Chapter Text
“Ryo, get down from there, this instant!”
Shuuji can see Ryo raise an eyebrow, but he does not let go of the metal bar as he’s been asked. No, instead, he brings his foot up next to his hand and heaves himself upwards, so he’s teetering on the thin metal guardrail. Shuuji’s shoulders are taut with tension, and his eyes rake over the side of the very tall, very sheer wall of the abandoned building Ryo is trying to force his way into.
“Would you relax?” he retorts, and Shuuji thinks he is going to go grey with stress at sixteen as Ryo stands up, hooking his elbow around one of the bars of the second story guardrail. The rail holds, and Ryo rocks back on his heels so he can lean away from the building to address Shuuji, “Why do you hate fun?”
Shuuji grits his teeth and takes a nervous step closer. His injured shoulder twinges. “I do not ‘hate fun’—” Ryo laughs. “—it’s just that breaking and entering isn’t an activity I would define as fun!”
Ryo rolls his eyes. “It’s not breaking and entering if nobody lives there.”
“Uh, yes it is! And trespassing—” “What are you, a cop?!” “—now get down, you’re going to fall and break your neck!” Shuuji tears his eyes away from where Ryo is so precariously perched between the first and second floor of the crumbling old building. This thing looks older than him, older than his father, older than the professor, maybe, and has clearly never been maintained. Shuuji glances pleadingly at Kunemon, who is sitting rather picturesquely among some daffodils in a large flowerpot in the corner of the first floor balcony, coiled around the large egg he’s supervising.
But Kunemon isn’t watching him, or even paying attention. He’s too focused on the egg in his grasp as he murmurs something against the eggshell. One antenna is flat against his head, and he’s pulling the other through his beak over and over. Shuuji takes a tentative step closer, and Kunemon stays wholly unaware of Shuuji’s presence until he’s only a few steps away.
“…Kunemon?” Shuuji calls.
Kunemon lifts his head with a start, one feeler twitching curiously as Shuuji approaches. His other antenna springs up as well, and he lifts his body off the eggshell to greet him.
“Kew?” <Hmm? What’s up?>
He seems to be fine. In that case, then… He points up the side of the building toward Ryo. “Kunemon, tell him he’s being stupid!”
“Kew, kew?” Kunemon follows his gaze, beak clattering quietly when he spots Ryo. He sways back and forth for a moment, then bobs his head at Shuuji. “Kewwwwn.” <Who, Ryo? Ohhhhh. I see.>
At first, Shuuji is relieved as Kunemon raises himself from the flowerpot and taps the metal railing with his beak-mandibles.
“Kew kew? Kewkewn kewee.” <You sure it’ll hold? That railing looks kinda sketchy.>
Ryo hesitates for a second, eyeing the ground below him.
“Ack…! I should prob’ly make sure it ain’t loose, huh?” He shifts his weight, reaching up with his other hand and grabbing the top of the second-floor railing. He tries to wiggle it, but it doesn’t budge. “Nope, it’s sturdy. Good call though, thanks Kunemon.”
Shuuji sends a dismayed stare at Kunemon—who makes a chattering sound that might be a laugh—as Ryo brings one foot up and braces it between the vertical bars of the second-story railing, then pushes off the first-floor railing with the other. Shuuji holds his breath as he watches Ryo haul himself up and over the guardrail on the second floor. When he touches down safely on the other side, Ryo casually rests his elbows on the horizontal bar, gazing at Shuuji with a smug look on his face.
“It’s not even that high up,” he says, motioning Shuuji over. Shuuji sighs, inching toward the balcony to see that Ryo’s right. The first story balcony is really more like a semi-basement patio, carved into the ground so that the top of the railing only reaches Shuuji’s waist. “Like, your lanky ass is tall enough that you could smash your forehead into the concrete just by walkin’ too close. Damn, and everyone thinks I’m the scaredy-cat of the group.”
“Okay, fine,” Shuuji sighs, and yeah, sure enough, he’s eye-level with the lowermost bar of the second-story’s railing. “Maybe I was a little hasty. I’m just—”
“Scared ‘a heights, right?”
“Huh?” He frowns, searching recent memory for when he’d mentioned that. “How do you know?”
Now Ryo’s the one who looks confused. “Didn’t you say so, the other day?”
“Kew, ke’ewe-kew.” <No, that was Lopmon.>
“Oh.” Ryo looks away from Shuuji and toward Kunemon, tapping his nails in an awkward pattern on the top of the railing. “Right.”
Shuuji’s about to ask him what Kunemon said when Ryo suddenly turns, reaching for the sliding glass door. “Wh—Hey, what are you doing?”
“Gonna go see if there’s anything useful in here,” he says, looking back at Shuuji over his shoulder. “S’why I climbed up here in the first place, remember? Or did you forget about the competition we’re having? Which, I’m gonna win by the way.” He pulls on the handle, and the door rattles. “Ah, shit, it’s locked.”
Ryo steps back, looking between the walls on either side of the balcony. Then he turns around again, peeking over the edge of the railing.
“Hey, Kunemon? Can you like… scale vertical surfaces? Like, are your feet sticky?” Ryo glances at Shuuji. “Y’know, like a gecko?” he elaborates, like that actually explains anything. “You ever seen a gecko zoom up a wall like it’s nothin’? Or, hah. A caterpillar. Caterpillars can do it too.”
“Kew…? Kew!” says Kunemon, and his droopy antennae start to straighten up as he puffs his chest out a little. “Kewkewee, kew! Kew kewn?” <Huh…? Oh, yeah! Easy peasy, Ryo! Where do I go?>
“For real? Hell yeah.” Ryo says, with a smile halfway between impressed and endeared. He points to a window a little ways away from the second-story balcony, on the left. “Okay, d’you see the window over there? It’s open. Think you can get in there and unlock the door from the other side?”
Kunemon sways thoughtfully, then starts to lean toward the first-story railing again, but stops short. He drops his chin onto the surface of the big egg he’s wrapped around, antennae twitching, and turns toward Shuuji. It’s hard to tell, but he gets the feeling that Kunemon’s looking at him.
“Y-yeah, I’ve got him,” Shuuji says, and he shuffles closer to lean over the side of the railing. Kunemon scoots back, giving him room to gather the soft brown egg in his arms. Shuuji lifts it gently, sweeping his thumb across one of the warm pink bands that wind around the shell. This time, he won’t let him slip away. “I’ve got him.”
The cataclysmic windstorm building behind Shuuji’s eyes approaches a cruel and terrible peak.
It’s always been there—this ruthless, unrelenting cyclone—roaring in his ears for as long as he can remember, slicing into him and ripping words from his tongue, even if he stands perfectly in the center, just as he’s been asked. But he should be grateful that it dances around him in its razor-sharp circles—it’s refining him into something better, doing him the favor of stripping away the pieces that are too soft, too weak, too useless. Over and over, forever and ever, around and around, until every last imperfection is gone.
The airstream tears bleeding gashes across the walls of Shuuji’s throat, dragging vicious, vitriolic bile on the wind spinning in a violent ring inside him. The scathing words cleave him open from within as they’re dragged forward from the back of his tongue, rushing from his parted jaws in raw, burning gasps that join the swirling black mist.
Something disguising itself as relief floods out from between his ribs, and the wind howls in his head, drowning out the sounds of spilling poison flowing endlessly from his lips.
At first, it feels good.
His chest swells with foul, rotten vindication as he watches the dark, strangling plumes spiral from Lopmon’s eyes and mouth, growing thicker and heavier around him until all that’s left of his silhouette is a final, desperate paw. Weak, trembling claws reach toward him for a single, painful heartbeat—
“don’t look at me with those eyes…!”
—until the fog swallows him whole.
Somebody shouts, loud and angry, and Shuuji whirls around, ready, at last, to be louder and angrier. From this point forward, he commands the storm. It served its purpose, but it answers to Shuuji now, and he’s one who will choose what it will and won’t strike down. He’ll be the one to hold its heart in his hands and dig his nails deep if it dares stray from its course. Here, inside the core of the cyclone, he’s in control. He’s safe.
CRACK!
Ryo’s fist pierces through the whirlwind and connects with his jaw.
Shuuji reels back, shrinking into the center of the storm, where nobody is supposed to be able to touch him. But Ryo refuses to let him hide. He plunges his arms through the fanged, tangled currents of snarling air, twisting his hands into Shuuji’s collar and yanking him from the eye of the hurricane.
The inside of Shuuji’s head falls silent as he’s pulled through the bitter wall of biting wind to the other side, out in the open where the howling cyclone can no longer reach him. And now, Ryo is loud—so deafeningly loud—louder than anything he’s ever heard. There’s nothing for Ryo’s words to compete against, and each one strikes him with thunderous clarity—bolts of lighting arcing in bold, jagged lines across the sky.
|
“You scumbag! What gives you the right |
He’s never seen what lies beyond |
|
Every damn thing he does, he does for you! |
He’s never heard what it sounds like, |
|
Actin’ like everything’s about you, |
He’s never understood just how much |
|
Look at him! Look at us! |
How much it’s causing. |
He’s an idiot—the cyclone never made him stronger.
The way it crushed his throat, clawed at his eyes, carved into his chest—all it ever did was hollow him out from the inside and leave behind brittle, broken shards of the person he could have been. He was a fool, a coward, a monster, who never thought to do anything but cover his ears, close his eyes, and kick someone else —somebody who loved him— directly into the path of the storm.
He deserves to die.
Shuuji’s stomach twists as Lopmon’s tiny frame writhes and shudders under the weight of the black mist swirling around him.
“A-ah… no… What have I—” His legs give out from under him, too suddenly for Ryo to hold him upright on his own. They crash to the ground together, and Shuuji feels like he’s choking. “What am I —I-I can’t—”
He deserves to die.
Ryo’s face is a watery blur, and his grip on Shuuji’s collar goes slack. He braces himself to be struck once more, but Ryo’s warm hands find his arms instead.
“You need to go to him,” Ryo says, voice both sharp and soft at once. Shuuji feels him squeeze his shoulders, but it doesn’t hurt. “You gotta make things right—it has to be you.”
Shuuji feels sick to his stomach, chest heavy with dread and shame. He doesn’t deserve to apologize or to ask for forgiveness.
He deserves to die.
The black mist surges outwards and contorts, twisting and swelling, and somewhere at its core,
Shuuji feels
something
shatter.
A horrible sound, halfway between the screech of shearing metal and the howl of an injured animal, cleaves through the air.
Then a clawed red hand bursts from the dark, closes around Shuuji’s leg, and rips him from Ryo’s grasp.
he deserves to die.
Shuuji can admit it—watching Kunemon scale the wall like gravity simply did not apply to him—that was pretty cool.
Shifting the egg in his arms, Shuuji leans back on the railing of the first-floor balcony. Ryo’s partner had made short work of getting up to the second-story window, and just a couple of minutes later, he reappeared on the other side of the sliding door. Kunemon crawled up the glass the same way he did the wall, and easily popped open the lock on the other side.
“You comin’?” Ryo had asked, and when Shuuji shook his head, he shrugged. “A’ight. I’ll be back in a few, then.”
It’s been “a few” now, and then some, but Ryo has yet to reappear on the balcony. Logically, Shuuji knows that staring up at it isn’t going to make Ryo return any faster, but he’s starting to get nervous.
“He’s fine,” Shuuji tells himself, or maybe the egg. “There’s no rush, really, so he can take his time if he needs to.”
The egg is silent in his arms. It is an egg, after all.
“There’s no need to worry,” Shuuji says, and he tucks the top of the egg under his chin. “Everything’s perfectly okay—”
CRASH!
“EEEEEAUUGHHHKKK!”
Shuuji’s stomach drops, and the egg nearly goes with it. He scrambles away from the railing to get a better look at the second story, searching anxiously for Ryo behind the glass.
“Ryo?!” he calls. “Ryo! Are you okay?”
There’s no answer.
“Uhhh—Uhhhhmm,” Shuuji’s heart hammers in his chest as wisps of panic pick up around his ears. “What do I—I’ve gotta—”
There’s no way he can climb up there like Ryo did. He has a sprained shoulder! He’s afraid of heights. He’s holding an egg! And he can’t just leave it here by its lonesome. He scans the side of the building, then the front.
The lobby door is already wide open.
Shuuji makes a dash for the front entrance, elbowing the door open wider before taking the stairs two at a time. Cradling the egg in one arm, he reaches out his other hand and turns the doorknob. It rattles in place and refuses to budge.
“Shit. Shit,” Shuuji wheezes. He drops his hand back to his side, then tries the doorknob again, huffing when it doesn’t work. Obviously it’s not going to work! He just watched it not work! Why would that change?! … he tries it a third time. “Shit!”
He steps forward to press his ear against the door, willing the blood roaring in his ears to quiet down as he strains to hear anything on the other side.
Nothing.
“Okay. Okay!” He steps back, looking the door up and down. “Uhhh, I’m sorry!”
SLAM!
Shuuji smashes the sole of his shoe into the wood and the door flies open, snapping against the hinges with a splintering crack. The recoil sends a zapping spasm of pain up his sprained shoulder, and he hisses through his teeth as he barrels into the apartment, looking around wildly. Where’s Ryo?! Is he hurt?! Is he dead?! Is he—
—leaning across the kitchen island,
casually handing Kunemon a tin of beans.
Ryo throws his arms in front of himself, nearly launching the can across the room in self-defense as Shuuji bursts into the kitchen. But Kunemon is quicker, and he reaches up and plucks it from Ryo’s hand.
“Holy shit, man, what’s your deal?!” Ryo says, lowering his arms with a shaky breath. Kunemon sets the can down beside him with a gentle clink! “Don’t sneak up on me like that, you scared the hell outta me!”
“Are you—” Shuuji’s chest heaves as he tries to catch his breath, “Are you okay?!”
Ryo blinks. He glances around, first at the kitchen, then at Kunemon, then back to Shuuji again. “Yeah…?”
The apartment is quiet.
Shuuji looks around as well. “Th-then what was—I heard you scream!”
Ryo blinks again, then his face flushes, and Kunemon makes that same chattering sound as earlier. “Oh. That.”
“What?”
He fidgets with his headband, then motions to somewhere on Shuuji’s left. He turns to look, and there’s an open cabinet near the floor next to the stove, with all manner of trays and cookie sheets and muffin pans spilling out. “Uh. Stuff fell over. Startled me.”
Tension bleeds out of Shuuji’s shoulders, and he lets out an exhausted, shuddering sigh. “That’s it? The way you shouted, I thought you were—”
“I’m not good with sudden noises, okay?! O-or stuff jumping out at me!” he snaps, face reddening further. He crosses his arms over his chest, looking anywhere but Shuuji, “I’m gonna have a fuckin’ heart attack! First I thought there was some kinda wild animal lunging outta the cabinet to eat me, and now you burst into the room outta nowhere, and—wait. How the hell did you get up here?”
Before Shuuji can say anything, Ryo leans over the kitchen island to peek around the wall toward the entryway. He takes in the crooked hinges and the gash in the doorframe, carved out by the wobbly, freshly-disjointed deadbolt.
“Did… did you kick the door in?” His voice is a light poke to Shuuji’s ribs, and the smug smirk unfurling across his face tells Shuuji that he already knows the answer.
“…no?” Shuuji says anyway, and Ryo bursts out laughing.
“Unbelievable!” he says, and warmth shoots up the back of Shuuji’s neck, “Mister It’s The Principle Of The Thing over here like ‘mneh mneh I’m gonna stay level-headed’, immediately kicks a door in—”
“I thought you were in trouble…” Shuuji mumbles, and he hugs the egg tighter to his chest. “Sorry, I just—I was…”
He trails off, gaze falling toward the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of Kunemon nipping the edge of Ryo’s palm, and suddenly his face flushes again.
“Hey, no, it’s fine, ‘m just messin’ with you,” Ryo says, and the teasing lilt has been replaced with something kind of abashed. “It’s, uh, it’s my bad, actually. Guess I lost track of how long I was up here, ‘n obviously you had no way of knowing that it was just—” he gestures at the heap of cookware on the ground, “‘S just, ugh, stupid ‘n embarrassing, when I was tryin’ to prove…”
Kunemon bonks the side of his head against Ryo’s shoulder, jaw opening and shutting wordlessly. Ryo scritches between his antennae.
“…oh. Oh, no, Ryo, you have nothing to prove, least of all to me,” says Shuuji. “And certainly nothing to apologize for. I’m sorry if I made it seem that way—it’s my fault too. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. I’m just glad you’re all right. And, um… ” Shuuji shifts the egg in his arms, glancing at the busted door behind him. “In your defense, I suppose my reaction was pretty funny, if a little extreme.”
“Oh, so nearly sending me into cardiac arrest is funny to you?” Ryo says, but he’s smiling, lowering his arms to rest his elbows on the counter again. “Well, I’ll let it slide, just this once. Since you were worried about me.”
“How generous of you,” says Shuuji playfully, and he smiles back before glancing out the sliding door, “Oh, but, speaking of, maybe we should get going—I don’t want the others to worry. And, uh, we should probably help find Falcomon.”
“Right, yeah,” says Ryo, but he turns to the kitchen cabinet behind him. “Gimme a minute though, I found a bunch of like, good spices—”
Shuuji balks at him. “What?!”
“What d’you mean, what?! That was the whole point of me coming up here!” He rummages around, then starts clustering a few small bottles on the countertop. “I actually found something that Aoi can use, for everybody, I’m not gonna leave empty-handed.”
“But—”
“Can you help me find a bag to put ‘em in? If we try to carry them all as-is we’re just gonna drop them all over the damn place—”
“Ryo!” he says, exasperated, and Ryo turns around, rolling his eyes. “I’m not going to just take people’s things!”
“Are you for real?!” Ryo shoots back, and he has the gall to look affronted. “There’s nobody here!”
Kunemon lets out a huff, tossing his antennae. His topmost pair of claws fall open and away from one another as he shakes his head, and he turns away from the two of them and starts to inch down the side of the kitchen island.
“That doesn’t mean it’s fine to just make a mess of somebody’s property!”
“What the hell are you talking about, you kicked their door in, how is this any worse—”
“Well for starters, I’m not taking the door with me!”
“You might as well be! D’you have any idea how expensive locksmiths are?!”
“Locksmiths just fix locks! The deadbolt’s fine, it’s just a little—”
“Oh my fucking—WHATEVER! A professional door repair guy, then, who cares!”
“The people living here, presumably!”
“Yeah?! And who lives here, Shuuji?!”
Shuuji scowls, annoyed both with Ryo and with the smile that is being very difficult about staying off his own face.
“Thaaaaat’s right! Nobody!” Ryo crows triumphantly, “So stop being such a tight-ass and help me find a tote bag or a backpack or something!”
Maybe he’s being a bit childish, but Shuuji lifts his chin in petty defiance, shifting the egg in his arms. “I can’t, sorry. My hands are full.”
Something that starts off sounding like laughter comes out of Ryo’s mouth, but he quickly rolls it into an aggravated groan. “You’re so—geez, all right, fine! If that’s the issue here, how ‘bout you—I dunno, go find a sheet, and make a baby sling, then!”
“That’s—” Shuuji stops, glancing down at the egg he’s holding to his chest. It’s starting to feel pretty heavy, and his injured shoulder is getting sore. “That’s not a bad idea, actually.”
The smug grin is back.
“That’s all I’m taking though!” Shuuji adds, before Ryo can say anything else. He ignores the “yeah, yeah!” he gets in response, stepping away from the kitchen area toward the living room.
Shuuji carefully sets the egg down on the sofa, shrugging off his jacket and gently looping it around the base so that it stays upright on the cushion. The absurdity of the situation hits him as he wanders into the hallway in search of a linen closet. Ransacking a stranger’s home isn’t how he planned to spend his afternoon, but he’ll take it.
It’s a welcome distraction from what went down last night.