[Daffodil Like Yourself] Chapter 1
Jul. 20th, 2019 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morphogenesisChapter One
The burglary cemented Light's belief that he and Clover never should've moved to Baltimore. A month ago, someone infiltrated their labyrinthine apartment building, broke their locks, and stole every last electronic device they owned.
For want of a secure deadbolt, Light found himself playing a last-minute gig at a Mount Washington Village restaurant on a cold November night. During a break, he slipped out the back (ignoring the nauseating smells of wilting produce and uncleaned grease traps wafting from the kitchen) for a cigarette. The pack rattled as he retrieved it from his pocket, announcing its dwindling supply and exacerbating his agitated need for one in the first place. He promised Clover he would quit and he would keep that promise, but tonight Clover was working. He needed his vice. A cigarette now wasn’t going to worsen last night’s eviction notice on their door.
He focused and exhaled his worries with the smoke: that Clover would ride the bus alone in the dark rather than waiting for him to retrieve her, that a night playing his harp at a slow restaurant still wouldn’t cover the cost of the stolen items, and that eventually he or his sister would call Mother for advice about said burglary and she’d harangue them into returning to Japan before she dragged them home by the ear. He and Clover had raced away from SOIS three years ago to avoid such control, thank you very much. Until this year, he grit his teeth and told himself it was the right choice, even if it felt like that decision triggered many misfortunes since. The latest was the reality that sooner or later he and his sister would have no apartment and no clue what to do next.
Just as worse, nothing could help them recover the essential stolen goods: the information on their devices. The laptops, smartphones, and external hard drives were lost money. The secret information within was lost power, influence, and protection. (And he would be lying if he said he wasn’t offended by the loss of his latest manuscript, a work in progress he’d foolishly failed to backup the night before).
With cold hands, Light fumbled for his replacement phone and had just opened the speech-to-text feature to check on Clover when footsteps came around the corner. Heavy boots, judging by the way they thudded against the pavement, and their owner walked with a slight limp as one footstep was a beat behind the other.
Light once told Clover that people have their own music, each one their own genre shaped by their speech, mannerisms, and appearance. When this person spoke it reminded Light of the screaming, thrashing rock music Clover took a liking to as a teenager: “Got a light?”
Though his heart jumped, Light didn’t miss a beat. “Not for you, Aoi Kurashiki. As I recall, you and yours have a penchant for a different kind of smoke.”
“Ha. Ha.” Aoi enunciated the syllables as if to be obnoxious, and it grated Light’s ears like sandpaper. Back in Building Q Aoi was so loud, acting the fool so nobody looked closer and saw through the disguise. Light would’ve saved Clover and himself a lot of heartache if he did first. “That’s cute, but we don’t have time for this—”
“‘We?’ I’m not giving you a moment of my time.” Light held his phone close to his mouth and in the middle of ordering it to call Alice, Aoi ripped it from his hand and shoved him with enough force to make him crash into a hard metal wall (from the smell, likely a dumpster). The first rule of self-defense was “First, make every attempt to avoid the fight,” but that rule went out the window the second Aoi laid hands on him.
Pushing himself off the dumpster, Light rushed forward with a growl and swung in the direction of Aoi’s voice, connecting at chest height hard enough to bend Light’s wrist. Pain shot from his knuckles up his arm, and Aoi wheezed as air rushed out of him.
Cursing that he hadn’t kept up with SOIS’ training regimen after his departure, Light swung with his other arm too late as Aoi dug his shoulder into Light’s chest. Beneath them, Light’s phone’s screen cracked loudly as it hit the ground, and this being almost offensive as being hit, Light lashed out and grabbed Aoi by the hair with the left hand and clawed in the direction of Aoi’s face with the right. A hissed swear and the give of tender skin beneath his nails satisfied Light, until something struck him under the chin hard enough that his teeth clashed and he broke his grip.
Explosive, but over in a moment as both parties retreated with quick steps, huffing but trying to pretend neither was in pain. For a moment, Light wished he could see Aoi’s face just to enjoy the shock or wounded pride that he’d been taken by someone he assumed would be afraid of him. “I didn’t come to kick your ass,” Aoi said.
“Just as well, because you didn’t,” Light said through aching teeth. Never mind that he clutched his sternum as he spoke. “Now go tell them that’s my final answer.”
Tonight wasn’t the first time Crash Keys’ asked the Fields to come to them, but it was turning out to be the most painful. For months, Crash Keys sent missives, plainclothes messengers to their jobs, and a check that he and Clover took petty enjoyment from burning in their sink (until they set off their smoke detector, resulting in an evacuation and a furious warning from property management).
They sent Junpei and Seven in June.
At Clover’s curiosity they agreed to meet at a local chain cafe that sold dishes named after Maryland’s bodies of water and overpriced but well roasted coffee. Clover snickered when Seven ordered a salad. When Seven grunted that real men took care of their health, Junpei snorted and muttered under his breath. He grunted when Seven thumped him.
As expected, Junpei had no use for tact. “Heard you left SOIS. Why?”
Light sighed and bluntly said they had no desire for further tedious espionage, and Clover squeezed his knee under the table as a subtle warning not to divulge the real reasons. Out of respect for her privacy, he said nothing about her mission disaster or her December 2028 kidnapping. She was released on New Year’s Day and claimed no memory of what happened to her. Light waited for her to tell him the truth. When she did, their bags practically packed themselves.
“Where did you go?” Clover said, and Seven took a loud gulp of his drink. “We could have used your help.”
“Where I had to,” Junpei said, and by the way Clover dug her nails into Light’s thigh he knew he had a moment to defuse the situation. Clover was small, but she’d ensure Junpei regretted angering her. As entertaining as that would be, Light liked this chain and didn’t want to be banned for life.
“I’m going to ask you once, politely, to answer her question Junpei,” Light said in a cutting tone like razor wire. “If you do, I won’t have to ask you why you both invited us under false pretenses.”
“Wadda you mean?” Seven said. He sounded very hesitant for such a steadfast man.
Clover blew bubbles in her drink in a display of condescending irreverence that made Light proud. “Crash Keys begs us left and right to talk for months, and now Akane’s fanboy and their accomplice show up? Do you think we’re dumb?”
Seven and Junpei denied neither the accusation nor their relation to Crash Keys. The conversation went downhill from there until Clover got up, slammed her chair into the table, and her heels clicked out the door as Junpei called “Clover, please!” and followed her.
Light rose in an instant to intervene, but a hand the size of a porterhouse steak wrapped around his upper arm. “Kid, wait. We can take it outside after if you want, but just listen to me.”
Light wrenched his arm free, grateful it was the prosthetic he could manipulate like a snake if he wished (although he felt a warning tug from the force). “You begged us to work with SOIS. You said we would contribute to the greater good, but now I wonder: whose?” Seven started to speak, but Light cut him off with a fierce slash of his hand. He was certain patrons noticed, judging by the hushed murmur of nearby tables, and thanked fortune that none of them likely spoke Japanese. He leaned in until he could feel Seven’s breath. “Clover and I don’t need their money, their apologies, or whatever else they consider fitting recompense. We will never be used by them again. Farewell.”
When Light left the cafe he passed Junpei, groaning on the concrete patio just outside the entrance. As the Fields walked away together, Clover fired a parting shot that she was surprised Junpei had balls after all. Light didn’t scold her a bit.
In the months between that meeting and now in the alley with Aoi, those memories still infuriated Light when they surfaced. In front of him, Aoi sighed heavily and said: “I ain’t an errand boy.” When Light opened his mouth to quip back, Aoi cut him off: “And shut up for two minutes.”
So instead Light thought, Oh I’m just terrified right now, and Aoi scoffed. “That too, smartass. Because you love to hear yourself yap, I’m making this short: Hongou’s outta jail.”
“I can read, yes. I didn’t burn every letter.” Light wasn’t sure whether to resent or appreciate they went to the effort to send him Braille correspondence. “Do you need us for a third Nonary Game, or are you letting law enforcement handle him?”
“You’re so smart, you work this out: His assets are frozen. Even if he could go back to Cradle, their reputation is in the toilet and no investors with a brain will touch them. He’s a wanted man. What does he have left?”
Something he cared about so much that during their desert trek he was a broken pathetic worm, passively lying in the trunk without it. “His pride.”
“And what did he take so much pride in he was willing to kill for it?”
Light took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. If he admitted this he walked into a room he swore never to enter again. “The First Nonary Game. And those test subjects are still alive. His last assets.”
“A gold star for Light Field,” Aoi said quietly. “They started disappearing in January, man. Junpei and Seven were gonna take you somewhere safe.”
Light chuckled and folded his arms. “So they thought I would go with you?”
"Cool, tell that to the dead people in the river. You remember someone named Hideaki?" Light did—a younger boy from The Gigantic who rolled his ankle escaping the ship. Aoi’s boots scuffed across the ground as he approached and stopped short of Light’s reach. A faint whiff of blood came off him. "He and his brother were fished out of the river this week. They were SOIS with you right?"
Light tried to recall the details but all he remembered were unidentified victims and idle bus stop chatter and speculation. The story disappeared quickly from any media coverage, even the independent city publications. "That doesn't mean anything." That was why his breathing picked up and he desperately tried to remember when Clover got off work tonight.
"Sure it doesn't." A cough from the dry, cold air. "I don't care if you believe me. Just come with us," Aoi said in a voice too tired for further argument.
Light shook his head. “I assume Crash Keys begs forgiveness instead of asking permission. Why not kidnap us months ago?”
“Tried that. It ends as well as you think.”
Before Light could ask what Aoi meant, shuffling from around the corner rang all of his well-programmed alarms. “Behind you—” he got out before an arm pressed on his windpipe. Someone pulled him against them as they covered his mouth with a rag, a moment identical to what Aoi did to him in Building Q. Just like that time, Light slipped under the surface of strange waters and disappeared.
The burglary cemented Light's belief that he and Clover never should've moved to Baltimore. A month ago, someone infiltrated their labyrinthine apartment building, broke their locks, and stole every last electronic device they owned.
For want of a secure deadbolt, Light found himself playing a last-minute gig at a Mount Washington Village restaurant on a cold November night. During a break, he slipped out the back (ignoring the nauseating smells of wilting produce and uncleaned grease traps wafting from the kitchen) for a cigarette. The pack rattled as he retrieved it from his pocket, announcing its dwindling supply and exacerbating his agitated need for one in the first place. He promised Clover he would quit and he would keep that promise, but tonight Clover was working. He needed his vice. A cigarette now wasn’t going to worsen last night’s eviction notice on their door.
He focused and exhaled his worries with the smoke: that Clover would ride the bus alone in the dark rather than waiting for him to retrieve her, that a night playing his harp at a slow restaurant still wouldn’t cover the cost of the stolen items, and that eventually he or his sister would call Mother for advice about said burglary and she’d harangue them into returning to Japan before she dragged them home by the ear. He and Clover had raced away from SOIS three years ago to avoid such control, thank you very much. Until this year, he grit his teeth and told himself it was the right choice, even if it felt like that decision triggered many misfortunes since. The latest was the reality that sooner or later he and his sister would have no apartment and no clue what to do next.
Just as worse, nothing could help them recover the essential stolen goods: the information on their devices. The laptops, smartphones, and external hard drives were lost money. The secret information within was lost power, influence, and protection. (And he would be lying if he said he wasn’t offended by the loss of his latest manuscript, a work in progress he’d foolishly failed to backup the night before).
With cold hands, Light fumbled for his replacement phone and had just opened the speech-to-text feature to check on Clover when footsteps came around the corner. Heavy boots, judging by the way they thudded against the pavement, and their owner walked with a slight limp as one footstep was a beat behind the other.
Light once told Clover that people have their own music, each one their own genre shaped by their speech, mannerisms, and appearance. When this person spoke it reminded Light of the screaming, thrashing rock music Clover took a liking to as a teenager: “Got a light?”
Though his heart jumped, Light didn’t miss a beat. “Not for you, Aoi Kurashiki. As I recall, you and yours have a penchant for a different kind of smoke.”
“Ha. Ha.” Aoi enunciated the syllables as if to be obnoxious, and it grated Light’s ears like sandpaper. Back in Building Q Aoi was so loud, acting the fool so nobody looked closer and saw through the disguise. Light would’ve saved Clover and himself a lot of heartache if he did first. “That’s cute, but we don’t have time for this—”
“‘We?’ I’m not giving you a moment of my time.” Light held his phone close to his mouth and in the middle of ordering it to call Alice, Aoi ripped it from his hand and shoved him with enough force to make him crash into a hard metal wall (from the smell, likely a dumpster). The first rule of self-defense was “First, make every attempt to avoid the fight,” but that rule went out the window the second Aoi laid hands on him.
Pushing himself off the dumpster, Light rushed forward with a growl and swung in the direction of Aoi’s voice, connecting at chest height hard enough to bend Light’s wrist. Pain shot from his knuckles up his arm, and Aoi wheezed as air rushed out of him.
Cursing that he hadn’t kept up with SOIS’ training regimen after his departure, Light swung with his other arm too late as Aoi dug his shoulder into Light’s chest. Beneath them, Light’s phone’s screen cracked loudly as it hit the ground, and this being almost offensive as being hit, Light lashed out and grabbed Aoi by the hair with the left hand and clawed in the direction of Aoi’s face with the right. A hissed swear and the give of tender skin beneath his nails satisfied Light, until something struck him under the chin hard enough that his teeth clashed and he broke his grip.
Explosive, but over in a moment as both parties retreated with quick steps, huffing but trying to pretend neither was in pain. For a moment, Light wished he could see Aoi’s face just to enjoy the shock or wounded pride that he’d been taken by someone he assumed would be afraid of him. “I didn’t come to kick your ass,” Aoi said.
“Just as well, because you didn’t,” Light said through aching teeth. Never mind that he clutched his sternum as he spoke. “Now go tell them that’s my final answer.”
Tonight wasn’t the first time Crash Keys’ asked the Fields to come to them, but it was turning out to be the most painful. For months, Crash Keys sent missives, plainclothes messengers to their jobs, and a check that he and Clover took petty enjoyment from burning in their sink (until they set off their smoke detector, resulting in an evacuation and a furious warning from property management).
They sent Junpei and Seven in June.
At Clover’s curiosity they agreed to meet at a local chain cafe that sold dishes named after Maryland’s bodies of water and overpriced but well roasted coffee. Clover snickered when Seven ordered a salad. When Seven grunted that real men took care of their health, Junpei snorted and muttered under his breath. He grunted when Seven thumped him.
As expected, Junpei had no use for tact. “Heard you left SOIS. Why?”
Light sighed and bluntly said they had no desire for further tedious espionage, and Clover squeezed his knee under the table as a subtle warning not to divulge the real reasons. Out of respect for her privacy, he said nothing about her mission disaster or her December 2028 kidnapping. She was released on New Year’s Day and claimed no memory of what happened to her. Light waited for her to tell him the truth. When she did, their bags practically packed themselves.
“Where did you go?” Clover said, and Seven took a loud gulp of his drink. “We could have used your help.”
“Where I had to,” Junpei said, and by the way Clover dug her nails into Light’s thigh he knew he had a moment to defuse the situation. Clover was small, but she’d ensure Junpei regretted angering her. As entertaining as that would be, Light liked this chain and didn’t want to be banned for life.
“I’m going to ask you once, politely, to answer her question Junpei,” Light said in a cutting tone like razor wire. “If you do, I won’t have to ask you why you both invited us under false pretenses.”
“Wadda you mean?” Seven said. He sounded very hesitant for such a steadfast man.
Clover blew bubbles in her drink in a display of condescending irreverence that made Light proud. “Crash Keys begs us left and right to talk for months, and now Akane’s fanboy and their accomplice show up? Do you think we’re dumb?”
Seven and Junpei denied neither the accusation nor their relation to Crash Keys. The conversation went downhill from there until Clover got up, slammed her chair into the table, and her heels clicked out the door as Junpei called “Clover, please!” and followed her.
Light rose in an instant to intervene, but a hand the size of a porterhouse steak wrapped around his upper arm. “Kid, wait. We can take it outside after if you want, but just listen to me.”
Light wrenched his arm free, grateful it was the prosthetic he could manipulate like a snake if he wished (although he felt a warning tug from the force). “You begged us to work with SOIS. You said we would contribute to the greater good, but now I wonder: whose?” Seven started to speak, but Light cut him off with a fierce slash of his hand. He was certain patrons noticed, judging by the hushed murmur of nearby tables, and thanked fortune that none of them likely spoke Japanese. He leaned in until he could feel Seven’s breath. “Clover and I don’t need their money, their apologies, or whatever else they consider fitting recompense. We will never be used by them again. Farewell.”
When Light left the cafe he passed Junpei, groaning on the concrete patio just outside the entrance. As the Fields walked away together, Clover fired a parting shot that she was surprised Junpei had balls after all. Light didn’t scold her a bit.
In the months between that meeting and now in the alley with Aoi, those memories still infuriated Light when they surfaced. In front of him, Aoi sighed heavily and said: “I ain’t an errand boy.” When Light opened his mouth to quip back, Aoi cut him off: “And shut up for two minutes.”
So instead Light thought, Oh I’m just terrified right now, and Aoi scoffed. “That too, smartass. Because you love to hear yourself yap, I’m making this short: Hongou’s outta jail.”
“I can read, yes. I didn’t burn every letter.” Light wasn’t sure whether to resent or appreciate they went to the effort to send him Braille correspondence. “Do you need us for a third Nonary Game, or are you letting law enforcement handle him?”
“You’re so smart, you work this out: His assets are frozen. Even if he could go back to Cradle, their reputation is in the toilet and no investors with a brain will touch them. He’s a wanted man. What does he have left?”
Something he cared about so much that during their desert trek he was a broken pathetic worm, passively lying in the trunk without it. “His pride.”
“And what did he take so much pride in he was willing to kill for it?”
Light took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. If he admitted this he walked into a room he swore never to enter again. “The First Nonary Game. And those test subjects are still alive. His last assets.”
“A gold star for Light Field,” Aoi said quietly. “They started disappearing in January, man. Junpei and Seven were gonna take you somewhere safe.”
Light chuckled and folded his arms. “So they thought I would go with you?”
"Cool, tell that to the dead people in the river. You remember someone named Hideaki?" Light did—a younger boy from The Gigantic who rolled his ankle escaping the ship. Aoi’s boots scuffed across the ground as he approached and stopped short of Light’s reach. A faint whiff of blood came off him. "He and his brother were fished out of the river this week. They were SOIS with you right?"
Light tried to recall the details but all he remembered were unidentified victims and idle bus stop chatter and speculation. The story disappeared quickly from any media coverage, even the independent city publications. "That doesn't mean anything." That was why his breathing picked up and he desperately tried to remember when Clover got off work tonight.
"Sure it doesn't." A cough from the dry, cold air. "I don't care if you believe me. Just come with us," Aoi said in a voice too tired for further argument.
Light shook his head. “I assume Crash Keys begs forgiveness instead of asking permission. Why not kidnap us months ago?”
“Tried that. It ends as well as you think.”
Before Light could ask what Aoi meant, shuffling from around the corner rang all of his well-programmed alarms. “Behind you—” he got out before an arm pressed on his windpipe. Someone pulled him against them as they covered his mouth with a rag, a moment identical to what Aoi did to him in Building Q. Just like that time, Light slipped under the surface of strange waters and disappeared.
