Chapter Text
Four months before Yusei turns twenty years old, Jack thrusts a massive bouquet of flowers into his arms and says, “Go to the hospital and give these to her.”
Yusei, who had been in the process of saying “Hello” like a normal person would upon seeing their friend for the first time in a couple of weeks, goes from pleasantly surprised to incredibly confused.
There are many questions to ask, but Jack is at best impatient and at worst already gone. In this case, it’s the latter.
Jack’s already a small, scowling speck on the horizon by the time Yusei has figured out he’s essentially been given a quest. Not what he had on the agenda for today, but what else will he do with his arms full of an excessive and gaudy display of roses? Delivering this to someone is theoretically simple, and a welcome distraction.
But Jack is, as usual, a bit sparse on the details.
Fishing around the sea of flowers nets Yusei one clue - a card, signed To Carly.
This narrows it down to Carly Nagisa, a fortune telling reporter girl that Jack seems to spend a lot of time pretending to only tolerate. Crow calls her “nosy”, Aki calls her “extremely accident prone”, and Jack yells at anyone who gives anything even resembling a negative opinion of her. Yusei mostly remembers her as the girl who, upon first meeting him, handed him a hand drawn fortune that said, “Super Unlucky! You have the worst luck ever!! Your fate may change if you eat: scallion pancakes”, with a drawing of an incredibly miserable looking stick figure fairy.
“Aw, bummer,” Carly had said at the time, as if she hadn’t handcrafted the fortune and personally given it to him. “But don’t worry! You can always turn things around!”
So, Carly.
Neo Domino City has about three hospitals.
Surely she’s in one of them.
“Jack?!” Carly screeches, when Yusei knocks on the open door to her room, in the third hospital he tries.
“Oh, no, you’re…” Carly wilts visibly at the sight of Yusei, falling bonelessly into her pillows. Peering around the excessive amount of foliage in his arms, Yusei observes that she's managed to do a perfect impression of a deflated lizard.
“Sorry,” Yusei says as he steps inside.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry!” Carly says, looking up at him through those thick, bottle-like glasses of hers. “I’m happy to have a visitor! Really! I just - I was hoping-”
“These are from Jack,” Yusei says, placing the bouquet and industrial bucket he’s been using to carry them in at the table by her bed.
“They are?!” And just like that, Carly springs back to life, shining like a lightbulb that’s been overcharged and is about to explode. Since Carly isn’t filled with electricity, this doesn’t happen, but she is filled with blood, so instead she coughs out a bunch from the excitement.
Yusei hands her a box of tissues, but she waves him away.
“Thank you for delivering these, Yusei!” Carly says, blood trickling down the corner of her mouth. She’s blushing something fierce, cradling her face as she looks at the roses. “It’s so sweet of Jack to bring me flowers!”
“He was insistent,” Yusei says, which is the only explanation he can give. “How are you feeling?”
“So much better with these!” Carly says, grabbing a fistful of roses and smelling them. She immediately sneezes. “Achoo! Well. Maybe my allergies aren’t doing better but - achoo! - but! This is great for my - my - ACHOO.”
And a new debilitating fit begins. Yusei moves the flowers to the corner of the room, where they can be observed with minimum resulting damage.
Carly manages to sneeze nine times in a row before it subsides. She croaks out a tiny wail when she can finally breathe again.
Yusei hands her the box of tissues again, and this time she accepts.
Carly mops up her face with a wad of napkins, sniffling the whole time.
“Thank you,” Carly eventually manages, surrounded by a wasteland of gross and/or bloody tissues.
“I’m not sure this was a good gift for you,” Yusei notes.
“No, it’s great!” Carly gushes, waving her arms around erratically. “Really! They’re beautiful! Tell Jack I love them, please? He hasn’t been returning my calls lately - he’s so busy, I know - but let him know I really appreciate the gift, okay?”
Yusei is ninety percent sure Jack is still completely jobless and rooming with Crow, who handles most of the household chores, but decides not to say this out loud. There’s something about discretion and valor, but mostly he’s worried if he says anything of the sort Carly will either melt like a salted slug or rally in Jack’s defense, and neither of which sounds productive for her health.
“Sure,” Yusei says, diplomatically.
“Has Jack been well?” Carly asks, twisting her hands in her blankets. “He’s eating more than just cup ramen right? Taking care of himself? Getting fresh air? Going on roller coasters? Doing bungee jumps?”
Some of those seem contradictory to being well.
“He looked fine when I saw him this morning,” Yusei says, because that’s truthful.
“Good! Good,” Carly smiles. “Um, would it be possible for me to ask you a favor, Yusei?”
“What is it?”
“If you could bring him something back for me. I wrote him a… letter,” Carly says, twirling her fingers together, face blushing again. “Very private, so don’t look at it! But um, I just figured, in case? He’s - very guarded about how he feels, and I hope I didn’t make him feel - bad, I guess? When he was here last week, we had a teeny, tiny, very small, um...”
“Fight?” Yusei suggests.
“Disagreement,” Carly corrects. “Jack worries. And he tries to hide that worry behind anger. And I”m worried he’s beating himself up over me.”
“Is he upset you’re in the hospital?” Yusei asks.
“We-eell, yes,” Carly says. “But don’t worry! It’s just appendicitis! I’m not, like, dying!”
“Oh.”
“He didn’t realize that at first,” Carly says, sighing. “He looked so concerned when I woke up! But when I told him it was just my appendix, and okay, that I did maybe nearly die because I passed out crossing the road because, well, why go to the doctor? I just thought it was a really, really bad case of stomach flu-”
“You what?”
“-he got super duper mad,” Carly continues. “And maaaybe we said some things. That were… not very nice?”
“So,” Yusei says slowly. “A fight?”
“No, a disagreement,” Carly says again. “We agree that living is great. We just disagree on health insurance and medical debt.”
“Ah.” Yusei says.
“But really, don’t worry about it. Medical bills and crushing debt aside, I’ll be fine. And thank you, again,” Carly says, grabbing her purse from the nearby end table. “It was really nice of you to drop by. Here, let me give you a fortune as thanks!”
“No, you don’t have to-”
“Draw!” Carly pulls a card out from a deck of cards blindly, and studies it closely. “...The King of Spades.”
“...Is that good?”
“I’ve mixed up my fortune cards with a regular playing deck, augh!” Carly wails. She dives back into her purse. “Wait wait wait, here! Okay, I’ve got it this time. Draw!”
She pulls a piece of paper out and holds it high above her head. Yusei has the briefest second to see something resembling a mangled twig with wings before Carly yanks it down and into her field of view. “Today's fortune is… ehhh? Super Unlucky again?!”
“Ah.”
“Wow, I’ve never seen someone get it twice in a row,” Carly says, pondering. She squints at the fine print, scribbled at the bottom. “W-well, maybe it's a good thing! Now you’re able to be more aware and wary of… um, large, airplane-sized inconveniences?“
“I… suppose?”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you can turn it around again!” Carly says, rallying, pumping her fist in the air like she can spiritually channel good fortune into Yusei. He has to hold her back from actually leaving her hospital bed.
Hand on her shoulder, gently but firmly guiding her back down, Yusei observes that the sunlight manages to filter in through the window and into Carly’s glasses, making her normally opaque lenses transparent, for just a moment.
“I believe in you, Yusei!” Carly tells him. She stares right at him, genuinely earnest, her eyes practically sparkling in the sunlight. “Things will get better, for you and me both!”
“...Thank you,” Yusei says, feeling oddly touched.
“You can also improve your luck by, um,” Carly flips the card over. “Ingesting metal? No, that can’t be right. Augh!”
“Man, if you keep coming here to deliver Jack mail,” Crow says, opening the door so Yusei can come inside. “You should start charging him shipping and handling fees.”
“It’s no trouble,” Yusei says. He steps inside, into Crow’s boxy little apartment and is blanketed in warm, fragrant air - whatever Crow’s making in the kitchen smells really good. Yusei’s stomach, which on most days he forgets exists, gives a painful surge to remind him that he hasn’t eaten today.
“Yeah, but Jack should stop getting things handed directly to him. Like dinner. Hey!” Crow shouts, striding through his cramped living room and poking his head down their hallway. “Kids! Dinner’s almost ready, wash up and help set the table! Yusei’s here too!”
“No, I couldn’t impose-”
From down the hall, several voices ring out.
“Dibs on sitting next to Yusei!”
“No fair, you got to sit next to him last time!”
“Yeah, ‘cuz I’m older.”
“CROW, TAIGA IS BEING MEAN-”
“NO I’M NOT, DAICHI’S JUST A CRYBABY-”
“Man, I hope Crow didn’t make broccoli again.”
“Oh boy,” Crow sighs.
“I’ll just drop this off with Jack and then leave,” Yusei says, trying to sidestep the entire situation, but Crow snags him by the shoulder.
“You are getting food whether you like it or not,” Crow says, jabbing an aggressive finger at him. “Man, I can’t believe I have to say this, but you look exhausted. You’re not getting enough sleep again.”
“Not… intentionally,” Yusei hedges, inching away from Crow’s glare. “I’ve been busy.”
“Uh huh,” Crow says, raising a single eyebrow. He folds his arms, tapping his fingers against himself as he thinks, chewing some thought over. When Yusei makes a tentative move to disengage, Crow steps in his way.
“Are you doing okay?” Crow says, voice low and soft. Yusei stiffens. “It’s only been a few weeks. I know you took the news hard.”
Yusei doesn’t actually remember much of that night, when he got the call. Necessity has smeared the memory in his mind. Nothing but the feeling of holding someone as they cried and cried for hours remains.
“I’m fine,” Yusei says. He’s always saying this, but no one tends to listen. “It’s not me that you should be concerned about. How - what about you? And the kids?”
“Oh, you know, fine,” Crow says, rolling his eyes. “Just like you.”
This feels like thinly veiled criticism, but Yusei has no response for it.
“Man. You make me sound like Martha. I should charge you for that.” Crow huffs, shaking his head. “Whatever, you’re getting a good meal at the very least. A good meal after a good day-”
“-means you can sleep the night away,” Yusei finishes, a touch of nostalgia in his words.
“Exactly. Good to know you still remember.” Crow gives him a friendly, light punch to the shoulder. “Go see his royal pain in the ass and then come eat. And don’t think you can sneak away! Jack’s in his usual spot.”
Jack’s “usual spot” is the very cramped balcony, which is positioned to give the people of this apartment building the perfect view of the prettier, better apartment next door. But Jack’s not looking down at the people, or across at the bleak gray concrete - he’s leaning back against the wall, eyes on the sky. The sliver of moonlight that passes between the buildings just barely manages to reach him.
As Yusei shuts the glass door behind him, Jack asks, “How is she?”
“Fine,” Yusei says. He tosses the letter Carly entrusted him to Jack, who has to snatch it out of the air before the brisk wind takes it. “She wanted you to have this.”
Jack takes one look at the plain envelope, at the looping cursive spelling of his name on the front of it, and his face pinches like he’s just bit down on something sour.
“Take it back,” Jack orders, thrusting it back at Yusei.
“Shouldn’t you read it first?”
“No.”
“I’m not going back to the hospital,” Yusei says. “If you don’t want it, toss it over the railing.”
Jack looks annoyed, but tellingly, doesn’t move an inch.
“Tch,” Jack snarls, shoving the letter away in a coat pocket. “It’s not worth it. Fine. I’ll keep it. But I’m not reading it.”
“Carly said you got in a fight,” Yusei says.
“It wasn’t a fight,” Jack says. “Just a disagreement.”
“A loud disagreement, according to the staff I spoke to.”
“Carly doesn’t take care of herself enough,” Jack says. “I was pointing out it is common sense to go to the doctor when you’re sick.”
“Mm,” Yusei hums. “And what does she have for insurance?”
“...She doesn’t.”
“Her job as a reporter-”
“I know what you’re going to say,” Jack says, cutting him off. “It doesn’t matter if it puts her in debt, her life is worth more than that!”
“Our finances shape our understanding of the world,” Yusei says. “And how we interact with it. You know that just as well as she does.”
“I don’t need you to lecture me on that.” Jack huffs. “She - you don’t get it.”
“Okay.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Okay.”
“It’s more than just the hospital bills.”
“Okay.”
“Stop saying that!”
At this point Jack looks ready to punch him, so Yusei retreats from melee range, which is a bit difficult given there’s no actual room to do so. He pulls something else out of his belt and tosses it to Jack, who catches it deftly.
“What’s this?” Jack asks, anger only momentarily distracted. He lifts the item in the air, studies it beneath the pale moonlight - a small vial, with murky green liquid. Jack immediately pulls a face.
“Not another of that witch’s concoctions,” Jack complains. “This looks like poison.”
“Stop calling Sherry that,” Yusei says. “It helps speed up recovery.”
“I don’t need it,” Jack dismisses, moving to toss it back.
“But Carly might.”
Jack stops, and his face is caught somewhere between a snarl and surprise.
“You’ve always been honest with your emotions,” Yusei says, tilting his head a bit. “I’m not sure why you’re hiding behind anger now.”
“I don’t hide-”
“If you want her to take better care of herself,” Yusei says, opening the glass doors behind them. “Go see her, and tell her that yourself. Along with why it matters so much to you. You can give that to her as well.”
And before Jack can shout at him, or give Yusei a laundry list of complicated reasons that don’t make sense, he steps through and shuts the door.
“AMBUSH!”
All five of Crow’s kids immediately tackle him once he’s inside, screaming and giggling the whole time. Daichi, Ginga, and Hikaru cling to his back, and Taiga and Kokoro on each leg.
“We’ve captured the intruder, Captain Crow!” Daichi shouts.
“Good job!” Crow’s voice floats in from the kitchen. “Return to base with the prisoner immediately!”
“Yes sir!”
“You heard him!” Hikaru says, clinging to his shoulder. She’s giggling so much that it's a struggle for her to get the words out. “That way, prisoner!”
So Yusei begins the arduous, ten-foot journey with five delicate children on board. He makes large, exaggerated movements with his arms and legs; the children shriek in laughter every time he nearly loses his balance.
When Yusei finally makes it to his destination, the kids tumble off and present themselves in a very disorganized line before their captain. Crow, armed with a spatula and a plate of bread rolls, greets them.
“Well done!” Crow says, saluting them with the spatula. “Now go wash your hands! Time to eat!”
“Yeah!” The kids salute back, and then lose what little decorum they had in a mad scramble for the sink. Crow smiles at them with obvious fondness.
“You’re good for them,” Yusei says quietly.
“Nah,” Crow says, setting down the bread rolls. “They’re good for me. That’s why I’m working so hard to keep ‘em. C’mon, sit down and start eating!”
Yusei picks a spot, and then becomes the center of another childish squabble as Hikaru, Daichi, and Taiga all argue over who gets to sit next to him. Nothing he says seems to help, and in fact causes Ginga and Kokoro to also throw themselves into the ring and fight for their right to sit next to the infrequent house guest.
“Man, you guys never fight this hard over who sits next to me,” Crow complains, as Jack finally deigns to return inside, slinking in like the world's tallest and brightest shadow.
“That’s ‘cuz we can sit next to you all the time,” Taiga answers.
“And you always pick on whoever’s closest to eat the most vegetables,” Hikaru complains.
“What - no I don’t!”
“Yusei eats anything I don’t wanna,” Kokoro says, matter of factly. “Even veggies!”
Crow whips his head around to stare at Yusei in betrayal. Yusei avoids eye contact and makes himself busy eating a suspiciously large pile of carrots that has suddenly appeared on his plate.
“Yusei!”
While Crow is lecturing him in one ear, and the kids are roaring in laughter in the other, Jack takes the seat across from him. Jack gives him a brief nod, evidently resolved in a decision. Then, without missing a beat, Jack expertly takes the attention off Yusei with just an offhand “Really? Asparagus again?” that has Crow pivoting to defend his budget, his culinary decisions, and his overall preference in vegetables.
And for a moment, surrounded by love and laughter and family, he’s lulled into contentment. It’d be nice if this could go on forever.
Three months before Yusei turns twenty years old, he’s lying on his couch, staring blankly up at his ceiling when he hears someone pounding at his door.
It’s enough to pull him out of his circular, downward thoughts and back into reality, where he has to pay attention to the way his leg is numb from the way it’s been dangling over the edge and his neck hurts from resting his head on the armrest.
The pounding stops, but he hears a faint, familiar voice calling his name - it has him pulling himself upright despite the way his body protests it, and forcing himself to stand.
His apartment is small enough that it’s basically no distance at all from the couch to the entrance. His head feels fuzzy in the way that it always does when he forgets to eat that day.
Yusei opens up his door and finds Aki, absolutely drenched in blood.
It’s well past sunset, and he’s got only a flickering light from his kitchen to illuminate her figure in the darkness. Shadows curl around her, shrouding her. It’s raining heavily, and lightning briefly strikes, lighting up the sky; Yusei gets the briefest glimpse of Aki’s eyes, wild and darting in every direction.
“Hi,” Aki says, voice a bit high pitched, stiffly raising her hand to wave like she’s not directly in front of him, dripping red onto his doorway.
“Hi,” Yusei answers, as his brain kicks into overdrive, yanking her inside.
All this rain, and yet it wasn’t enough to wash away everything coating her. Yusei locks the door and casts a critical eye over her. No visible wounds, she doesn’t seem to be limping or moving strange. She’s shivering, but that’s likely from the cold, or the adrenaline. The thick unpleasant smell of copper coats her.
“I can explain,” Aki says.
“Okay,” Yusei says, waiting for an explanation.
There’s a solid minute of silence as Aki visibly debates the best choice of words, and settles on the worst.
“I can’t tell you,” Aki says, which is the opposite of an explanation.
“...Okay,” Yusei says again. “Is this - your blood?”
“No!” Aki says, frantically waving her arms. Blood and water splatter onto his unpainted walls. “No, no, um, this is. Paint.”
“Paint,” Yusei echoes, dubiously.
“Really… coppery paint,” Aki mutters, crossing her arms. They both watch the red and clear liquid trickle down the wall, and pool beneath her feet. It’s going to take hours to get this out of the carpet. “I just - please. It’s not as bad as it looks. Kind of.”
“What happened?”
“I - you remember what happened a few weeks ago?” Aki says, gripping her arms tight. The grip she has on her right forearm looks bruising. “At the factory.”
“Yes,” Yusei stares, trying to connect the pieces of these very concerning statements. He is desperately trying to quell the rising tide of panic threatening to drown him. “Is Ruka okay?”
“Yes, yes she’s fine,” Aki says, and Yusei can feel some tension drain out of both of them. “I made sure of it.”
“...What happened?” Yusei asks slowly.
A quick grimace from Aki, but she looks away before Yusei can be sure of it. Pain - or something else.
“That’s not important right now,” Aki says. “But - I need your help. Please.”
Aki cares so strongly, and has been hurt and betrayed by others who’ve taken advantage of that. Her story is one of misunderstandings and loneliness, and Yusei only has the barest inkling of it.
Showing up in these conditions at his door, well past midnight - the simplest thing to understand is this: Aki needs his help now.
Aki reaches out, tentatively - Yusei meets her halfway, grasping her hand firmly.
Yusei has no right to turn his back on her. Not now, not ever.
“Of course,” Yusei says.
Aki sighs, her shoulders relaxing, and their fingers twine together. The way she holds his hand tight, like this moment is an anchor, grounding and safe, is touching, but also, crushingly painful. Aki is far stronger than she realizes. Every bone in his hand is in danger of snapping.
When she lets go, and Yusei can reclaim circulation in that hand, he says, “What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to let me stay the night,” Aki fidgets. “And tell people I’ve been here with you, since at least mid afternoon. We had dinner and watched a movie and stayed in all night.”
Yusei eyes flick to his door. “Except for the part when you ran out for drinks and got caught in the downpour on your way back.”
“Right. Yes.” Aki breathes out slowly.
“Nothing else you need me to do?”
“No. I have everything else taken care of.” Aki shakes her head. More blood gets splattered on his walls, and also probably his own clothes at this point. Which reminds Yusei.
“We need to burn your clothes.”
“Oh. Right,” Aki inspects her dress with a frown. “I didn’t exactly bring a change of wardrobe though. Could you-?”
“I’ll get you something,” Yusei says, and disappears into his guest room, while Aki makes use of his shower.
His apartment is tiny, despite having two bedrooms - the rooms are more akin to closets, and every single one of his friends complains of claustrophobia when they visit. This doesn’t seem to stop them from visiting though, Sherry included, and if he’s right, she should have left some things that Aki can borrow.
He digs through a drawer, pushing past one of Crow’s vests tangled with one of Jack’s long sleeved shirts, ends up pausing on a sweatshirt he vaguely remembers - the words Team Deformer! The Mighty Morphtonics! emblazoned on the front.
Yusei frowns, tracing the words with his hands. He should give this to Ruka at some point.
He sets it aside and resumes his search, and manages to find a blouse and pants that should fit Aki.
He leaves them for her on the guest bed, and then goes looking for his cleaning products, of which he has approximately two. Soap, and WD-40. Yusei has the suspicion neither will prove all that effective at removing bloodstains.
Still, it’s all he has, so this is how Aki finds him, once she’s clean and wearing her borrowed outfit: dumping an entire bottle of dish soap into his carpet.
“You’re going to have to bleach it,” Aki says. Her hair is still wet, curling at the ends. Sherry’s clothes fit, but Sherry choose to leave apparently the least insulated clothes she owns - Aki’s shivering again in Yusei’s heat-deprived apartment.
“I’ll just cover it up,” Yusei says, standing up. “Cheaper.”
“Bleach isn’t that expensive, is it?”
“Don’t know.” Yusei says, tossing Aki his blue jacket that he left on the couch. She makes a brief face - it does, unfortunately, smell of the motor oil Jack accidentally dumped on it last week, but pulls it on all the same.
“Let’s go buy some, then,” Aki says, tugging on the jacket’s collar. “...Maybe also get you some laundry detergent.”
“Suspicious hour to go buying things.”
“We’ll just say you spilled red wine everywhere.”
“I don’t drink wine.”
“Well, don’t say that when the cops ask.”
“Why would I need to talk to Security?”
“They might come by and ask questions. They’re nosy like that.”
“The cops aren’t going to come to me with questions.”
Three days later, the cops are at his apartment with questions.
“Right, this is just routine,” Ushio says, standing right over the spot in the doorway that Yusei covered in bleach just a few nights prior. Mikage is in his hallway just a step further in, writing things down on a clipboard.
“Okay,” Yusei says, painting his walls with a fresh coat of paint.
“So, you gotta be honest with me, yadda yadda: Aki was with you all night?”
“Yes,” Yusei lies.
“And what did you do while Aki was over?” Mikage asks.
“We held hands,” Yusei says, very seriously.
“...All night?” Mikage asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
“God I wish that was me,” Ushio sighs. Mikage smacks him on the shoulder.
“She is a suspect!” Mikage hisses. “And far too young for you!”
“I didn't mean with her!” Ushio splutters, and his face goes red for some reason.
There is a dried brown spot close to the floor. Yusei attacks it with the paint roller before he realizes the extent of the blood hiding in plain sight - the sunlight is unfortunately very illuminating. He suspects the only reason the detectives haven’t noticed is because Ushio alternates between yawning and stealing glances at Mikage, and Mikage’s clipboard isn’t so much a notepad as it’s a well organized folder that seems to be mainly pictures of Jack.
The paint roller isn’t going to be enough. He tips over the can entirely and watches as Mikage leaps back to avoid the ocean of blue flooding his floor.
“Oh no,” Yusei says, well after the fact. “Are you alright?”
“Ah, yes,” Mikage says, having collided into Ushio standing in the doorway. Ushio’s face is a bright red; Mikage seems to be checking out her shoes to ensure no paint got on them.
“Ah, uh, um,” Ushio says.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mikage says, side-stepping Ushio now that’s aware of how close they are. All professional, not a hair out of place, clipboard still in hand.
“Ah, no, it’s - fine, yeah, fine,” Ushio says, looking somehow miserable. He clears his throat, finally looking down at the mess on the floor. “That’s going to take hours to get out of the carpet, yeesh.”
Four and half, at least. Yusei sighs.
“Bit of a dour color choice for renovations, wouldn’t you say?” Ushio comments. “I wouldn’t have expected something brighter for you, maybe white? Cyan?”
Aki thought a navy blue would look nice, so they picked out the shade after she’d burned her clothes in the furnace.
“This is more practical,” Yusei says.
“For what?”
“It’ll hide the bloodstains well,” Aki had said, selecting Not Suspicious Navy Blue.
“...Heating.”
“Uh. If you say so.”
“So what is this about, again?” Yusei asks, like he doesn’t have a beating heart beneath the floorboards he’s smothering with paint.
“Can’t really give you many details,” Ushio says, with a shrug. “Just that we’re looking into someone’s, ah, disappearance, and Aki was last seen with them before they went missing. We’re just making sure she’s not involved.”
“Right,” Yusei says.
“What prompted the renovations, anyway?” Ushio asks, tucking away his notepad.
“...I spilled wine on the carpet.”
The next time Yusei sees Aki, she smells of dirt and roses.
It’s a cold, breezy day - the park has no shelter, but Yusei’s never really minded the wind anyway.
“No loose ends,” Aki says, which is not really the most comforting of statements to hear.
Ruka, on the swingset, waves at them. The wind is so strong, she’s practically flying with little input of her own, the empty swing next to her even managing to match her movement. Yusei waves back, and Aki smiles. Something protective and warm coils around his chest.
“Oh, remind me to give you back your jacket, next time you stop by,” Aki says. “I managed to get all the grease stains out of it.”
“Keep it,” Yusei says.
“Keep it?” Aki echoes, eyebrows raising. “That’s your favorite jacket.”
“I don’t have a favorite jacket.”
“Yes you do, it’s that leather blue one. You wear it all the time. It’s your favorite.”
“I want you to have it.”
“Why?”
“You’ll take better care of it than I do,” Yusei says, because it’s the easiest answer he has.
“I know you’re not trying to pawn your favorite leather jacket onto me because it’s too high maintenance, Mr. Handmade Motorcycle Man.”
“My motorcycle was crafted with low maintenance in mind.”
“That’s not the point and you know it-”
Ruka runs up to them at that point, thankfully cutting the conversation short.
“Rua said he heard the ice cream truck,” Ruka says, pointing past the park’s entrance. “Would it be alright if we, um, got some together?”
Yusei strains his ears, but can’t hear any kind of music heralding a truck full of ice cold snacks. Aki looks equally dubious, but just nods and says, “Of course. Will you be joining us, Yusei?”
“Sure,” Yusei says. Ruka’s face breaks out into a shy smile.
“I’m going to go grab Rua,” Ruka says. “Meet you at the gate!”
Aki holds her smile until Ruka turns and runs back to the swingset.
“I’m really worried about her,” Aki murmurs. “Can you believe her parents have already left town?”
“But the funeral-”
“Was only two weeks ago!” Aki seethes, before dropping her voice again. “Unbelievable. All that matters to them is getting back to some overseas deal. I used to think my parents were bad, but this… They’re utterly reprehensible.”
Two weeks ago, there was a funeral. The following night, Aki was on his doorstep in the middle of a storm. Coated in blood. Sleeves smeared with dirt.
It doesn’t paint a very good picture.
Two months until Yusei turns twenty, he makes the mistake of thinking he can have a normal afternoon visiting Crow.
“I am going to die if I don’t perfect this soufflé,” Crow states, head in his hands. Yusei peers down at the table, looking at some kind of lumpy, puffed up baked good that’s golden brown, flaked with small bits of cheese and bacon.
Before Yusei can ask, Crow stabs it with a fork and shoves it at Yusei. This is probably an invitation to try it, so he does.
“It tastes good,” Yusei says, unable to divine the problem with it at all.
“But it looks ugly,” Jack says, with supreme authority. “That will count for a third of the scoring in Counter Counter Kitchen.”
Yusei doesn’t know what that is either, so Crow shoves another envelope his way and then stomps over to the fridge so he can despondently stick his head in it and sulk. He says this cools his temper and helps model healthy anger management techniques to his kids. Jack claims it never works.
Yusei pulls some papers out of an envelope, and reads them a few times before the words form a coherent narrative.
“You’ve been invited to a - television show?” Yusei asks.
“Counter Counter Kitchen,” Jack says. “It’s a cooking game show. It’s entertaining.”
“It’s not just a game show,” Crow yells, to be heard from inside the refrigerator. “Counter Counter Kitchen is a game show with a twenty-five thousand cash prize! Potentially.”
“The point of the show is that you can ‘spend’ some of the promised cash prize to activate traps to hinder your opponents,” Jack explains. He’s eyeing Crow’s pot of cheaply brewed coffee with an obvious distrust. “The meager entertainment value comes from the ridiculous circumstances in which they have to cook. Contestants waste their potential prize money causing problems for each other.”
“BUT,” Crow shouts. “If I don’t spend any of my money, and win, I get the whole twenty-five grand!”
“Which means he’s at a severe disadvantage, especially considering he’s not a traditionally trained chef,” Jack summarizes. Yusei pours some coffee into a mug, and offers it to Jack who takes it reluctantly. His face shrivels up immediately, but he doesn’t spit it out.
Crow must have been more successful than usual in impressing upon Jack the importance of careful spending, Yusei thinks, watching Jack take another painful sip.
“This is swill,” Jack announces. “How can you suffer to drink this every day?”
“Caffeine,” Yusei says.
“Disgusting. You should be drinking coffee for its rich flavor, the aroma, the-”
Yusei stares down at Crow’s souffle thing. Baking and cooking are areas of science, he knows this, but he’s never really invested time into understanding them like he has with physics and engineering. Martha once mentioned that creativity was one of the joys of baking, and that art could manifest in any form, including food, but she was also practical; their food was home grown, and did not resemble the gleaming, polished products he sees in grocery stores.
Still. The food isn’t green, or molding, or rotting. Surely that counts for something?
“It looks fine to me,” Yusei tries to console Crow, but this just seems to have the opposite effect; Crow moves his head to the freezer instead.
“He’s doomed,” Jack informs him. “Crow can’t even steam asparagus right.”
Crow has a couple choice things to say to Jack in response, which are muffed to his current location and the low tone he pitches his voice to. It doesn’t seem like it’s managing to cool him down much at all. Jack, too dignified to give a response, takes another sip of the coffee, and nearly gags.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Jack declares, and dumps his cup into a nearby potted plant. The wilting leaves on it suggest this happened before, and will happen again. “I’m not starting the day off with this as my drink.”
“It’s almost noon,” Yusei states, but this doesn’t hold water for Jack, who strides out Crow’s front doors without a second glance, no doubt headed for Blue Eyes White Cafe. Jack has written both Crow and his discount coffee off for the day as hopeless. So much for being more budget conscious.
Yusei turns back to Crow, who is extracting himself from his kitchen appliance. The top of his hair is frozen.
“Are you worried about this competition?” Yusei asks
“Well yeah,” Crow answers, dropping into the seat next to him. He rubs at his temples. “Getting selected was already a long shot, but now I have an actual chance at the prize money. And with that kind of money… I could finalize the adoptions, not just foster.”
“If you need money-”
“You barely make more than I do,” Crow huffs, cutting Yusei off before he can make the same pitch he’s made for years. “Listen. If I need anything, it’s for you to take care of yourself, yeah? I know that the whole business with the twins is…”
Yusei lets his eyes slide past Crow’s shoulder. The next few words go in one ear and out the other.
“...Aki, you know?” Crow says, and Yusei blinks back into the conversation. “She’s fussing over them, but also you.”
“Me? Why?”
“‘Says you're acting weird.” Crow squints at Yusei, like he can puzzle out Yusei’s secrets if he sees just a little less of him at a time. “Something about your jacket?”
“My jacket is fine.”
Crow sighs.
“Jack’s gonna watch the kids the weekend I’m out,” Crow says, tapping his fingers against his plastic table. “I just need to get a memorized grip on like, a lot of common recipes. I can’t be the one guy who doesn’t know what filet mignon is.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Yusei asks.
“Nah, this is something I’ve gotta manage on my own,” Crow says, shrugging his vest on. “But if you’re free, let’s get coffee. You absolutely can’t tell Jack this, but he’s right, the stuff we got is shit.”
One month and a day before Yusei turns twenty, he gets a call in the middle of the night.
It is, by and large, the worst time to get a call. He’s just crashed after a day of working at the garage, followed immediately by running drills with Sherry. Even grabbing the phone off his nightstand requires almost more effort than he can give, with his bruised wrist being especially vocal about how little it wants to be moved.
Yusei flips open his phone.
The blinding light from the screen reads: Unknown Number.
High chance of spam, low chance it’s someone he knows. In the back of his mind, he’s worried it’s Aki again, making a midnight call while digging a hole six feet deep. But even that would be a welcome alternative to a repeat of the call he got weeks ago, the worst of his life. Anxiety wars with weariness for a single moment.
He takes the call.
“Hello?” Yusei asks.
The response he gets comes in the form of an excessive amount of static.
“Hello?” Yusei tries again.
The static gets louder, and there’s some kind of high pitched noise in the background; something that resembles a voice, almost. Yusei strains his ears, and thinks he can make out two things:
…Ruka!
…Old Recycling Plant…
The line dies abruptly after that.
Yusei tries calling back, but is informed the number he’s trying to reach has been disconnected.
Not Aki. Not Ruka’s voice either. But an eerily familiar one all the same.
A chill runs down his spine, and Yusei is now wide awake.
The old recycling plant was destroyed some nineteen years ago by an earthquake. The city eventually built the new one right next door, thinking they could at least use the old place for storage and processing, but found a myriad of problems they didn’t have the funds to deal with. Most were mundane; rats, mold, poor infrastructure that no one could count on not falling on their heads.
Ultimately it was decided that it was more trouble than it was worth, and it was just boarded up to keep people out.
When Yusei was Ruka’s age, he used to play here. He had a habit of wandering in decrepit buildings in search of usable scrap, and this one was no different. Jack would follow, because he seemed to think if Yusei was going into condemned ugly buildings, then Jack had to do it too. Crow would also follow, because Crow had a habit of thievery and was always down for breaking and entering.
The abstract risk of death made it seem thrilling. A little trick that turned fear into fun.
They were not very good children, Yusei reflects, staring at the broken glass windows and rotting boards nailed across the doors. He watched the way the building seemed to shudder, listing to one side like it was a creature slowly dying. If she found out her three boys had gone into the factory that day, Martha gave them a lecturing so fierce his ears would still be ringing for hours after. It made them sneakier, but no less bold.
He wishes Rua and Ruka hadn’t taken after them so much.
The police have finished their investigation, but the tape remains, heralding just where he needs to go in order to search for Ruka. Yusei leaves his bike behind, and ducks beneath the tape, walking into the building.
The wind picks up, and it whistles in through the windows. Yusei picks his way through, carefully stepping around trash, rusted nails, and the building groans around him as he does. No matter where he steps, something else in the building creaks in response, the sounds of the building threatening to fall apart at any second, all around him.
Yusei looks around, searching for signs of Ruka. The full moon illuminates what little it can, peeking in through the gaps in the windows, the tiny holes in the walls, but there’s so much space, and too little light.
Ruka didn’t answer when he tried calling her number. It went straight to voicemail.
Yusei flips open his phone - no signal. The screen flickers, and then dies abruptly, like it lost all of its charge at once. Nothing he does brings it back online.
Not great omens. Despite this, he presses on.
There’s a strange patch of broken ground in the middle of the floor, where concrete has been hacked away and filled in with dirt and rubble. In the miniscule light he can’t make out much more than that, but something unsettles him about it. The ground here seems darker, and stained.
Yusei forces himself to look away, finding a way up after a few moments. He scales a creaking, wooden staircase up to the second floor.
His shoulder aches from where Sherry struck it with her rapier, and his wrist is starting to swell from taking the brunt of a fall. Yusei tries to push out all thoughts about it, with limited success, as he casts his gaze around what must have previously been the office floor of the building. Discarded, torn cubicles are strewn about. The desks have been broken, from either vandalism or time, and there’s a pool of water in the corner, fed by the leaking holes of the thin and falling ceiling.
His head is buzzing from a combination of sleep deprivation and the vague fear that has him following a phone call into an old factory in the middle of the night. Yusei watches the shadows twist on the walls, blinks, and finds them back where they started.
Are the walls moving?
The building is crying enough that it could be. Pain and anguish, as its insides fall apart, rot and decay, and it’s forced to stand there and take it. To continue on until the allotted time. His reflection on the broken shards scattering the floor looks back at him with pity.
He’s so tired.
No, there’s no time to stop moving.
His eyes struggle to stay open. He tries to rub at them, but finds his hands lack the strength to lift themselves.
One more month. Just one more.
He can rest a moment now, surely.
There isn’t enough time for that. Every moment is precious.
He’s all alone, and the weight of it all is too much to carry.
Isn’t it? Isn’t it tiring? Lonely? Exhausting?
The room starts spinning, slowly like a carousel, round and round and round until the speed is dizzying. The dark grays and browns of his surroundings start to blur. His thoughts are muddled and blocked like leaves in a gutter drain, thoughts trickling in with only the vaguest of notions. Shapes and images flash through his mind.
Pressure is building in his head, and his body feels disconnected, full of static.
He stops moving.
The not so distant point of the future grinds to a halt.
Everything is so loud.
The wind shrieking through the windows, the building groaning as it tries to swallow him whole. His heartbeat, racing, thundering in his ears.The crashing of something metal, coming closer, and closer…
MOVE!
Something cold rams into him from behind, and Yusei stumbles forward, back into reality just in time for a steel beam to narrowly miss his head. It strikes the ground where he was just standing, splitting the floor with alarming speed and a thunderous crack echoes through the building. Every moment of the deafeningly loud cacophony is a stark, cold repetition of the fact that was almost him.
The building is still.
His mind is clear again, even if his hands shake briefly. He tries to breathe. One month and everything he’s worked for, almost gone in an instant. He’s digging his fingers into his bruised wrist before he knows it, and hisses.
The pain in his wrist is sharp, and grounding.
“Bad habit, using pain like that,” Sherry would say, if she saw him. Sherry would say a lot of things if she just saw him just now, nearly getting his head smashed in from failing infrastructure.
No.
No, it wasn’t just the building falling apart, like all things when time takes its due.
For him to have been in any sort of mortal peril, for Yusei to have nearly passed out standing even as tired as he is, frozen like a stuck, disconnected circuit board… this couldn’t be natural.
There’s something here.
And if it tried to kill him, what would it do to Ruka?
“Ruka?” Yusei shouts, his voice bouncing off the walls. “Ruka, are you here?”
Something moves in his peripherals - something green. Yusei jerks his head towards it - an office door, creaking open, giving him a glimpse of a dark hallway beyond it.
Not a tantalizing invitation. But the shadows aren’t where he last saw them, when Yusei looks back.
He runs for the door.
Something shrieks behind him, and it’s like something suffocates the light in the room, snuffing it out and drawing out the breath from his lungs.
A step - two steps - there’s something on his shoulder, digging into it.
Yusei ditches his jacket, shrugging it off as it starts to pull on him.
The shrieking gets louder.
He just barely detangles himself from his jacket, as it is seized away from him.
A chill brushes his elbow.
He trips -
And his bad shoulder collides into the door. Yusei grips the side of it and uses his momentum to swing himself around it, and slam the door shut.
The silence is immediate.
Yusei waits, to see if the doorknob will rattle, if the walls will shake, if the shadows start to pour in beneath the door. But nothing happens.
He takes a few more steps in this hallway, rounds the corner until he finds another door, unlocked. He opens it, and steps into what must have been an office, once upon a time.
He can see his breath, in this room. It's freezing. A fact he’s suddenly all too aware of, especially without his jacket now.
This part of the building has the roof partially caved in, probably from a combination of heavy snow and rain damage. Despite all the broken windows and holes in the rest of the building, Yusei is only now realizing this is the first breath he’s taken that feels like fresh air.
And, behind a large desk in the middle of the room, sitting with her knees drawn up and her head buried in her arms in a patch of moonlight, is a young girl with green hair.
“Ruka!”
“...Yusei?” Ruka peeks up, eyes red rimmed and puffy. She bolts upright once Yusei comes into the light.
As soon as he’s close enough, she reaches out and grabs his arm.
“You’re really you!” Ruka says, voice laced with relief. Her hands are warm, despite the cold air. “You shouldn’t be here! It’s really dangerous!”
“That’s why I’m here,” Yusei says. “You shouldn’t be out alone. Especially not in this building. Why are you here?”
Ruka deflates, from rescued to scolded in seconds.
“I thought - I didn’t know it was this dangerous,” Ruka mutters, digging into her pockets. “I just wanted - I couldn’t bear to lose it. Rua’s favorite action figure. He spent months waiting for it and I wanted to bring it back to him.”
Ruka presents Yusei a toy - some shiny golden robot in the shape of a dragon. His stomach sours when he spots something brown and dry flaking off its shoulder.
“Power Tool Dragon,” Ruka states softly. “The rookie hero of Team Deformer, who wanted to be a part of them so badly, even though he wasn’t from the same planet as the rest of the Deformers. Rua loves him.”
“Rua wouldn’t want you to risk your life over this,” Yusei says. “There’s - there’s something here, Ruka.”
“I know,” Ruka says, biting on her lip. “I thought it was funny - the figure was just lying there, in the middle of the floor. How could the police have missed that? But then the building - it tried to hurt me. It tried to use Rua’s dragon to lure me in. I ran away and hid in here. I don’t think it likes the light.”
“It did the same to me,” Yusei says, frowning. The way he came in only was the only path out - back out to the main floor then down the stairway, which isn’t a viable option for escape now.
“Why are you here?” Ruka says, tugging at his hands like she still needs reassurance he’s real. “How did you know to look for me?”
“Got a call that you were here,” Yusei says, distractedly trying to figure out if he can scale a building with a child clinging to his back and zero supplies to facilitate that with.
“Someone called and told you that?” Ruka says, gripping his hand tight. “But I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here.”
“You should have told Aki at least,” Yusei says. “She’s going to be really worried when she finds out.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell her,” Ruka says miserably. “She doesn’t believe me either.”
Yusei doesn’t get to ask about that, because just as he opens his mouth, something bangs on the door.
Yusei pulls Ruka close and she clings to his side. The door starts to rattle, shaking with the force of something pounding on the other side of it.
The luxury of time is no longer theirs. Yusei looks out one of the windows, bizarrely intact, and judges the distance to the ground as too far to take without breaking his legs. He doesn’t have time to heal from that, and it’s possible the danger of whatever is in here might be able to reach further than the confines of the walls.
“We need to go,” Yusei says, and Ruka doesn’t question him, just grips his hand tightly in hers. Ruka has always trusted him, even before he earned it; Yusei prays it is not misplaced.
He shoves the desk Ruka was hiding behind toward the wall, where there was a half-hearted attempt at some point to stack the other furniture. He tests his weight on the desk - it holds, so he vaults up, and lifts Ruka to the next structure; a precariously balanced desk chair.
“Up,” Yusei directs, and Ruka starts climbing to the open ceiling, up a potentially manageable path. He follows slowly, careful not to disrupt the balance.
“I can’t reach!” Ruka calls, a few feet from an upturned desk.
Before Yusei can respond, there’s a flash of green in the corner of his vision again, and Yusei turns just in time to hear the hallway door burst with the loudest thud, and witness the room get very dark and very, very cold. His fingers freeze, and his breath comes out in stark white clouds.
No time to plot a careful course. Yusei scales up the chairs, knocking at least one aside; it is swallowed up into the darkness, he doesn’t even hear it hit the ground. Yusei gets to Ruka and boosts her up onto his shoulder; Ruka squawks and struggles to adjust to the sudden height, but she steadies herself and just barely manages to snag the next step up - just as something icy grabs Yusei's ankle.
Damn, damn, damn.
The grip is unshakeable, and worse, it’s spreading up his leg. Using his arms, Yusei pushes Ruka up a few inches more, and she scrambles up.
“Go!” Yusei says, as Ruka turns and reaches her arm back to him, as if her tiny body could haul him up.
“Not without you!” Ruka yells.
That’s going to be a problem, because Yusei can actually feel himself being pulled down, getting pried off despite how much he’s digging his nails into the furniture.
Damn it all. How much will it hurt? How much will this cost? Will there be enough time to recover?
Did Rua worry, before the end? Or did he just think about Ruka?
Yusei bats those thoughts away with a hammer.
“You need to go,” Yusei tells Ruka, as gently as he can. She stubbornly shakes her head. “You have to live, remember? I’ll be okay.”
“No!” Ruka screams. “No, no, no!”
NO!
Something collides with his ankle, and there’s this awful, screeching noise. Ruka covers her ears, and Yusei feels himself slam back into the makeshift tower, ankle mercifully free, but still very numb. He scrambles up the tower to Ruka, and doesn’t look back, not until he has Ruka’s hand in his and they’re crossing that last gap and hauling themselves onto the roof; Yusei kicks the tower on his way up, with enough force to topple the rest of the decrepit thing. It shudders and falls, soundlessly, into the abyss.
Ruka’s eyes are fixed back down into the darkness. When he looks, all he catches is darkness swallowing up the entire room.
“Ruka,” Yusei says.
“I,” Ruka says, and stops. Chews her lip, then rubs at her eyes with her sleeves. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
She takes a step toward him, and then lurches - the entire roof is shaking. Yusei catches Ruka’s wrist before either of them can trip into the giant hole and render their whole escape moot.
“Is - is it attacking the support beams?” Ruka asks. “It’s going to topple the whole roof to get to us!”
Not good. Yusei casts a wild look across the roof, that’s rippling like the ocean waves. The nearest building is both taller and too far away to jump to. The ground is unmercifully far, but at this point it’s his legs or their lives; he can probably survive, but it will cause a lot of problems in the next few weeks.
Less problems than dying would, though.
Yusei heads to the ledge closest to where he left his bike, adjusting his grip from Ruka’s wrist to her hand. She follows quickly, and with a determined look on her face. As always, Yusei’s both proud of her, and perpetually worried for her. Ruka always takes on so much for her tiny shoulders to bear.
A sudden hole opens up right in front of them, Ruka pulls back quick enough to help Yusei from tumbling in. They adjust and keep running - more holes are practically punched through the roof, cluttering their path.
It’s desperate. It’s determined to get them, to end them. The breaks are haphazard, irregular and without planning. It needs them dead, so much that Yusei suspects that’s all that it can think of. Obsessive. Frustrated. Fixated.
They make it to the edge. Just as Yusei’s scooping Ruka into his arms, she points out to the corner with a “Look!”
Yusei risks a look.
A metal drain pipe, rusted and old - but bolted to the side of the building, running all the way to the ground.
The entire building is starting to shake.
Yusei bolts - Ruka grasping his shirt, hauled over his shoulder. The very floor of the roof has more holes than concrete, and it’s starting to fall in more places simply out of an inability to sustain itself. He nearly trips, and has a dizzying moment where he genuinely worries he’s about to plant face first to the ground - but his training kicks in, and he catches himself, and uses the momentum to twist and keep going.
“Hold on tight,” Yusei says. “I need both my arms-”
“Right,” Ruka says, awkwardly moving so she’s clinging to his neck, arms locked around him, clunky shoes digging into his sides. “Go!”
The moment Yusei’s feet leave the roof, the entire thing collapses. He grips the pipe with everything he has, absurdly thankful he wore his gloves tonight. Carefully, he tests sliding down the pipe - jerkily, as he has little control on their speed, and he gets painfully caught on the places where the pipe is bolted down. Ruka is quiet, but her little fingers are digging painfully into him, and she’s shaking.
But they’re making progress.
Halfway down, and the screeching returns. The building is shaking, and the rivets bolting the drain to the wall burst and fall off. Ruka screams as the pipe groans and then jerks sideways. Yusei scrambles for purchase on anything, just as he loses grip on the pipe - he manages to cling to a windowsill, just as that too falls apart with the very bricks holding it up.
Yusei tucks Ruka against his chest, and kicks out blindly against where the crumbling wall is. He hits - something, some of the bricks? And then tumbles and tumbles until his bad shoulder once again takes the brunt of his fall.
His vision whites out as pain lances through him. Sound dies abruptly.
You rule pain, Sherry has said, over and over, often the inflicter of said pain. Not the other way around. Do not let it stop you.
As if it were that simple. Maybe it is for Sherry. Yusei, despite being a quick study, never quite learned that trick. It’s Ruka’s face, pale and frightened, that kicks his brain into gear just enough to pull himself up, to breath through the sharp pain until it's merely a pulsing, dull ache. Just enough. He has to be more than enough. He has to be more than this.
Yusei only checks to make sure Ruka is still in his arms - she is, hands locked around his neck, eyes squeezed shut - and he stands, and runs. Runs past the dust and the debris and the fear lodged in his throat. He follows the only things he can trust - the pale moonlight, and a glint of green.
He doesn't run far, but it feels like an eternity.
Yusei nearly collides with his bike, basking in the light of the full moon. Only then does Yusei stop, and let go. It takes several more minutes before Ruka does the same.
Together, they look upon the ruins of the factory. It is in pieces, utterly collapsed. The dust is only beginning to settle. The strange darkness that hunted them is still and unmoving, like a dead creature.
Ruka takes a halting step toward it, hands balled into fists.
“I lived,” Ruka whispers. She takes a shuddering breath, and then screams, voice rising and shrieking with everything she has. “I lived! You didn’t get me! You missed me again! You - you’ll rot in that building forever like you deserve and I lived!”
Then she’s crying, thick tears rolling down her face.
Yusei, wobbling, sets himself down on one knee, and reaches a hand out to her. Ruka turns and buries her face in his shoulder, her arms coming around him, and her sobbing shakes his body.
“I lived,” Ruka cries, hiccuping. “And Rua didn’t. It’s not fair. It’s not fair!”
“No,” Yusei says, curling one arm around her back. “It’s not.”
Not so long ago, there was a funeral.
Three weeks before that, there was Rua, Ruka, and a man with a knife. Only Ruka left the factory alive.
Yusei got a call that night, too.
Yusei lifts her up in one arm, cradled close to his chest. She’s growing up too fast, getting too big to be carried, but soon he won’t be able to do this anymore. Ruka doesn’t complain like she usually would either, just locks her arms around his neck and rests her head on his shoulder. Her tears haven’t ended, but she just quietly sniffles instead of outright bawling now; even grief takes more energy than she can give.
“We’re leaving,” Yusei tells her, and she nods, closing her eyes.
Something small and cold grabs his free hand, and holds it tight.
“Yeah,” Yusei says, as his heart aches. “Let’s all go home.”
Ruka throws what Yusei very charitably does not call a tantrum at the mere thought of returning to her parents home in Tops (“That’s not home!”), so he brings them back to his tiny apartment. Ruka quietly follows Yusei inside, pulls on Rua’s old sweater, and lets Yusei tuck her into the guest bed. She stares aimlessly at the ceiling, and he leaves the nightlight plugged in.
There’s a cold spot by his couch; Yusei hovers near it for a moment, wishing to know what’s the right thing to say, to do. He ends up saying “Goodnight” to an empty room. It doesn’t feel like enough.
Yusei texts the group chat. Aki has been in a panicked uproar, Crow called Security, Jack is roaming the streets apparently in search, and he’s missed no less than six calls from various people. He gives a quick update that he found Ruka and she’s safe. Ruka herself sends a thumbs up emoji in response. Instantly, he hears Ruka’s phone start ringing in the other room, muffled through the walls.
He expects neither of them will get much sleep.
Yusei enters his room and closes the door with a sigh. His phone buzzes in his hand.
He flips it back open - message from Crow: You both doing okay? What happened?
Fine. Yusei texts back. I’ll tell you later.
Now Yusei’s phone is ringing. The sun is ominously rising on the horizon, heralding the beginning of a day he has gotten zero sleep for, and Yusei can feel himself teetering on the edge of crashing. He digs at his eyes with the heel of his hand, trying to scrub the weariness from his brain.
“Hey,” Yusei says, once he’s managed to hit the accept button without opening his eyes. “Sorry I-”
“Yusei,” says a voice that is not Crow’s. Yusei feels every muscle is his body spasm, briefly, as if for a moment electricity replaced blood as the primary thing running through his veins. Yusei opens his eyes to a dreadfully orange sky. “Good morning.”
“Godwin,” Yusei answers, mostly on auto pilot. “What’s going on?”
“Sherry couldn’t call you last night,” Godwin answers. “You fell off the map for a solid few hours. I was checking in on you.”
“I’m fine,” Yusei says. “What do you really want?”
“Truly, I’m just checking in on my late colleague’s son,” Godwin says, with a small laugh. “Is that so hard to believe?”
Yusei lets his silence answer for him.
“Very well,” Godwin says, back to business. “I want to meet next week to touch base, and map out the final preparations. There’s been a breakthrough.”
“Fine.”
“We’ve finished restoration of the last recording,” Godwin says, and Yusei feels his stomach do a complicated flip and not quite nail the landing. “We know for certain what time it starts now.”
“When?”
“We’ll discuss that when I see you and Miss Leblanc,” Godwin answers, infuriatingly. “I wouldn’t want to disrupt your day anymore than it already has been. I really was calling to check on you. You’re the key to this whole operation.”
“I know,” Yusei says. He’s holding his phone so tightly he can hear the plastic casing creak. “I won’t fail.”
“I know you won’t,” Godwin says, and cuts the call there.
Reasons to stay upright are no longer existent, so Yusei falls back onto his bed, just barely keeping his phone from sliding out of his hands and onto the cold hard floor. He’s keyed up and exhausted at the same time, that familiar buzz of electricity hitting all his nerves intermittently. He lays one arm over his eyes so he can at least ignore the coming dawn, if not his rapidly approaching future.
His phone is buzzing again. Yusei turns his face enough to glimpse at the screen - Crow, with a text: I’ll swing by the morning with Jack and the kids and make breakfast at your place, you can tell me then. We’re here for you.
There’s a strong, painful tug at his heart. How lucky he is, to have friends like this in his life. How much he wishes he deserved them.
Okay. Yusei texts back, only a little shaky.
Yusei stares at his phone for a while, until he pulls up the calendar app, and looks at exactly one month from today.
One month until he turns twenty.
One month until he fulfills his destiny.
One month until the prophesied end of the world.