→ imeeji: memory three
Mar. 1st, 2019 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
irregularWhen you get there, you realize you're looking at the set of the final showdown of every gangster movie ever made. But you're dumb and you're desperate and you want your life back, and you've got nothing else to lose.
The burns?
That's how you die.
You've got nothing to lose is the problem. Nothing left, more like. All your life you've been good at precisely one-bloody-thing and now you can't do that any more, so what the Hell else are you supposed to do with yourself? Oh sure, you had Option B and Option C like a sensible kid because, no matter how much time and effort you sank into soccer, who puts absolutely all their eggs in the Professional Sportsman basket? but both those required people to trust you further than they could throw you too, and how likely is that one now? Turns out that when you're the subject of both a professional conduct inquiry for the match-fixing and a criminal investigation for the illegal gambling, it's rather difficult to apply for a job with the police.
So you look into it, don't you? Like an idiot, like the dumb desperate kid that you are you let Kase talk you into it and you're grateful to him for it, aren't you? Guess he still feels bad about his part in all this, and you're just plain glad that he at least still thinks you can be trusted to tell him what color the sky is, or what day it is comes after Tuesday. So you look into it, and it looks more and more like the fit-up it is, and before you know it you're walking a very dangerous line and you've got nothing to fucking lose.
Which is why you agree to the meeting.
Which is why you decide to show up.
Even though the time and the place is enough to give you chills. Even if, when you get there, you realize you're looking at the set of the final showdown of every gangster movie ever made. Warehouses at midnight, for Christ's sake! But you're dumb and you're desperate and you want your life back, and when you wonder aloud if you should really be doing this, and if there's really any way to pull things back, Kase's right there to say of course.
You've always deferred to his judgement. He's older. Smarter. Taller, too, and that counted for a lot when you were seven. He puts his arms around you, and it still does, sort of...
Then the roof comes in on you so fast you barely have time to cry out.
You don't remember much of the what-happens-now. You fall. You smell gasoline. You have trouble getting up and that's when you realize someone hit you. You blink, and you're surrounded by flame and move move move you're on your feet, and then you're not, and then you're up again and choking and dragging yourself up a staircase, palms blistering against the metal fucking move--
In two seconds' time you wake up in hospital, where they tell you that eye blink was eight weeks of your life.
And, four dragging, agonizing weeks later - four weeks of drugs and hospital smell and dressing changes like the worst refinements of torture - she arrives, Erika does, and asks you if you want to sell your soul.
It doesn't hit you until she leaves you and you're hours deep in the why-me mess. That's when you realize that Erika is the first person you've met since you opened your eyes who knows what the Hell your name is. The nurses don't know - they've got you down as some Taro Yamada. Your face is bandaged and so are your hands, and who's going to give a pen to a guy who's not quite yet trusted with spoons? Your throat's still too swollen to talk. You remember you told nobody where you were going, that you carried, quite deliberately, nothing that could have identified you to the cops. Your teammates, the coaches, the club owners? They must guess the guilt finally got to you. They must think you slipped off somewhere, and quietly did yourself in.
But Erika knows. You don't know how she knows, but she knows.
And you know, as plainly as you know anything, that she's going to be back for an answer.
You've got nothing to lose: that's the problem. That's the thought you keep tripping over, like it wants to remind you that it's there. Someone wanted you dead, that's just obvious - and you've got literally no reason to let the world know that you're not. You've got nothing to go back to, and nobody waiting when you get there. Your father forgot you existed, you've damn near forgotten mom, and Kase.... you don't know what happened to Kase, but if you had to guess you'd say he was probably dead. You go back and you're going to prison, if you don't just go straight to the morgue, and you still don't know why...
So you tell them you're Rei Tachibana, and that Erika is your aunt. She smiles at you like a proud parent, and tells you she'll be in touch. And you stare at the ceiling, and you re-learn how to use chopsticks, and you wonder what it will be like to kill.
The burns?
That's how you die.
You've got nothing to lose is the problem. Nothing left, more like. All your life you've been good at precisely one-bloody-thing and now you can't do that any more, so what the Hell else are you supposed to do with yourself? Oh sure, you had Option B and Option C like a sensible kid because, no matter how much time and effort you sank into soccer, who puts absolutely all their eggs in the Professional Sportsman basket? but both those required people to trust you further than they could throw you too, and how likely is that one now? Turns out that when you're the subject of both a professional conduct inquiry for the match-fixing and a criminal investigation for the illegal gambling, it's rather difficult to apply for a job with the police.
So you look into it, don't you? Like an idiot, like the dumb desperate kid that you are you let Kase talk you into it and you're grateful to him for it, aren't you? Guess he still feels bad about his part in all this, and you're just plain glad that he at least still thinks you can be trusted to tell him what color the sky is, or what day it is comes after Tuesday. So you look into it, and it looks more and more like the fit-up it is, and before you know it you're walking a very dangerous line and you've got nothing to fucking lose.
Which is why you agree to the meeting.
Which is why you decide to show up.
Even though the time and the place is enough to give you chills. Even if, when you get there, you realize you're looking at the set of the final showdown of every gangster movie ever made. Warehouses at midnight, for Christ's sake! But you're dumb and you're desperate and you want your life back, and when you wonder aloud if you should really be doing this, and if there's really any way to pull things back, Kase's right there to say of course.
You've always deferred to his judgement. He's older. Smarter. Taller, too, and that counted for a lot when you were seven. He puts his arms around you, and it still does, sort of...
Then the roof comes in on you so fast you barely have time to cry out.
You don't remember much of the what-happens-now. You fall. You smell gasoline. You have trouble getting up and that's when you realize someone hit you. You blink, and you're surrounded by flame and move move move you're on your feet, and then you're not, and then you're up again and choking and dragging yourself up a staircase, palms blistering against the metal fucking move--
In two seconds' time you wake up in hospital, where they tell you that eye blink was eight weeks of your life.
And, four dragging, agonizing weeks later - four weeks of drugs and hospital smell and dressing changes like the worst refinements of torture - she arrives, Erika does, and asks you if you want to sell your soul.
It doesn't hit you until she leaves you and you're hours deep in the why-me mess. That's when you realize that Erika is the first person you've met since you opened your eyes who knows what the Hell your name is. The nurses don't know - they've got you down as some Taro Yamada. Your face is bandaged and so are your hands, and who's going to give a pen to a guy who's not quite yet trusted with spoons? Your throat's still too swollen to talk. You remember you told nobody where you were going, that you carried, quite deliberately, nothing that could have identified you to the cops. Your teammates, the coaches, the club owners? They must guess the guilt finally got to you. They must think you slipped off somewhere, and quietly did yourself in.
But Erika knows. You don't know how she knows, but she knows.
And you know, as plainly as you know anything, that she's going to be back for an answer.
You've got nothing to lose: that's the problem. That's the thought you keep tripping over, like it wants to remind you that it's there. Someone wanted you dead, that's just obvious - and you've got literally no reason to let the world know that you're not. You've got nothing to go back to, and nobody waiting when you get there. Your father forgot you existed, you've damn near forgotten mom, and Kase.... you don't know what happened to Kase, but if you had to guess you'd say he was probably dead. You go back and you're going to prison, if you don't just go straight to the morgue, and you still don't know why...
So you tell them you're Rei Tachibana, and that Erika is your aunt. She smiles at you like a proud parent, and tells you she'll be in touch. And you stare at the ceiling, and you re-learn how to use chopsticks, and you wonder what it will be like to kill.
notes |
| ★ That may have been rather too helpful. |
| ★ K, unsurprisingly, didn't always want to be a |
| ★ Kase, K's childhood friend and senpai, vanished the night of the fire after convincing him to look into who fitted him up. Spoiler: It was Kase. Though K doesn't realize this yet, Kase's insistence that he should investigate himself and willingness to accompany him even when it became obvious how dangerous this was may well seem a bit suspect to someone less emotionally-invested in it all. |
| ★ Kase is, as should also be obvious to a detached observer, very obviously Not Dead After All. Keep an eye on him, he'll be showing up later! |
| ★ K is essentially an orphan, though his father is a deadbeat rather than actually dead, and the very public shaming he experienced prior to his disappearance and own presumed death mean that there is absolutely nobody out there looking for him after he vanishes. |
| ★ He meets up with 'Erika', the woman who would become his handler, when she approaches him in hospital. With very little left to anchor him to his old life and a lot of rather pressing reasons to keep his head down and learn to protect himself - like the bit where he was nearly killed by gangsters once and has to presume that they wouldn't react too well to his showing up alive - K took the only way forward that he felt was open to him. |
| ★ Weiss Kreuz may be stupid (and it absolutely is) but it's still not exactly cheerful. |
