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subasekabang · 7 years

Text

Ticking of Hours, Lonely

Author: @zenellyraen

Rating: M

Word Count: 12300

Pairings: Background Shiki/Eri ; Josh/Neku hints (setup for more later)

Warnings: Pretty blatant discussion / reference to suicide, canon typical death talk, violence, slight to major self-doubt / unreality, hinted social negatives irt trans character, Joshua, all post-game spoilers in the house honestly

Summary: After all is said and done, Neku wakes up. A bullet wound to the chest. Memories fully intact. Injured, with no proof to any of the events that happened, that he remembers but can't explain. He has nothing from the Reaper's Game except the memories of a promise to meet up again, and even that he's unsure of, because after such a traumatic experience, how can he trust anything?

Can he even be sure that any of it actually happened?

Author's Note: HOO BOY. Okay so this is finally done! It's a complete fic in and of itself, but it mostly serves as set-up for another fic I want to do immediately after this. Deepest thanks and regards to the mods and participents of the subaseka bang! Y'all were wonderful and I really loved getting to be involved in this! Biggest love to my wonderful artist, @minisculelizard, who did an amazing job on his piece.

[.start.]

Brr-brr.

Pause.

Brr-brr.

Sleepily, Neku reaches out, fumbles slightly, grabs his vibrating phone from its habitual place on his pillow. He squints into the blue half-dawn light, taking in the time, the name flashing on the screen, and his heart constricts, then starts beating overtime.

03:06 AM

Call From: SHIKI

“Shit,” Neku mutters. He flips open his phone and holds it up to his ear as he sits up, wincing as his chest pulls painfully. His hands are shaking. Neku tries to put it out of his mind. “Shiki, what’s wrong, are you alright?”

There is a long, long moment, where Neku hears nothing but static, where he thinks maybe, just maybe, it’s an accidental call, though the thought is tinged with no small amount of hysteria because what if it’s worse. What if it's not Shiki at all, and he's just going to blink and his bedroom will fall away- And then there’s a quiet sob. Shiki’s voice is harsh and raspy with weariness, grief, panic, (Neku knows, he’s felt them all), and it takes her several, shuddering breaths in and out before she can finally say, “Neku.”

“I’m right here, Shiki. I’m right here, is everything okay? What’s wrong?” Neku murmurs, his free hand fisting in the bed sheets. Shiki doesn’t answer and doesn’t answer, only repeats his name over and over again between the quiet sobs. Neku keeps up his talking, trying to distract her from her own panic. “It’s gonna be okay, Shiki, just breathe. You’re fine, it’s going to be alright. I’m right here, shhh shhh, it’s okay.”

(As he does, Neku curls over himself, pulling his knees up to his chest with slow, agonizing movements, and hates the distance between them, the late hour, the fact that the trains aren’t running right now, everything that is keeping him from every modicum of comfort he can offer.

He’s still not used to not being able to touch her.)

Shiki draws a deeper breath than any she’s managed so far. Neku holds his.

“Neku, tell me it was real,” Shiki pleads, and Neku blinks furiously against a flood of his own tears.

His hand trembles where he has his phone held against his ear, and Neku leans his head over, his shoulder up, to brace it there instead. He wraps both arms around his curled legs, his fingers roughly digging into the soft blue blanket. “Shiki,” he says, “Shiki, it was real. The Game was real, it happened. You remember, right? You remember the Noise and the Psych Pins and meeting Beat and Rhyme and Mr. H and everything else.” Neku casts around for something else, anything else, gnawing his lip in the unfocused half-light. “You remember meeting me at Hachiko? Saving my sorry ass from being partnerless? Using your pig to fight?”

There’s a watery sniff. A deep breath. “He’s not a pig.”

Neku smiles. It’s a weak expression, but it’s a real one. “And you remember all of it, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“It was real, Shiki.” Neku sighs and leans back, forcing his muscles to loosen and relax against the cool wall, wincing as the injury on his chest twinges again. “Everything really happened. You’re not crazy.” He shakes his head. “None of us are.”

Shiki’s next breath is still shuddery and upset, but the one after is calmer. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I mean. How else would I have met you, right?”

“Exactly.” Heartbeat slowly calming down, Neku breathes in and out with Shiki, hoping to quell the still-anxious twist in his gut. He can't bring himself to close his eyes, scared that when he opens them again, he'll wake up in the Scramble. “I mean, you couldn’t have pulled down my shorts in the middle of a crowded street just to fix a button otherwise.”

She laughs, which is exactly what Neku wanted. He smiles into the air, curls up over himself again until he’s talking into the crevice between his thighs and torso, forehead resting on his knees, restless and unable to truly settle. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. God, for a second there I thought I had forgotten. Thanks, Neku." Shiki's words sound warm, just a little rough, and Neku’s heart aches for her, hates the distance all over again.

"Shiki," he begins, uncertain, "do you want me to call Beat and Rhyme? We can see when we all have off to go walk around Shibuya again."

"Mm, that'd be great. I miss you guys. Gosh, Neku, it's so late! Why did you pick up at this hour of the night?"

Neku huffs out a quiet laugh, and this time, he doesn’t even blink when his chest throbs with the sharp motion and the beat of Neku’s heart. "I'm always going to pick up when you guys call. Same way you'd do it for me."

Sulky and embarrassed now that the immediate panic has receded, Shiki grumbles, "Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I should bother you like that. You could’ve woken up your parents."

"Eh, it’s really not a problem, Shiki. I would have explained it to them. We’re partners, right? Just, like. Buy me lunch when we meet up, or something."

“Deal.”

They let everything fall into an easy silence then, just listening to the other’s breaths across the phone line, until Shiki sighs, heavy. “Alright. I’m going to try and go back to sleep. Make sure you sleep too, okay, Neku?”

“Got it. Sleep well, Shiki.”

The phone beeps as she hangs up, and Neku lets his hand fall to the side, and his phone slips from his limp fingers. He closes his eyes. It’s too early for this. Too late. Too something, where the edges of the world press in, unreal and constraining all the same. Nothing makes sense here anymore.

“Joshua,” he says into the space between his knees, so quiet he can barely hear it himself, “where are you?”

It’s not the first time the question has come to mind, and it probably won’t be the last. But the weeks after the Game have stretched on and on and with them, the Game has become something more akin to a nightmare than a reality. But it happened. It had to have, because if it hadn’t, then Neku wouldn’t have any friends.

Right?

If it hadn’t happened, Neku wouldn’t have the scar from a bullet wound on his chest and three weeks of missing time to keep track of.

(It’s hard to keep believing something when you have no proof it ever really occurred.)

Neku swallows past a heavy lump in his throat.

He does not sleep. It it not the first time for that either.

* * *

It goes like this.

Four different kids wake up in three different hospitals, muscles weak, lungs laboring for breath, and the startled, glad cries of their parents are foreign to their ears. They all look around, searching for something familiar, anything, and there is nothing. There are pale walls, white curtains, the sterile metal and plastic rungs of the beds they are laid in. There are no marks on their hands. There are no pins to be found. The Scramble is gone, their cell phones (when they finally get those back) are missing any mysterious texts or camera apps.

For all intents and purposes, it seems as though nothing happened. That everything was no more than a strange dream.

(Well, as it was, several things did happen. A car accident, a knife to the wrists, a mysterious gunshot wound.

But those are the things the four kids bear with them now in bodies they aren’t sure they remember. There is nothing from a period of three weeks where they had power over their own fates, fighting in a Game where the rules kept on changing.)

The kids are all alive.

Neku, alone finally in his hospital room while his mother runs to find a doctor to check him over now that he’s regained consciousness, looks down at his hands and wishes, for a long, despairing moment, that he had a Player Pin tucked into the folds of his palm. That on his other hand, there were the jagged, painful tick-lines of a clock that exposed the tender muscles below his skin, counting down to erasure. Something.

He doesn’t know quite what to do. There is still so much left that tells him he should already be on the move. He is wasting time.

“Sakuraba-kun,” the doctor says, walking into the small examination room. Neku stiffens and looks up at him, fists his hands into his blankets when the jolt it sends through his torso pulls hard at the bullet wound. “How are you feeling?”

Neku blinks slowly at him, trying to muster his thoughts through the medical cocktail currently seeping through his veins. “Like I got shot,” he says dryly, the hoarseness of his voice surprising him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots his mother leaning forward. “You know what happened? Do you remember who it was or what they looked like?”

And Neku immediately shakes his head. “Just some kid, Mom. I don’t… remember anything.” When in fact, it’s a bit closer to the opposite, Neku’s memories clamoring loudly, gunshots and a frantic chase and a wide, wide grin. Neku breathes in, out. (It’s actually… a little strange to be able to reach back and remember anything at all. There aren’t any blank spots in his mind anymore, which is just such a change from the last two weeks that it takes Neku a moment to realize that the doctor is trying to get his attention.)

“Alright, Sakuraba-kun, just follow what I say…”

So Neku does, letting the doctor run him through a number of tests. He suffers through them all with ill, impatient grace until they finally leave him alone, the lights dimming as the sun sets and visitor hours end. Neku’s mother leaves with promises to be back tomorrow, and she’s so glad, so glad he’s alive and doing well, she was so worried. Neku pats her on the back as she clutches him to her and pretends that this isn’t all very strange to him.

He’s supposed to be dead.

Now that he’s alone, Neku leans back in the bed, chest aching aching aching, and closes his eyes. He needs something. Something familiar, beyond the pounding in his head and the dryness of his mouth. Anything. And with a stutter-start of his heart, he realizes that he does have something.

A promise.

A location.

Hachiko, a week after they wake up, though really, Neku is going to be there every day once he gets released until he sees Shiki, Beat, Rhyme, and -

Joshua.

Joshua, Joshua, Joshua, and Neku can’t even curl over himself with the force of his sudden panic, because there’s a bullet hole in him, tight and painful with each hitching breath, and he just wants to see his friends again and Joshua shot him. Again. He lost. Aren’t they all supposed to be dead? Confusion swirls around in his mind, over and over with no resolution in sight as Neku tries to put it out of his mind. He can find out later. He has to be able to find out later.

This is the first night that Neku falls asleep with Joshua’s name on his lips and the others’ not far behind.

It is not the last.

* * *

The sun shines high in the sky about a week later, and Neku has finally convinced his mother that it’s safe for him to take the train into Shibuya again, that no, he won’t stay out too late, that yes, he understands how nervous it makes her that he’s going back to the place where he got shot. It makes him nervous too. His is an excited kind of nervous, however, low and anticipatory and slightly nauseating. She only really agrees when he promises to check in with her every hour and that no, of course he’s not going alone. He’s meeting up with some friends. No, really, Mom, some friends from… school.

(If one could really count the Game as school, anyway. It taught a lesson. Surely that counted for something.)

He looks and looks for his purple shirt as well, for familiarities sake, for the fact that , maybe, this way they’ll recognize him. Sure, he wore other clothes those three weeks, he had to, but. Maybe it’ll be easier with the headphones and the outfit he wore the first time he met all of them. That’s what they know him as, how they remember him. He’s sure of it.

But he can’t find it.

He can’t find that shirt anywhere, and it’s distressing because where could it be? Where could it even be? It can’t have gone too far, he was in the hospital. Where-

Oh.

He.

He died in that shirt.

Neku very carefully places a shaking hand against the sore mass of tissue in his chest, pressing just a little bit to feel the blood pulsing under his hand, a little harder still. He takes a deep breath, swallows. Right. He died in that shirt. Even if he could find it, he couldn’t wear it. It would have blood and bullet holes all over it.

Neku sits down heavily in the center of his room, hands clenched into fists against his thighs, bracing himself there, and he just breathes in and out and in and out. He fights back the tide of hysterical laughter clawing up the back of his throat, but. He died.

He doesn’t even know if anyone else is alive.

He doesn’t know. Neku hopes desperately that they have been returned to life as he has been, but he failed them, didn’t he? He lost. He lost the last game between him and Joshua. He could not pull the trigger and do what Joshua had done to him. He doesn’t know if they’re alive. Maybe Joshua is just punishing him. Sent him back with this to be alone and to know that he failed. Maybe that’s all.

Neku takes another few deep, excruciatingly painful breaths, rubs harshly at his eyes until they are dry and sore.

And then he stands up.

He has no time.

If they’re alive, they’re alive. If they’re dead, he can mourn them then, but he doesn’t know. And since he doesn’t know, he needs to go to Hachiko; he needs to try and meet up with them. Which means, most importantly:

“Mom, do you know where my headphones went?” Neku calls.

* * *

He almost doesn't go.

Neku waffles around the station for almost half an hour. They never decided on a time or anything like that. They hadn't decided on anything at all. There was never time for it. Just a vague, nebulous concept of “Once this was all over.” Survival instinct, almost. Trying to give themselves something to look forward to when all else was hopeless. Mixed success, really, but Neku needs it now with a fervor buried deep within his skin. His headphones rest around his neck, and Neku straightens his unfamiliar shirt with shaking hands.

(“They found you there,” his mother said before he left, fretting, one hand pressed to her cheek, and Neku carefully didn't think about it. Didn't think about how loaded the location would be for him. The mere idea of the Scramble made his heart go wild in the worst way, sickening and strange, but-

but he had to go.)

And so, swallowing past his dry throat, Neku makes his slow, torturous way up the stairs and to the main station. People mill about everywhere, passing around him with almost no care in the world aside from their designated tasks. Some, more engrossed in whatever it is they're doing, bump into him, and Neku almost relishes the slight brushes of contact, because it's different. There, ahead, the statue of Hachiko. Neku joins the crowd of people and tourists awkwardly hovering around the monument. He can't bring himself to look away.

After all, what if he looks and no one's there?

What if no one comes?

What if-

“Phones?”

Neku’s knees almost buckle at the welcome voice, the more welcome nickname, and he turns sharply to see Beat standing there. He has his stupid beanie on, and there are bruises and abrasions all over his arm and one half of his face, crutches in his hands, and Neku has never been more happy to see him standing there. Beside him, Rhyme waves, excited, with her one good arm. The other is in a brightly colored cast, cradled close to her body, and god, Neku swallows back the urge to cry.

He does not, however, stop himself from hurrying over to them, skidding to a stop right before he hurtles into them. “Hey, Beat, Rhyme,” he says, breathless, and-

There are arms around him.

Two sets of them, or at least as much as Rhyme can manage as she squeezes herself between Neku and Beat. Neku blinks, his vision going blurry with something that he’s going to deny are tears, and he muffles a low, pained sound as he hugs them back.

It is too much and yet not enough.

They pull back, after what is probably an unseemly number of minutes spent holding each other and begin talking in low, excited voices. They're here and they're real, so everything else, everything else has to be real too and-

Neku blinks, turns around without quite knowing why.

Standing there, in a green cardigan and white skirt, is Shiki. Unfamiliar and familiar all at once, because this is not the body of the girl he got to know. This is not the face he knows. But she is the person, because the uncertain smile that crosses Shiki’s lips is exactly the one Neku saw for weeks. It is perfect.

She is perfect.

* * *

That time, they don’t walk into Shibuya. They get as far as the Scramble Crossing before Neku starts shaking, and the people running into them whenever they stop isn’t making it better anymore. They're too much, everyone is too much. He remembers being stuck here for weeks, waking up for only a few hours at a time like a dream, like a program turned on and off, being worried that he would be stuck here forever, and as much as he loved (loves?) Shibuya, he can’t do this right now. Neku opens his mouth, closes it.

He can't say it.

Beat suddenly turns around.

“There’s a buncha shops we can hang out at right next to the station and in the underground, right?” he says when Rhyme and Shiki look at him curiously. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies, and I'm not into it.”

Tellingly, no one fights him at all.

(Neku breathes out a sigh of relief. It isn’t just him that can't bear to see Shibuya in all its questionable glory again. It'll never be just him again.)

It’s strange, though. Being there, that is. Shibuya is beautiful and cacophonous and vibrant and alive, but at the same time, the sick twist of panic, of reaching to tap a pin that isn’t there to scan the thoughts of passersby, of marking groups of people as Noise generators…. He can’t do it for long. It wears on him like a constant threat, like the smell of burning plastic lingering in the back of his throat. Neku feels razor sharp and worn thin.

But Shiki is there. Brunette, clutching her stuffed animal, beautiful. Beat is there, loud and irascible and wonderful. Rhyme, too, calm and quick-witted, snappy with her pointed remarks.

Neku, too, is there, and isn’t that a marvelous thing on its own?

So what does it matter if, despite its noise and people, Shibuya seems… subdued? Somehow… less than it had been before, even though it’s supposed to be fixed from the games Joshua was playing with it.

Neku has to be seeing things. There’s no other explanation.

* * *

The first time Neku takes his shirt off to change for gym class, there is a tight, collective inhalation from his classmates around him. He thinks nothing of it. It’s just these semi-strangers making noise.

Until, that is, one of them touches his shoulder.

“Dude, is that your scar from when you were shot?”

And Neku’s skin abruptly tightens, a sick twist of fear and embarrassment and, oddly enough, guilt chilling his stomach. Right. Of course. The scar is still there after all, still healing, though he’s been cleared for physical activity and it hardly even twinges anymore. But it’s still bright red and healing, and of course they’re going to ask. The Japanese school rumor network is robust. Of course they know he was shot. They probably knew mere hours after it happened. It shouldn’t surprise him that they want to see it. How many people get shot and live to tell the tale?

But they don’t, can’t, know it all, and that seals Neku’s lips faster than anything. Fighting off the urge to snarl and shrug the offending, encroaching hand is harder than it should be, but.

He’s better than that now.

“Yeah,” Neku forces himself to say. “Pretty gnarly, right?”

It gets the appropriate amount of attention (too much), and Neku tries to distract them all from prying too much, but. They’re nosy high schoolers. There’s only so much he can do aside from grit his teeth and hope that the coach comes in soon. After that, he makes sure to wear an undershirt, to never take that off in his school, because there are exactly four people who understand everything held within the pinkened scar tissue, everything it means, and exactly none of them are here.

* * *

They meet up every chance they can after that. Beat and Rhyme can't always make it, and sometimes Shiki doesn't show up either, but Neku is almost always there. Every Sunday, perched near the statue of Hachiko, and even if they end up lingering around the station underpass rather than proceeding further into Shibuya, well.

Who could really blame them? Even being this far in Shibuya's borders sends tingles of unease down Neku's spine. Things here are still rocky. Getting into the district changes the air itself, tinging it with desperation and despair and the faintest hint of death, but after a while...

After a while, it settles down.

Shibuya, as vibrant and crazy as it is, settles.

Neku tries to put it out of his mind, but that only half works when he’s constantly looking, the low buzz of something that isn’t quite panic running live currents below his skin. The crowd becomes predictable. Neku can look out and spot the stagnating trends, the uninspired and unmoving masses. Something in the air throughout Shibuya feels like Death. The unmoving, aching void that awaits everyone. In a place that was once both the center of life and death for Neku, the sight is... unsettling at best. That Neku can step into the crowd at the Scramble Crossing and not find the blank spaces in the crowd where he could have been.

(Steadfastly, he ignores the part of him that wonders if something might actually be wrong in the UG. Surely, Joshua is just-

Ignoring them? Changing the rules of the Game so Neku and the others can't see it anymore? It seems strange, but everything Joshua did seems like a fever-dream now. Neku's hands are tied. Something is wrong in the UG, but Neku is operating more than half blind at this point and there's nothing he can do. He isn’t about to die again. He isn’t sure, either, that he could do this again, no matter how much he wants to find Joshua and grab his stupid blue shirt and shake him.)

* * *

“Does anyone else notice that something in Shibuya seems … odd?” Neku asks as they linger near the statue of Hachiko, huddled together for warmth in the midst of Tokyo winter. The scramble crossing is so close and yet so far. The press of people is alright here, tourists stopping to admire the statue before moving on, and Neku feels oddly fond of these transient people.

“No, not really,” Shiki says, and Neku hums, ducking his face beneath his scarf. He has to put it out of his mind. He'll just... reinforce it if he's thinking about it all the time.

After all, thinking makes certain things true.

* * *

“Was it real?”

A question, repeated more often than not between them. Shibuya is so much less when the rhythm of the Game is gone, and Neku holds onto it as much as he can. He has a bullet wound in his side. A gnarl of scarred tissue that is impossible to explain except for the laughter in violet eyes, and it’s his certainty that keeps Beat and Shiki and Rhyme grounded. They’re more easily explainable. Didn’t go deep enough, got to the hospital in time. They make sense. They were in place, in Shibuya, for things to go south and still end up okay.

But Neku was shot, and there’s no explanation for that except Joshua.

So, like the spider’s hair leading them from hell, Neku bears their weight time and time again. He wouldn’t know these people if it wasn’t for the Game. He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t be who he is, more open, someone who doesn’t need to hide behind his headphones and just watch, like an isolated island in the middle of the sea, if Joshua hadn’t been there. If they all hadn’t died and came back.

Different.

Better.

More aware.

“You know, if Joshua was a better person, I would think that he sets up the Game to make people learn to appreciate life more,” Neku says, his head pillowed on Beat’s stomach. They’re hanging out at Beat and Rhyme’s today, Beat’s standoff with his parents broken by the accident that still runs its angry claws across Beat and Rhyme’s skin. It isn’t perfect, but so very little ever is.

He feels Beat’s laughter in the contraction of muscles below his head. “Hah, fuck that. Joshua would never.”

“That’s why I said if, asshole.”

“We don’t even know why Joshua was running the Reaper’s Game to begin with,” Rhyme says thoughtfully. “What did he get out of it?”

They all think for a moment.

“Sick amusement?” Shiki offers.

“Yeah, probably.”

* * *

Neku sits with Shiki in the clinic, feet tapping on the tile. His fingers tighten around hers. The air in here is tense. Neither of them, probably, should be here, but it is important to Shiki, as she explained to him with quiet, shaking words, and so it is important to Neku. She needs to be who she truly is, after everything they’ve been through, she says. She can’t keep being jealous, hateful, and if this is what it takes, then Neku will fight everyone who looks at her sideways for it. He’ll be her bulwark against the rest of the world.

“It’s hard,” Shiki says, soft, nervous. “It’s hard and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, not even my worst enemies. But the struggle is something I can’t keep running from.”

Neku threads his fingers through hers and thinks he’s never met anyone braver.

This part is not his story. He will not tell it. But it is hers, and if she needs him to hold her hand every other week while a doctor carefully prepares a syringe, no force will keep him away.

* * *

It has been a year since Neku woke up in the hospital, alive and aching with pain, and today is the first day he steps into the Scramble alone.

This time, he makes it to Ten-Four before he turns back around, shaking the whole way. It’s not very far. There are still a lot of people, and Neku isn’t moving as quickly as he really should, but it takes him a long time anyway, because now, now he’s watching for blank spaces in the crowds, the heated and quiet conversations. He’s watching for people, heads down and brows drawn, who are likely candidates for Noise. He looks in the doorways of each shop, trying to see a tag there. He finds them, here and there, like wisps of smoke, but even so, the energy is … wrong. Something is wrong in Shibuya, in the acrid taste of something deeper than fear filling his mouth.

He knows that he’s trying to find something.

He just doesn’t know what.

(This is not exactly true. Neku knows what he wants to find, even now. A bright, mocking voice, a cutting laugh, violet eyes behind silver-blond hair, but Joshua is nowhere to be found. The Dead God’s Pad is too far for him to try to reach on his own when he can hardly make it through the Scramble without having a panic attack.

He just has to keep trying.)

* * *

“It was real, right?” Shiki asks, her thumb pressing against her wrist, where a thin white line is.

Neku takes her hand without disturbing her grip. “Of course it was. I’m right here.” He wets his lips. “What’s got you thinking it wasn’t?”

Because there’s always something. There’s always a way to doubt the Game. Neku isn’t even sure if they’re supposed to remember it, just that they do.

“I guess I just… don’t feel like I lived three weeks. I hardly feel like I lived the one I stayed awake for.”

And that’s the thing, really, isn’t it? Neku’s mouth firms out into a line. Between all of them, he and Beat are the only two who were awake the entire three weeks, and even Beat admits that there are days he can’t remember, which just leaves Neku. As always, slightly apart from the rest. Selected. Special. He sighs. “Shiki, it was very real. The Game happened. That’s why we’re here doing what we are. That’s why you’re going into fashion.”

“I was into fashion before,” Shiki says, and Neku hates the doubt he hears in her voice.

“That’s why you’re doing it with Eri. That’s why you two reconciled. That’s why she’s on her way here to Shibuya right now, isn’t it? Weren’t you going to talk to her about everything?” And when Shiki lifts uncertain brown eyes to Neku’s, he smiles gently, more when she mirrors the expression. “Because you want her to know that it happened.”

Shiki looks up and sees Eri making her way through the crowd towards them, and she smiles and she is beautiful, and Neku lets her go easily when she stands and hurries to her friend, when she reaches out with hands that linger a touch too long to be anything but intentional and holds Eri’s wrists.

He’s so glad to see her happy.

* * *

There’s nothing.

For months and months and months, there’s nothing aside from the slow burn of healing. Neku’s chest closes, the scar cooling from an angry red to a sullen pink to a whorl of scar tissue, still tender when he puts his hand on it. School is untenable because Shiki and Beat and Rhyme aren’t there, and-

The Game might have shown him the importance of reaching out and understanding everyone else’s views, it also created a wall. A high, impassable wall of shared experience. How is he supposed to connect to people now that he’s died? Now that he’s fought for three weeks for his life and the lives of his friends, how is he supposed to tell anyone about that and expect them to understand?

The most he can give people is a smile and a lie and Neku feels uncomfortably close to understanding Joshua after all.

* * *

“What do we have after this?”

Beat doesn’t even look up from his food. “A movie or something? I dunno, man, ‘s up to you.”

Neku lets out a quiet sigh, kicking his feet as he looks over [somewhere in shibuya]. People flow around them, moving in unplanned unison. It’s an odd connection, a magnetic awareness of other people’s bodies, and try though Neku might, he can’t find the odd spaces he knows should be there. There is no graffiti in the storefronts, despite the Noise Neku can still almost sense. He fingers a pin in his pocket, wishing not for the first time that it was his Player Pin, that he could Scan the area around him, that he could do something.

Leaning back, Neku takes his hand out of his pocket and sighs. “I just want to change something, you know.”

“Well, maybe you haven’t figured out what you wanna do?” Beat offers, mouth half-full of burger. Neku would tell him to wait and chew before he talks, but he already knows it’s a wasted effort.

“I know, though. I do know,” Neku says. “I want to be the next CAT.”

Beat levels him with a surprisingly serious look. “You know who CAT ended up being. You sure?”

Neku winces. Mister Hanekoma is still missing. His involvement with the UG and Joshua is completely undeniable, and Neku has the uncomfortable feeling that it goes deeper than he’s aware. But that isn’t what he meant. Not completely anyway, and Neku ignores the part of him that accepts the inevitability of the Underground, and to an extent, Joshua, in his life. Unlife. Whatever, he’s not talking about it. “I meant the art, Beat. The inspiration, not the rest of it.”

It sounds fake even to his own ears, and he can’t blame Beat for the skeptical look he gets.

Beat shrugs, but the action isn’t a defeat or acceptance. It’s a stall while he gets his thoughts together, and Neku watches him, waits. Beat sighs, scrubs at the back of his neck, pulls his hat off and puts it back on, all while Neku only crosses one ankle over the knee of his other leg. Beat hauls in a huge breath of air.

“Well, man, way I see it? I wasn’t ever gonna go to college anyway, right? An’ that little shithole sent us back for something.” He looks off long into the distance, sunset highlighting his face stark with red, his eyes turned molten. Neku blinks, watches the determination pull itself over Beat’s face. “And I ain’t letting another day go by without using it to the fullest anymore. New ideas, new inspiration, that isn’t really my thing. I’m not an artsy kind of guy.

“But dancing? Skateboarding? I’m good at that. I could do that. That’s cool. And it’s… inspiring, right? To other people?” Beat looks up at Neku, his brows drawn into firm, determined lines. “I could do that. People like it when I dance.”

Neku nods, quiet. “They do.”

“So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll make it big dancing or some shit like that. Maybe Rhyme can help too, if she wants to. She’s good at dancing too.” Beat finally uncurls himself just a bit, leaning back away from his legs, and he grins, blue eyes twinkling mischievously. “Maybe we could even make our own music to dance to or something. Mix it all together and just handle everything ourselves, showcase our talent.”

“That assumes you have any,” Neku says without any bite, and Beat elbows him, almost fondly.

“The world is all bullshit, okay? But we got this second chance and we got it together.” Beat holds out a fist, punching it towards the horizon. “I ain’t about to waste any of it.”

Neku takes these words, examines them. Puts them away for reconsideration later.

For now, though, he just snorts. “Way to sound like a kid’s show.”

“Hey.”

* * *

As it turns out, the active effort of giving a shit is exhausting to maintain.

Neku tries, really, he does, but the world simultaneously looks better than ever and worse than before, and he can’t always reconcile the two. It’s best and worst, oddly, in Shibuya. Everything here is already different. At least here, he can pretend to know why things are changing, why the world looks and smells strange, a half-step off from typical, even though the district still feels wrong. It’s better when Shiki is there, showing off her new designs on herself and on Eri, when Beat and Rhyme are there, dancing and singing, wildly alive.

Neku tries not to feel like he’s leaving something behind every time he steps on the train out of Shibuya. Like he doesn’t feel the brush of fingers against the nape of his neck, waiting and possessive and achingly familiar.

* * *

Neku graduates.

It’s a strange thing, when he never expected to live past fifteen, past sixteen, past-

When Neku never expected to live.

But now, standing with his scroll in hand and his parents’ proud faces out in the crowd, he’s here and he’s alive and he’s going to change the world, even if he’s missing a center point of gravity in his universe. The rest of the planets have aligned and he can’t wait for the sun to return just to keep moving forward.

Joshua would be angry, if he stopped. After all the trouble Joshua went through for Neku, he would be angry.

That motivates him more than anything else.

Another secret, carefully tucked between his ribs, pulsing with the beat of his heart, but Neku thinks this one, his friends will forgive.

* * *

This is what he tells no one else:

Neku can’t leave Shibuya well enough alone.

After high school, the weekly trips slow. They become every other week, then once a month, then, only when they have time. College is busy, the life of artists is unforgiving, and none of them can afford to slow down. They have to create and influence. They are too aware that life is terribly, unforgivably short, and they can’t pretend that they’re going to get another chance after this. They have to make a difference, and this means drowning themselves in their art.

But in those spare moments where Neku needs to surface and breathe, he goes to Shibuya.

It’s like trying to immerse himself in freezing water. He figures that he’ll just inch in, one toe at a time until he hits his knees and he’ll have to jump all in or nothing. There’s going to be a point where he’ll have to confront either Udagawa or he’ll have to face the fact that he can’t get to the Dead God’s Pad anymore.

Eventually, Neku will have to jump.

Until then, however, Neku goes to Shibuya and pretends he can’t taste his own blood. He pretends that he isn’t looking for Joshua, that he isn’t seeking the Game out because that would be ridiculous. He doesn't walk around and talk to the shopkeepers because they remember who he is. He doesn't stare at the empty storefront where WildKat used to be, looking for all intents and purposes like it's been abandoned for decades, like there was never a shop at all there. It doesn’t matter what Shiki says or the sympathetic looks she gives him when she sometimes finds out where he’s been because he can’t hide these things from everyone forever. He does tell them, just. Not all the time. He can’t explain it.

Shibuya is a disease, a scab, a scar, something he’s never going to get rid of but that he can’t resist going back in to prod at. He has to go to Shibuya, knows this with a certainty that no one else understands.

Even if-

No, especially if it terrifies him.

Neku can’t be afraid forever.

* * *

Neku takes a deep breath. It’s tinged with iron and the sharp, tearing taste of fear.

Coming here alone was a mistake.

Udagawa curls and rises around him, the clatter of trains nearby and people nowhere near loud enough to overpower Neku’s own heartbeat. Neku’s hand is on the railing, clutching it for support, because his legs can’t. They shake and tremble like an earthquake. Unsteady, setting him off-guard, and Neku- can’t. He can’t hold himself up. Even trying like this is too much, too hard. He’s jittery, and his entire body is quaking visibly.

The few people on the street around him scuttle away, like he’s poisonous. Their eyes crawl over Neku, judging him for this visible weakness, and Neku.

Well, Neku can’t hear or see any of them.

He can’t breathe.

It’s too much and too close, and even the sight of the mural he used to spend hours admiring makes nausea roil in his stomach. Neku clutches it, himself, one hand folding over the knot of scar tissue on his chest like he can hold himself together physically if he just tries hard enough, because he can’t fucking breathe and he died here what was he thinking coming back alone? He can’t have been thinking. He should have never come here, he should have never come back at all, this is worthless, what is wrong with him that he keeps coming back to Shibuya?

The pavement is closer. Why is it closer? When did he fall to his knees? When? Why did he come here like he expected to end up looking down the barrel of a gun again?

What is wrong with him?

There is the clattering of a metal ball against metal, the distinct rattle of someone shaking an aerosol can.

Neku looks up.

The world moves with him, settling out in nauseating fits and bursts. There, in front of the mural, is a boy. His shirt is yellow, and even from here, Neku can hear the music pumping through the large headphones he has over his ears. He shakes a can of spray paint, looking up and down the wall consideringly, bright red hair shifting as he bops his head in time with the beat. Then, without any further thought, he lifts the can and begins spraying.

Neku blinks. Something twists in his chest and he pushes himself up.

“Hey,” he says weakly, clears his throat, tries again. “Hey!”

The kid pauses. Looks over at Neku. Jerks his chin in a nod of acknowledgement, and turns back to the mural. Raises the can and resumes spraying again, large swatches of yellow.

Neku’s temper snaps. “That’s CAT’s mural! You can’t just-”

“CAT isn’t around anymore,” the redheaded vandalizer interjects. He nudges his headphones with his shoulder so they fall back around his neck before he looks at Neku again. “The wall is fair game now.”

“That’s not-” Neku starts, but falters. CAT is Mr. H, and Hanekoma hasn’t been seen in years now either, so the kid is, technically, right. “It’s not right. It’s his art.”

The kid watches him carefully, but shrugs a moment later, raising the can again. “Art evolves. I’m just here to help.”

There is silence aside from the continued bursts of paint from the canister. Neku can’t watch, stares at the ground as the source of his inspiration, the site of his death, is massacred.

A can is shoved into his view.

He takes it, confused, then blinks at the redhead, who shrugs again, an affected, too-casual lift of his shoulders. “Can’t beat it, own it,” he says, as though that makes any sense. “You know how to tag shit?”

“Sure, I guess?” Neku says, confused.

And the vandalizer gestures at the wall as though to say, “Be my guest,” and steps back. Skates back, actually, now that Neku is looking. Why is he wearing rollerskates? Neku shakes his head, returning his attention to the mural. Shibuya has never made sense and it isn’t about to start now. He lifts the can. His hands shake.

He presses down on the nozzle.

It’s an inelegant slash of orange, and the sight of it lifts the iron chains from Neku’s lungs. He stares at it, at the drips slowly bleeding their way down the wall, and starts when an elbow nudges him.

“Not bad. Here, if you really want to learn,” and next thing Neku knows, he’s learning how to deface his own favorite mural. But nicely, and it-

Honestly, it feels nice.

It feels like, somehow, he owns this space again, carved out the moment of his own death and replaced it with something new. It hurts, the way all new wounds do, but there’s a lightness, a relief in Neku’s heart that cannot be exchanged for the terror of before. Later, he’s sure he’s going to regret the fuck out of this, but right now? Now, it’s good. It’s… exactly what he needed.

There’s a sound, and the kid claps a hand on Neku’s shoulder. “Ever run from the cops?”

“What? No?”

“Well, it’s time to learn.”

“What?”

* * *

They run, and Neku doesn’t get the kid’s name, but they see each other around Shibuya every once in awhile and nod solemnly before defacing the city, and they run from the authorities and it’s good.

It’s good.

* * *

Reaching out and connecting to people is still difficult. Expanding the horizons of your world is, as Beat puts it, like building muscle. You have to rip it and let it heal, bigger and more painful in the interim because the only way to grow is to challenge yourself and Neku has never been good at that. It's like stepping off the edge of a cliff, but, they all reason, when you've died once already, life doesn't seem that frightening anymore. Neku still remembers the shopkeepers around Shibuya, and they remember him too, greeting him with smiles and by name whenever he drops by.

“This is Neku-kun,” [blank]-san says to a new hire one afternoon. “You'll end up seeing a lot of him. He's a good customer.”

The kid gives Neku a skeptical look from his spiked hair to his bright clothes, which are admittedly a bit out of place in [store], but really, there's no reason for that kind of attitude. Neku tucks his face behind his high collar, the style still his favorite, but grins instead of scowls. “I'll be in your care,” he says, jokingly formal, and [blank]-san laughs the way he meant them to.

“Mm, I was wondering when you were going to drop by, Neku-kun,” [blank san] says, as though suddenly reminded of something. “The owner of one of the coffeeshops around the area came by and asked where you were.”

That's odd, Neku doesn't say. “Oh? Who was it?”

“You know WildKat, right?”

Neku's heart takes off, breath frozen in his very lungs.

[So and so] waves an idle hand, busy looking at something on the desk. “Apparently, there are noises that it's going to open up again, and the owner was walking around trying to find his old regulars. I didn't know you used to stop by there. Any idea why it closed?”

“No,” Neku says with a dry mouth. “It. It was years ago. I have no idea.”

* * *

(Neku checks and the store front is still empty. There's nothing there, and Neku doesn't know whether to be upset or disappointed or glad or all of them, but he's just scared and hungry with a desperation that surprises him.

This is another thing he keeps close to his chest and does not mention.)

* * *

“Oh hey, Sakuraba?” his R.A. calls as he enters the college dorms, and Neku pauses.

“Yeah?”

“A guy, middle aged, looked like a barista, kinda scruffy, came by looking for you about an hour or so ago? He said he had a delivery for you, but didn’t leave anything behind.” The R.A., his plain, honest face scrunching slightly, squints at Neku. “You’re not getting involved in anything illegal, are you?”

Neku can hardly hear him over his own heartbeat. He’s aware that he shakes his head, that he makes his shaking excuses and goes upstairs, that he opens his door and drops his portfolio with an affected care. That his breath is coming too hard and too fast and he probably did come off like he’s getting in trouble when really, he’s trying to not panic at the news of Mr. H coming by his fucking dorm room like it hasn’t been almost five years.

He stops.

There, resting innocuously in the center of his low desk, is a plain box. No note is attached. It’s held closed by a single piece of unadorned tape.

It wasn’t there when he left this morning.

Carefully, Neku picks it up. There’s a solid weight to it, neither too light nor too heavy for its size. Shaking it makes no noise. Neku’s heart skitters and thuds into an ever-increasing inferno of noise that he can’t explain, his breath coming shorter and shorter. His palm stings in a way it hasn’t for years. Neku rubs it, at first absently then harder and then digging when he can’t feel the grooves of numbers ticking through to blood and bone.

He should just leave it.

(He should open it.)

He doesn’t know who it came from or how it got here.

(There’s only one person it could ever be, the only one that comes to mind, and Neku’s heart cannot calm down, cannot halt its tripping pace because of that name. And he knows exactly how it got here.)

Neku picks up the box. His fingers tremble, fumble with the tape, and Neku hisses under his breath, willing his shaking hands to steady long enough for him to get this damn box open. Finally, though, he slides a fingernail beneath the lear line and lifts and-

-a stutter.

A thunder as Neku’s ears roar with the sound of his racing heart, as he reaches within the box and withdraws a silver chain. It lifts, jingling faintly, and then, the bullet casing attached to it rises from its padded bower.

Neku drops it.

The sound it makes as it clatters on the ground is too-loud, shocking, and Neku realizes only then that his chest is heaving, that every breath is a dragging struggle, harsh and rasping and filling every void his heartbeat leaves behind and he can’t see, he can’t stand, the world itself isn’t real anymore. There’s no timer on his hand, and his side aches like it hasn’t since he was actually shot but the bullet casing can only be from one person because there’s only ever been one person who could even have it to begin with. Panic, like electricity arcs in his chest and arms, nauseating, and Neku wishes he could be anywhere, could do anything, could go back in time five years and stop himself from contemplating a mural that got two people killed.

His eyes, frantic for anything other than the faint gleam of silver to look at, fall to the box.

And the note, now revealed, within. With shaking fingers, Neku tries once, twice when they don’t quite manage, to pick it up. He turns it over once, then again.

The note reads one line only:

“Miss me, partner?”

And that’s it.

That’s what does it. That idle, flippant question as though Neku hasn’t been a compass that lost its North for years, looking for Joshua.

Neku finds himself curled over his own knees untold minutes later, mouth open in a silent scream. His cheeks and hands and knees are soaked with tears, his clothes damp and uncomfortable with sweat as the world shudders back into place around him. Trembling through the aftershocks of that, Neku pushes himself off the floor. He feels weak, like a kitten, like he’s going through Physical Therapy all over again, learning how to push through the ache in his muscles.

But when he reaches down to pick up the necklace this time, Neku’s hands are curiously still.

* * *

He wears it.

God knows why. He tries to not think about it too much; the whys and hows would drive him insane. It’s never on the outside of his clothes. Sure, the casing is innocent enough that most people he passed would pass it off as simple jewelry.

But those three that matter. The only people who truly matter.

They would know, and Neku wants this to be just his right now, no matter how bad of an idea it might be.

Just until I figure out what to say, he tells himself, pressing the lump of gunmetal against his sternum. It won’t be long. I just. Have to explain it to them, and I can’t if I don’t know how.

* * *

This is how it continues.

Time passes as it does, and those three weeks seem further and further away each time they are remembered, yet they dig and settle under the skin. Completely unseen. Absolutely unforgettable. Neku tries to capture something of this in his art, broad brush strokes on stark canvases, needle thin lines cutting across them, but the best way he can express it is on the walls in Shibuya, especially Udagawa, a shaken can of compressed paint and a mask pulled low across his nose and mouth as he defaces the city, paint dripping and spattering to the ground like so much blood.

He knows the back alleys. He knows this place with an intimacy that means the locals have already accepted him as par for course and pass over him. It’s easy. It’s comfortable.

It’s where he died, and he doesn’t know what to do about that. He tries to not look for the stains of where he was shot, the weight of the bullet that killed him hanging from his neck.

He is only sometimes successful.

They do ask. Of course they do. You share a secret with only three other people who you see for a few hours every other week, though you keep in almost constant contact through your phones, and they’re bound to notice the chain hanging around your neck when you don’t change much on your person anymore, still stuck to habits and comforts. Neku deserted his headphones years ago, but that never meant that he didn’t enjoy having them around still. They’re comfortable, a weight that he didn’t know he missed until he replaced it.

When she sees it, in one of their monthly meetings at an izakaya, Shikis stares at the chain, then at Neku, waiting for him to offer her an explanation that he doesn’t have, that he drowns in a gulp of bitter beer because this is what their meetings have sometimes turned into. Beat stares out over the crowd, half caught in other people’s conversations the way he always is, because that’s how Beat makes friends. Plus, he’s looking after Eri, her tall form moving through the crowd, and Neku knows without question that if someone lays a hand on Eri, Beat will be there living up to his name before a second has passed. Not that there should be any trouble. The izakaya is loud and raucous, in the way that izakaya full of Japanese college students usually are, but it isn’t trouble. Neku sinks into the noise as a way to escape the question.

Rhyme, sharp and perceptive and sly beneath that beatific smile of hers that has only gotten her and Beat a larger online following, doesn’t give him an easy out like that, though.

“What’s this?” she asks, reaching out to tap the lump the bullet casing makes against his shirt, and Neku flinches at the tap of metal on skin.

Carefully, he wets his lips. “It’s nothing. Just something I picked up.”

“I haven’t seen you wear a necklace in years. Not since your media player broke.”

“It’s just a necklace, Rhyme,” he tries.

“Where’d you get it?”

And that he doesn’t have a quick answer for. Even Beat has stopped staring at the crowd, returning his focus to Neku and the way Neku’s hands twist around themselves. “It was a gift,” he says finally.

“From?”

Neku wants to say that he doesn’t know, but he does. His tongue is heavy in his mouth, and Rhyme’s gaze turns gentle and oddly pitying before she pats him on the hand, stopping his nails before they dig in a bit too sharp.

“It’s okay, Neku.”

Eri gets back then, bringing a pitcher of water with her as she sits, and there’s an odd twist to her mouth.

“Are you okay?” Shiki asks, surreptitiously wrapping an arm around Eri.

“Yeah, but do you think we can go to a different bar next month? Shibuya’s been getting kinda dangerous lately, and I don’t like the vibe in here anymore.”

Neku clenches his teeth.

Beat hums, tapping a knuckle against the wooden table. “Yeah, I dunno. You’re right, Shibuya’s been feeling real weird recently. I dunno what’s up with that. This used to be a pretty damn good bar to stick around in and now it’s kinda fucked up.”

“It’s just a bar,” Shiki says, but her tone is doubtful.

Rhyme too, now, dragging her fingers through the condensation gathering on her glass of water. She never drinks, preferring to watch them all get red and tipsy and laugh at them. Actually, Beat never gets drunk either. He only nurses a single whiskey that he never finishes. It might actually just be Neku who drinks and he’s not sure what to do with that information except to take another sip of his beer and try to not make a face at it. “It’s not just the bar. It’s the whole city. Shibuya feels… weird. What if we met up in Odaiba or Asakusa next month?”

“It’s Shibuya,” Neku says, mouth numb.

Eri leans her arms, long and pale like the rest of her, on the table, her expressive mouth pouting, and Neku pretends that he doesn’t see how Shiki is distracted by it, fond. “Well, yeah, and I know you guys have… history here, but there’s a whole city out there.”

“But-”

“But nothing, Neku. Shibuya isn’t the same. It’s been what, almost six years now? Isn’t it time to move on? We have bigger and better things to do.”

Bigger and better than Shibuya? The district that brought them all together? Neku’s mouth curls down as his thoughts turn bitter and uncharitable, but he’s broken out of it by Rhyme tapping his hand again.

“He isn’t coming, Neku,” Rhyme says kindly, her eyes catching on where the bullet casing has swung past the collar of Neku’s shirt. “It’s been five years. I think it’s time we move on.”

Swallowing, Neku pushes the casing back beneath his clothes. He feels more grounded with it against his skin. “I don’t know. It feels like Shibuya’s dying, and I think it’s our fault and if I, we, stay here, I think-”

“We can’t fix it, Neku,” Shiki says, voice firm. “I’m not dying again to fix a problem that isn’t mine. Whatever’s going on here, it’s his problem, and he has to fix it.”

Neku’s mouth twists to the side. Quietly, he says, “I feel responsible.”

It explains everything and nothing at the same time, but when Beat suggests they meet up in Odaiba next month, Neku goes and pretends that he isn’t more anxious now that the familiar line of 104 is out of sight.

* * *

Neku isn’t wrong.

That’s the thing. He notices it a little sooner than everything else, but the world is stagnating and worsening. Not just in Shibuya, but everywhere around the world, things are getting worse. There’s a mad flourish of ideas, of creative Imagination (capital “I” and everything) to come out of it, like flowers blooming from decaying bodies, but it’s not enough to mask the smell of death, and Neku sees it everywhere he goes.

He isn’t wrong. The world is dying, and they’re all dying with it. It’s worse than before, when it was just Shibuya hovering on the edge of the brink, considering how far down it would be to fall and rise again.

He wonders.

Maybe-

Maybe this is why Joshua isn’t here. Maybe he’s busy elsewhere.

But no, Joshua wouldn’t care about anything beyond his district. Couldn’t, maybe, but even Shibuya suffers. Neku sees it everywhere, and every waking moment he has free of class, he’s in the district, wandering the streets. He sees the vandal sometimes, a familiar and welcome figure that he exchanges too-solemn nods with, and greets shopkeepers by name. He meets everyone and keeps an eye out for exchanges that promise to turn into Noise. Neku tries to keep Shibuya breathing, and when his own murals catch the media’s attention in place of CAT’s, he takes it for the victory it is.

He can’t leave well enough alone.

(Neku doesn’t know how to feel alive if he isn’t worrying over Shibuya.)

But the end of his college career is coming up, and the city is already skirting talking to him in a serious capacity, making his art on the walls of Shibuya a deliberate attraction. They’re talking about setting up a studio for him there, apprenticed to a more notable artist to get his foot in the door, and Neku has three other job offers from other artists, all wanting his skill under them, but this is the only one in his town and-

Something crawls in his skin, and Neku breathes in, breathes out.

He’s clicking on the ad for apartment listings before he really lets himself think about it.

* * *

“You what?” Shiki asks, only it’s less asking and more shouting, and Neku holds his phone away from his ear slightly before she calms down long enough to not make him go deaf.

“I bought an apartment in Shibuya,” he says again. Shiki’s response is muted the second time, but still incoherent. He’s pretty sure she’s yelling at Eri, explaining to her girlfriend what idiocy Neku has landed himself in this time. Neku wishes that his phone had a cord on it, just to give him something to do other than pace while he talks. “I just. I don’t know. I just want to be there. I want to be nearby. There’s a job waiting for me, and I just-”

She is silent for a while. Neku can see her chewing on her lip in his mind’s eye. “Are you sure? I mean, the place isn’t exactly healthy for us; I don’t think…”

“I know.” Neku breathes out hard through his nose. “I know. But I want to be there, all the same. I don’t think I can leave it behind.”

“We should be able to.”

“You only have to visit. You don’t have to stay there with me.”

“I don’t think I could.”

They’re quiet together for a long time. She does this while she’s organizing her thoughts, and it’s not like Neku has ever really known what to say. Even now, six years later, he has nothing that makes sense to him. He has no words to pull forth.

Eventually, she sighs. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Neku barks out a laugh, short and sharp. “Me too, Shiki. Me too.”

* * *

It's like he's right there all over again with the bright edge of mocking laughter around every corner. Like the years spanning this haven't happened, like he hasn't finally learned how to walk across the Scramble Crossing without preparing for a fight, fingers resting against a pin that isn't the Player Pin but makes his heart calm its crazed beating anyway.

The gun cocks.

Shaking, Neku focuses on the bright white slash of Joshua's smile. The widened purple of his eyes. Neku's hands are steady as he lifts his own gun, but he knows already how this goes. He won't shoot, but Joshua will, and in doing so, they maintain the balance that keeps Shibuya thriving. That was how it was supposed to go, with Joshua too proud to do anything close to stepping down and Neku having cracked his shell open enough to want to protect one of the closest friends he's earned.

And then.

Joshua's mouth forms a word, two, three, and the gun lowers without the customary flash and-

Neku wakes up and swears that he can still see the barrel of the gun right in front of his eyes. It doesn’t scare him. How could it? He’s seen it a million times. He knows what happens, what could have happened, and it’s stopped being frightening and more of an object of curiosity than anything else. First night in his new apartment and he has a nightmare. The nightmare, if he's being honest; it's been haunting him with every change for the last six and a half years, and while this is the first time Joshua hasn't shot him, the rest of it remains the same. The gun can't frighten him anymore.

He can also see the violet eyes behind it. Those don’t scare him either. Not when Shibuya itself doesn't.

“Wait for me.”

Neku snorts. Like he's been doing anything else.

Little bastard.

But he rolls out of bed with a renewed sense of purpose, and pulls back the curtains to look over Shibuya, his Shibuya, and breathes in the city air and gets ready to take this place by storm.

* * *

Shibuya explodes with color at most times, more so around Christmas, and Neku settles into the hubbub with a sense of coming home. His art is everywhere now. He designs signs for so many stores in the area that he's getting a name for himself. His mentor is pleased with how much attention their studio gets, and the internet is ablaze with requests and orders, and Neku sees so many emails and comments about people who love his work (and, of course, people who don't, but even disagreement is understanding and expanding their world as long as they're not a douchebag about it), and it's like Shibuya appreciates that.

The city itself feels welcome, feels like home, and the others do come to give Neku a housewarming party, even if they don't stay for long. The long-twisting anxiety that has curled around Neku since the Game settles now that he's in Shibuya, now that he's trying to make the city live once again, and when he walks by an old coffeeshop on Cat Street to visit the Jupiter of the Monkey store, a white paper in the window stops him.

Neku pivots slowly on his heel, walking up to the door. Plain kanji and katakana on the sign read: “WildKat Cafe, Closed for Renovations. Opening Soon.”

A warm glow settles in Neku's chest. He nods to himself. As he leaves, continuing on his trek to the store, he knows, finally, that he's been doing the right thing.

* * *

Something here changes.

Shibuya is alive again. Slowly, surely, growing more and more each day, with a kind of vitality that Neku hasn’t seen from it in years. It's been two years now since he moved into the city, and it's been two years of challenging, tireless work, but Neku, as “Phones”, has been getting renown throughout the city, for his work in Shibuya, and he loves how the city has been responding to it.

“You know, most artists at least ask permission,” a dry voice says.

Neku almost drops the can. He whips around, eyes wide, because it can't be, it can't be-

But, standing right there, examining his work with a pensive look on his face, hands shoved deep into his pockets, is Mister Hanekoma himself. He meets Neku's gaze, and grins, lifting one hand. “Hey there, Phones. How's it been?”

(A piece of the universe shivers into place, and Neku's scar aches. Here's more proof, Neku wants to think. Here's the second biggest piece of proof of them all, because Mister Hanekoma has always meant the Game itself. Where there is one, the other isn't far behind.)

“It's been good,” Neku says once he remembers how to breathe. “Is...”

Mr. H shakes his head. “Nah, he's a bit wrapped up. Plus, you remember how hard it is to get him to do anything reasonable.”

“Is he okay?”

“That's an excellent question.” Hanekoma looks Neku up and down, then huffs out a quiet bit of laughter. “Man, you've grown, haven't you? Why don't you gather your friends and come by tomorrow for some coffee? We can catch up then.”

Neku nods before he really registers the motion, desperate for any connection. “Yeah, yeah, I'll get everyone together. No problem.”

“Good.” And that seems to be all he came by to say, because Hanekoma turns and slouches off, hands tucked into his pants, and Neku watches him as long as he can before he loses Mr. H's form in the crowd. If Neku blinks, he'll disappear. If Neku blinks, he'll lose the proof that this has happened. He'll have to accept that weight himself again, and he can't hold it up anymore. Not on his own.

Neku lets out a breath. Pulls out his phone.

[To: Group]

So you won't believe who I ran into just now.

[From: Shiki]

Who?

And Neku has to bite back a triumphant grin.

[To: Group]

How does everyone feel about getting coffee tomorrow? I know a place on Cat Street that's opening up.

* * *

“Mister Hanekoma,” Shiki says, with no small amount of surprise.

The man in question only grins and raises a hand, laconic and sarcastic as always in the face of pretty much everything. “Hey there, Miss Shiki! Glad to see you as yourself this time. And may I say, you're looking pretty nice. Good job.”

She flushes, her hands catching on the hem of her shirt as she tugs and resettles and can't fight the smile that crosses her beautiful face. Watching them, Neku feels himself smile too, sympathetically excited for this reunion. Mr. H and Beat shake hands, Beat taking up so much space in comparison. Beat has a few centimeters on Mr. H now, which is impressive considering how looming he had seemed when they were all younger. Rhyme bows, then gives that up with a giggle and enthusiastically hugs the man who saved her and her brother's lives, and Mr. H just smiles through it all.

“So,” Neku says, “are the drinks on the house, or?”

Mr. H laughs, a sharp bray of noise. “Who do you think you are, my boss? I'll give you a discount, but nothing's on the house. I gotta get this place busy, you know.”

“So same old Mr H, huh.”

“Like you expected me to change.”

And really, Neku didn't. Really, honestly, he didn't.

They get settled at a table, warm drinks clutched between their hands, and they're already chattering like they're fifteen and learning about how much larger the world really is than just them for the first time. Neku can't stop smiling, ebullient joy battering at his ribcage because he was right. He was never wrong, and his memory hadn't ever failed him, and somehow, knowing that he hadn't been insane lifts such a massive weight from his shoulders that Neku feels giddy with it.

Suddenly, during a lull in the conversation, the door opens, and Mr. H, behind the counter, straightens with a smile at first that falls into nothing at all as soon as he sees whoever it is behind them. Neku blinks at Mr. H, the words in his mouth drying up as he becomes… aware of a presence, waiting at the edge of his notice. The hair on his arms stands on end, a rush of electricity running through him.

“Didn’t expect to see you here so soon,” Mr. Hanekoma says, a beat too late, the smile that slides back on a touch too wide to be genuine.

The voice that Neku wanted to hear for eight years chimes in, sharp and exactly the way that Neku has worn it down to familiar points in his dreams, “Really, dear, you should've known better than that.”

His heart pounds high in his throat. Everyone in front of him has gone quiet, staring, pale-faced, at the door. Tense, his hands clenched in his lap, it takes Neku several moments for his head to stop swimming. He can do this. He has conquered meeting an entire city. He has tagged every inch of its people for himself. He can see past the barrel of the gun now.

Neku turns around.

“We all know how stuffy business can be. It took them a while to get their heads in order. But don’t worry, I got let out early on good behavior.” Josh smiles, the expression a knife-cut across his face. He is small and fifteen, unchanged as ever with the same shirt and same orange phone resting idly, dangerously, in his hand. His violet eyes, dazzling and wide with something that is nowhere close to an actual smile, move from Rhyme to Beat to Shiki to Neku, where they stay.

He looks like no time at all has passed, and for all that Neku is twenty-four now and eight years have gone by since the bullet wound in his chest was anything other than a healing scar, Neku feels like he’s right back there. Fighting for his life, playing a game where the rules were introduced and discarded before any of them really even knew what they were. His palm aches like it's been cut down to the bone, and every thud of his heart rattles the bullet casing resting against his sternum.

Swallowing roughly, Neku finds that he can’t break the gaze between him and Joshua. Josh’s smile only grows.

“Did you miss me, darlings?”

#TWEWY #TWEWY Bang 2017 #zenellyraen

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