now? Hm…

No, I couldn't. How would I live with myself, knowing that Aya, Yohji, and Omi never knew what happened to me? Knowing that they're a man down on missions, and wondering if that might cause one of them to die? They need me to make it back….

I don't really believe this guy tried very hard. There's got to be something he didn't try….

"So, um, how exactly does this all work?" I ask.

"Well, I don't know exactly you see, this is just what I've puzzled out from my experience…anyway, from what I can see, time isn't linear, like most people assume it is. Instead, it branches out, like a tree. So say you have two different worlds, connected by a fork. They'll have the same history up until where they split, and then things go their separate ways. This causes them to be similar, but with subtle differences. And this happens an infinite number of times. So the result is an infinite series of realities; some nearly identical, and others so different you can't even imagine. Heh-heh. You should see the one where Japan was conquered by the Vikings. Now theres a bizarre experience."

"And I can travel through them because my other selves are all dead?"

"Now you're getting it," the man says, "this here alley is some kind of 'hot spot.' I'm not sure what causes it, maybe it's located by a key fork, or maybe the branches cross each other, I don't know. But it acts like a gate. I'm almost positive that there are other places like it, but I expect they're rather spread out. Anyway, normal people can't go through. It's some sort of law built into the whole structure. If regular people went through, I'd imagine they'd displace their equivalents and everything would get shuffled around into a right old mess." He pauses for a second and studies the back of his hand, "every now and then, there's a person so unlucky that they just drop dead like flies, dying young over and over again, until there's only one left. I might add, that it's inevitable that any person will have one equivalent that outlasts the others, it's just that the final one is usually so old that they don't get around much, and their chances of accidentally wandering through a gate are almost nil. But you my friend, are unusually young for a remainder, and you had the misfortune of walking through this alleyway after your last equivalent kicked the proverbial bucket. The same thing happened to me, what seems like eons ago."

"Wow. I can see you've put a lot of thought into this."

"I've had a lot of time to think about it," he says, dryly.

"Every decade or so, some poor sap wanders through here, and I set them straight. It makes me feel useful."

Wow. Sounds like life is just one big party for this guy.

"It was kind of interesting finding out all the ways I died. Eighty percent were from stress-induced illness," he says, smiling, "the rest were suicide. Except for one; the remaining one, I was mauled by a bear while writing in the woods. Pretty neat way to go, I think."

Yep. One biiig party. And he thinks I might want to stick around with him?

I decide to change the subject. "So…you're a writer then?"

His face falls. "You don't recognize me?"

Er, should I? "No…I'm afraid not. Who are you?"

"Soseki," he says, proudly.

"Soseki who?" I ask, feeling stupid.

"Soseki who the boy asks!" he clasps his head, "you break this old man's heart. I'm the Soseki, whelp. What do they teach in schools these days?"

Oh wait, that does sound like a familiar name from high school…if I remember correctly, his stuff bored me to tears….

"Oh, I do remember now…you're one of those dead guys…."

"No kidding," he says.

"Um…" time to change the subject again, "don't you get kinda lonely here?"

"No," he says, "I've got Ophelia."

Ophelia? Oh, he must mean that cat a little ways down the alley. I didn't notice it before.

"Cats make better friends than people, don'tcha Ophelia?"

Okay, he's talking to the cat now. I think that's my cue to go.

"Er, so how do I leave? Just walk down the alley?"

"Yep," says Soseki, "either way will work. Just walk through the alley any time you want to leave. If you find a place you like, just avoid going through the alley and you should be fine."

"Okay," I say, "well, thanks for the help."

"It's what I do," he says, "do me a favor and read one of my books once you settle down."

"…sure." I answer, not so surely.

"Well, I guess I'll be seeing you then."

"I sure hope not." I hear him say, as the endless path begins to shorten and suddenly transforms into a far more familiar street.

In fact, it looks almost exactly like the street I live on ought to look like….

…and there's the Koneko right where it should be!

I practically bolt through the doors. There's hardly anyone inside.

I look around, almost suffocating with hope that I might actually be home….

…until I notice a strange girl working behind the counter. Damn! It's still not right.

"Do you need help?" a friendly voice behind me asks.

I turn around, to face a rather hippy-ish looking man with a goatee, holding a bouquet of flowers.

"Er, do you work here?" I ask.

"No," he says, and pushes a pair of boxy glasses up to rest in his spiky hair, "but I come here all the time, so I know this place. You looked like you were searching for something."

"I was looking for someone named Aya Fujimiya," I say, uncertainly.

"You're a lucky guy then!" the man says, flashing an even bigger smile, "that's the very person I'm buying these flowers for! Aya lives with me!"

My jaw drops open in shock. No way. Aya lives with, and is receiving flowers from a scruffy man wearing sandals and a t-shirt that says '100% organic'?!

Well, this ought to be good….