xpurgatory

[xpurgatory]

05. february

Prolog and note.

This not fanfiction.

It’s barely fiction. This is a story/anecdote that has been weighing me down. I’ve wanted to tell it for a long time but it’s been like water. I can’t give you water. I thought deeply about how I wanted to present the water—should I pour it into a bowl, or in a vase and stick in a flower? Should I dig a pond or split the earth and change the tide? I didn’t know. Instead, I kept the water inside me, allowing myself to fester and bloat.

Then my friend gave me a well, something that took root and dug deep. Names have been changed and when I get too scared, circumstances have been adjusted as well. Trigger warnings for some heavy shit like eating disorders, body image, drugs, and abusive relationships.

01.

In 2005, Allie met Rafa at a prestigious summer program for gifted high school students. That is where the story dies and begins again.

In 2004, Allie began dating Brett. By that time, Allie and I were best friends again after some long years of some cold shoulder fighting that only girls of a certain age could pull off. We were very similar. We both experienced massive growth spurts over the past two summers, such that, by 2004, we loomed as amazons among the men. We were beautiful amazons, but we were also 16 years ago with bodies too large for everyone else’s comfort, so grey clouds blurred our vision when we looked in the mirror. By contrast, Brett was perhaps one of the shortest and skinniest boys in our cohort. When Allie and Brett made out in the hallway, she’d lean back on the lockers and sort of squat while he stood between her thighs. Our peers fussed and groaned with disgust. But Allie—Allie seemed to revel in it. She seemed to love the attention—although privately, she’d confess that she wasn’t quite sure why she began this relationship. I mean, we all knew what Brett got out of it. He loved his incredibly intelligent, gorgeous, amazonian goddess and he knew that this dream was not sustainable. He knew what other people thought—including that time a confused store clerk saw them together, signaled Brett over, and literally asked him, “Are you rich?”

But then the Bloomberg Summit happened. The prestigious summer program selected Allie for their political science cohort, whisking her off to New York City for a few weeks. There, she met Rafa, a student in their creative writing cohort.

Allie told me about it later. About Rafa’s broad shoulders and broad prose, which the Summit honed to the fine point of an ice pick. About how Rafa spoke to her in a way that made her feel as if the rest of the world dropped away. He furiously turned out poetry about her, for her, and she, having never eaten before, devoured them. Their whirlwind summer romance was every romance in the movies, and when she returned to our quiet town, she collapsed on her bed, a burned out husk.

“What about Brett,” I asked her.

“Eh, I’ll never see Rafa again. It’ll probably be okay.”

And, unsurprisingly, it was. Brett desperately clung onto his dream despite the fact that Allie still dreamed about Rafa. In 2006, they were accepted into different ivy league universities and parted ways. I, too, left Allie’s story and drifted out of her life for the next decade. I didn’t know how much I would need her later.

02.

In 2011, Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal erupted rudely into our lives. The 24/7 news cycle regaled the nation with that one (1) photo of Weiner’s weiner (you know what I’m talking about, reader, there’s no way to forget it). As we watched Weiner hold press conferences with a mixture of fascination and disgust, our eyes not only rested on him, but on his wife, the brilliant and silent Huma Abedin. In rancorous bewilderment, we stared at her standing behind her husband and held court in our homes. Why did she stay with him? Is she stupid? Is she naïve? Is she staying for their kid? Doesn’t she know that her husband is a sexual deviant and she’s just endangering her kid? She’s weak. She’s a terrible mom. She must not care about anything. She’s so greedy. She’s too power-hungry. She’s bringing women down. If she were a real woman, she’d leave him now.

In 2011, I met Daniel. He was a new post-doctoral fellow while I was a new graduate student, and I manufactured excuses to be on the same floor as him. Eventually, he asked me out, thus beginning an on-and-off romance dominated by anticipation and anxiety. He—he was a tremoring soul. At one point, he disowned his father after his father told him that he wished that Daniel had never been born; at another, he told me that he just proposed to his ex-girlfriend. I saw other men in the spaces in-between (and sometimes in the thick of it all), but I never stayed the night. We remained friends, sometimes hesitantly, throughout it all and he was there when my car broke down and my friend got a divorce as I was there at his father’s tumultuous wedding and when his mom got sick. We went on vacation together, spent weekends together, drove to work together, and no matter who else we kept on the side, we always used “we” when referring to us. After four years of chaos, he declared that he was done with other women and wanted me to be his girlfriend. I agreed—although, at the time, I had begun emotionally preparing myself to leave him forever. The next few months were fine until January rolled around and I asked why we weren’t having sex very often.

At first, it was because he was tired from being at the gym. Then, it was because he was very stressed out from work. Then, it was because, I don’t know, he just ate a lot or something.

Then, it was me.

I had an odd smell down there, it seemed. It was puzzling. I sniffed my underwear and smelled nothing unusual. Men, if you’re reading this, you have to understand that the vagina can be weird, but women know when there’s something off. I did not feel unusual. I did not feel like I needed to pee often or that I itched. But he kept insisting that something was off. Once, he insisted during a time in my cycle where there was more discharge than expected even though I still felt fine.

“You should go see the doctor,” Daniel insisted.

“But I feel fine.”

“No, something must be wrong.”

I frowned. “But what if there’s nothing wrong? What if that’s just me?”

He did not look at me when he answered, “There has to be something wrong.”

I left the apartment that morning without saying goodbye. I did not feel anything when I got home and scheduled an appointment with the gynecologist for the next day. I, who was earning her doctorate in reproductive endocrinology, did not feel a single thing as I calmly sat down in front of the gynecologist and explained that there may be something wrong with me down there.

She began the usual routine. “Do you feel itching? Do you smell something off?”

“No.”

“Do you feel pain? Is there an unusual discharge?”

“No, I feel fine.”

She squinted. “Okay… Why are you here?”

“My boyfriend said that something smelled off.”

Her eyes grew wide and her lips pursed. We were still, together, for a moment before she asked, “He actually said that to you?”

Something swelled up inside of me but I slapped it down. My voice remained steady despite the heat creeping up my neck. “Yes.”

“God, I hate men.”

Regardless, we proceeded. I laid back and put my feet in the stirrups while a cold metal instrument poked and prodded around inside my body. I stared at the ceiling, replaying the doctor’s last words over and over again in my mind, and forcing myself to breathe as we do in yoga class.

After the doctor closed me up, she said that I was fine. The “weird” smell would probably go away in a few days, like how all normal smells do. (Later, I discovered that my daily vitamin had actually expired last year, and stopped taking them. Afterwards, I immediately returned back to “normal.”) Meanwhile, she would really appreciate it if I can bring my boyfriend some educational materials and/or maybe take him out back for a beating. For the next few days, I did not respond to Daniel’s texts until I got a, “I need to talk to you. Can I come over?”

That was when I found out about his addiction.

03.

In 2010, Allie and I obtained our bachelor degrees. I entered graduate school while she began working at a 6-figure job at a hedge fund company in New York City so that she could pay off her student loans as well as save for law school. She moved into a small apartment by the American Museum of Natural History, and I would visit her over the summer to party with her and her roommates. We went hard--dancing at La Caverna, Beauty Bar, Red Room (RIP), on the bar tops of Coyote Ugly, smoking with budding movie producers, running down Broadway with ripped fishnets, Insomnia Cookies at 3am, one-night stands with uppity uptown folk, late nights with smeared eyeliner and broken heels. Then, one summer, Allie told me that she met a guy. Dylan. He seemed nice. Over dinner at our favorite vegan restaurant, Allie took out her phone and said that Dylan’s dick was that thick. I rolled my eyes. We’d see how long this would last.

Allie proved me dead wrong. In 2015, as I quietly prepared myself to drop Daniel for good, Allie called to announce their engagement and asked if I could attend her wedding. I pictured bringing Daniel. But, even though I had already held his shaking hands while we watched his father get re-married, I could not imagine taking him to my friend’s wedding. I was also nearing the end of graduate school and unsure about my future. So I sent in my RSVP but did not commit. I was lucky that Allie loved me enough to entertain my uncertainty.

Then I found out about Daniel’s addiction.

Unexpectedly, the actor Terry Crews explained it the best. On February 11, 2016, Terry began releasing a series of videos called Dirty Little Secret. His timing was impeccable. In 2016, a few days after my humiliating visit to the gynecologist, Daniel came over and confessed to urges that he did not understand and could not control. It came over him, you know? When he’d do it, he’d enter this headspace and he felt so good and like he could do anything, you know? You know heroin? When he’s doing it, that’s probably how heroin feels? He can’t stop. He tried to stop it when we started dating for real, but then the urges just built up and even though he loved me, he’d wake up some days resenting me, hating me, pushing me away. He wanted to stop. He wanted to stop so badly because he could see how it was making me feel, how ugly it was making me feel, and he hated himself for it and he couldn’t stop. He’d been doing it since he was ten years old, you know, and he wanted to stop. He really wanted to stop.

I did not know the correct language at the time, and when I look back, I don’t know if he already knew or if he was kidding himself. All I could do, while he confessing his sins, was watch my boyfriend and best friend split before my eyes. He became two people—the guy who once said that my problems were his problems and that other guy, the monster, who once said that it was not him, it was me. The problem was me.

At the end of that conversation, Daniel circled back to pushing me away. We should take a break, he said, because he needed to figure this out on his own. He could not keep watching me go through the pain of enduring his trials and errors while he figured it out. And he would fix himself, he promised, he would fix himself—maybe, two months? Two months. Maybe less. What do you think about that, babe? Whatever, it was going to happen anyway.

Reader, I want you to understand that these situations are rarely sudden. It’s a stepwise process, and I was so immersed under water that I could not wipe my eyes lest I forgot to breathe. I couldn’t even move. Instead, I stood still, perfectly still, as he moved me across the board to whatever position suited him that day. In January, I smelled weird. In late January, it was me. In early February, it’s not me, it’s him. In mid-February, I was unfuckable. In early March, I was very fuckable. In mid-March, I was out of my mind trying to leave him, please don’t you understand that some people make mistakes, sometimes we’re not ready to talk about our mistakes, we’re not talking about this tonight. In late March, I was his only safe place in the world. In April, I was stressing him out. In May, he slept with someone else and told me it was only going to get worse but maybe we can still be friends?

So he showed me the door out and I left.

Terry Crews puts it the best. In one of his videos, he addresses the wives and tells them to get out. Get the fuck out. There is nothing you can do, so take care of yourself and leave right now. That’s what we told Huma, right? Standing in front of our TV screens, cozy in our ignorance, we yelled get out girl because it’s only going to get worse. In our blissful bubble, we added, with both pity and rancor, you’re too smart for this. You’re a strong and independent woman. How dare you betray us by standing there?

Later, I found out that after I got out, he sank into a deep depression because he did not expect me to cut off all ties. He’d show up unexpectedly because he knew where my office was, and he’d try to cozy up to my friends. Eventually, he texted and asked if I could help him because his pain was too much—and you know what reader? I did. Despite having hollowed myself out to make room for the ego of a grown man who could not control himself, I put off rebuilding my destroyed body, my lungs and stomach and words, to help him regain his ground. I felt light, weightless, mute. Some time in September, I developed a cough that lasted for the rest of the year. Eventually, Daniel got accepted to a faculty position. He declared himself to be sober but if he were to remain that way, he had to stop speaking to me because I was stressing him out. Thus, once more, I was the problem.

I haven’t heard from him since.

04.

Last year, I celebrated New Years with Allie and Dylan in Chicago. Allie emerged from the bedroom on New Year’s day while Dylan slept in, so she seized on the chance and asked, seriously, how was I doing.

“You never told me exactly what happened,” she pointed out.

“No, I haven’t really told anyone.”

We were quiet for a while. Then, slowly, she asked, “Did I ever tell you that I met Rafa again?”

In the summer of 2006, before we started university, Rafa called Allie and said that he was now living in northern New Jersey, just a bus ride away from our home town. She immediately agreed to meet and packed a weekend bag. Rafa lived in a tiny loft in the outskirts of an industrial town where the lakes appeared as a flat olive green. Allie felt off with her Coach bag and Lucky jeans but as soon as she entered the apartment, Rafa greeted her with open arms and a stack of poetry he had furiously scribbled out in anticipation of their reunion. The weekend flew by and she would return, week after week, even after the commute stretched because she had to move south for university. She adored Rafa’s roommate, an easy-going guy who never seemed to be around, as well as Rafa’s best friend who lived downstairs. But, most of all, she loved, loved Rafa and he loved her.

Then, it started. Rafa had always been temperamental. She’d known this since the Summit—he would passionately court her with new verses just as soon as he began ranting about some injustice in the world. It made his poetry better, hotter, she’d say. Also, it’d make him better in bed. But then Rafa’s moods turned her way. Why was she dressed like that? What was going on with her hair? Allie got rid of her skinny jeans. She cut her hair.

After a few months, she found the needles in the bathroom.

“But here’s the thing,” Allie tells me in her Chicago apartment, where her husband sleeps in the next room and her law degree hangs on the wall. Her voice drops down to a whisper. “I didn’t leave him then. I stayed.”

After discovering the needles and confronting her boyfriend, Allie continued to make those long trips up to see Rafa, who began to use openly in front of her. His mood swings and scrutiny intensified. One day, she asked why they weren’t having sex as frequently, and he looked her in the eyes and stated, “Because you’re too fat.”

Allie paused.

She won’t really remember this part until later, but apparently, she packed her weekender bag while Rafa got high in the bathroom, and walked downstairs to Rafa’s best friend’s apartment. She asked if she could stay until her bus the next morning. Later, he’d ask her for sex and she’d agree, but she wouldn’t feel it.

When she got back to her dorm room on Sunday evening, she locked the door to the suite’s bathroom and stuck her finger down her throat.

“Do you remember how skinny I was when we hung out after we graduated?” Allie asks. “That’s why. I’m better now but that was a long four years.”

I stare at the ceiling of her Chicago apartment.

“Look,” Allie continues, shifting around on her seat, her voice lowering even more and her eyes darting to the bedroom door. “I love Dylan, but you think I love, love him? Dylan is amazing. We have so much fun together and he’s my perfect partner. But listen, Tracy, I’m not out-of-my-fucking-mind in love with him. You were out-of-your-fucking-mind in love with Daniel. Rafa was the love of my life, but I can’t do that kind of shit again.”

She takes a breath. “That’s why I married Dylan, because he’s not the love of my life. Because, well, you got to think about yourself you know? You’ve got to survive.”

05.

After two years, I’m better at telling this story. I am better at staring at it directly instead of out of the peripheries, collecting my rapidly beating heart, and shoving it back into obscurity. I’m better about the shame, even though now, as I write this, I still have to change certain details. I have held back, hesitated, asked, “Do I really want to be this honest?”

I think artists and writers who create deeply flawed, personal stories and then release them into the wild are the bravest. I think about Huma, and the courage and strength needed to silently stand on a stage and stare at her burden, her liar, while the rest of the world, in their absolute arrogance, scorn her for choosing to carry it for as long as she can. How dare her. How dare you.

[xpurgatory]

04.

Once, Sakichi falls out of a tree and hits every branch on the way down. A yelp rips through the courtyard and jolts Hanbei to his feet. He finds a groaning heap rolling in mud and leaves, and extends a hand.

With dirt streaked across his pallid face, Sakichi sets his bottom lip and refuses the offer. Instead, tiny palms dig firmly into the mud to hoist the shaking body into the air ... and back down over the other side. The strategist bites down on a smile as he watches the child attempt to overcome gravity for the second time.

"Sakichi," Hanbei gently begins. "How does your left ankle feel?"

The child sticks his lower lip out. "Fine."

"Then why is your foot hanging like that?"

The child struggles to explain his stubborn rejection of basic human anatomy. Blood continues to drain out of his face as the pain of standing on his sprained ankle crescendos into a brilliant white, and Sakichi eventually allows Hanbei to carry him inside so that the doctor may examine him.

The next day, Sakichi shows up for practice. To be fair, Hanbei reflects as he watches the child first hobble around in a circle and then walk into a wall, he probably looks better in his own mind as the doctor had prescribed a heavy regime of painkillers. The strategist holds up his hand to halt practice and before the drugged up baby general can voice his disagreement, Hanbei picks up Sakichi and brings him back to his room.

"You have to rest that ankle," the strategist cautions as he ties the child down to the futon.

"I must help Hideyoshi-sama," Sakichi feverishly declares.

"Yes," Hanbei wryly agrees, "but you'll be of more help with two ankles, not one."

"But Hideyoshi-sama needs---" the child sputters as Hanbei pulls the top of the comforter over his mouth.

"You must learn is how to deal with your limits," the strategist says as he secures the last knot. "Sometimes, you have to take time out to heal lest you become permanently crippled."

And so, the strategist spends the next few days keeping a close eye on the injured child. He eventually suspends the knots, but not after once slapping Sakichi for running off yet again on the crazy drugged fueled notion of serving tea to Hideyoshi-sama while hobbling. Hanbei brings meals to Sakichi's room, sweeps crumbs off the tatami mats, and reads to the child until the first snores escape from that tiny opioid laced mouth. It is only after when Sakichi has fallen into a deep sleep that the strategist blows out the candles and spends the rest of the night breathing heavily into eucalyptus soaked sheets and cleaning blood off the inner folds of his sleeves.

Two weeks later, the child walks with only the slightest of limps. Three weeks later, Sakichi climbs his first post-recovery tree and picks apples off the highest branches for the glory of the Toyotomi. Hanbei smiles when the child general can once again whip through practice with both ankles digging firmly into the ground, and hastily wipes away a faint trail of blood running down the side of his lips.

[xpurgatory]

03. Saving grace

Once, during a campaign, Akechi Mitsuhide falls down a well.

He cannot even recall the circumstances which had led to such a strange accident. When he wakes with hair streaming around like the last saving grace in shallow waters soiled with mud and blood, he only recalls roiling red ruins slipping beneath the horizon and smoke filling the sky. Mitsuhide props up on elbows and spits.  

It's not the worst ending ever. The strategist mentally checks over his body. Aside from shaking knees and a dull pain squeezing his spine, all the parts seem to be there and in (more or less) working order. Fingers brush against the bricks and scrape off slime. The well is wide and deep; the low water level suggests that it has not been used in some time. Carefully, under half lidded eyes and half-held breaths, Mitsuhide makes his way round the bottom, tracing each brick over and over, searching for a ledge, the first step back to the world above. Eventually, the annoying itch at the back of his throat tells him to stop.

How long has it been?

He sits down. The campaign began at dawn but who knows how long he has been unconscious. Mitsuhide squints up at the moon half peering over the ledge of the well, but it is too full to discern the passage of days. The logical conclusion, of course, is to assume that it is merely the night after the battle but a hazy voice hiding beneath the dripping locks of his last saving grace wonders.

Why have they not come looking for him?

Under the bright moonlight, strips of darkness slip through the soiled water. Mitsuhide lashes out but the slippery leech wiggles out between his fingers and disappears between a crack in the bricks. Mitsuhide squints at the crack. Can a nail fit through? What could he even do if a nail could fit through? The strategist paces around and around and suddenly makes a leap at one end of the well. Heels claw desperately against the thick slime as the strategist ricochets up the well until his left knee screams for mercy, pops, and he crashes back down.

The air runs thick when he wakes. The crimson light that has filled the well tells him stories of an entire day which has passed despite his imprisonment. The strategist opens his mouth but the sheer motion of stretching his throat brings tears. The soiled water seems to be clearer under the fading sunlight so the strategist quiets his mind before dipping his hands in for a drink. Then, bracing along the side of the well, the strategist attempts to climb onto his feet but the left knee refuses to cooperate and he collapses. A long sigh. The hazy voice hiding beneath the dripping locks of his last saving grace swells under all the assumptions of the setting sun so Mitsuhide stomps his left foot against the opposite wall. White floods the world.

It is night again when he starts awake. He struggles to sit up as his left knee screams and his stomach attempts to eat itself. Mitsuhide glares up at the perfectly circular promise of freedom. Again, the hazy voice urges, he has to try again. There is no other way. They will not come back for him. The strategist spreads his fingers out in the darkness and his breaths grow slow and low. Even here, the edges are distinct. Hell has seen the pallid limits of his flesh and has turned its back.

Again. He has to try again.

Later, when Mitushide finally manages to limp back to Nobunaga's camp, his warlord greets him with a mild look. Ignoring the gapes from the other advisers around the table, Nobunaga gestures over at the rolled out maps.  "Come here, Mitsuhide. Look over this. You can clean up later."

Mitsuhide grimaces as he drags his left leg over. With his last saving grace now caked in dried mud and slime, he takes his place at Nobunaga's feet and moves on.

[xpurgatory]

02. Limbo

What does a child know about limbo, Akechi Mitsuhide wonders as he watches Shigeharu's silhouette slide across the silver face painted over the placid river. The child temporarily removes the damp cloth masking his face and betrays a nose collapsed into a permanent wrinkle-- a hidden revolt roiling against the rotting stench churning across the garden. He stumbles over a small corpse, clamps the cloth back on, and moves on.

They've been poisoning the rats. When the devastated rice and grain supplies were first discovered, panic roared so loudly across the senior council that they missed Mitsuhide's amused warnings. They left poison out in the dark corners, the damp hallways, among the crumbs, the stalks, the leaves. Shigeharu discovered the first dead bird. Before long, Mino was up to its ankles in collateral damage -- in birds, mice, fish, and cats. Mitsuhide watched the council shake their heads and swallowed his laughter. Their rice and grain supplies recovered nicely but now marinated under a thick cloud of flies.

What does a child know about limbo, Mitsuhide wonders as he watches Shigeharu quietly struggle with his breath. The youngest addition of the Saito clan spends his days sneaking in shaky breaths when others look away and his nights under a face cloth soaked in eucalyptus. The strategist waits for a word, a complaint, a meaningful glance between those who know, but the child never grants him this pleasure. Instead, Shigeharu waits.

Eventually, the sky breaks into the season's first downpour. The riverbed swells, swallows the rancid bodies, and sweeps the malaise off to the west. Mitsuhide wakes to a world washed clean and makes his way down the muddy path.

"You could have said something to stop this," Mitsuhide muses out loud as he approaches the child who has been standing still for some time.

Shigeharu turns his head back to meet the gaze of the lanky strategist. His eyes smile and know.

[xpurgatory]

01. Ghost

Two weeks after the incident, Rohan wakes to find his right hand missing. Well, not missing. Just, not there. Under the thin slivers of dawn filtering in between the blinds, he squints at the apparently defunct fingers on his right hand. Oh. Okay. It must be asleep and has forgotten to wake with the rest of his body. He pokes and prods against his right palm, his right thumb, against the dry pads of each finger print until, in a bout of fury, he rips out a fingernail.

Nothing. No pain, no reflex, nothing but blood all over his covers from the gushing wound of a violently missing nail.

The mangaka carefully bandages up the mess and opens the bedroom window for the first time in two weeks to let out the faint iron-like smell. He takes a leisurely breakfast (set the pot, then toast, perhaps some eggs, scrub the pot, leave it out to dry, eat, chew, drink coffee, read news) before settling down to plan out the day's panels. He makes a sandwich for lunch, takes a walk around town (careful, avoid the ice cream parlor) or around the park (let's go the long way round the turtle pond), and works on his panels all afternoon before heroically attempting dinner. Lately, it's only been soup, but even then, by the fifth gulp, he feels too sick to finish the rest. After dinner, Rohan reads or finishes more panels so that he may try his damn hardest to ignore the gauze wrapping around his throat.

For the past two weeks, this has been Rohan's daily schedule.

With one hand out of commission, everything has slowed and become ever so exhausting. Although ambidextrous, his left hand eventually fatigues, shakes, quivers, and eventually, refuses to hold the pen any longer. And so, as his left hand tunnels into the deepest hells of carpel, the mangaka is forced to focus his mind elsewhere -- perhaps, at the space which once held an envelope that he threw out, at the box of pictures which he has buried under a stack of reference books, or at the window which only opens from the inside these days.

It's too slow, everything is too slow. The dull white gauze stretches out between moments and spins webs around his mind. For two weeks, he has jumped and ducked and weaved around the listless snares of endless time, but he must have slipped up the other night and lost his right hand in the process. The mangaka leans back in his chair and closes his eyes, but even there, the gauze wraps around his shut lids, his uneasy ears, until he can see nothing but the pulsating red backs of his eyes and hear the slow rush of his blood. His chest heaves; it's become difficult to breathe.

Koichi, who has apparently been concerned over the lack of threats against his own well-being, drags Rohan out to the fair on Friday with Yukako. The mangaka quickly loses the lovebirds in the crowd, and immerses in research photography until the camera leads him to the fortuneteller's tent. He moves his eyes from behind the lens to get a better reading of the name across the front flap when Koichi suddenly bursts out from the darkness within.

"It's a lot of fun, Rohan! You should go! I mean, okay, it's a bit useless, but it's cool and .. j-just get the cheapest reading," Koichi insists as he pushes his friend (?) inside.

Thin, gauzy scarves sweep across the ceiling of the tent. Candle light filters through just brightly enough so that Rohan doesn't trip across the various baubles littered across the floor. The mangaka eventually makes his way to the table and mildly stares at the hooded figure who will no doubt make some sort of flashy introduction.

The woman beneath the hood gasps.

"Don't bother," Rohan says dryly. "I'm a famous mangaka and just here for research. Relatedly, I'm going to taste this crystal ball now."

"What are you?" the fortuneteller whispers.

"I told you, I'm a famous mangaka. Now, here's some money so I can taste--"

"You are not all here."

The mangaka frowns. His left hand, which has been reaching out for the crystal ball, halts. "What?"

"You are like ... Half of you is like a ghost. Where is the rest of you?"

Rohan leaves the tent in a huff. In fact, he leaves the entire fair in a huff and does not quite stop huffing until he reaches the front of his house. The mangaka collapses on the porch steps and his useless right hand uselessly flops over uselessly by his side. Rohan snarls at his useless (apparently, ghost) fingers and, before he can stop himself, begins searching for the hidden cigarettes that Josuke had cleaned out a few days before he left, two weeks ago.

The gauze begins to tighten around his throat.

Josuke never said why. He never gave any forewarning at all; just disappeared one morning without a word for that part he left behind. Koichi vaguely mentioned something about Italy, about looking for something, and Rohan could not bring himself to ask for more details. Immediately, after the news, he threw away the envelope of two tickets which Josuke had bought for later that week and locked his bedroom window. He moved all of the pictures which he took of the idiot's adventures around the turtle pond (why did this even happen) and that time Josuke stuck both spoons up his nose at the ice cream parlor (again, why) beneath some books, threw away the now extra toothbrush, and moved the second pillow back in the closet. He moved quietly, efficiently, furiously, so that when he finally woke to notice his new world, time had already thickened to paste.

Koichi swings by Rohan's house on the day after the fortuneteller incident.

"I got tired," Rohan says with a shrug as he puts on a pot. "I've got a lot of deadlines these days."

Koichi nervously pokes at the empty cup before him. "Rohan, why aren't you moving your right hand?"

"Why are you here," the mangaka snaps.

"Josuke will be back, you know. He will be back from Italy."

Rohan stares at the cold pot on the stove. He shrugs again. "Who knows, though? And who cares?"