Chapter Text
Goro is very nearly, but not entirely, above trying to lose Maruki in the bookstore he’s dragged them both into.
The first day– yesterday– was only settling-in and getting-used-to-the-place and other assorted dust-hued nonsense, and Maruki has seen fit to turn this day into a shopping trip that is about five times longer than it has any right to be. He’d insisted on trying to secure new clothes for Goro, but told Goro he could pick out whatever he wanted, which turned into Goro trying to balance an equation where one side was his comfort and the other was Maruki’s budget. Maruki never said anything about what he was willing to allow Goro– about the threshold where “sure, I’ll get it” turns into “no, you’re not worth it”– but Goro knows it’s there. He’s not ready to find that line just yet.
Clothes shopping turned into looking for a suitable lunch place, which turned into sitting down and having lunch a long walk later, which has now inexplicably turned into wandering a bookstore because Maruki noticed only two books in Goro’s bag, which is apparently far too few for a growing boy. “Pick out whatever you’d like,” Maruki had said, looking around at the shelves and displays with unabashed contentment. “I have a sizable home library, but it’s not really appropriate stuff for teens– just a lot of boring psychology texts.”
Goro wrinkles his nose at the memory. He hates the insinuation that something is beyond his grasp, but even more than that he hates the unspoken expectation that he should be loitering around the teen section– or, god forbid, the children’s section. Never mind the fact that there are a few series he’s always wanted to start on that lurk there, or that Maruki isn’t even looking at him in the first place, apparently content to let him wander freely. Goro barely considers himself a teenager; for all intents and purposes, he might as well be a smaller, ganglier, less confident, less knowledgeable adult.
It’s only with shame burning over his face that Goro manages to pick out a couple of teen mysteries to go alongside his adult detective fictions. He buries them at the bottom of his stack with the titles facing inward. He doesn’t want to look like he’s looking for Maruki, so he settles for loitering about fifteen feet away from where Maruki is browsing before Maruki takes notice and flags him down. When he asks Goro “ready to go?”, all cheeriness and light, Goro nods.
They start the journey back to the apartment with their arms laden heavy. The prickle at the back of Goro’s neck has turned into a full-blown ache, telling him that you should never have let him see what was in your bag. He knows how to live with adequacies, and again Goro feels there’s a weight of expectation pressing down on him: Maruki doesn’t think his previous way of living was good for him. Well, he’s been living like that and getting on perfectly fine so far, so why should he worry? Goro is an ungrateful fucking pig and he knows it. He hasn’t deserved a single thing since the–
Maruki is standing in front of him. The subway station bell is chiming. Maruki looks vaguely like he wants to reach out to Goro, but he very clearly isn’t touching him, and there’s hesitation in the way he shifts his bags. Goro knows he’s afraid of him. For him. It’s the same thing, in the end.
“Akechi-kun,” he says, voice heavy with concern. “Are you ready to go?”
Goro rises. His bags feel leaden. He hopes the pages will poison him when he gets home and holds them close.
—
Five nights in, Goro manages to get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in the new apartment. In the previous nights he’d woken up at odd hours, wandering through the place like a vengeful ghost at 12 and 2 and 4. He’d taken in the aforementioned bookshelves full of massively boring (and largely outdated) psychology texts, nearly all of which seemed used, or at the very least foxed and scruffy. Goro had also found a set of cooking utensils more comprehensive than he’d expected, an overstuffed tub of little plastic animal and people miniatures, and, buried deep in a bathroom drawer, a purple hairbrush. There were a few hairs on the brush: dark and straight. Nothing like Maruki’s.
Goro isn’t exactly precise or methodical as he collects his evidence, but he is collecting it, and he is developing some sort of picture about the special circumstances that seem to come up every second step he takes. Maruki and the apartment produce an entire gallery of strange pictures he hangs up next to one another in his mind.
Exhibit one: the apartment itself. It’s the nicest one Goro has ever lived in– still not downright swanky, but it’s nice, and while it might make sense for a clinical psychologist’s salary to hold this place up, it’s downright bizarre to imagine a graduate student trying to afford all this. Goro fills in the blank spot on the check with some sort of atypical windfall. Maruki could be a trust fund baby, or maybe coasting off inheritance (he’s old enough for his parents to be passing away right about now, and they might as well have had the decency to die rich). He could be skimming drugs off his lab-work and selling them, although Goro doesn’t know if he actually has access to all the mysterious little vials and pills like laboratories have in the movies, let alone whether they’d actually be worth anything. Maruki could just be related to the building owner. All these answers feel mundane, in the end, and Goro finds he doesn’t really care much about pursuing them so long as no one’s going to break down their door about it.
Exhibit two is more a subsection of exhibit one: the size of the apartment. Like its overall cadence, it’s not huge, but it is sizeable, to the point where there is an entire unused room semi-adjacent to Goro’s. He peeked in once, before Maruki got home from work, and discovered that it was somewhat, but not entirely, bedroom-like. Spare furniture and boxes of miscellanea were stashed away in its unlighted, dusty depths. Goro wasn’t sure what the room was trying to tell him. Any image it could have presented– spare bedroom, storage room, study– was muddied and indistinct.
The third exhibit seems to be Goro himself. He keeps asking himself why am I here? Why me? Why throw a kid in here at all? and coming up with nothing reasonable. He only faintly remembers the meetings with the social worker, let alone any of the actual questions she asked, and Maruki’s answers mostly seemed to stray on the side of uninteresting altruism. It was all the kind of “because it’s the right thing to do” drivel that didn’t seem to say anything about Goro.
Goro doesn’t concretely know a single thing about how Maruki views him until that evening.
They’re sitting around the dinner table eating something Maruki tried throwing together. It’s alright, strictly speaking, and it’s certainly more nutritious than whatever Goro’s previous caretakers tried tossing his way. He doesn’t yet feel bold enough to try slinking off to his room and eating there, so Goro sits and tolerates Maruki’s idle chatter.
“I finished sorting out your transfer with the school, by the way,” he adds, onto the tail end of a speech that was mostly about subway passes. “You should be able to start attending next week, and we’ll get your uniforms in the mail before then. Is there anything else you think you might need?”
Goro mentally tallies his school supplies. There are blank spaces, of course, but those blank spaces only get filled by kids with parents with money– spaces in the shape of fancy pen sets and laptops and fine noise-cancelling headphones. “I’m alright.”
“You’re always welcome to have any of the stationary around the house. I always keep a stack of notebooks somewhere, and they’re probably more useful to you than me.” He smiles, his hand halfway to his water glass. “You’re learning all sorts of new things, after all, and good notebooks are better suited to original ideas– I’m just rehashing the same old stuff or taking meeting notes with them.”
Goro is sorely tempted to talk back– ask him something along the lines of “do you really think we’re learning anything creative or useful”– but he buries his snappishness in his fried rice.
Maruki, undaunted, continues on. “You’ll have to tell me about what school is like for you,” he says. “I have a lot of adolescent clients, and I think I’m going to get more soon, so it’s important for me to know what things are like for kids your age.”
Something within Goro sinks as a thought occurs to him. It’s a spurious thought, but it still has spurs, and it digs them into his sides as he reframes his image of Maruki-as-parent in his mind. He knew he was a psychologist in practice, but hearing about how closely Maruki’s clientele resembles Goro makes him feel like a rat picked out from an enclosure. Goro has been many things before: a burden, a troublemaker, a tax credit– but he has never before been a test subject.
There’s still a mote of optimism banging against the walls of his brain. You’re not just a test subject, it insists, you’re also a data point! A valuable moment of insight! Somehow, this fails to comfort him. Even though he full well knows he’s been chasing down a number of premature conclusions, Goro can’t stop himself from snowballing into a sulk, and he’s still sitting there with his brow furrowed and his hands clenched when Maruki starts talking again.
“How have things been going, by the way? Here, I mean.” Maruki’s plate is scraped clean, and Goro picks his head up to watch him lean back in his chair. “Hopefully the adjustment hasn’t been too bad?”
“No, it’s been fine.” Again wants and questions rise in Goro’s chest; again he shoves them down. He closes his eyes and huffs as if to physically push them out of his lungs. When he opens his eyes, Maruki is still looking at him, now with some sort of amusement playing across his face.
“You know, you remind me a lot of myself as a teenager,” he begins. “I’d do the same thing– insist there wasn’t anything wrong when I was asked about things, and then act surprised when the adults around me happened to figure out I wasn’t being entirely truthful. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing you of lying– and I’m certainly not upset! I just… ah, how do I phrase this?” He contemplatively leans his neck back and pauses to crack it this way and that. Maruki’s shoulders visibly relax after one crack in particular, and when he opens his eyes again he looks much calmer. “I understand why you might feel the need to cover up any dissatisfaction you might be feeling. It’s difficult enough to bring grievances to a caretaker, let alone bringing them to some new caretaker, at that. But I still do want to know.”
Throughout his speech, Maruki’s tone has taken several steps into a place Goro has never seen him occupy– no, he has heard this voice before. Maruki spoke like this with the social worker: a little quiet, a little soft, methodical and optimistic in tone and diction. It’s vaguely irritating for reasons Goro can’t explain.
Goro can’t dwell on it long, though, because Maruki’s voice dips into seriousness. “If you have any needs or wants that aren’t getting met, it’s my responsibility to address them as best I can, and to do that I have to know what they are. I don’t mean to make this sound businesslike, but I figure it’s better for me to be clear and unambiguous about this. So, please, Goro… do you want or need anything at all?”
Maruki leans forward, and Goro feels like he’s been nailed to his chair. It only takes Goro a few moments to voice the question burrowing through his grey matter. “Why did you bring me here?”
Maruki blinks guilelessly at him. Goro rambles onward. “I don’t really get why you picked me in particular, but I also don’t know why you have a kid here at all. It’s not like you– you knew my mother or something.” He cuts himself off with a strange wheezing exhale. As if invoking his mother is itself a poisonous act.
Maruki doesn’t seem fazed, though. “I suppose it is rather odd, isn’t it?” He waits for Goro to pick his head back up before he continues. “To tell you the truth, the circumstances are… well, they’re a bit–”
“Special. I know.” Goro fixes him with a stare. “What’s so special about this situation?” He only narrowly avoids replacing this situation with me, but the strange pity on Maruki’s face makes him feel like he somehow telepathically communicated the sentiment anyway.
Goro feels his stomach dropping even as he can’t pinpoint why– why there’s so much confusion and dread welling up within him, watching Maruki’s eyes flicker in such odd ways. Part of him does know: knows that this is where the other shoe drops, where he starts to hear about the other responsibilities he’ll be tossed into. The other homes were gracious enough just to neglect him every now and again, but he’s never been made into a– into– he can’t think through the phrase in its entirety. Guinea pig? Patsy?
Maruki lets out a decisive, quick sigh. “I do apologize, Goro– I intended to tell you this a little bit later so you could get settled in properly first. But if you’re sure, then I suppose it’s about time.”
He picks up his head, sitting back with clear deliberation. “Goro… there’s something special about you. It’s very difficult to describe, but I’ll do my best to teach you, I promise.”
Maruki’s smile is slight; it grows as he speaks. “You have some very unique abilities compared to the general population, and I think you’ll be able to use them to do some wonderful good in the world.”
Goro blinks at him. He’s not sure what his body is doing, but something viciously uncomfortable has settled within him, writhing and acidic. He vaguely feels like Maruki’s trying to induce eighth-grader syndrome in him– like this has long since entered the realm of delusion and is turning into full-fledged folie a deux.
Maruki’s smile turns fond and warm. Patriarchal and patronizing in equal measure. “I can see how uncertain you are, and that makes perfect sense. It’s hard to believe, I know. But I’m being completely honest when I say that there’s magic within you.”
Goro feels his heart sink. The glimmer of hope he felt at being magical and special fades fast. It’s clear enough to his ears that this is about to turn into a speech about potential and ‘everyday heroism’ and all the other little nonsenses that boil down to being a good little boy in a city that doesn’t want him around. He feels stupid and childish– he only has to acknowledge the presence of hope after it’s disappeared, and knowing that part of him is believing in this bullshit makes him want to rip it out of himself.
“We’ll work together,” Maruki continues. “I have some plans in mind, and together, we can work together to do some truly incredible things.”
Goro scoffs. “What, do you have powers too?”
Maruki’s smile does not waver. “Yes, actually. Though I think mine are a bit different than yours.”
Goro’s palms are sweaty. He wonders about the logistics of running away in the middle of the night. He only manages to mumble the word “magic” into the growing silence, overwhelmed with sudden terror as he is.
“Mm, sure, but it’s at least partially a science. It’s what I study, and– oh, Goro…” Maruki seems to have noticed the intensity of Goro’s discomfort, and he rises from the table to move next to Goro, crouching down. With their eye levels equalized, Maruki looks a little bit less terrifying and a little bit more sane. “I know this is a strange thing to hear, I know– from someone taking care of you, no less! But… but I still mean every word. It’s still all true.”
Maruki places a hand on Goro’s shoulder. “Goro… don’t you want to be a hero?”
There is only one correct answer to that question. There has only ever been one correct answer ever since his mother spoke her last words to him. Go be a hero somewhere else, Goro, she’d said, faint remnants of affection shining through her voice as she led him outside, letting him catch the currents of the outside world of his own volition.
Goro tightens his grip on the arms of his chair. “Proof,” he says. “Show me proof. Then maybe I’ll believe you.”
He knows nothing can make him into a hero– that he might as well not bother hoping for it. But Maruki, for all his strangenesses, is unfaltering. “Of course,” he says, “though it might be frightening, I have to warn you.”
“I don’t care.” Goro imagines nothing could be worse than hope.
Maruki rises and stretches. When he’s done, he motions for Goro to wait a moment before he heads over to his own bedroom. There are scattered, muffled sounds of tidying, and a minute or two later he motions for Goro to follow him inside. He has not turned the light on. Goro can’t help but stand and walk, one step at a time, into Maruki’s room.
The computer screen is the only thing that illuminates the room. The curtains have been drawn shut, and Goro is only able to see faint images of Maruki’s half-made queen-size bed and cheap flat-pack furniture. He only manages to see the details of the computer’s form when he draws close– it’s kind of abstract, lined in wires and nonsensical connections. Goro finds himself concerned about the amount of melted plastic and voided warranties that seem to make up this amalgamation.
Maruki sits down at the old, battered swivel chair in front of the screen and motions for Goro to come closer. “Go on. I promise it won’t electrocute you,” he says, with a little laugh that sets Goro’s nerves even further on edge. Goro obeys, though, and when he looks into the screen he isn’t sure what he’s seeing. It looks like one of those satellite geography maps Goro’s seen on school computers, but veiled in an odd affect that makes it look like a blurry, blue-toned cityscape.
“This is a pretty special tool,” Maruki says, drawing the keyboard and mouse a little closer to himself as he gets himself situated. “It’s kind of an… extension of the powers I’ve got. More of a lens than anything else.
“What you have to understand, Goro,” he says, slowly growing more and more excited and reverent in tone, “is that there’s another world besides our own. A world defined by the collective thoughts and feelings of all of humanity. You and I can look into that world– and we can change it, too. We can help people in ways you could never imagine. It’s a kind of heroism far greater than slaying monsters could ever be.”
Maruki looks up at Goro– he doesn’t have to look up quite that much, since Goro hasn’t hit a growth spurt yet. His eyes gleam in the low light. “I understand your hesitance, I really do. But I can show you the sort of good you and I can do. Here, look…”
Maruki gestures to the screen, and with a few commands he makes the view change from Tokyo’s buildings to the streets themselves. Goro sees a few faint motes of light come onscreen, bobbing gently along the pavement. If he squints hard enough he can see humanlike silhouettes surrounding them.
“Those are souls,” Maruki whispers. Goro is surprised at how quickly he believes it. “Every person’s soul is a little different, but they follow patterns, and we can spot the truly troubled ones from here.” He points to a little soul painted in orange and green. “This one is a child’s soul. Innocent, unburdened. This one is troubled by anxiety– see how the edges of it are diffuse? This one is weighted by sadness, and… oh!”
Goro’s head spins as Maruki pulls the view to focus in on one soul in particular. It seems to be a floor up from the ground, confined to the very corner of a building, and the person-shape around it is small and scrawny. Some part of Goro immediately recognizes that something is different about this soul, even if he can’t consciously name what it is or how he noticed it. Some part of him tells him that he’s seen this soul before.
It takes Goro a moment to realize that the part of him that sees the soul is motile within him. A separate aspect, in and of itself. It squirms and writhes, and Goro would almost think he’s suddenly become ill if not for how familiar it feels to him. He knows this isn’t an invader, that it isn’t trying to rip him open from the inside, and yet–
Goro turns his attention to Maruki. His eyes are still fixed on the screen, and Goro’s palms sweat just a little bit more as he realizes that Maruki can still see yet more things that Goro cannot. Goro sees the souls and he knows that there is power here just in the seeing, and if Maruki’s claim to reach within them and enact change is true, then. Then.
The thought recedes. All at once Goro’s hindsight tells him he started believing in the power of the other-world long ago– that Maruki is just confirming something he always knew. All he needed was a guide.
Maruki has leaned back from the console. He looks intensely contemplative, as if all of his consciousness is somewhere else, working to solve a problem. Goro shuffles a half-step closer, encroaching on his frame of view.
Maruki’s attention is slow to latch back onto Goro. When he does blink back to awareness, though, his focus is complete and warm. “My apologies,” he says, and to Goro’s ears he finally, finally sounds like he means it. “That was just a bit… unexpected. I should have let you ask your questions and experience this for yourself.”
Goro turns back to the screen. The little lone soul is still sitting there, static and ragged, as if waiting for something.
“I think I understand,” he murmurs. “How do we change things? Make things better for them?”
Maruki straightens in his chair and quietly zooms the console’s view out before turning it off entirely. With the screen darkened and the sunset long since gone, the room is almost entirely dark. Goro’s shadow obscures Maruki’s face, but he knows Maruki is smiling.
“Patience, Akechi-kun. We’ll reach that in time, I promise you– but we have to be patient.”
Maruki stands, and slowly makes his way around Goro back to the lighted parts of their home. “I want to give you some time to really think this through, so let’s finish up there for today. This has to be a slow process in order to work properly. I don’t want to treat any part of this lightly– oh!” He turns to regard Goro more fully, and now Goro is the one held in Maruki’s backlit shadow. “Goro, you must understand. All of this is our secret, okay? Other people won’t understand the depth of what we’re capable of.”
Goro nods. There’s no one else to tell– or to believe him.
Maruki is back at the table, tidying up their dishes, and for a moment Goro can pretend that they’ve gone back to something approximating a normal household. For a moment, Goro can forget how sickening his inner magic seems to feel.
But a moment is long enough, and Goro goes to help load the dishwasher.
—
Maruki manages to snag Goro’s attention on one of his first school mornings, reaching out into Goro’s field of view as Goro finishes putting his new water bottle together. “Oh, Goro! I’m going to be home a little later than usual tonight– but once I’m back, we’re going to have a celebration, so think about what you might want to do!”
Goro blinks up at him. “Sure,” he says, and something about Maruki’s guileless smile makes it easier for him to be just a bit more open. “Is there something special going on?”
Maruki claps his hands together, and all at once Goro sees just how hopped-up and frazzled he seems to be. “I’m defending my thesis! If all goes well, I’ll be a psychologist very soon! It’s– oh, it’s exciting, but I’ve got to finish up my preparations…”
Goro watches him bustle around the kitchen, his efforts redoubled. “I thought you were already a doctor.”
“Nope, not quite yet! Nobody’s calling me Dr. Maruki for now. But…” He slows to a stop, momentum temporarily drained mid-tea-preparation. Maruki looks at Goro. “Even when I’ve earned the title, you don’t have to call me Dr. Maruki. Just Maruki is fine. Or Takuto, or…”
He trails off, and Goro can hear all the other titles and names for the man in front of him rush into the empty space. Goro can’t say any of them yet. “Right,” he murmurs, nodding. Maruki returns to his preparations, and Goro returns to his own, and the morning passes by in a blur.
When Maruki returns home in the evening, he practically kicks open the door and startles the everloving hell out of Goro, who had been reading on the couch in silence for the past several hours. “Goro!” He calls, holding his arms wide.
Goro tries to wrangle his nervous system back into submission. “You did it?”
“Oh, Goro, you don’t know how many years of effort went into this– aha! Hah! I’ve been running on adrenaline for hours now, ah…” Maruki haphazardly throws down his various bags and paces and paces and does nothing of consequence for moments on end, all his limbs in motion. “I don’t even know what to do, it’s all so– Goro! Did you pick somewhere for us to go to celebrate?”
Goro straightens his posture upon the couch. He feels restless just watching Maruki go a million miles a minute. “It’s your degree. Shouldn’t you get to pick?”
“Ah, Goro, if I picked I’d just grab some sort of boring adult place and I’d– bore you to tears talking about my thesis.” His energy noticeably deflates a bit. Goro wonders what he was going to say in place of ‘bore you to tears’. “I mean, it’s also a celebration of you getting settled in here– any number of things, really! Do tell me, Goro, what would you like?”
Goro considers the question before he hems in his own answer, silently revising his wishes to be a bit more palatable. “...Just a cafe or something would be nice. Someplace quiet, with good drinks and desserts. If that’s what you want–”
“That’s perfect, Goro!” Maruki immediately gathers up one of his bags to draw out his wallet and phone. “I’ll just get myself changed and then we’ll go!”
Maruki hustles off to his room, and Goro gets himself put together as best he can. He finishes tying his shoes as Maruki emerges, passing a scarf to Goro. “It’s cold out, isn’t it?”
Goro recognizes the request for what it is and bundles up accordingly, if only to avoid being nagged about it. They walk together to the cafe Maruki had suggested, his long-legged gait occasionally outpacing Goro’s shorter one, but he slows up whenever he notices Goro lagging behind. It’s at once endearing and annoying. Goro wishes he could just grow up already.
Maruki is considerably more subdued when they sit down at a little two-person table in a corner. The cafe itself is done up in cool tones, all lavender and sage pastels, and Goro feels embarrassed for both of them for going to such a– an immature, girlish place. Maruki doesn’t seem to mind, though, and he excitedly points out different treats upon the menu.
They order; they sit. Maruki loses himself to his cream soda. “I didn’t realize how stressful all of this was until it was over,” he says, gently spooning the cherry off the top and setting it on his side plate. “I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say this has been the culmination of a lot of work.”
Goro stirs his own soda: it’s citrusy and almost overwhelming in its tartness. He feels relaxed. Almost fuzzy, strangely enough. He wonders if adults feel like this when they drink alcohol. “It’s like writing a book, isn’t it?”
“Yes, exactly! That is, if the plot was mostly incomprehensible and there were hundreds of characters with names like ‘data point A’ and ‘subject B’.” Maruki chuckles to himself. “A lot of my research is just casual comparative stuff, or case studies. I don’t usually have to mess around with true experiments– those are difficult to manage because of all the variables you have to keep straight.”
Goro can tell Maruki is actively dumbing things down for his sake. He doesn’t like it, but neither would he like it if Maruki just spouted unintelligible jargon at him, so he keeps his mouth shut.
“The important part,” Maruki continues, “is how my research will be able to help people– the applications of it all. Those are much fuzzier, but at the very least I’ll be able to keep exploring them either through my own practice or on the side.”
Something about the vagueness of Maruki’s wording piques Goro’s interest, but he’s not in the mood to go down that rabbit hole just yet. He pauses, waiting for Maruki to continue. After a few long moments of silence he looks up to see Maruki smiling at him. “Here I am, celebrating all my own accomplishments when you’re about to head back to school and make some accomplishments of your own, eh?”
Maruki raises his glass for a toast; Goro obliges him. Their food arrives a moment later, and Goro digs into his sandwich, wondering why his own silence feels so heavy in his gut.
Eventually, Maruki speaks once more, tracing a fingertip around the rim of his glass. “The timing of all this feels very fitting– we’re both starting a new journey, aren’t we?”
Goro, plied with rich treats, is feeling unusually bold. “In more ways than one.”
Maruki grins. “You know, my thesis itself is about that world. Not as you and I would see it, mind you, just something a bit more palatable to the general public. Only you and I can play with the applications of that knowledge.”
“The… changes.” Goro doesn’t know how closely to veil his language in public; he lowers his voice as best he can.
Maruki nods, looking around surreptitiously. “We’ll talk more about it at home,” he says, “but for now let’s just have some fun.”
‘Some fun’, as Goro comes to understand, is strolling around until Maruki excitedly points out an arcade and hands Goro a coinpurse of quarters. Goro has scarcely had the time or the fortune to play any sort of video game before, and so he ends up sucking at just about everything he tries. It’s fun, though– he has to admit to himself that it’s fun playing at being a kid. It’s also fun watching his foster-father suck even worse than him at video games, and Goro even finds himself giggling when Maruki’s ship explodes seconds after the last self-destruction run.
They walk home together mostly in silence. Goro still doesn’t feel any chattier, but neither does he feel the pressure to speak quite as keenly as he used to feel it. It doesn’t hurt quite so much anymore to be here, alongside this man; it feels like this space might even be a shape he can fit into in a few years. Goro looks up and tries to find the stars.
—
Goro is late getting home on the day the fog rolls in.
He’s gotten used to taking the long way home or stopping by the library or doing any number of things to spend less time at home. He knows Maruki is planning on buying him a cell phone– he’s mentioned it at the dinner table twice, which is a good indication that he didn’t just think about it once and then forget about it– and Goro tries to relish the few peaceful evenings he gets before he’ll start feeling obligated to text Maruki about where he is and what he’s doing and who he’s with. He’s heard from classmates about just how invasive parents can get. It sickens him, but he’s not sure it would be any better if Maruki simply didn’t care about Goro ending up dead in a ditch on an after-school evening.
The fog, though– the fog makes his steps sluggish, uncertain. He turns a corner, forgets why he went that way, and doubles back by looping around a different block. He almost passes by their apartment complex by virtue of not being able to see it until it was within arm’s reach.
Goro leans against the wall, feeling all his weight settle onto one shoulder. His tiredness feels biomagnified, like all the small things in the world have had the impulses ripped out of them and their apathy has rippled straight up the food chain and into Goro’s veins. It feels comforting, though, to share such a totality with everyone and everything he passes. It feels comforting to let go. It feels–
Maruki pokes his head out from the doorway. He peers up at the sky like he’s expecting to see something other than haze. There is just as much tiredness in his eyes as there always is; it feels as if the fog isn’t touching him.
“Oh,” Maruki says, softly. “It’s awfully foggy out.”
Goro doesn’t say anything. Something faintly squirms within him, but the mist in his lungs silences it. He considers sitting down and– and then what? Not getting up? Making Maruki carry him inside, like a disobedient toddler being bodily hauled to bed? It’s ignoble, this kind of lethargy. He despises how easily it’s gotten its hooks into him, and it’s his spite that makes him pick his head up just an iota higher.
When Maruki approaches him and gently pats a hand on his shoulder, it takes Goro a moment to react– to recognize the sensation for what it is. Weight, warmth. A hollow warmth, but warmth nonetheless.
“Come on inside,” Maruki says. When he leaves, Goro follows.
—
The fog clears later that evening. Goro sees the sparse stars stretching overhead from the living room window and wonders what part of him the fog was silencing. He felt it, he felt it– something stirring within him, like a companion, like a parasite. He asks himself the same questions he’s been asking himself since he was old enough to understand how hollow he is inside: what are you? Who are you? What are you supposed to be?
Nothing abides him. Every time Goro goes to sleep, he knows he is not doing so alone– and yet. And yet his companion is silent. And yet the silence has stretched on since he discovered his mother’s body.
When he lies down to sleep, he does so with keen ears.
—
Christmas almost passes without incident. Goro isn’t expecting much, and indeed Maruki goes light on the decorations and overall fanfare, but he still wakes up on the 25th to Maruki making breakfast with more care than he usually does. He’s thrown something together a bit like French toast, and he’s slicing fruits when Goro comes shuffling in.
“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Maruki nearly nicks his hand and whips his fingers back, checking his hand for cuts. He regains his bearings and his smile quickly, though, and keeps preparing breakfast while Goro slumps himself over the kitchen table. Goro dares himself not to get excited when he sees the clumsily-wrapped presents idling in the living room.
The sugar reinvigorates Goro, and while he can’t work himself up into a proper fervor– he’s never been able to, strictly speaking– he still finds himself re-energized as Maruki ushers him into the living room, pressing a gift into his hands. “Go on, go on!”
Goro’s motions are tentative when he starts tearing open the paper, but he can’t help but rip faster as soon as he feels the plastic and sees the candy-colored color scheme glaring up at him. The toy pistol is just slightly too large for his hands. Goro immediately intuits that Maruki has gotten the deluxe version, the one meant for older kids and replica collectors.
“I thought you enjoyed that series,” Maruki says, looking faintly bashful. “I, ah– got the right thing, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Goro murmurs, heart pattering. He inspects Red Eagle’s pistol as closely as he can, tracing his fingertips over every bump and seam in the plastic. He has nothing to do with it– which doesn’t matter at all because he has it.
“...Thank you.” Goro clutches the pistol to his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything.”
Maruki waves him off. “Ah, I don’t need any presents! I’ve already got everything I want, I promise you.”
And yet– and yet as he says it Maruki looks like he’s a thousand miles away. He continues talking, though, and what he says next captures Goro’s attention in its totality.
“Goro,” he says, “would you like to see something special?”
—
Goro changes out of his pajamas and into a more suitable sweater and jeans before he joins Maruki at the front door. Maruki patiently waits for him to slip on and tie up his boots. “You won’t need your gloves,” he says, pulling the door open and waiting for Goro to head out. “It’s not that cold where we’re going.”
Goro is just outside the door before he realizes he’s still carrying his pistol. Its weight is comforting, though, and Maruki doesn’t seem to have an issue with it, so he holds it as they descend to the street.
When their boots hit the pavement, Goro fixes Maruki with a stare. “Where are we going?”
Maruki pulls out his cell phone. It’s an old, battered flip phone, and he looks at it for a moment before he answers. “Somewhere special.”
Goro recognizes that tone– he’d never want to miss it. The thought of magic buzzes in his head. “Does it have to do with…” He can’t bring himself to say it.
Maruki pats Goro on the shoulder just twice before he gets walking. “Come along,” he says, adjusting his cap upon his head. “All will be revealed, I promise.”
They walk a couple of frost-lined blocks before they get to a particularly busy crossing. A subway station lies catty-corner from them, and Maruki stops Goro before he can cross.
“Are you ready, Goro?”
Goro nods. There are questions– is it dangerous, will it hurt, will my magic be there waiting for me– but none of their answers will mean anything when confronted with the real thing.
Maruki’s glasses catch the cloudy light. “I have a couple of rules we need to follow when we’re here, alright?” His face is uncharacteristically serious and drawn. Abruptly, Maruki looks to be about five years older. “Never, never stray from my sight while we’re here. We need to stay close to each other at all times. Don’t touch anything if you don’t know what it will do or how it will react. And if something starts talking to you, don’t tell it your name or anything about yourself.”
Goro’s mind jumps to illustrations he’s seen in picture-books. Yokai and their tricks, faeries and their curses, devils and their deals… A loophole occurs to him, though. “If we can’t say names, what do we call each other?”
Maruki’s surprise readily shows in the blue-white sun. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he says, and some of his usual levity seems to return to him as he draws out his cell phone once more. “We can come up with nicknames later. This will just be a brief journey, okay?”
Goro nods.
“Do you understand what I’ve told you, Goro?”
Goro nods again, perhaps more hesitantly.
“Alright. Are you ready?”
Wordlessly, Goro shifts his pistol to his other hand and takes Maruki’s free hand in his own.
Maruki squeezes his hand, closing his eyes for just a moment as he selects something on his phone and the world bleeds away and away and–
–Goro blinks. His vision swims for a few moments more before the nausea and disorientation recedes. Everything around him is painted in a violet palette, blue-red-red-blue overlaying one another in sequence. There are shapes like buildings and shapes like people, and Goro understands right away that none of them are real.
Maruki leans into Goro’s field of vision. Goro waves him off before he can ask him something inane like “are you alright” and spoil the thrill of discovery. He slowly stumbles himself upright– his limbs feel heavy here, like the air is a different texture than usual.
None of the textures of this place make sense, at second glance: the distant buildings look organic, and the ground beneath his feet looks glassy and unstable, rippling gently like a shallow puddle. The neon lights above them appear to be shelled in paper. It’s beautiful, even as Goro still feels vaguely ill.
“I just wanted you to see this for now,” Maruki says, shoving his hands in his pockets and gazing up at the ersatz night sky. “It’s safe up here, but we can’t delve into the lower layers just yet. I hate to string you along in such a way, but…”
Goro hears all the unsaid assertions hidden between the lines. “So we can go further when I get my powers?”
“In approximately that order, yes.” Maruki reaches a hand out, full-armed, as if grasping for something across the plaza. Goro follows his gesture and only sees indistinct shades scattered across the crossing.
Nothing happens– it looks like Maruki has decided against something. He sheepishly reinserts his hand into his pocket, teetering onto his tiptoes for a moment before he addresses Goro. “Perhaps we can make the walk back home through here– explore a little?”
Goro waits for Maruki to start walking before he follows.
“So. Where is… here?” Goro notes that the buildings are shaped about the same as they are in real life, and that the city layout has been preserved with just as much accuracy. If he isn’t concentrating too hard on the strange materials and wandering ghosts, he can almost pretend it’s just a color filter overlaid over the real streets, the real places.
“This place,” Maruki says, “is the Metaverse. This domain of it is sort of like the collective unconscious– the total human perception of the world we live in.”
Goro immediately submerges himself in skepticism. “I doubt people see the world strangely enough to make all this happen.”
“Ah, well, it’s not an exact science. The oddities and distortions are… like artifacts in a digital image. It’s a strange place, and I suppose it needs some strangenesses to match.”
Goro wants to argue with that but can’t. He has to look at his feet as he walks; the iridescent-pink shallows and creeping tendrils keep threatening to trip him. Head bowed, he asks the question that’s been rattling in his mind ever since he relearned how to hope.
“...When do I unlock my powers?”
Maruki doesn’t pause, but he does look over his shoulder at Goro. “I know it’s tempting, but you’re going to have to be patient, Goro. It’s not a painless process, and–”
Maruki’s head whips around; he stops in his tracks. Goro draws close behind him and tries to follow his gaze, seeing nothing but the street sketched in red-gray tones. The road has buckled and split across the way, making a small crevice. Darkness collects within it, spilling out, writhing–
Maruki throws himself in front of Goro. Goro can’t see exactly what happens next, but he does see these happenings: Maruki, making a swift gesture in front of his face. Maruki, casting his arms out. Maruki, calling a name. His scream rips out of him so fast and so loud that it’s incomprehensible.
Goro’s heart is already pounding from the sheer stress of hearing Maruki yell when the flames pour forth and the tendrils burst from the ground.
It hurts to look at, the blue-white flames and spiraling appendages, abyssopelagic and mechanical all at once. Goro can’t even see what they’re attacking, but they rip it apart all the same in a single decisive motion. Something has been drawn and quartered in the space of a single breath. The Metaverse heaves with the intrusion, and then the tendrils are gone.
The entire incident happens in the span of four seconds.
Maruki watches the black smudge on the ground for a moment longer before he turns to Goro, harried and exhausted. “Goro, are you alright?”
Goro’s throat is too tight to speak. He nods.
Maruki draws out his cellphone and motions for Goro to follow him. “I think we should… we should go back now.”
He leads Goro to a spot one-and-a-half blocks away from their home before he hits a button and, without ceremony, they are both deposited back in the cold daylight. Goro feels as if all of his organs have shifted a quarter of a centimeter to the left. He grips at his churning stomach as they ascend the stairs together.
Goro is always braver when Maruki can’t see him. He stills and calls up the stairs. “What was that? The thing that you did.”
Goro can just barely see Maruki’s smile in quarter-profile. “All in due time, I promise.” He unlocks the door to their home and ushers Goro inside, taking off his shoes as if the world, unlocked, means nothing to him.
—
Maruki is dead asleep on the couch when Goro gets home late.
He’d been at a banal little party arranged by some clubs, and after he had talked to approximately no one he’d stolen a can of soda and a handful of snacks and snuck off home. His wandering took him around the surrounding blocks, exploring all the businesses that were still open on New Year’s Eve. Goro had felt brave in the way only a young boy can be. He miraculously managed to avoid any dutiful security or police officers liable to ask where his parents were on such a night, and by the time he’d made his way home it was already almost midnight.
The baleful microwave clock reads 11:34, omnipresent high-pitched hum and all. Goro slings his backpack into his room and goes back out to get himself a snack when he hears Maruki snoring. He looks out over the living room: Maruki is splayed over the couch, phone resting on his chest and glasses askew, a beer bottle on the coffee table.
Goro’s stomach heaves. He counts only one bottle, though. Nothing like the glass forests he’s seen so many men put to seed. Maruki’s sleep looks peaceful enough– if he’s an unstable drunk, it isn’t showing.
Goro carefully crosses through the kitchen and extracts a soda from the fridge, watching Maruki the whole way for any changes. He wants to slink back off to his room and shut himself away but he can’t make himself walk away and he isn’t sure why because he can’t stand being near even the slightest whiff of alcohol and he sits down on the edge of the living room carpet. It’s not very comfortable. He can’t bring himself to crack his soda open; it would make too much noise.
Goro sits paralyzed and hunched for minutes. Condensation drips onto his hand, freezing his fingertips. When he picks his head up he’s shocked to see 11:59 exactly up on the clock.
He stands and–
WINTER 2012 –
Bells ring in the distance. Goro scampers away under their auspicious tones, hiding from the new year’s watchful eye.
—
Goro buys himself another two books with the New Year’s money he gets from Maruki.
Maruki receives only two New Year’s postcards. Goro pretends not to notice.
—
Goro likes that Maruki doesn’t own a car. He startles badly enough just having to walk to school nowadays– so many tire-screeching stops on the roads running alongside him. People have gotten so much worse at driving nowadays, haven’t they? Everyone is so impulsive, so inattentive. No one loves anyone anymore. Goro waits for the signal to beckon him forward before stepping over the white bands of the crossing.
—
On one evening in particular, just as the wind begins to whisper about the promise of warmth and rain, Goro gets home to see Maruki attacking the mysterious maybe-storage room with a vengeance. He’s fully kitted out in a facemask and bandanna holding back his hair, delving into the clutter so thoroughly he almost doesn’t notice Goro come in.
“Hi, Goro!” Something about Maruki’s tone immediately sets Goro on edge, and it takes him a moment to realize where the anticipation is coming from– that Maruki is up to something.
“Hi,” Goro says, taking a couple of steps into the room. It’s dusty as hell, naturally, but it seems like the biggest dust-gatherers were upended a long time ago. There are a great many cardboard boxes around. Goro looks a bit more intently and slowly realizes that most of them are still taped shut. Mysteries within mysteries.
Maruki pauses, sitting cross-legged in the midst of old 100-yen-store trinkets and implements. “I think I’m making good progress, huh?”
Goro nods. “It’s not time for spring cleaning yet, though.”
Maruki runs a hand back over his skull, accidentally whipping his bandanna off his head. “About that,” he says, patting a spot next to himself. “Come here, Goro. I’ve got something to discuss with you.”
Goro doesn’t take his backpack off before he sits down, and he feels it pulling on his shoulders as he tries to sit straight-backed. Maruki doesn’t take his facemask off. Even now, even with his face totally hidden, Goro can tell that he’s smiling.
“Goro,” he says, “I know this is a bit unexpected and a bit sudden, but I’ve been making some plans, and–”