Other Lives - For Everyone
Title: Other Lives
Author: morphaileffect
Recipient: Everyone
Rating: PG?
Other Characters/Pairings: Inui/Yanagi
Disclaimer: The characters of Yanagi Renji and Inui Sadaharu belong to
Konomi Takeshi. The batshit AU scenarios I placed them in are (to the
best of my knowledge) all mine.
Warnings: This is a collection of AU drabbles: possibly confusing, and
at some parts possibly unforgivably OOC. Though I certainly hope not.
Summary: Just a few of the many ways things could have been different.
(i'm sorry, i suck at summaries.)
Here, when I say I never want to be without you,
somewhere else I am saying
I never want to be without you again.
- Bob Hicok
Other Lives
Renji opened his eyes, and it was bright out.
"Get up," a familiar voice said.
The voice made his heart skip a beat. Renji threw the covers off himself and bolted upright. And found himself facing exactly the person he expected.
He was just standing at the foot of Renji's bed, holding the curtains in his hand, looking down at Renji with a puzzled expression. He looked dressed to leave the hotel, which was reasonable if it was around 8 AM - the tournament began at 10.
It was just Inui Sadaharu, Renji's doubles partner for this leg of the Australian Open. Some guy he met barely a year ago. Some guy who rarely laughed, and laughed derisively when he did, and never made small talk or stooped to sugarcoating his statements during interviews - a damn good athlete, just not a very likeable one.
It made no sense. No sense at all. For Renji to feel this much relief upon seeing him.
"We're going to be late if you stay in bed any longer," Inui Sadaharu calmly informed his doubles partner.
"How did you get in here?" Renji remembered vaguely that the young man had a room of his own. It was somewhere down the hall...
"Your manager and I've been calling you on your hotel phone and cell phone for an hour. We thought something had happened to you, so we asked for a copy of your room key." He looked Renji up and down. "You don't look hurt. Are you feeling ill?"
"No..." Renji sighed and rubbed his eyes. "No. I think I was just dreaming."
Inui Sadaharu raised an eyebrow. "Must've been a good dream..."
Not really, Renji almost answered. "I dreamed I lost you," he said aloud.
He didn't know why he said that. It just slipped out. He looked up at Inui Sadaharu and Inui Sadaharu looked down at him. And a corner of the other young tennis player's lip curled up into a smile that was infamous for infuriating opponents and alies alike.
"Why would you lose me?" The edge in his smile said: What makes you think I'm yours to lose?
Renji looked at the stranger at the foot of the bed. He took a deep breath and let it out. And with that breath went the last of the feelings that carried over from the dream. It flowed out of him and left him feeling strangely empty.
That smile was right: they weren't anything. Just two young tennis players of the same age, born nearly on the same day, who happened to be especially good at their game. They were professionals with their own agenda, helping each other rise to the top - that was it.
Renji doubted they would ever become friends. He doubted it very much.
"It's not important," Renji said, hoping to sound as neutral as he was starting to feel. "Forget it." He swung his legs off the bed. Inui Sadaharu made a small sound at the back of his throat that sounded like contempt. And without further ado, he left his doubles partner alone to get ready for the day.
===
He was supposed to be eleven years old today.
A long time ago, Renji had a friend. They met when their fathers took them to the same tennis club and taught them both how to hold the racquet properly. Since then they were always playing together, and were never apart, not for more than a day.
Only a year ago, his friend was taken away from him. An incurable sickness. They kept Sadaharu from him for months and months, and then they showed him his empty shell. It was over quickly, Sadaharu's parents had said; they made it sound like a bigger mercy than it had any right to be.
"Don't worry. I'll get better soon," were his smiling friend's last words to him. "When I'm up, the first thing we'll do is kick everybody else's butts."
"Sadaharu." It was a difficult name to pronounce for a boy who was never good with goodbyes, even when there was nothing else to say. Every syllable was wrenched painfully from his lips, his chest, the backs of his eyes. "We're moving away, far away. I don't know when I can come back to see you..." How small his hand was when he laid it lightly on the gravestone, how secretly it trembled. "But you'll be with me, won't you?"
===
He was supposed to be thirteen years old today.
This was the school Renji was supposed to attend. This was the neighborhood to which his family had moved. Renji was supposed to call, and write, and visit now and then, so they could play and compare notes and help each other with their homework, like they used to.
An out-of-control truck put an end to all that. It put an end to everything they had planned. No goodbyes, not to anyone, Sadaharu remembered - his friend didn't last long enough for that.
This was supposed to be Renji's life. Sadaharu was here because he could not bear it falling away into nothing, just because the person this entire path was laid out for was gone.
But there were some things Sadaharu knew he was still not strong enough for. He hated history class the most. He hated calligraphy and light reading and most of all, he hated the tennis courts. He tried not to pass by them while on his way from one building to another, avoided the gaze of anyone who happened to be on them as he was passing through.
Renji was not on those tennis courts. Renji was supposed to be eleven years old, and a star player in this school. And Sadaharu was sure that if his gaze fell the wrong way, if the light happened to strike his glasses at the worst possible angle, he would see Renji there, waving him over, and he would hear Renji's voice calling his name.
"It's you, isn't it?" said one of the people at the courts - an upperclassman. "We've heard all about you. You made a really smart move, transferring here, you know. Thanks to you, we now have three first year tennis champions in our school!" But the hostile look in Sadaharu's eyes made him draw back and blink. "You're... that famous doubles player, right? Inui Sadaharu?"
"I'm Inui Sadaharu," he answered icily. "And no, I do not want to join your tennis club."
===
Inui did not like to think about what they had between them that was not distance - professional or physical. Through some twist of fate the two young men were researching exactly the same scientific phenomena - and they only knew of each other's existence when they published their papers on it at exactly the same time. They were even almost the same age, born one day apart, though living on opposite sides of the globe. Technically, this means they were born at the same moment, but their birthdates were separated by a gigantic international dateline.
Naturally, the two of them were eager to meet each other right away and pick each other's brains. This did not surprise Inui. What did surprise him was that they hit it off, like two firecrackers lit at once, following the same path.
They weren't even supposed to understand each other all that well - one of them was fluent in Japanese, the other not so. And yet how quickly they came to know about each other's little gestures, finished sentences for each other. It was as if they had known each other for ages.
In each other's company, they forgot all about time and everything else. In each other's company, things seemed to make more sense. At first Sadaharu was willing to dismiss it as a curious meeting of like minds, nothing more... but the longer they stayed together, the more he realized he was becoming dependent on the other young man's presence. He looked forward to their every meeting as a small child would.
...Which was ridiculous, of course. He was twenty-five and a distinguished chemist, the head of his own university research department - and Yanagi Renji, a behavioral scientist, was equally accomplished, attaining a professorial seat at such a tender age. They were too grown up for the concept of "best friends" or "soulmates" and the like.
And yet, such topics seemed to worm its way into their conversations far too often.
"I have this theory," Yanagi brought up once, "about people who are born to be together."
Inui put down his coffee cup. "You mean twins?"
"Not twins." Yanagi shook his head. "There are people who are brought together by circumstance, and people bound together by fate. The people brought together by circumstance can survive well enough without ever meeting each other, but those who are fated - " He paused and took a sip of his tea. "Let's say that if there was a relationship where the phrase 'born to be together' would apply, it would apply to theirs."
A corner of Inui's lip rose. That expression might have offended any other person - not Yanagi. "That's a rather... romantic notion, isn't it? It's strange to hear from someone like you, Professor. 'Circumstance' and 'fate,' these things can't be measured."
"What if they can be measured, Doctor?" Good God, he sounded serious. "What if there was some way to quantify genetic and behavioral compatibility - and subsequently predict which two people in the world would be just perfect for each other?"
"Some people might rebel against the thought of that," Inui said dryly. "It would wreak havoc on the notion of 'free will', after all."
"Some people may not welcome certain facts of life. It doesn't make them any less true." Yanagi put down his cup and leaned forward, looked deep into his friend's eyes. "If I told you I've been composing a series of formulae that would prove my hypothesis valid without a shadow of a doubt - would you believe me?"
Inui held his friend's gaze for a moment. Then he had to throw back his head and laugh. "I won't only believe you, I'll help you!"
"Will you?" What little of Yanagi's eyes that Inui could see (usually they were half-lidded, or closed in concentration - an eccentricity that not a few girls in the academia found charming) gleamed with mischief. "I warn you, however. The Neurad Committee might think we're teaming up against them. The formulae are based on Darylian diagrams - which, as I'm sure you know, were summarily shot down by the Committee two decades ago. And since the Committee equals the rest of the global scientific community..."
"Isn't that exactly what we were made to do?" In spite of himself, Inui was enjoying this. "Play doubles against the rest of the world?"
"When you put it that way," Yanagi chuckled softly. His smile mirrored Inui's now. Anyone else who did not belong to this little space they shared might have found it terrifying. "Although I must correct you, Doctor. It's not the rest of the world - just the parts that are in our way."
===
"Doctor! You can't do this!" Inui didn't need to look. Only Winters had a shouting voice that annoying. "Doctor!"
He could hear them loud and clear over the pod speakers; there was no need for them to bang their fists on the viewing room window. What was that, anyway, a feeble hope that melodrama will save the day?
At any rate, Dr. Inui Sadaharu could not afford to heed his panicked assistants. In just a few hours, the laboratory would be officially shut down. He would be unable to access his records, his prototypes, all of which he was not given ample time to back up and store. That was the point, he was aware - the only thorough means of sabotaging the project was to ensure that the principal scientist would not be able to pick up where he was cut off.
He had been working on the machine for far too long, Inui had been told - spending far too much of his sponsors' money. And for what? The desired result was a one-man vehicle that could travel between dimensions, break all the known barriers of time and space simply to prove there was another universe out there - that there were other universes. It sounded incredible, but before he took on this project Dr. Inui Sadaharu was infamous for achieving the incredible - that was how he was able to reel in funding to begin with.
It was a frivolous assignment from the start. Worse, it looked like it was getting nowhere. His sponsors decided to divert their funds into more profitable studies, such as finding a catch-all cure for dandruff. Or breeding strawberry-flavored carrots, which were at least good for you.
Again and again Dr. Inui Sadaharu had promised his sponsors results. Again and again, he had failed to deliver. Whatever progress he had been making existed only in his head, his sponsors decided. So this time there were no more extensions, no more excuses. He no longer even had to prove anything.
They were simply shutting down the project. And he had no choice.
"The core failed to reach stasis at peak pressure!" Winters screamed into the microphone that was directly hooked up to the pod speakers. "It won't hold!"
"It came as close as it could to holding, the last time." Inui sounded distracted, because he was. There were too many buttons in this damn thing. He should have been given time to streamline the interior panel at least, so it wouldn't look like something out of a steampunk novel. "I've made a few adjustments to the midrange formula, it should be able to..."
"But why risk it?" Winters was quite possibly having a heart attack. This might be the first time a human being was going to commit suicide right before his eyes. "Doctor! Why??"
Inui didn't answer. He, too, knew there was a less than 30.1% chance his modifications to the midrange formula had actually fixed it. It was far likelier that his mortal body's atoms were going to be smashed into tiny unresolvable bits.
Inui Sadaharu, aged 43, activated the pod he had strapped himself into. Never married, never had children, never had a friend in his life, this was all he had - the proof that he was right, that there were alternate universes, and that in at least one of them, somehow...
Why did he have to push through with it? Why risk death just to be proven right?
It wasn't logical. It wasn't scientific.
He didn't know.
===
"Master! Don't do it!" An adolescent boy's familiar voice. Knocking sounds coming to him as whispers, and rolled out into thunder. "Master!!"
The banging made Yanagi open his eyes. He must've lost consciousness for a few minutes or so, because he could swear his apprentice was nowhere in the vicinity when he began the transfusion.
He turned his face toward at the stone slab beside the one on which he is lying. There was something there, made of soot and smoke and shadow and a mess of many carefully measured essences. It was shaped like a man and it was breathing. Or at least Yanagi thought it was...
It was hard to see even in the brilliant lights of his laboratory. His eyesight was swimming. From his arm, a bunch of thin tubes ran toward the human-shaped mass. He could see -or thought he could see - his own blood running into a tiny network of branches forming with painful slowness within the concoction.
His blood.
"Go away, Akaya," he said weakly, hoping the boy heard it and the annoyance in his voice carried above the frantic banging on his laboratory door. "This is a delicate stage. If you interfere, I will die and then I will haunt you, cut off your hands and feet and feed them to your pet dragon. The gods know that you - "
He couldn't continue. His consciousness was flickering out again.
Several dozen failed experiments later, one finally showed promise - at least a 50% chance of turning out a success. The shape on the other stone slab wasn't collapsing, and his blood was being conducted into the shape's limbs, exactly as the ancient, forbidden tomes said it should be.
It was only his blood he could use... after careful study of the effects of other creatures' blood on the concoction, he learned that only human blood could be meticulously prepared for the process, and that only his blood - the blood of no ordinary magician, but the Emperor's Court Magician himself - stood a good chance of withstanding the procedure.
"You idiot! It's not safe! The last time - the last time, you were almost - " Akaya might have been crying outside his laboratory door. Yanagi thought he heard the boy choke back a sob. "I gotta tell the Emperor!"
His impulsive apprentice's footsteps, always heavy even in a hurry, faded down the stairwell.
Yanagi closed his eyes again. The Emperor had asked him - why did he have to choose creating a homunculus as a pet project? He could have worked with the Empire's medics to discover a cure for crop plague. He could have learned more about making animated soldiers out of clay. He was the most powerful and knowledgeable magician in the kingdom - perhaps even the whole world. He could be as useful or as evil as he wanted.
Yanagi had his reasons. But he had no words for those reasons.
He wasn't insane. He wasn't trying to raise the dead. He wasn't spilling anyone's blood but his own. And what it all boiled down to was pure faith that there was someone - or something - out there that should exist in this world, but didn't. And only he, the most powerful magician in the kingdom and perhaps the whole world, could bring that existence about.
Maybe a bit of it was vanity. Or loneliness.
But in the end, if you asked him, it was all about creating balance in a world that had none.
===
A career as an artist was certainly not something he had expected of his childhood friend - but then, Sadaharu couldn't say he had expected to become a travel writer, either.
And of all the places in the world, they had to meet at a cafe in Paris. It was ironic and not just a little ridiculous, Sadaharu was aware. As children, they had expected to become scientists, doctors, teachers, historians... they had wanted boring lives for themselves, living out their adulthood in relative peace, crawling to old age together.
But then, very early in their lives, Renji's family had to move away... and afterwards, it was like everything had the freedom to change. A simple goodbye, etched deep within the years, rearranged their whole lives for them.
"Things didn't quite turn out as planned," Renji said right before a sip of tea. "But it looks like it worked out, in the end. You look happy, Sadaharu."
Sadaharu shrugged. He might have looked happy, but Renji looked good. This was what he'd missed - his friend's pensive smile, the deceptive silence hiding gears perpetually in motion. Those mysterious eyes hiding from the rest of the world, but not him. Those long large-jointed fingers lightly wrapping around delicate things.
But there was also a glow about the young, grown-up Renji, a semblance of something falling into place. Sadaharu wondered if he had that glow, as well - he could believe that he did.
It lasted until it was time to go. Renji rose from his seat, ever graceful, ever more aware of the time, and said he was due back at his exhibit. That critic from Amsterdam was bound to drop by any time now, and she'd said she had some questions to ask Renji regarding his "alternate universes" series of paintings.
He was sure Sadaharu also had a busy day ahead of him, so maybe they could continue their talk some other time. Maybe when Renji came home to Japan for the holidays. He was going to visit Sadaharu at home, he promised with an impish smile on his face, just like he used to.
But as Renji was about to leave, his friend called his name. He turned around. "What is it?"
Sadaharu kept himself in check. He wanted to say I think I scoured the world to find you, but there was no room for such words in this particular time and place.
"I'll be staying in Paris a few more days. Maybe we could meet again soon. Maybe for dinner." He took out a pen, hurriedly scrawled the number of the hotel he was staying in on a clean paper table napkin. "I'm sure we have many other things to talk about."
Renji accepted the number, at first looking thoughtful and a bit taken aback. But the expression didn't last long. A sudden smile brightened up his entire face.
"Yes. We do. I'd like that."
===
"I just have one question." They could only talk over the phone now. It was as if they had no common ground between them anymore, when once they had been inseparable, and once they couldn't get through a single day without seing each other's face.
"If I'd known... if you'd told me, and if I'd asked for you to stay... would you have stayed?"
It was winter. They were eighteen and physically separated only by a few bus rides and a hundred side streets. If they came across each other in a crowded street, they would pretend not to see each other. If you asked either one of them what the other's significance to him was, he would say they were childhood friends and nothing more.
They were growing up in separate directions, but they were bound to meet again - over and over, pretending to be strangers and pretending not to care. Who knew which of them was feeling more pain, or if pain was even part of the equation? The world was small, yet they both wanted to believe it was bigger than the two of them... because that meant that someday, they would be able to move on and live down all the what-ifs and whys and what-nows.
For the longest time Renji stood by the window to his apartment, holding the phone to his ear - watching the snow fall without truly seeing it. Somehow knowing that somewhere else, a few bus rides and a hundred side streets and an eternity away, Sadaharu was doing the same.
He decided to end the conversation simply by saying the truth: "I don't know."
===
Sadaharu opened his eyes, and it was still dark.
On impulse he reached for the other side of the bed. His arm and hand came into contact with warm, bare skin, which stirred beneath the weight of his touch.
"Sadaharu...?" A deep, familiar voice, raspy with sleep. Long, large-jointed fingers rested lightly on the back of Sadaharu's hand. "What is it? Why are you awake at this hour?"
At this hour...? Sadaharu glanced over at the clock on Renji's side of the bed. 3 AM. Too early for explanations.
"I dreamed I lost you," he only said. Renji sat up, and with eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, Sadaharu could see his brows furrow.
"Lost me how?"
"I don't know." Sadaharu reached up to lay a hand on Renji's shoulder, gently pulling him back down onto the bed. "Forget it. It's not important."
"Hmm." Renji languidly set himself back down. With a sleepy sigh he moved closer, curving his naked body against his lover's - a comforting warmth, as he had always been. "For the record, the chances of you 'losing me' anytime soon are less than 0%. If that'll help you go back to sleep."
Sadaharu knew what he meant. It was their leg of the Australian Open tomorrow. He and his childhood friend were going to enter that arena as a doubles team and win, as they always did. But in order to do that, they both needed to be fully rested.
"No." Sadaharu wrapped his arms around the warmth beside him. "I don't want to go back to sleep."
A neutral grunt greeted that answer. Renji knew him better than that, he knew that in just a few minutes, Sadaharu would be out like a light again. He, too, had an athlete's well-trained body, able to set its own alarms.
But if Sadaharu were to choose, he would not go back to sleep. He would lay here like this, holding his friend, his lover, his partner in all things, as close to himself as he could. Maybe if he could stay like this until the dawn, the dreams wouldn't return. And then, he wouldn't have to lose Renji to his fears and the infinite possibilities that threatened what they had worked so hard to keep together.
Author: morphaileffect
Recipient: Everyone
Rating: PG?
Other Characters/Pairings: Inui/Yanagi
Disclaimer: The characters of Yanagi Renji and Inui Sadaharu belong to
Konomi Takeshi. The batshit AU scenarios I placed them in are (to the
best of my knowledge) all mine.
Warnings: This is a collection of AU drabbles: possibly confusing, and
at some parts possibly unforgivably OOC. Though I certainly hope not.
Summary: Just a few of the many ways things could have been different.
(i'm sorry, i suck at summaries.)
Here, when I say I never want to be without you,
somewhere else I am saying
I never want to be without you again.
- Bob Hicok
Other Lives
Renji opened his eyes, and it was bright out.
"Get up," a familiar voice said.
The voice made his heart skip a beat. Renji threw the covers off himself and bolted upright. And found himself facing exactly the person he expected.
He was just standing at the foot of Renji's bed, holding the curtains in his hand, looking down at Renji with a puzzled expression. He looked dressed to leave the hotel, which was reasonable if it was around 8 AM - the tournament began at 10.
It was just Inui Sadaharu, Renji's doubles partner for this leg of the Australian Open. Some guy he met barely a year ago. Some guy who rarely laughed, and laughed derisively when he did, and never made small talk or stooped to sugarcoating his statements during interviews - a damn good athlete, just not a very likeable one.
It made no sense. No sense at all. For Renji to feel this much relief upon seeing him.
"We're going to be late if you stay in bed any longer," Inui Sadaharu calmly informed his doubles partner.
"How did you get in here?" Renji remembered vaguely that the young man had a room of his own. It was somewhere down the hall...
"Your manager and I've been calling you on your hotel phone and cell phone for an hour. We thought something had happened to you, so we asked for a copy of your room key." He looked Renji up and down. "You don't look hurt. Are you feeling ill?"
"No..." Renji sighed and rubbed his eyes. "No. I think I was just dreaming."
Inui Sadaharu raised an eyebrow. "Must've been a good dream..."
Not really, Renji almost answered. "I dreamed I lost you," he said aloud.
He didn't know why he said that. It just slipped out. He looked up at Inui Sadaharu and Inui Sadaharu looked down at him. And a corner of the other young tennis player's lip curled up into a smile that was infamous for infuriating opponents and alies alike.
"Why would you lose me?" The edge in his smile said: What makes you think I'm yours to lose?
Renji looked at the stranger at the foot of the bed. He took a deep breath and let it out. And with that breath went the last of the feelings that carried over from the dream. It flowed out of him and left him feeling strangely empty.
That smile was right: they weren't anything. Just two young tennis players of the same age, born nearly on the same day, who happened to be especially good at their game. They were professionals with their own agenda, helping each other rise to the top - that was it.
Renji doubted they would ever become friends. He doubted it very much.
"It's not important," Renji said, hoping to sound as neutral as he was starting to feel. "Forget it." He swung his legs off the bed. Inui Sadaharu made a small sound at the back of his throat that sounded like contempt. And without further ado, he left his doubles partner alone to get ready for the day.
===
He was supposed to be eleven years old today.
A long time ago, Renji had a friend. They met when their fathers took them to the same tennis club and taught them both how to hold the racquet properly. Since then they were always playing together, and were never apart, not for more than a day.
Only a year ago, his friend was taken away from him. An incurable sickness. They kept Sadaharu from him for months and months, and then they showed him his empty shell. It was over quickly, Sadaharu's parents had said; they made it sound like a bigger mercy than it had any right to be.
"Don't worry. I'll get better soon," were his smiling friend's last words to him. "When I'm up, the first thing we'll do is kick everybody else's butts."
"Sadaharu." It was a difficult name to pronounce for a boy who was never good with goodbyes, even when there was nothing else to say. Every syllable was wrenched painfully from his lips, his chest, the backs of his eyes. "We're moving away, far away. I don't know when I can come back to see you..." How small his hand was when he laid it lightly on the gravestone, how secretly it trembled. "But you'll be with me, won't you?"
===
He was supposed to be thirteen years old today.
This was the school Renji was supposed to attend. This was the neighborhood to which his family had moved. Renji was supposed to call, and write, and visit now and then, so they could play and compare notes and help each other with their homework, like they used to.
An out-of-control truck put an end to all that. It put an end to everything they had planned. No goodbyes, not to anyone, Sadaharu remembered - his friend didn't last long enough for that.
This was supposed to be Renji's life. Sadaharu was here because he could not bear it falling away into nothing, just because the person this entire path was laid out for was gone.
But there were some things Sadaharu knew he was still not strong enough for. He hated history class the most. He hated calligraphy and light reading and most of all, he hated the tennis courts. He tried not to pass by them while on his way from one building to another, avoided the gaze of anyone who happened to be on them as he was passing through.
Renji was not on those tennis courts. Renji was supposed to be eleven years old, and a star player in this school. And Sadaharu was sure that if his gaze fell the wrong way, if the light happened to strike his glasses at the worst possible angle, he would see Renji there, waving him over, and he would hear Renji's voice calling his name.
"It's you, isn't it?" said one of the people at the courts - an upperclassman. "We've heard all about you. You made a really smart move, transferring here, you know. Thanks to you, we now have three first year tennis champions in our school!" But the hostile look in Sadaharu's eyes made him draw back and blink. "You're... that famous doubles player, right? Inui Sadaharu?"
"I'm Inui Sadaharu," he answered icily. "And no, I do not want to join your tennis club."
===
Inui did not like to think about what they had between them that was not distance - professional or physical. Through some twist of fate the two young men were researching exactly the same scientific phenomena - and they only knew of each other's existence when they published their papers on it at exactly the same time. They were even almost the same age, born one day apart, though living on opposite sides of the globe. Technically, this means they were born at the same moment, but their birthdates were separated by a gigantic international dateline.
Naturally, the two of them were eager to meet each other right away and pick each other's brains. This did not surprise Inui. What did surprise him was that they hit it off, like two firecrackers lit at once, following the same path.
They weren't even supposed to understand each other all that well - one of them was fluent in Japanese, the other not so. And yet how quickly they came to know about each other's little gestures, finished sentences for each other. It was as if they had known each other for ages.
In each other's company, they forgot all about time and everything else. In each other's company, things seemed to make more sense. At first Sadaharu was willing to dismiss it as a curious meeting of like minds, nothing more... but the longer they stayed together, the more he realized he was becoming dependent on the other young man's presence. He looked forward to their every meeting as a small child would.
...Which was ridiculous, of course. He was twenty-five and a distinguished chemist, the head of his own university research department - and Yanagi Renji, a behavioral scientist, was equally accomplished, attaining a professorial seat at such a tender age. They were too grown up for the concept of "best friends" or "soulmates" and the like.
And yet, such topics seemed to worm its way into their conversations far too often.
"I have this theory," Yanagi brought up once, "about people who are born to be together."
Inui put down his coffee cup. "You mean twins?"
"Not twins." Yanagi shook his head. "There are people who are brought together by circumstance, and people bound together by fate. The people brought together by circumstance can survive well enough without ever meeting each other, but those who are fated - " He paused and took a sip of his tea. "Let's say that if there was a relationship where the phrase 'born to be together' would apply, it would apply to theirs."
A corner of Inui's lip rose. That expression might have offended any other person - not Yanagi. "That's a rather... romantic notion, isn't it? It's strange to hear from someone like you, Professor. 'Circumstance' and 'fate,' these things can't be measured."
"What if they can be measured, Doctor?" Good God, he sounded serious. "What if there was some way to quantify genetic and behavioral compatibility - and subsequently predict which two people in the world would be just perfect for each other?"
"Some people might rebel against the thought of that," Inui said dryly. "It would wreak havoc on the notion of 'free will', after all."
"Some people may not welcome certain facts of life. It doesn't make them any less true." Yanagi put down his cup and leaned forward, looked deep into his friend's eyes. "If I told you I've been composing a series of formulae that would prove my hypothesis valid without a shadow of a doubt - would you believe me?"
Inui held his friend's gaze for a moment. Then he had to throw back his head and laugh. "I won't only believe you, I'll help you!"
"Will you?" What little of Yanagi's eyes that Inui could see (usually they were half-lidded, or closed in concentration - an eccentricity that not a few girls in the academia found charming) gleamed with mischief. "I warn you, however. The Neurad Committee might think we're teaming up against them. The formulae are based on Darylian diagrams - which, as I'm sure you know, were summarily shot down by the Committee two decades ago. And since the Committee equals the rest of the global scientific community..."
"Isn't that exactly what we were made to do?" In spite of himself, Inui was enjoying this. "Play doubles against the rest of the world?"
"When you put it that way," Yanagi chuckled softly. His smile mirrored Inui's now. Anyone else who did not belong to this little space they shared might have found it terrifying. "Although I must correct you, Doctor. It's not the rest of the world - just the parts that are in our way."
===
"Doctor! You can't do this!" Inui didn't need to look. Only Winters had a shouting voice that annoying. "Doctor!"
He could hear them loud and clear over the pod speakers; there was no need for them to bang their fists on the viewing room window. What was that, anyway, a feeble hope that melodrama will save the day?
At any rate, Dr. Inui Sadaharu could not afford to heed his panicked assistants. In just a few hours, the laboratory would be officially shut down. He would be unable to access his records, his prototypes, all of which he was not given ample time to back up and store. That was the point, he was aware - the only thorough means of sabotaging the project was to ensure that the principal scientist would not be able to pick up where he was cut off.
He had been working on the machine for far too long, Inui had been told - spending far too much of his sponsors' money. And for what? The desired result was a one-man vehicle that could travel between dimensions, break all the known barriers of time and space simply to prove there was another universe out there - that there were other universes. It sounded incredible, but before he took on this project Dr. Inui Sadaharu was infamous for achieving the incredible - that was how he was able to reel in funding to begin with.
It was a frivolous assignment from the start. Worse, it looked like it was getting nowhere. His sponsors decided to divert their funds into more profitable studies, such as finding a catch-all cure for dandruff. Or breeding strawberry-flavored carrots, which were at least good for you.
Again and again Dr. Inui Sadaharu had promised his sponsors results. Again and again, he had failed to deliver. Whatever progress he had been making existed only in his head, his sponsors decided. So this time there were no more extensions, no more excuses. He no longer even had to prove anything.
They were simply shutting down the project. And he had no choice.
"The core failed to reach stasis at peak pressure!" Winters screamed into the microphone that was directly hooked up to the pod speakers. "It won't hold!"
"It came as close as it could to holding, the last time." Inui sounded distracted, because he was. There were too many buttons in this damn thing. He should have been given time to streamline the interior panel at least, so it wouldn't look like something out of a steampunk novel. "I've made a few adjustments to the midrange formula, it should be able to..."
"But why risk it?" Winters was quite possibly having a heart attack. This might be the first time a human being was going to commit suicide right before his eyes. "Doctor! Why??"
Inui didn't answer. He, too, knew there was a less than 30.1% chance his modifications to the midrange formula had actually fixed it. It was far likelier that his mortal body's atoms were going to be smashed into tiny unresolvable bits.
Inui Sadaharu, aged 43, activated the pod he had strapped himself into. Never married, never had children, never had a friend in his life, this was all he had - the proof that he was right, that there were alternate universes, and that in at least one of them, somehow...
Why did he have to push through with it? Why risk death just to be proven right?
It wasn't logical. It wasn't scientific.
He didn't know.
===
"Master! Don't do it!" An adolescent boy's familiar voice. Knocking sounds coming to him as whispers, and rolled out into thunder. "Master!!"
The banging made Yanagi open his eyes. He must've lost consciousness for a few minutes or so, because he could swear his apprentice was nowhere in the vicinity when he began the transfusion.
He turned his face toward at the stone slab beside the one on which he is lying. There was something there, made of soot and smoke and shadow and a mess of many carefully measured essences. It was shaped like a man and it was breathing. Or at least Yanagi thought it was...
It was hard to see even in the brilliant lights of his laboratory. His eyesight was swimming. From his arm, a bunch of thin tubes ran toward the human-shaped mass. He could see -or thought he could see - his own blood running into a tiny network of branches forming with painful slowness within the concoction.
His blood.
"Go away, Akaya," he said weakly, hoping the boy heard it and the annoyance in his voice carried above the frantic banging on his laboratory door. "This is a delicate stage. If you interfere, I will die and then I will haunt you, cut off your hands and feet and feed them to your pet dragon. The gods know that you - "
He couldn't continue. His consciousness was flickering out again.
Several dozen failed experiments later, one finally showed promise - at least a 50% chance of turning out a success. The shape on the other stone slab wasn't collapsing, and his blood was being conducted into the shape's limbs, exactly as the ancient, forbidden tomes said it should be.
It was only his blood he could use... after careful study of the effects of other creatures' blood on the concoction, he learned that only human blood could be meticulously prepared for the process, and that only his blood - the blood of no ordinary magician, but the Emperor's Court Magician himself - stood a good chance of withstanding the procedure.
"You idiot! It's not safe! The last time - the last time, you were almost - " Akaya might have been crying outside his laboratory door. Yanagi thought he heard the boy choke back a sob. "I gotta tell the Emperor!"
His impulsive apprentice's footsteps, always heavy even in a hurry, faded down the stairwell.
Yanagi closed his eyes again. The Emperor had asked him - why did he have to choose creating a homunculus as a pet project? He could have worked with the Empire's medics to discover a cure for crop plague. He could have learned more about making animated soldiers out of clay. He was the most powerful and knowledgeable magician in the kingdom - perhaps even the whole world. He could be as useful or as evil as he wanted.
Yanagi had his reasons. But he had no words for those reasons.
He wasn't insane. He wasn't trying to raise the dead. He wasn't spilling anyone's blood but his own. And what it all boiled down to was pure faith that there was someone - or something - out there that should exist in this world, but didn't. And only he, the most powerful magician in the kingdom and perhaps the whole world, could bring that existence about.
Maybe a bit of it was vanity. Or loneliness.
But in the end, if you asked him, it was all about creating balance in a world that had none.
===
A career as an artist was certainly not something he had expected of his childhood friend - but then, Sadaharu couldn't say he had expected to become a travel writer, either.
And of all the places in the world, they had to meet at a cafe in Paris. It was ironic and not just a little ridiculous, Sadaharu was aware. As children, they had expected to become scientists, doctors, teachers, historians... they had wanted boring lives for themselves, living out their adulthood in relative peace, crawling to old age together.
But then, very early in their lives, Renji's family had to move away... and afterwards, it was like everything had the freedom to change. A simple goodbye, etched deep within the years, rearranged their whole lives for them.
"Things didn't quite turn out as planned," Renji said right before a sip of tea. "But it looks like it worked out, in the end. You look happy, Sadaharu."
Sadaharu shrugged. He might have looked happy, but Renji looked good. This was what he'd missed - his friend's pensive smile, the deceptive silence hiding gears perpetually in motion. Those mysterious eyes hiding from the rest of the world, but not him. Those long large-jointed fingers lightly wrapping around delicate things.
But there was also a glow about the young, grown-up Renji, a semblance of something falling into place. Sadaharu wondered if he had that glow, as well - he could believe that he did.
It lasted until it was time to go. Renji rose from his seat, ever graceful, ever more aware of the time, and said he was due back at his exhibit. That critic from Amsterdam was bound to drop by any time now, and she'd said she had some questions to ask Renji regarding his "alternate universes" series of paintings.
He was sure Sadaharu also had a busy day ahead of him, so maybe they could continue their talk some other time. Maybe when Renji came home to Japan for the holidays. He was going to visit Sadaharu at home, he promised with an impish smile on his face, just like he used to.
But as Renji was about to leave, his friend called his name. He turned around. "What is it?"
Sadaharu kept himself in check. He wanted to say I think I scoured the world to find you, but there was no room for such words in this particular time and place.
"I'll be staying in Paris a few more days. Maybe we could meet again soon. Maybe for dinner." He took out a pen, hurriedly scrawled the number of the hotel he was staying in on a clean paper table napkin. "I'm sure we have many other things to talk about."
Renji accepted the number, at first looking thoughtful and a bit taken aback. But the expression didn't last long. A sudden smile brightened up his entire face.
"Yes. We do. I'd like that."
===
"I just have one question." They could only talk over the phone now. It was as if they had no common ground between them anymore, when once they had been inseparable, and once they couldn't get through a single day without seing each other's face.
"If I'd known... if you'd told me, and if I'd asked for you to stay... would you have stayed?"
It was winter. They were eighteen and physically separated only by a few bus rides and a hundred side streets. If they came across each other in a crowded street, they would pretend not to see each other. If you asked either one of them what the other's significance to him was, he would say they were childhood friends and nothing more.
They were growing up in separate directions, but they were bound to meet again - over and over, pretending to be strangers and pretending not to care. Who knew which of them was feeling more pain, or if pain was even part of the equation? The world was small, yet they both wanted to believe it was bigger than the two of them... because that meant that someday, they would be able to move on and live down all the what-ifs and whys and what-nows.
For the longest time Renji stood by the window to his apartment, holding the phone to his ear - watching the snow fall without truly seeing it. Somehow knowing that somewhere else, a few bus rides and a hundred side streets and an eternity away, Sadaharu was doing the same.
He decided to end the conversation simply by saying the truth: "I don't know."
===
Sadaharu opened his eyes, and it was still dark.
On impulse he reached for the other side of the bed. His arm and hand came into contact with warm, bare skin, which stirred beneath the weight of his touch.
"Sadaharu...?" A deep, familiar voice, raspy with sleep. Long, large-jointed fingers rested lightly on the back of Sadaharu's hand. "What is it? Why are you awake at this hour?"
At this hour...? Sadaharu glanced over at the clock on Renji's side of the bed. 3 AM. Too early for explanations.
"I dreamed I lost you," he only said. Renji sat up, and with eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, Sadaharu could see his brows furrow.
"Lost me how?"
"I don't know." Sadaharu reached up to lay a hand on Renji's shoulder, gently pulling him back down onto the bed. "Forget it. It's not important."
"Hmm." Renji languidly set himself back down. With a sleepy sigh he moved closer, curving his naked body against his lover's - a comforting warmth, as he had always been. "For the record, the chances of you 'losing me' anytime soon are less than 0%. If that'll help you go back to sleep."
Sadaharu knew what he meant. It was their leg of the Australian Open tomorrow. He and his childhood friend were going to enter that arena as a doubles team and win, as they always did. But in order to do that, they both needed to be fully rested.
"No." Sadaharu wrapped his arms around the warmth beside him. "I don't want to go back to sleep."
A neutral grunt greeted that answer. Renji knew him better than that, he knew that in just a few minutes, Sadaharu would be out like a light again. He, too, had an athlete's well-trained body, able to set its own alarms.
But if Sadaharu were to choose, he would not go back to sleep. He would lay here like this, holding his friend, his lover, his partner in all things, as close to himself as he could. Maybe if he could stay like this until the dawn, the dreams wouldn't return. And then, he wouldn't have to lose Renji to his fears and the infinite possibilities that threatened what they had worked so hard to keep together.