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i.
Ryuu is nine. He thinks that if he didn’t have Gin and Rashoumon with him, he’d want to die.
He barely has clothes for Rashoumon to do much, but Rashoumon makes do—it always does. It wraps around him on cold nights, helps him put on puppet shows to make Gin smile, snatches apples and figs from market stands when the vendors aren’t looking. When Rashoumon had first manifested, and he had seen a black veil of cloth stab clean through his father’s arm—
Ryuu doesn’t think about that.
Sometimes he creeps close enough to the city streets to hear rumors. He’s never cared for them much—rumors don’t keep him and Gin fed and warm, after all. But he hears soulmates, hears threads of fate, hears about an ability user who can see these strings and how they all connect. “The people you’re connected to can save your life,” a woman says, pearl necklace reflecting the sunlight into Ryuu’s eyes, “or, well… destroy it.”
Rashoumon stirs at that, like the words mean something to it, and Ryuu thinks that maybe it’s got a point, because—save your life. He latches onto that, ignores the latter part, and wonders—Is it worth it? Should I go?
That night, he slinks out of the tiny shelter he and Gin and eight others like them share and crawls through the dark streets. The moon is high above, but it isn’t so late that the city is deserted, and Ryuu follows the whispers and murmurs about an aging ability user hidden deep in the slums, who carves people’s fates out for them to see—it takes him hours, but he finally slumps before a chipped doorstep, the nameplate too faded to read.
The door opens before he can knock on it. “I saw you coming,” the ability user croaks. “Come. I know what you want.”
Ryuu readies Rashoumon to strike, just in case, and follows them into the dilapidated house. Moonlight shines on cracked, dirtied furniture, but Ryuu can’t see much else—they don’t go too far in, the ability user settling onto a creaky chair placed right in the middle of the living room. “Hold out your hand, child.”
Ryuu does. Gnarly, wrinkled fingers run over his own. “You will meet one of them soon,” they murmur. “Eyes black as night. He holds the touch of death… like the grim reaper himself.”
“Who—” Ryuu starts, but they’re speaking again before he can say much else.
“The other one will take time. White like moonshine… eyes like the sunset.” The ability user looks up at him then, and Ryuu suppresses a flinch—their eyes look like they’ve been clawed out, spidery red blood vessels crawling over the white. “The heart of a tiger.”
“Who—Who are they?”
They shake their head. “My ability only allows me to see the threads. Not who they will be to you. That is your choice to make.”
“My… choice?”
“You always have a choice. What do you want these people to mean to you? Choose wisely. You only get one chance.”
The ability user ushers him out before he can ask any questions, and when Ryuu’s got his bearings back, they’ve locked the door in his face. Their words turn into a jumbled mix of nonsensical letters in his head as soon as he starts walking away, but…
What do you want these people to mean to you?
Ryuu is nine. He curls up next to Gin on their paper-thin mattress, Rashoumon wrapping around the both of them, and thinks Gin’s the only person who’ll mean anything to him.
—
ii.
Ryuu is ten. He is standing in a circle of corpses. All his friends are dead.
There is a man in the center of the field—his eyes are as black as night, skin as pale as the bodies around them. He twirls a gun in his hands with the same ease Rashoumon grabs figs. The touch of death… the grim reaper himself.
His name is Dazai Osamu, and Ryuu feels the threads of fate binding them together, strung tight around their fingers. He thinks Dazai could pull on those strings and play Ryuu like a marionette just as easily as he can slice them off and let them flutter to the ground.
Ryuu looks into his eyes and thinks: What do I want him to mean to me? He looks at the bodies littering the field, the blood spreading through the blades of grass, and thinks: What choice do I make?
They can save your life… or destroy it.
Ryuu is ten. He is standing in a circle of corpses. All his friends are dead.
In their too-empty home, Gin tends to her twisted ankle.
Ryuu is ten. He joins the Port Mafia. Rashoumon twists and writhes and cries.
What choice do I make? What choice do I have?
—
iii.
Ryuunosuke is sixteen, and Dazai-san has left the mafia.
He screams. He screams and rages and roars for all the world to hear, because this isn’t fair, because I didn’t spend the last six years of my life under him just for this, because he’s leaving me, he’s just like everyone else, he’s just like Mother and Father, because I chose him, I chose him, I made him mean something to me, and now—
Rashoumon is crying, he thinks, when he sends it cutting through the necks of every Mimic soldier he can find. Ryuunosuke thinks it’s asking him to stop, telling him it doesn’t want to keep doing this, begging him, make another choice, make him mean something else to you. But Ryuunosuke doesn’t listen— can’t, really, not when all he can hear is his blood pounding in his ears, his heartbeat beating hard as a hammer, his hands curling into fists so tight his nails cut into his palms. He thinks about the threads woven around his fingers, about how Dazai-san’s are connected to his somehow.
The touch of death. The grim reaper himself.
His throat is raw from screaming, and when there is nothing left but blood around him, he crumples to his knees. Ryuunosuke wants to tear at his hands, wants to rip the strings into black-and-white shreds at his feet. Until now he doesn’t know if Dazai-san had been the one to save his life or destroy it—until now he doesn’t know if the choice he had made for both himself and Gin had been worth it. Had there been a point to it at all?
He and Gin are older now, no longer orphaned children hiding away in the slums, but feared members of the mafia. Gin’s knives sing with joy whenever she cuts through a sleeping man’s neck—Rashoumon has grown from putting on puppet shows to eating the space around it. They are older now, taller, colder, harsher.
Was it right? Ryuunosuke thinks about that ability user, their wrinkled hands skating over his small, nine-year-old palms. Was the choice I made the right one? Tell me. Please.
Ryuunosuke is sixteen. He is kneeling in a pool of blood. Nobody answers him.
—
iv.
Ryuunosuke is twenty, and Nakajima Atsushi morphs into a pure white tiger before his eyes.
The heart of a tiger, a cracked old voice reminds him. Eyes like the sunset.
When he limps back to the mafia headquarters, head numb and spinning from seeing Dazai-san again, Ryuunosuke can only think, What an insult to the sunset.
—
v.
Ryuunosuke is twenty. (Maybe twenty-one—he doesn’t really keep count, these days.) The Moby Dick has sunk beneath the ocean’s waves, his entire body is sore from fighting, Rashoumon is barely conscious, and the weretiger is standing next to him.
“Hey,” he says, “it’s over.”
The weretiger says nothing for a moment, then rasps, “Yeah.”
They’re silent again. Eventually, the weretiger shakes his head and sits heavily on the floor, his legs trembling from what’s most likely exhaustion. Ryuunosuke would sit, too, but there’s something about sitting side-by-side with the weretiger that makes him want to back away in disgust. “What do you think happened to him?” the weretiger asks. “Fitzgerald, I mean.”
“Probably drowned. Hopefully drowned.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” the weretiger sighs, but there’s no fight in his voice, for once. “Oi, Akutagawa.”
Ryuunosuke massages his forehead. “What.”
“You know you… don’t have to be so reliant on Dazai-san, right?”
“You—” Ryuunosuke whirls on him, instantly glad he hadn’t given in and sat beside the weretiger—if he had, he doubts he would’ve been able to reel Rashoumon back from plunging straight through his chest. Much as he absolutely detests the weretiger, he’s too tired for another fight just now. “You don’t get to tell me that. What, just because you’re Dazai-san’s favorite now—”
The weretiger throws his hands up before him. “That’s not it! I just meant…” He worries on his lower lip in obvious contemplation. “I just meant… You know you have a choice, right? To keep clinging on to him, or to… let him go, I guess.”
You have a choice. You always have a choice.
What do you want them to mean to you? Choose wisely. You only get one chance.
“This is none of your business,” he grumbles, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than the weretiger. The weretiger must know that—he’s more perceptive than he lets on, annoyingly enough—but says nothing. For once, Ryuunosuke feels grateful, though it doesn’t last long.
“You’re right.” The weretiger shrugs. “But it’s worth thinking about. I know a lot of the time people tell us we’ve only got one chance at something…” He frowns. “But I think it’s up to us, in the end. How many chances we give ourselves. What choices we make. Everything’s all in our hands. We’ve just got to learn what to do with them.”
Ryuunosuke is twenty, maybe twenty-one. The fight is over. The sun is setting. What do I want him to mean to me? he asks himself.
Predictably enough, no one answers. But Rashoumon curls around him, warm to the touch, and Ryuunosuke thinks this is the first time in a long while they’ve both felt alright again. Maybe it’s the fading sun rays, or the coat around him—maybe it’s the way the weretiger’s eyes glimmer when the light hits his face just right, gold and purple reflecting the horizon.
White like moonshine, eyes like the sunset… the heart of a tiger.
He closes his eyes. What do I want him to mean to me?
Choose whatever, Rashoumon tells him. They sound like puppet shows, like warm nights with Gin in his arms, like sharing stolen figs. Choose and fail and learn. Again and again and again. It’s up to us how many chances we give ourselves.