Chapter Text
From: Matsuno Chifuyu
After the incident from last time, I decided not to take the tape with me. Who knows what can happen. I meant to entrust you with keeping an eye on it until I’m back, but I realise I forgot to tell you about it. It’s hidden in the wall against my bed. Do whatever with it but be careful. Also, I’ll advise you don’t watch it now, you’re stressed enough as it is.
Keisuke had been staring at the e-mail for far too long now.
This looked like a math problem. He groaned to himself for a moment.
At least his only teacher that afternoon was sick, so he got to go home early. Which meant he would spend less time agonising over Chifuyu’s stupid text and more time agonising over Chifuyu’s stupid tape.
Seriously, why keep an eye on a tape? Granted, it was a magical time-leaping tape, but it wasn’t going to grow legs and run away. If it did it just wouldn’t qualify as a tape anymore. And why Keisuke!?
After all this time saying they couldn’t open it, that they should wait for Chifuyu to be ready, and after how disappointed Chifuyu had been when he and Ryusei went and watched it anyways… now Keisuke had to watch out for the stupid thing?
And then there was the end of the message. I’ll advise you don’t watch it, but not an honest disapproval of the action. Meaning if Keisuke wanted to, he could.
What did he mean too stressed!? Keisuke was perfectly alright. He just… he’d been needing to know. No stress. Just a murderous instinct to protect and stop all his friends from dying in the future. A future Chifuyu wouldn’t tell him about. Keisuke was being normal, all things considered.
Which meant that as soon as he went home, he went to Chifuyu’s apartment.
“Sorry ma’am, Chifuyu says he’s forgotten something in his room”
“Oh.. sure, I suppose.”
And when Keisuke found himself in Chifuyu’s room, he realised there was something even more cryptic about the e-mail Chifuyu had sent him.
What do you mean, ‘in the wall’?!
Turned out, Keisuke had to move the damn bed away, look at the junction between the floor and the wall, slip his arm under a removable part of the floor-carpet which conveniently hid a crack in the wall, and blindly retrieve the tape inside the fluff filled wall.
Chifuyu’d gotten really weird since he came back from the future, huh.
Not that Keisuke could blame him.
He quickly bid goodbye to Chifuyu’s mother and retreated to his own apartment and his own room. Being there alone with the tape then raised two questions.
Should he call Ryusei?
No, he thought, his empty fist squeezing itself as he reverently held the tape in the other. Ryusei was unsettled enough by all that he had already seen. He shouldn’t have to see more. Especially when it was Keisuke’s duty as the captain to protect his gang members. Showing Ryusei the rest of this would only do more ill than good at this point.
Then… should he watch it?
The answer, it happened, was quick to be decided on.
Keisuke retrieved the VHD reader of the apartment, setting it in his room. With a heavy ball in his stomach, he set it to where he and Ryusei had paused it after Chifuyu had found them last time.
It wasn’t such a long time ago, yet it still felt like a dream from another life already. But it was true and real, and Keisuke needed- he needed. To find out what would happen in the future.
Otherwise, how was he supposed to protect Chifuyu? Ryusei? Kazutora? And Mikey?
He pressed play. The image of Tachibana Naoto filled the TV screen.
“Hello,” the boy, no older than twelve surely, greeted politely. “All of you already know me by now, but I’ll still introduce myself. My name is Tachibana Naoto. I technically come from the sixth timeline but…” he seemed to think for a moment, before shrugging, “technically all Naoto’s are one and the same really.”
And there.
It was already starting to be confusing again. Geez, Keisuke really thought he had gotten the hang of this now…
“I don’t think anyone’s really explained how the real time-leaping worked yet,” Naoto was thankfully quick to explain. “But it goes like this: when someone has been handed the time-leaping ability, they can go back in time on a couple of conditions. They cannot do it alone, they absolutely need someone else’s help. Someone needs to share a regret with them, something strong enough to bring the person back in time early enough to right that regret. Kind of like what you guys are doing with the tape, really. We call that second person the trigger. Now, when the past has been changed, the time-leaper returns to a new future. The trigger person’s memories are rewritten to be the memories of the original trigger person. That way, the trigger person remembers both futures.”
Naoto pointed at himself.
“For a majority of these futures, I was Hanagaki Takemichi’s trigger to go back in time. I wanted him to save my sister,” he explained solemnly. “As a result of the tape’s time leaping mess, I now have the memories of all the Naoto’s who got the rewritten memories. But I’d like to warn you in advance, I’m still me. I’m not gonna turn into an old man in front of you or suicide on screen. You can relax.”
And Keisuke did, unwittingly. Somehow, he hadn’t even clocked on to that concern yet.
He crossed his knees on the couch and supported his cheek on his elbow. Ready to pause the tape at any given moment, because he still wanted to listen to Chifuyu and not get in over his head, but he was still utterly focused on every detail. The real testimony was beginning now, he could tell.
Naoto wore a solemn face now.
“Like I’ve said before, the person I want to send this tape to is my sister. Tachibana Hinata. I want to tell her about everything we’ve gone through in those alternate timelines, so that she finds a way not to die in her own timeline. That way, she can stay the annoying sister she always is,” the kid smirked, before turning more serious. “It all starts with my meeting with Hanagaki Takemichi.”
That name, again.
The child looked fond, ever so subtly, as he said:
“Hanagaki is a born loser, big sis. But he really loves you.”
***
The music was loud, but not as loud as what Chifuyu used to be forced to subject himself to back in the old days… or rather back in the future’s old days.
Sometimes it was standing in the reception hall for hours listening to classical music and talking to people he would rather have put a bullet in the head of. Sometimes, it was staying in a dark-lit brothel or some drugged up dance floor where he had to attend business without flinching.
Sometimes it was just gunshots, over and over again, on repeat.
Next to that, he found that rock music was pretty enjoyable. Even though every loud screech of the microphone almost made him twitch. Old habits died hard, and Chifuyu never did flinch.
It was all too easy to forget where he was and how old he was. But he was making efforts to be present to keep himself from reaching out to his old systemic reactions.
It was hard because his systemic reactions were all often related to suppressing any reaction, keeping himself from tensing or freezing or putting a bullet in whoever grabbed him from behind because maybe it was an ally, and that was also what it meant to have trauma. Sometimes he could not make the difference between normalcy and war.
Sometimes he could not make the difference between being alright and forcing himself to be. Should he be allowing himself to flinch instead? To consciously put in the effort to show the world it was not always alright?
It was all too easy to forget where he was now. But he followed the main singer with his eyes, trusting them to tell the truth. He was in Mikey’s middle school’s hall, listening to a club’s music performance which was loud, but mostly pleasing to the ear, his fellow gang mates by his side as they stood at the back of the crowd.
It was alright.
Still, Chifuyu knew someone was approaching them with intent amongst the people coming and going behind them before the footsteps stopped in their backs. He said nothing, aware of the possibility of breaking the person’s arms. Aware he was choosing not to do it.
“Sano-kun?” a feminine voice reached their ears above the music. “Could you do me a favour?”
Mikey groaned.
“I’m not going to the stupid show, not to help and not to watch,” he said decisively, shouting over the noise.
“That’s not what I wanted to ask,” the girl shook her head. “Besides, the show’s been over for a while now. I’m looking for Kohagi, she disappeared right after she did her chores.”
“And why is that my problem?” Mikey drawled, even as Draken elbowed him.
The girl frowned.
“You’re the one who protected Suzuki when she almost got raped by the perv teacher from last year, I remember that. You’ve helped with Kohagi’s bullies in the last few months too. Look,” the girl hissed, looking worried. “I’m really concerned about her right now, she’s been off the last couple days, and she’s not talking to me anymore. I’m just… it’d reassure me if you helped me out on this one.”
Mikey sure had a reputation even in his own school, Chifuyu thought wistfully. Mikey thought it over, an annoyed frown between his eyes. But, just like Chifuyu knew him to, he groaned loudly and gave in, too righteous not to at least try something.
“Sure. You owe me a week of homework for this.”
The girl smiled, even if it was a strained curl of the lips.
“Thank you, Sano-kun.”
“A classmate?” Chifuyu questioned when she left the hall running.
“Two years in a row, yeah,” Mikey explained boredly. “She seems to think I’m some reliable guy…”
“You’re supposed to be, remember?” Draken drawled, pushing Mikey towards the exit. “Now don’t you have something to do?”
“Alright…”
“I’ll accompany you,” Chifuyu said.
He did not like the idea of being alone in the noise and the crowd. But really, he did not mind going around helping people instead of enjoying music. The last person who had asked had been so rude about it, but Chifuyu did like helping. At least, he remembered that he used to like it.
It had been a long while since. A good action would not wash a layer of blood off his hands, but it might ease his battered soul still.
They made their way out the hall. There were people everywhere, but not as much as near the stage. The music still echoed in the corridors even as they walked away. Mikey suggested looking through the third floor first, where the piano room was. But of course, as they made their way over, they found that the place was already occupied by the orchestra club who had emptied the space to move all their instruments in. No lost sad looking girl there. At least that was how Mikey described it.
Checking most rooms would be a hassle, Mikey said, so instead they first went back outside to ask the teachers at the barrier if the girl had already left the premises. By the time it took the three of them to return outside, the rock show was over, and the musicians were thanking their audience under an audible shower of screams and encouragements.
Mikey went to talk with the teachers while Draken and Chifuyu stayed a bit behind.
“This is the Orchestra’s performance. Enjoy.”
Chifuyu turned and raised his eyes to the walls of the middle school. Indeed, even outside there were a few microphones, likely used in case of emergency exercises in usual cases. He counted three on the walls at ground levels, and if he tried, he could see through the windows of the higher floors to see those that were set inside the corridors.
It was because he looked up so high that a strange figure caught his attention. He raised his head even higher, narrowing his piercing eyes to the roof. There, behind the protection barriers, there was…
“Draken,” Chifuyu called evenly, not looking away. “Is the roof open to students?”
“Huh?” the boy turned to look down at him, intrigued. “Yeah, during breaks. But today it’s closed, the school doesn’t want anyone there, either the students or the guests, so it’s locked.”
“Where are the keys?”
Now Draken was frowning.
“The director and the cleaning staff got duplicates, why are you asking all of this?”
“There’s a girl on the roof,” Chifuyu said, before he broke into a run back into the building. “Tell Mikey!”
“What? Wait- Mikey! Hey, Teacher!”
Chifuyu ran too fast to listen to the rest.
***
“Hanagaki was the reason why so many people survived, but somehow he was never satisfied. With people like him, everyone has to survive. Now you’re going to argue that my goal should be the same, as a policeman, but I’ve lived too long for revenge and reviving my sister to care too much about that on a personal level.”
“I met Mikey-”
“Really, then why didn’t you kill him!?”
“Naoto wait-”
“That bastard is the reason why my sister is dead!”
The worst of this was, Keisuke could understand it all. He did not condone it, but he could understand.
“Hanagaki has this endless will to help people, even if he’s not strong enough to win any fight nor smart enough to turn the tides on his own. It’s what allows to draw people to him. Even myself. At first I relied on him out of necessity, because it could only be him. But as time went on, I realised…” Naoto looked slightly fonder now. “I’d come to rely on him because I genuinely thought only Hanagaki would have the heart to save all these people. He keeps crying, but it’s always kind hearted, and always for others.”
Naoto added, before a memory took over the stage:
“Even when he starts giving up, the people he draws to himself pave the road for the future he wants. Because they believe in him, and because they too, believe and want that happy future.”
Keisuke was in front of Takemichi. Takemichi was on his knees, crying, sobbing for whoever could hear him.
“I killed her this time,” was what he was saying. “Everything I do always ends up worse than before, I keep messing it all up… That’s enough, let’s just give up, Naoto… we can’t do it!”
And true to form, Naoto was also there, and Keisuke could hear him think, perceive his feelings rising like a dead storm coming to life because if this man gave up then who would continue to believe?
It was such a foreign feeling. Yet… Keisuke felt that, it was a feeling that would suit into his own chest, were Mikey to falter.
Naoto grabbed Takemichi. And his words were exactly what they had always believed in.
“You’re the only one who can do this. But you’re not alone, and your actions have consequences! Before, we didn’t have Ryuguji Ken, we didn’t have Hanemiya Kazutora and we didn’t have Matsuno Chifuyu. We do now, because of you. We would never have gotten so far without them. You can’t give up now!”
“And the crowd around him continued to grow and grow,” Naoto recounted as Keisuke sighed himself out of the memory. “Until my sister was a part of it, alive and well. And until he died, I suppose.”
***
“We have to stop her!” What seemed to be Mikey’s homeroom teacher screamed in panic, but the director held her at the bottom of the last stair case.
“This is a delicate matter,” he said. “We can’t act rashly.
“Director!”
The teacher that had been with Mikey and Draken joined them, while Chifuyu withdrew towards his commander and vice-commander, watching in high alert.
“Kotoshima-sensei, can you confirm what the students testify?”
“I’ve seen it myself, sir.”
“Then call the police immediately, warn them of the case.”
“Should we stop the festival?”
Mikey intervened sharply before the director could say the same.
“That would only alert her and prompt her to jump earlier!”
All the adults turned to them.
“Sano-kun, what are you doing here?” the woman said.
Mikey raised an eyebrow at her.
“Kohagi’s my classmate. My friend was the one who saw her first,” he pointed a thump at Chifuyu, who merely nodded.
“Leave them,” the director told the teachers and the member of the staff with the key. “At least they’re not panicking, and we can’t cut them out entirely now… either way, young Sano-kun is right. Still, we are at a conundrum.”
“Right,” the other teacher nodded grimly. “We can’t simply let this go on, we have to send someone. Is the psychologist in the premises?”
“It would take too long to fetch her,” Mikey’s homeroom teacher argued, her voice trembling as she did. “And she would know! Kohagi-san has always been a very guarded student, she’ll withdraw for certain!”
“Then how about I go?” Mikey intruded on the conversation again, raising his hand to volunteer. “I’m just her classmate, so if I pretend I snuck up there and had a chat with her, it would be a long enough distraction, right?”
His teacher whipped her head towards him again.
“Sano-kun!” she protested again. “This matter is not for children! You shouldn’t even be here!”
“Misawa-sensei is right,” Kotoshima added. “There are guidelines for such situations.”
“I know them too,” the director stipulates. “And by-standing students must be as uninvolved as possible for their own health. But in dire situations, we need volunteers…”
Mikey perked up, but Draken held him back, shaking his head.
“It can’t be you,” he said with his deep rumbling voice. “She knows her best friend asks you for help sometimes, she’ll suspect something. Besides, I don’t want that on your head.”
“Well it can’t be you either, you’d just intimidate her,” Mikey retorted sharply.
“Children,” Kotoshima frowned. “Are you in any way educated in how to act in those situations? Even with volunteers, we can’t simply allow anyone to try their luck,” he turned to the director, “a student’s life is on the line!”
“Someone first needs to call Kohagi-san’s relative.”
“I’ll do it,” Draken volunteered, “I’ll go to the psychologist's office if it can help and tell her about it.”
“Thank you Ryuguji-kun,” and he took off running with their approval.
“I’m formed.”
A brief silence occurred, as all remembered that Chifuyu was, in fact, still present.
It was he who volunteered.
“I can be the distraction.”
Even Mikey was watching him like he had grown another head. He looked slightly worried, just as Chifuyu remembered him being years in the past of his memories. How nostalgic.
The director frowned.
“Young man,...” he trailed off.
“Matsuno.”
“Matsuno-kun. You’re not from our school, are you?”
“No. I’m the one who found her,” he pointed upwards, keeping steady eye contact. “I happened to help in other cases of attempted suicides, I talked down at least one person before. I’m qualified. Besides, the girl- Kohagi-san doesn’t know me and I don’t know her. And I look her age. It’ll be easier for someone like me to distract her without alarming her. I apologise if this is presumptuous, but I had to volunteer,” he explained himself calmly.
“Chifuyu…” Mikey murmured to him. “Are you sure?”
“I’m serious. Don’t worry about me.”
He was not even counting Baji’s own brand of suicide in his experiences, that one was obviously a big failure. But it was one that had marked him and made him strive to be better, when inevitably the same situation occurred, again and again, within the criminal organisation that Toman became.
He did not think his experience would be useful again now. But he always knew to be ready. He guessed that talking down a guilty man from pulling a gun on their own head or jumping down a sky-bracing building was different from talking down a middle-schooler from doing the irreparable because they felt ill in their skin.
“It would be irresponsible.”
“I know you have prioritised procedures for this,” Chifuyu shook his head, certain of himself, smileless.
***
“...After Ryuguji Ken and Sendou Atsushi, there was Matsuno Chifuyu. I’ve only ever met him as an adult, but that man is terrifyingly smart. He’s always a constant in the past Hanagaki describes.”
Keisuke perked up at the name. The dead body he had seen before that, and Draken’s changed self in prison were images carved in his mind, and he wanted nothing more but to get rid of it before nausea caught up to him. But he knew what was coming would not be happy.
Nothing about Chifuyu’s various futures ever was.
“He is discreet and always knows when to keep quiet. But he has nerves of steel. He’s helped Takemichi keep holding on more times than I can count. He is yet another admirable figure in Toman’s history, even if widely overlooked. The most terrifying about this man, however, is that he never forgets a thing, and he is as stubborn as Hanagaki when he needs to be.”
Yes, Keisuke thought with a terribly warm pain in his heart.
Keksuke knew all about that.
“And I came to learn, he is most stubborn in his sense of justice. He is solid as a rock, steady through grey moralities, and he will never bend in the name of saving people. Especially those he cares for, I learned. Even when time ticks forwards inevitably, and takes all possibilities of escape with it.”
Naoto smirked sadly.
***
Chifuyu’s eyes glowed with resolve.
“But you don’t have options.”
The director looked at him.
“And time is ticking.
Will you allow it?”
A brief silence. Brief, because time was ticking.
“...Please.”
***
She turned as she heard a key turned into the entrance’s lock. She grabbed the barriers tightly. Was she ready? Had they noticed? Were they going to try and make her believe they cared?
What good would it do them?
But instead, it was a boy who walked in, surely younger than herself. His walk was casual, and his eyes didn’t rise to meet hers. He came closer, barely, and looked up at the sky.
“We will now play Bach’s famous piece…” the microphone went on softly as the boy met her gaze at last.
“Hello,” he said, quiet and unhurried. “Are you here for the view too?”
How strange. His eyes, cloudy blue, yet so steady.
He looked as though the stormy wind could not touch him at all.
***
“Truly, what a pair they make.”