Chapter Text
I. Sentence to death
“Professor, why the long face? Give me a smile.”
“…”
“Come on, smile?” Aventurine pulled himself out of the Dreampools. God knows how long he'd been in there.
“If you didn’t wake up soon, the company people outside would’ve torn the hotel down. The hotel said the guy in the room under your name wasn’t actually YOU. Our poor Trailblazer got kicked straight out of the pool by the Hounds. He sobbed and told the company you’d been sliced by a sword, disappeared, and turned into bubbles. Topaz burst into tears right there on the spot. And yet here I was, staring at you napping in my room.”
“Cough, cough—don’t bring that up, Ratio. Get me a glass of water… dammit! Fine, don’t give me one. Stop rolling your eyes, it makes you look less handsome. I’ll drink the damn bathwater we soaked in.”
“So, oh great Aventurine, ready to go back to work now?”
“No.”
“May I remind you, being tsundere is very last season.”
“Then why didn’t you just tell them I was in your room?”
“Because nobody even asked me. Topaz just messaged me to say she confirmed your disappearance. Once she said that, I figured there wasn’t much for me to add.”
“So she didn’t really cry? Knew it—she doesn’t care that much about me. Pfft… damn it, Ratio, did you pee in the pool? This water tastes awful. Wait! Professor! Don’t walk away! Professor!”
“……”
Ratio calmly pushed open the door. Aventurine, wearing a mask from God knows where, clung to his arm as they headed out. The staff from IPC passing by didn’t even glance up.
“Doesn’t anyone at your company recognize you?” Ratio leaned down and asked near his ear.
“Are you kidding?” Aventurine left his coat and all the clinking trinkets behind at the bottom of Ratio’s Dreampool. Beneath the shimmering surface lay his cast-off glory and wealth. “You have to understand, peacocks squeak when they walk. Squeak squeak. Take off the coat, put on a mask, ditch the jewelry—boom. Barefaced like this, who’s going to think I’m The Mr. Aventurine?”
“So your true self is your coat and accessories?”
“What else could it be—my soul?”
Aventurine whistled. He clung to Ratio’s arm and glided like a dancer through a mess of all the IPC men who seemed to sprout from the cracks of the hotel. “People should know how to give themselves a break, my darling. I haven’t taken a proper vacation in twenty years. Faking my own disappearance is just a way to rest for a few more days.”
A flustered employee crashed into Ratio, sending papers flying everywhere.
“Careful, sweetheart, otherwise people might think Penacony is about to collapse,” Aventurine leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching Ratio kneel to help pick up the mess of those recycled toilet paper.
“In a way, you’re not wrong,” said the frazzled employee, not daring to look up. Only when Ratio handed back the papers did he realize this was the company’s academic consultant.
“Thank you, Professor Ratio! I’m so sorry—really embarrassed.” He then turned to Aventurine. “You two walked in arm-in-arm. If you’re wondering what’s going on, the professor here can fill you in. It’s not exactly a secret anymore. Pretty soon the whole galaxy will know.”
“Care to share?” Aventurine hesitated a second. “My... partner isn’t much of a talker.”
Hah, that so? The employee thought privately. “Long story short, our top exec Aventurine has gone missing. The company’s now negotiating with Penacony about it. But I’ve got work to do, so I’ll leave it there. Thanks again, Professor Ratio. Best wishes to you and your partner!”
“Wait,” Ratio stopped him. “Do you know Aventurine?”
“Uh, you mean THE Aventurine? Everyone in IPC knows him. Always wearing sunglasses and hats indoors, talks like a wisecracking punk, jingles when he walks, reeks of perfume. A legend—brilliant, eccentric, off-the-charts smart. Professor, didn’t you used to work with him?”
Ratio gave a quiet nod.
The poor guy gave the masked figure shaking against the wall a confused glance, then remembered—this was Ratio’s partner. He grabbed his files and made a run for it.
“My dear, is it possible to laugh yourself to death? Hahahahaha!” Aventurine hadn’t stopped laughing since they boarded Ratio’s ship.
“You think this is funny?”
Aventurine wiped tears from his eyes and licked one. It tasted like mint flavored yellow macarons. Just kidding—it didn’t. But he was craving one.
“No one recognizes a legend, hahaha… Legendary, THE great great Aventurine... cough cough, choked on my own spit... cough…”
Ratio set the ship to autopilot, pulled a bottle of water from under the seat, and tossed it to him.
Aventurine was shaking with laughter, coughing between fits, fingers trembling as he failed to unscrew the cap. Finally, the professor rolled his eyes and opened it for him.
“Thanks.” The water was delicious. “Professor, you’ve got red veins in your eyes—stop rolling them or it’ll ruin your perfect image, I’m begging you.”
“So if Big Boss Aventurine wanted time off, why crash at my place?”
“The air in Pier Point makes me WANT to work. Don’t you know? The IPC laced the atmosphere there with something addictive. Stay there too long and you turn into a corporate mutt, howling at your quarterly goals. Do well, and you’re drowned in credit points; mess up, and you starve with your shriveled gut and go home crying to mom and dad. Unfortunately, I don’t qualify for that second option. So what choice do I have left?”
“Why do you talk more and more like a—”
“More like , like a what? Crazy?” Aventurine interrupted him. “I figured out a lot of things in that dream. I mean it. Tons of things—maybe more than you could ever understand. Come closer, darling… No eye-rolling, I said. Don’t doubt me. Press your forehead to mine. I’ll transmit my brainwaves to you. You know, my brain emits gamma rays.”
No, it does not. Ratio resigned himself to silence and touched foreheads.
“Good, my dear professor. Now close your eyes. Let my gamma waves travel through my frontal lobe, across the cosmic background radiation, and zap into your skull… What’s this? A zit on your forehead? Haven’t you outgrown puberty? Don’t tell me you’re still grading student papers behind my back—ahhh no matter. Focus back, my gamma waves, even through your zit, will transmit into your gloriously overdeveloped brain. Feel it, darling? My joy and madness?”
“Aventurine, the Dreampool water is a powerful hallucinogen. That’s why they deliberately make it taste horrible. It’s not meant for drinking at all!”
“Shhh. Don’t interrupt the transmission, darling.” Aventurine cupped Ratio’s face. “No joke, I really figured things out. I saw a TV that could talk, a cello that could play itself, a cube pazzle that could twist and solve itself. I saw the Trailblazer and his little squad all lovey-dovey; I saw a dog turning into a cat, a man turning into a dog, and a bird turning into a bird. I jumped from the 27th floor and died—then woke up. I slit my wrists in a hot bath, watched the blood fill my eyes—then woke up. I got stuck in an empty trash can and asphyxiated—then woke up. I saw a man on the street sliced himself in half, grinning and asking if his cross-section looked neat; I heard a same young women singing the worst and best song simultaneously; I smelled the scent of blue words written by a top-floor writer—same smell as a McDonald's three-dollar combo meal. Shhh. Don’t cut in, don’t get worked up.” Aventurine covered Ratio’s mouth. “I’m not done. I saw my childhood self—and my future self. Oh man, that little me was so cute, Ratio! Too bad I don’t have a single childhood photo. And my future self? Just as obnoxious as I am now. I wanted to stab him and that desire turned into a sharp icicle. I saw the void—under the red blades, a black-and-white otherworld. And then, and then… lemme catch my breath… a black sky cast a white shadow. That’s when I pulled out your little note. I saw all those things in the dream—so many the strange, the boring, the beautiful, the sad, the cheap, the expensive, the wild, the mundane, the dreamy things. Yet I could not see you. You weren’t there, my dear professor. I was supposed to die, you know? I’ve always wanted to die. My past and future both said goodbye to me. But… yout note, under that white shadow, reminded me. I just wanted to see you again, among so many other things. And then I woke up, Ratio. I opened my eyes, and I saw you.”
Aventurine opened his eyes—those glorious eyes no ordinary employee would recognize, but which belonged to the legend himself. “You’re so beautiful.”
Ratio liked Aventurine. Of course he did. But his proud yet fragile ego never let him admit it so easily.He often felt that, emotionally, he was still immature—mostly because he still believed something he read back in middle school: “In love, the first one to admit they’ve fallen loses.”
Yes, immature might be an objective description of Ratio, not just a self-judgment. But regardless, his actions—his objective behavior—made it clear enough that he actually cared about Aventurine
What’s that? You want to know what his actions were?
Well then—
“Professor, I consider it somewhat rude to just put your dick in and not move.”
The opened water bottle was spinning in the air, leaving a long long clear trail behind it. Making love in low gravity environment was a real headache — imagine two people floating in midair had to find some kind of leverage, otherwise even moving a slight bit was difficult.
Ratio reached out, trying to turn off the gravity-null mode, but just as he floated near the dial, Aventurine gave him a sharp kick with his leg and sent him spinning, again. The two of them, tangled together, bouncing and drifting through the ship cabin, tumbling in circles, along with the television, their phones, and remote controls.
“Let’s try something with a bit of a challenge, shall we?”
“I swear, for God’s sake, that water from the Dreampool was actually poisoned!” Ratio growled, teeth clenched. His dick was stuck inside Aventurine, completely still. Force acts equally in both directions—Ratio wondered if it was possible to teach that very basic Physics principle to Aventurine, and if words failed, maybe he could try explaining it by… injecting his sperm inside dear Mr. Aventurine, which may be a better teaching approach.
“No rush,” Aventurine finally managed to hook his toe around one of the ship’s support straps on the ceiling and looped his foot through it. “Come on, let’s do it upside down, at the ceiling of the ship. Use your imagination, my dear.”
Ratio grabbed the strap and hooked his own foot in, using one hand to pull Aventurine closer by the waist. Even so, the movement came with a strange resistance, like THAT time in the hotel swimming pool. Yeah, THAT time—Aventurine had sex with him in a public pool once. Back then, Aventurine had even asked whether Ratio’s semen might float out of him and accidentally “impregnate” someone else swimming nearby. If that happened, he claimed he’d have to send some assassinators to eliminate Ratio’s illegitimate child, well, along with that someone. The only response Ratio could manage at the time was a groaning whisper in Aventurine’s ear: “My dear Idiot. It’s a swimming pool. There’s chlorine, last time I check it was disinfectant.”
Now, the two hanged man clumsily managed to had Ratio’s dick functioning, while swinging left and right like a giant pendulum with every push — awkward, but still, functional. If only Aventurine didn’t keep giggling like a peacock calling out to its mate, the whole thing might not have seemed quite so absurd…
“Hahahaha, Professor… Ratio… you watched that low gravity space porn right? It was a fucking lie!” Aventurine laughed as he started masturbating, some clear little cute fluid dripping from his thing and forming tiny droplets that floated in the air.
“If we could just figure out a proper position, our situation would be a lot less ridiculous.”
“Proper? What does ‘proper’ even mean?” Aventurine kicked the ceiling again with his other foot, and their pendulum like swinging motion got even more chaotic.
Meanwhile, Ratio found himself debting: Why the hell am I putting up with all this? Is it just because… I might actually like him? And if I do, does that mean I have to put up with all his absurdity, spoil this poor, cute, smart and terrible human being?
“Professor, my love.” Aventurine twisted his head to look at Ratio. “Kiss me. Come on, kiss me right now. This is the most interesting sex that I’ve ever done in my life. No one else in the whole universe could endure me like this, except you.”
Ratio stopped his internal debate. Yes, he thought. It’s exactly because I might like him… that I’ll spoil him, no matter how outrageous he gets.
The hanged man kissed fiercely. Water from the bottle, bodily fluids, tears, saliva—and soon their cum—all turned into glistening droplets suspended in the air. Raindrops were rising up in the air, thus this wasn’t a sad rain, and thus they weren’t sad fish.
Floating alongside them, the television was still running.
“...This is an emergency broadcast from the Interastral Peace News. Good evening. We now need to interrupt with breaking news: precious property of the Interastral Peace Corporation and one of the Ten Stonehearts, Mr. Aventurine, has tragically died while vacationing in Penacony, a site advertised as an absolutely safe tourist destination and host of the Charmony Festival.
According to the investigation, full responsibility for the incident lies with the Family’s mismanagement and deliberate concealment of the truth. The situation is deemed extremely serious and we urge you to suspend your visit in Penacony. The Interastral Peace Corporation strongly condemns the Family and extends its deepest condolences to Mr. Aventurine’s friends and loved ones. The company vows to pursue this matter to the end. And Mr. Aventurine’s funeral will be held seven days from now, in Pierpoint. You are warmly invited…”
Aventurine reached the peak of his climax just as news of his own death aired on live.