I will follow you into the dark
Title: I will follow you into the dark
Characters: Massu
Rating: PG
Words: 2,880
Warnings: AU, darkish undertones
Summary: It's a little lonely coding at the edge of cultivated cyberspace, but Masuda doesn't mind.
Notes: Set in the future of the world of the anime Mushishi (which is gorgeous and moving, I highly recommend it), 2100AD. Originally part of a larger set that fell through exploring the evolution of the spirit beings, mushi, and their adaptation to a world increasingly dependent on technology, of which mine was the last. nanyakanya has posted hers, Comfortably Numb,which is set about 160 years earlier. Title from a Death Cab for Cutie song. Happy Tanabata! Zoe's, appropriately, is Tego-centric, and this posting time was her idea. XD
---
Masuda liked his job. He didn't love it, it didn't send him home with a sense of joy or accomplishment or increased self-worth, but it wasn't bad as far as jobs went - the pay was good and the work wasn't hard and he got plenty of time to himself every day. The work was repetitive, but he didn't mind that, didn't mind that he never had to fly by the seat of his pants or panic about something being new and/or exciting. He just plodded along, meticulously laying out the same code he always laid out, pulling the right steps out of his memory for whichever sort of job it was - he had always been good at memorizing movements, and he treated coding just like dancing, only he was using his fingers.
Privacy was a big deal to Masuda. Not just for security reasons in a world where stealing someone's identity only required proper coding and bam you've been crowded out of your own life by a virtual doppelganger, but probably because that was a big possibility. Privacy allowed him to set himself apart from a sea of coded faces, and Masuda spent most of his private time offline. Reality was subjective, he knew, but there was just something about being outside cyberspace, using all of his body to move through the world, not just his fingers or hands and the chip wired straight into his brain. So his coworkers found him mysterious, wondered why he slipped away every day right after work with excuses as to why he couldn't meet up with them later in a cybercafé to relax and unwind. Masuda had a place for that.
He made his way to Asakusa, down a temple road - the epitome of anachronism, these beautiful structures replicated in cyberspace and rarely visited on foot anymore. The upkeep in cyberspace was certainly more manageable, visiting more reasonable, and it filled him with a strange, hollow feeling when he passed old temples and noticed crumbling edges and unkempt grounds. Perhaps humans believed that the gods had preceded them into cyberspace. He didn't really know. Sometimes, if he had time, he'd stop in and drop a few hundred yen in the offering boxes, bow, clap, bow and say a little prayer, before moving on.
Around a few corners and there it was, one of his favorite places. Full to the edges with bodies moving to the rhythm of a deep, bass beat, abandoning cyberspace where anything was possible, to play out the scene in the flesh, where actions were limited but accomplishments strangely rewarding, a bright flush of pride when practice paid off and people would stare in appreciation. It was about as private as anyone could get in this world, lost in a sea of faces in the bright darkness of the club, moving to the beat. Breathing, seeing, living.
_-*--*-_
It was sort of lonely at the edge of cyberspace, laying code-tracks out into the void for future developers to build on, but he didn't really mind as long as he had music in his ears, tapping away at a keyboard he couldn't see - immersed in cyberspace as he was, he could only feel it. Lately, though, there had been something just on the edge of his vision, something other than the code he had set up to look like footprints, the silvery glowing prints extending out over nothing like webbing, a safety net of sorts. What he saw was silvery, he supposed, flashes of cool brilliance from the corner of his vision, coming always closer.
He guessed he should probably be worried about that, since no one knew what he was talking about when he casually mentioned it around the office.
His boss gave him a worried look. "We don't have anyone else working out there but you, and there isn't a trace of any coding being done but yours. We'll check out your deck and see if it's there."
But it wasn't. And after his boss ordered him to take a four-day weekend, Masuda just stopped mentioning the flashes, and no one asked. The first time he was able to catch a full glimpse, it was like watching moonlight race across a rippling lake, glittering, brittle brightness dipping and cresting and rolling across the emptiness and he caught his breath in surprise. He began watching out for it, flicking his vision around to catch it at the first burst of light, watching in awe as it waved across the void, a million miniscule footprints moving to an unheard beat and he started changing his coding theme to see the different effects, music notes, stars, a range of dazzling colors that made him shudder.
Those glittery lights made their way into his dreams, flights of fancy that sometimes took terrifying turns, though the reason behind the fright was enigmatic. Just a sense of loss, fear of the lights passing him by entirely and fading away into nothingness, leaving him behind. Alone. The fear put him on edge, and he found himself pulling away from the half-life he'd been living to suspend himself in cyberspace, afraid of missing out. He took to accessing cyberspace even off the clock, lying in his bed, hands cupping the back of his head as he watched a fireworks display like none he'd ever seen, coding set to display flickering bursts that twinkled and faded as they swelled before him. It was strange, all that cold beauty, impersonal, and yet he couldn't stay away.
"Masuda," his boss began with a frown. "You're falling behind. We need that section done by next week."
The blush that rose was shame. He'd never fallen behind before, never been chastised for not completing a job, and he told himself he had to focus. Finish the job and move on. He could still watch the show at night, he decided. His coding was returned to its original theme of footprints and he wandered along them, one foot in front of the other, fingers flinching at the brightness at the edge of his sight that called to him. At home the displays were more vigorous, more alluring, and he didn't know if that was the lights or his mind prettying it up, because underneath was always that distant and aloof coldness that frightened him even as it called to him.
_-*--*-_
Part of the appeal of the clubs was the anonymity. The feeling of being close and surrounded by fellow humans, touching even, but no one knowing you. They didn't need names and there was nothing to steal. So when a girl sat next to him at a noodle stand and stared at him while she waited for her order, he sort of fidgeted nervously before finally locking eyes with her. From one of the clubs in Ikebukuro, he thought with a sudden shock. He hadn't realized he'd even seen enough to recognize faces. She suddenly smiled at him and turned to accept her bowl. They ate in relative silence for a moment before she spoke quietly between bites. "I haven't seen you around in a while. Everything okay?"
He was uncomfortable with a perfect stranger asking him. It felt like such a personal question, although maybe that was the nature of the thing occupying his thoughts more than the question itself. He continued to eat and she let him, not pestering him until he finally answered. "Everything is okay. Just busy for now."
She nodded, peeking at him from the corner of her eye. "Well," she said, lifting the bowl to her lips to drain it, and he was surprised. He hadn't noticed she'd been eating so quickly. He hadn't been really watching her at all, he realized with a frown. "I hope we'll see you again soon," she finished, standing and moving away without another look.
He was left alone with his bowl of noodles and the man running the stand who wouldn't meet his eyes, wondering at the sudden sense of loneliness.
_-*--*-_
He had been watching the lights coming closer and closer, idly wondering what it would feel like to have the dazzling brightness wash over him, and, despite his best efforts, he couldn't stop himself from indulging at work, the shame he felt at his boss's disapproval when he finished just under the deadline not enough to keep him away.
When they did overtake him, it was nothing like he'd dreamed, coming suddenly and rushing over him without warning. It was frightening, the deep pull like a riptide threatening to drag him out so far he could never make it back; it was overwhelming, nothing he could fight and he felt so small, nestled in the lights and overfull, body singing with a low electric thrum; it was exhilarating, maybe like skydiving he sort-of thought, sort-of felt, senses overloading to the point where he thought he might shut down, just stop being, and then it was past and he vaguely felt tugging and pulling and dull noises that might have been his name.
He was distantly aware of movement, senses too dulled to really register anything and it wasn't until much later that he actually came to, his mother at his bedside, tears streaking her cheeks.
"Mom?" he said, and his voice broke harshly over the sound. Her face snapped up and she was really crying then, and squeezing his hands that felt too sensitive, tingling under her touch and he mastered every muscle in his body to keep from pulling away, though he couldn't help wincing. His vision seemed weird and it was a minute before he placed it, reaching up toward his left eye and stopping at the bandage. "Mom?" he asked again, voice trembling, this time.
"Honey. My baby," she said, reaching out to touch his hair. "Your eye is gone."
"Gone?" he whispered hoarsely. Gone?
"When you were electrocuted."
"When I was… when was I electrocuted?" He wracked his brains but came up with nothing.
"At work. You were at work and there was a power surge and somehow it overcame your surge protector, they don't know how."
He shivered at the memory of the electric hum and she instinctually tugged up his blankets.
Suddenly his life was over. He'd thought it would be okay, that his missing eye wouldn't affect his place in society. A little surgery and he'd be good as new, and in cyberspace you didn't need eyes anyway. But the surgery wouldn't help him, he discovered. No matter what the doctors tried, there was no repairing the damage to his optic nerves. And beyond that, the doctors couldn't repair his fried circuitry. He could never access cyberspace fully again. The only way he could get in was 2-D through a computer terminal, and he knew it wasn't enough. It could never be enough when all he thought about was the bright light riding the darkness, blinding brilliance overtaking him in every way, thoughts that tear him up because they terrified him and yet he couldn’t stop wanting it.
Weeks passed and he couldn't take it anymore, coding in 2-D while his co-workers surrounded him, entrenched in their 3-D cyberspace, his greatest desire all around him and inaccessible. So he left. Packed his bags and went, leaving his mother behind even though she pulled at him in worry and fear, because he didn't know what else to do.
He joined a commune, because where else could he fit in? He learned to work his body for more than pleasure, for more than health, and it made him surprisingly happy, finding solace in the soreness of straining muscles, the face-to-face communication between people that took anonymity away but not in the way that cyberspace did, strip-mining you and laying out the gems alongside the dirt and rocks for everyone and anyone to see. It was so strange and refreshing to be surrounded by people who were really there, even if he was often alone in his small, snug, hand-built home. He found himself smiling more, learning all kinds of things of an earthier nature, relying on the man three houses down to learn how to tie knots, or the woman four houses across to learn how to make miso soup from scratch, rather than running to Wikipedia. In cyberspace the connection was a series of 1's and 0's, and there was no denying there was a connection, but it was so abstract, people reveling in the weird anonymity, showing sides of themselves they'd never show in real life, for better or worse, and hiding their names and faces if they could. Here, where he was, the connection was blood and sweat and tears and joy and he wondered how humanity ever let it get to the point that even family members found their solace and happiness separately.
It was there that he learned of mushi, from a girl younger than he was, Ona, who learned from her father, who learned from his mother, farther back than anyone could remember. Mushi, alive, like them, but different, just a different manifestation of life. They are hard to find, the girl said, but she couldn't know anyway. She couldn't see them like her father could, but he said that mankind had taken so much of life for himself that it left so little for the mushi; that was why there was so little verve left in the world, why mankind was sinking into itself. Masuda, in turn, gave her a strange sort of hope. The mushi hadn't disappeared, and mankind hadn't stolen everything. She was absolutely sure that he witnessed the mushi tokoyami, the eternal darkness, and the mushi ginko, the eternal light, that devours the darkness and makes it light. And she was solemnly delighted that it had somehow managed to adapt. He didn't know what to think, hovered his hand thoughtfully over his missing eye. It hadn't devoured all his darkness. He could feel the void inside.
It felt good being in the commune. It felt right most of the time, and he often sent letters home to his mother, labored over them because even though he could read, he had never really gotten the hang of writing. Hadn't had to. So he would stare at the large, crooked letters snaking across the page and smile to himself before sealing it up and giving it to the man who came once a week to sell the village things they couldn't make. He wanted her to come and be with him. Maybe then he'd feel the same connection to her he felt with his elderly next door neighbor, and the thought that he didn't feel that way already made him sad and hopeful all at once.
Time passed and he grew restless, his incompleteness gnawing at him. His mother would send neatly printed letters back expressing gratitude that he had found his place, but politely declining his request that she move there as well, instead asking him to come back. As much as he loved the people here, he still felt a little lost. Venturing into the forest became an escape, challenging his body with the long, arduous hikes, and his mind with trying to identify all the plant and animal life his friends had been teaching him. Without realizing, he sought out the dark places, until he found himself sitting in a cave, thoughts lost to him and he become conscious of what was repeating over and over in his mind. The play of lights in the utter dark, ginko over tokoyami, and he cried. He had hoped to escape it, but he knew now that that was impossible.
He was drawn to the dark, but all he could find here was a tenuous darkness, never so dark he couldn't make out his hand in front of his face and he spent hours contemplating the light, wandering the woods to watch the light and dark patches, always searching vainly. It was just like before, his life on repeat and he wondered at that knowledge, that life is a circle and never ends. He smiled, thinking that Ona would be pleased.
Years passed. The void grew and he threw everything into it, forming friendships and forcing smiles, making sure he was never alone. He married Ona because she was the only one who understood, who could sense his dark moods and turn the tide. He loved her but even she and, later, their child couldn't fill the darkness, couldn't make it bright inside. His search became desperate and she watched him with sad eyes, their son's tiny hand caught in hers and he felt despicable because they should be enough.
And then, one night, long after he'd given up hope, in the dead of a moonless night he caught a twinkle over an inky pond, ten, fifty, a hundred, and he froze. He should have said goodbye, he thought fleetingly, but it wasn't long before he felt the anticipation build in himself, stomach flipping in eagerness. Wanting. Needing. It had found him. Or maybe he found it. It didn't really matter now. Nothing changes after all, he thought, Ona will be pleased, and he stepped forward, never closing his eye and let the darkness consume him and turn him into light.
Characters: Massu
Rating: PG
Words: 2,880
Warnings: AU, darkish undertones
Summary: It's a little lonely coding at the edge of cultivated cyberspace, but Masuda doesn't mind.
Notes: Set in the future of the world of the anime Mushishi (which is gorgeous and moving, I highly recommend it), 2100AD. Originally part of a larger set that fell through exploring the evolution of the spirit beings, mushi, and their adaptation to a world increasingly dependent on technology, of which mine was the last. nanyakanya has posted hers, Comfortably Numb,which is set about 160 years earlier. Title from a Death Cab for Cutie song. Happy Tanabata! Zoe's, appropriately, is Tego-centric, and this posting time was her idea. XD
---
Masuda liked his job. He didn't love it, it didn't send him home with a sense of joy or accomplishment or increased self-worth, but it wasn't bad as far as jobs went - the pay was good and the work wasn't hard and he got plenty of time to himself every day. The work was repetitive, but he didn't mind that, didn't mind that he never had to fly by the seat of his pants or panic about something being new and/or exciting. He just plodded along, meticulously laying out the same code he always laid out, pulling the right steps out of his memory for whichever sort of job it was - he had always been good at memorizing movements, and he treated coding just like dancing, only he was using his fingers.
Privacy was a big deal to Masuda. Not just for security reasons in a world where stealing someone's identity only required proper coding and bam you've been crowded out of your own life by a virtual doppelganger, but probably because that was a big possibility. Privacy allowed him to set himself apart from a sea of coded faces, and Masuda spent most of his private time offline. Reality was subjective, he knew, but there was just something about being outside cyberspace, using all of his body to move through the world, not just his fingers or hands and the chip wired straight into his brain. So his coworkers found him mysterious, wondered why he slipped away every day right after work with excuses as to why he couldn't meet up with them later in a cybercafé to relax and unwind. Masuda had a place for that.
He made his way to Asakusa, down a temple road - the epitome of anachronism, these beautiful structures replicated in cyberspace and rarely visited on foot anymore. The upkeep in cyberspace was certainly more manageable, visiting more reasonable, and it filled him with a strange, hollow feeling when he passed old temples and noticed crumbling edges and unkempt grounds. Perhaps humans believed that the gods had preceded them into cyberspace. He didn't really know. Sometimes, if he had time, he'd stop in and drop a few hundred yen in the offering boxes, bow, clap, bow and say a little prayer, before moving on.
Around a few corners and there it was, one of his favorite places. Full to the edges with bodies moving to the rhythm of a deep, bass beat, abandoning cyberspace where anything was possible, to play out the scene in the flesh, where actions were limited but accomplishments strangely rewarding, a bright flush of pride when practice paid off and people would stare in appreciation. It was about as private as anyone could get in this world, lost in a sea of faces in the bright darkness of the club, moving to the beat. Breathing, seeing, living.
_-*--*-_
It was sort of lonely at the edge of cyberspace, laying code-tracks out into the void for future developers to build on, but he didn't really mind as long as he had music in his ears, tapping away at a keyboard he couldn't see - immersed in cyberspace as he was, he could only feel it. Lately, though, there had been something just on the edge of his vision, something other than the code he had set up to look like footprints, the silvery glowing prints extending out over nothing like webbing, a safety net of sorts. What he saw was silvery, he supposed, flashes of cool brilliance from the corner of his vision, coming always closer.
He guessed he should probably be worried about that, since no one knew what he was talking about when he casually mentioned it around the office.
His boss gave him a worried look. "We don't have anyone else working out there but you, and there isn't a trace of any coding being done but yours. We'll check out your deck and see if it's there."
But it wasn't. And after his boss ordered him to take a four-day weekend, Masuda just stopped mentioning the flashes, and no one asked. The first time he was able to catch a full glimpse, it was like watching moonlight race across a rippling lake, glittering, brittle brightness dipping and cresting and rolling across the emptiness and he caught his breath in surprise. He began watching out for it, flicking his vision around to catch it at the first burst of light, watching in awe as it waved across the void, a million miniscule footprints moving to an unheard beat and he started changing his coding theme to see the different effects, music notes, stars, a range of dazzling colors that made him shudder.
Those glittery lights made their way into his dreams, flights of fancy that sometimes took terrifying turns, though the reason behind the fright was enigmatic. Just a sense of loss, fear of the lights passing him by entirely and fading away into nothingness, leaving him behind. Alone. The fear put him on edge, and he found himself pulling away from the half-life he'd been living to suspend himself in cyberspace, afraid of missing out. He took to accessing cyberspace even off the clock, lying in his bed, hands cupping the back of his head as he watched a fireworks display like none he'd ever seen, coding set to display flickering bursts that twinkled and faded as they swelled before him. It was strange, all that cold beauty, impersonal, and yet he couldn't stay away.
"Masuda," his boss began with a frown. "You're falling behind. We need that section done by next week."
The blush that rose was shame. He'd never fallen behind before, never been chastised for not completing a job, and he told himself he had to focus. Finish the job and move on. He could still watch the show at night, he decided. His coding was returned to its original theme of footprints and he wandered along them, one foot in front of the other, fingers flinching at the brightness at the edge of his sight that called to him. At home the displays were more vigorous, more alluring, and he didn't know if that was the lights or his mind prettying it up, because underneath was always that distant and aloof coldness that frightened him even as it called to him.
_-*--*-_
Part of the appeal of the clubs was the anonymity. The feeling of being close and surrounded by fellow humans, touching even, but no one knowing you. They didn't need names and there was nothing to steal. So when a girl sat next to him at a noodle stand and stared at him while she waited for her order, he sort of fidgeted nervously before finally locking eyes with her. From one of the clubs in Ikebukuro, he thought with a sudden shock. He hadn't realized he'd even seen enough to recognize faces. She suddenly smiled at him and turned to accept her bowl. They ate in relative silence for a moment before she spoke quietly between bites. "I haven't seen you around in a while. Everything okay?"
He was uncomfortable with a perfect stranger asking him. It felt like such a personal question, although maybe that was the nature of the thing occupying his thoughts more than the question itself. He continued to eat and she let him, not pestering him until he finally answered. "Everything is okay. Just busy for now."
She nodded, peeking at him from the corner of her eye. "Well," she said, lifting the bowl to her lips to drain it, and he was surprised. He hadn't noticed she'd been eating so quickly. He hadn't been really watching her at all, he realized with a frown. "I hope we'll see you again soon," she finished, standing and moving away without another look.
He was left alone with his bowl of noodles and the man running the stand who wouldn't meet his eyes, wondering at the sudden sense of loneliness.
_-*--*-_
He had been watching the lights coming closer and closer, idly wondering what it would feel like to have the dazzling brightness wash over him, and, despite his best efforts, he couldn't stop himself from indulging at work, the shame he felt at his boss's disapproval when he finished just under the deadline not enough to keep him away.
When they did overtake him, it was nothing like he'd dreamed, coming suddenly and rushing over him without warning. It was frightening, the deep pull like a riptide threatening to drag him out so far he could never make it back; it was overwhelming, nothing he could fight and he felt so small, nestled in the lights and overfull, body singing with a low electric thrum; it was exhilarating, maybe like skydiving he sort-of thought, sort-of felt, senses overloading to the point where he thought he might shut down, just stop being, and then it was past and he vaguely felt tugging and pulling and dull noises that might have been his name.
He was distantly aware of movement, senses too dulled to really register anything and it wasn't until much later that he actually came to, his mother at his bedside, tears streaking her cheeks.
"Mom?" he said, and his voice broke harshly over the sound. Her face snapped up and she was really crying then, and squeezing his hands that felt too sensitive, tingling under her touch and he mastered every muscle in his body to keep from pulling away, though he couldn't help wincing. His vision seemed weird and it was a minute before he placed it, reaching up toward his left eye and stopping at the bandage. "Mom?" he asked again, voice trembling, this time.
"Honey. My baby," she said, reaching out to touch his hair. "Your eye is gone."
"Gone?" he whispered hoarsely. Gone?
"When you were electrocuted."
"When I was… when was I electrocuted?" He wracked his brains but came up with nothing.
"At work. You were at work and there was a power surge and somehow it overcame your surge protector, they don't know how."
He shivered at the memory of the electric hum and she instinctually tugged up his blankets.
Suddenly his life was over. He'd thought it would be okay, that his missing eye wouldn't affect his place in society. A little surgery and he'd be good as new, and in cyberspace you didn't need eyes anyway. But the surgery wouldn't help him, he discovered. No matter what the doctors tried, there was no repairing the damage to his optic nerves. And beyond that, the doctors couldn't repair his fried circuitry. He could never access cyberspace fully again. The only way he could get in was 2-D through a computer terminal, and he knew it wasn't enough. It could never be enough when all he thought about was the bright light riding the darkness, blinding brilliance overtaking him in every way, thoughts that tear him up because they terrified him and yet he couldn’t stop wanting it.
Weeks passed and he couldn't take it anymore, coding in 2-D while his co-workers surrounded him, entrenched in their 3-D cyberspace, his greatest desire all around him and inaccessible. So he left. Packed his bags and went, leaving his mother behind even though she pulled at him in worry and fear, because he didn't know what else to do.
He joined a commune, because where else could he fit in? He learned to work his body for more than pleasure, for more than health, and it made him surprisingly happy, finding solace in the soreness of straining muscles, the face-to-face communication between people that took anonymity away but not in the way that cyberspace did, strip-mining you and laying out the gems alongside the dirt and rocks for everyone and anyone to see. It was so strange and refreshing to be surrounded by people who were really there, even if he was often alone in his small, snug, hand-built home. He found himself smiling more, learning all kinds of things of an earthier nature, relying on the man three houses down to learn how to tie knots, or the woman four houses across to learn how to make miso soup from scratch, rather than running to Wikipedia. In cyberspace the connection was a series of 1's and 0's, and there was no denying there was a connection, but it was so abstract, people reveling in the weird anonymity, showing sides of themselves they'd never show in real life, for better or worse, and hiding their names and faces if they could. Here, where he was, the connection was blood and sweat and tears and joy and he wondered how humanity ever let it get to the point that even family members found their solace and happiness separately.
It was there that he learned of mushi, from a girl younger than he was, Ona, who learned from her father, who learned from his mother, farther back than anyone could remember. Mushi, alive, like them, but different, just a different manifestation of life. They are hard to find, the girl said, but she couldn't know anyway. She couldn't see them like her father could, but he said that mankind had taken so much of life for himself that it left so little for the mushi; that was why there was so little verve left in the world, why mankind was sinking into itself. Masuda, in turn, gave her a strange sort of hope. The mushi hadn't disappeared, and mankind hadn't stolen everything. She was absolutely sure that he witnessed the mushi tokoyami, the eternal darkness, and the mushi ginko, the eternal light, that devours the darkness and makes it light. And she was solemnly delighted that it had somehow managed to adapt. He didn't know what to think, hovered his hand thoughtfully over his missing eye. It hadn't devoured all his darkness. He could feel the void inside.
It felt good being in the commune. It felt right most of the time, and he often sent letters home to his mother, labored over them because even though he could read, he had never really gotten the hang of writing. Hadn't had to. So he would stare at the large, crooked letters snaking across the page and smile to himself before sealing it up and giving it to the man who came once a week to sell the village things they couldn't make. He wanted her to come and be with him. Maybe then he'd feel the same connection to her he felt with his elderly next door neighbor, and the thought that he didn't feel that way already made him sad and hopeful all at once.
Time passed and he grew restless, his incompleteness gnawing at him. His mother would send neatly printed letters back expressing gratitude that he had found his place, but politely declining his request that she move there as well, instead asking him to come back. As much as he loved the people here, he still felt a little lost. Venturing into the forest became an escape, challenging his body with the long, arduous hikes, and his mind with trying to identify all the plant and animal life his friends had been teaching him. Without realizing, he sought out the dark places, until he found himself sitting in a cave, thoughts lost to him and he become conscious of what was repeating over and over in his mind. The play of lights in the utter dark, ginko over tokoyami, and he cried. He had hoped to escape it, but he knew now that that was impossible.
He was drawn to the dark, but all he could find here was a tenuous darkness, never so dark he couldn't make out his hand in front of his face and he spent hours contemplating the light, wandering the woods to watch the light and dark patches, always searching vainly. It was just like before, his life on repeat and he wondered at that knowledge, that life is a circle and never ends. He smiled, thinking that Ona would be pleased.
Years passed. The void grew and he threw everything into it, forming friendships and forcing smiles, making sure he was never alone. He married Ona because she was the only one who understood, who could sense his dark moods and turn the tide. He loved her but even she and, later, their child couldn't fill the darkness, couldn't make it bright inside. His search became desperate and she watched him with sad eyes, their son's tiny hand caught in hers and he felt despicable because they should be enough.
And then, one night, long after he'd given up hope, in the dead of a moonless night he caught a twinkle over an inky pond, ten, fifty, a hundred, and he froze. He should have said goodbye, he thought fleetingly, but it wasn't long before he felt the anticipation build in himself, stomach flipping in eagerness. Wanting. Needing. It had found him. Or maybe he found it. It didn't really matter now. Nothing changes after all, he thought, Ona will be pleased, and he stepped forward, never closing his eye and let the darkness consume him and turn him into light.