Work Text:
Yonagi Park.
March 23, 6:00 pm.
"Cheers!"
Glasses clink against one another in harmony with the chorus of voices. Ryuki raised his glass to toast and took a sip of his (non-alcoholic) champagne, observing as the party unfolded.
In the middle of it is the maiden of honor. Mizuki, rocking a sandy gold dress with heels and an eyepatch, merrily laughed while hugging Bibi, dressed in a matching navy blue dress herself.
It was a celebration for Mizuki's graduation, held in the wood platform over the pond of Yonagi Park. Date splurged quite a bit for this, Ryuky noted. A DJ and a catering were contracted, even though there were barely enough people to fill a couple of tables.
Date, who for once left his coat and is sporting a slick gray vest over his turtleneck sweater, is watching from nearby with Aiba on his shoulder, no doubt recording the party for posterity. The rest of their friends alternated from congratulating the blue haired girl and engaging in conversation with one another.
He was around friends.
People that he cared for.
People that cared for him.
And yet, he couldn't stop himself from feeling detached.
Alone.
"Ryuki?"
Despite himself, he smiles. He was never truly alone, was he?
Ryuki, pensive, rests against the wood barrier stopping him from falling into the pond. His unfinished glass was left on a nearby table.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Tama asks inside his head.
"You're in my head already, can't you tell?"
"Inside that dense noggin of yours? I'd have better luck trying to seduce Pewter." Ryuki snorts.
"It's nothing. Just..."
"Just...?"
"...humor me again, Tama, just one last time. And this will be the last time I talk about it." he says outloud.
Tama is quiet for a moment, before Ryuki feels her popping out of his eye socket. Instinctively, he reaches his hand out for her to land on, and then places her on the wooden beam.
"I'm all ears."
Ryuki smiles again, a little half smirk that is equal parts tired and content. But it melts away soon enough. For a moment, he's quiet, trying to organize the thoughts that plague him.
"What is the worth of this world?" he asks abruptly.
"Its worth?"
Tama's question prompts him to clarify, but the words are struggling to come out. He grits his teeth as a sudden headache pierces him.
He tries again.
"If this world is a simulation..." the headache is getting worse, and there's a growing ringing in his ear. He holds his head with one hand.
"Ryuki? Ryuki!?" Tama's voice is garbled and faint, as if she was speaking to him through an old radio.
This episode is his worst yet. The world flickers around him, parts suddenly missing, the colors fading away and his hand is starting to slip through the barrier. Words and numbers rip themselves from the ground and fade into nothingness.
"The@#&#$ Line#_$#3" a voice echoes through the radio noise. He almost doesn't dare to turn back, but like a magnet, an irresistible force compels him to turn back.
He doesn't see her immediately. He expected her to be right there in front of him, floating over the water because concepts like the ground were foreign to her. But finally, he sees her reflection in the pond’s dark water, like it was on the TV screen in the stadium just barely a month ago. She's impossibly big, as if she were the shadow cast from his body.
"between¥®$@ the real(&3@ and the unreal is€®¢~£^¡" she's doing that stupid hand sign again. She said it was meant to resemble the nonuple-X, but to him, the three holes formed by her hands seem to form the eyes of a monster.
"... The line between the real..." his mouth is moving on its own. The noise is getting louder, and his head feels like it's going to split down the middle. "... And the unreal... Is-"
"Ryuki!" a voice cuts through the noise, clear as the sky.
A hand grabs his chin and leads his face forward. He meets eyes with an angel. It must be an angel, for there is a blue halo that glows around her. Or maybe she's a devil, because she looks suspiciously like a S&M domme.
"Tama...?" her hands cup his cheeks. They're warm, and the texture feels scratch-y somewhat, but she's right there in front of him. "H-how...?"
"Look into my eyes, Ryuki, and take a breath on my count, OK? One..." she inhales, despite not having lungs, but his body unconsciously imitates her anyways.
By the count of ten, the ringing in his ear subsides, and by twenty the world is restored, and he can no longer feel her eyes on his back.
"Good, Ryuki, you did very well." She strokes his cheek with her thumb, and he can't help leaning into her warm, feather-like touch.
"How is this possible?" he asks, his hand reaching up to grasp the hand on his cheek. But he finds nothing to hold; the moment he applies the slightest bit of pressure, his hand passes right through. "A hologram?"
"Pretty neat, huh. Pewter has been cooking this up for the last 6 years."
He takes all of her in. She's slightly tinted blue, like she is when he sees her inside the VR simulation. The warm heat radiating from her hand is new, however, and it grounds him, reminding him this isn't a virtual reality.
Looking down, he finds Tama's real body on the ground, her pupil glowing blue and mimicking the actions of her project body. Or is it the other way around, instead?
"Hey, eyes up here." She says coyly.
Despite himself, he feels a different internal heat creeping up his face.
"N-no, I-I-"
She pushes herself as close as she can without phasing through him. The heat she emits in a particular area could almost trick his brain into thinking something was really pushing against him.
"I don't mind if you look, but I'm sure you would want to do it in private." she whispers in his ear and how is she doing that!?
"Ventriloquism." she answers. Oh, did he say that outloud?
"You did. Say, who's the prettiest in the whole world?"
Ryuki clamps his jaw down.
"Hmph, spoil sport. But that's OK, I already know." she says, a smug smile on her face.
Suddenly her body flickers off and on for an instant.
"Tama...?"
"This takes quite a bit of battery, so I can only hold it for six minutes." she explains. "For now, at least."
The feeling of a time limit reminds him what he needs to speak about. Encouraged by her touch, he begins again.
"What if she was right, and this world is only a simulation." Somewhere, something trembles, but it quiets down again. "How can we know what we perceive is real?"
Tama looks surprised. "I thought you didn't believe a word that To-"
"Don't!" he doesn't scream, not quite, but the desperation in his voice stops Tama. "Don't say her name. Please "
The AI's eyes soften, and resumes stroking his cheek, near his lips. "I won't. But I thought you didn't believe her bullshit?"
"I want to, I wholeheartedly want to think it was all the ramblings of a mad woman, but I saw it."
"It?"
"The hole, the seam. In her office six years ago, when you were unconscious. It was... Horrifying." His eyes look haunted.
He remembers. He didn't at first, when his memory was spotty and he forgot six whole years of his life, in this one and in the other. As if the space between the years didn't matter to the narrative.
But piece by piece, he started to remember. When he told her the nil number, how gravity didn't matter anymore and he could walk through solid objects as if they weren't there.
And he can still feel the hole at the edge of his consciousness, just outside his blind spot, and how the seams fray further during his episodes.
The hole's getting bigger.
But even then, he can't be sure. He can no longer be sure of his own senses. Was he still hallucinating? Was his mind conjuring a simulated world inside a simulated world?
And if it’s really there and it keeps growing, then what will happen to the rest of the world? Will it fall through him?
'This world will soon collapse'
Had she made him an instrument of destruction? To fulfill her twisted desire to bring humanity to Moksha?
Why did he know the nil number? What compelled him to utter it out? Why, at that moment, was he burning with such curiosity at what would happen next?
Was there really a Frayer that acted through him? Through everyone? Was he just a puppet whose limbs were being pulled against his will?
The ringing is back. It's low, but he can still hear it.
"Ryuki." Tama calls for him back to reality, and the noise quiets down.
"Tama, what do I do?" he can't hide the raw fear that escapes from his mouth. "How can I stop it? Can I even stop it?"
“...”
"You deny it." Her words are simple, but her voice carries unequivocal resolution. It stops his spiraling thoughts dead in his tracks. "You deny it, again and again!"
His eyes look at her in awe, and she continues on, her voice further sure of herself.
"Can you feel the wood chips under your fingertips, the wind on your skin and my hands on you?"
He nods, numbly. The movement makes her fingers sink into his body ever so slightly, but the heat he feels grounds him instead, unlike the coldness of the void.
"This is the real world. It can't be anything else but real. And so are your feelings. You are as real as the world you live in, and the actions you take in it are because of your own will. I mean, who else would try to console the criminals he arrests?"
He huffs a short, airy laugh.
"And I mean, look at me! I don't have the same sense that humans like you have, but even so I can still perceive the world, I still have feelings, and even if I have a duty and a purpose, I have autonomy. I'm here with you, because I want to be here, Ryuki, and I promise you that I'll always be.
"I'll bring you back to reality, whenever you need me."
Something swells in his chest and his eyes are suddenly blurry. He feels her thumb stroking under his eyes.
Suddenly, he feels eyes on the back of his head. She's there, again, looking down on him from his own shadow, chilling him to the bone. His head automatically goes to turn back, but Tama stops him with her hand on his face.
"Hey, you shouldn't turn away when a beautiful girl is talking to you." she smiles reassuringly. "What do you sense?" she asks, even though he knows she knows she can't see her .
But he answers anyway.
"It's... h-her. She's... It's like she's behind me, haunting me."
"Ryuki, that bitch is dead."
The colorful language surprises him, and she has all his attention.
"Is like in the virtual reality simulation. Unnecessary things are ignored."
That gets a surprised laugh out of him.
"If she left her so-called 'simulation' then she cannot exist outside of it, as long as you don't perceive her. You exist in the world because you perceive it, and in return it perceives you, from the people around you to the actions you make. As long as you can make a statement of your existence, you will remain here."
It's odd. The way she talks, it's almost like she believes him, more than he can believe in himself.
"That's why she stalks you like a crazy ex, because you're the only one left to perceive her. And once you deny her, then she will really cease to exist."
He's stunned. Until this moment, he felt so lost, so afraid. But Tama's words, her steel-clad belief, made him feel more brave than he ever felt in this and all other timelines.
Her image flickers again, and this time it disappears. Tama silently looks up to him, and he crouches to pick her up. She brings her to his eye socket, but instead of absorbing back the nano-paste that composes her gooey body, she nuzzles against his cheek.
"Kill that crazy nihilistic bitch for good this time. No one is allowed to give you a hard time but me, OK?"
"Yeah."
Once she rests safely and snuggly in his eye socket, he closes his eyes and turns .
He sees her.
She is there, at the other side of the hole. And for the first time, ever since he first saw her and all the other times in the other world, he sees fear in her eyes. There's cold sweat on her forehead, and her hand opens and closes nervously.
With resolve he didn't know he still had, he walks forward until he's in front of her.
Her hand reaches out. He doesn't know if it's to choke him, or to try to appeal to him, but it's pointless, the moment her arm tries to go through the hole it vanishes. For some reason, he thinks that there's a two way mirror between them.
She tries to speak, but even though her mouth opens and closes, no sound comes out, as if she was on mute.
She is powerless. All her cunning and scheming led right to this moment, and by her own hand she trapped herself.
He wonders if she felt even a fraction of this fear when she took her own life in the other world. He doubts it. She clearly believed it wouldn't be her end there. But it was, her death in the other world was permanent, a fact of reality.
She would sacrifice the whole world, even herself, to reach this point. But even her, despite her beliefs, didn't know what she would find on the other side, and now she instinctively tries to survive.
A human like himself at the end of the day.
He's almost feeling pity for her. But he still remembers.
He remembers everything.
With his hands, he feels around for the edges of the hole until he grabs something with his right hand. Somehow, it feels like both a thin cloth and a hard, solid crystal. The warp and weft.
He looks at her, again. And he hesitates. She's indeed a monster of her own making, but she was also a mother to someone. A human that cared for another.
The him from before, even the him from the other world, maybe they would try to pull her out, or really take pity on her. But she has haunted him long enough.
But can he really be true to his justice like this?
At this moment, he remembered a few words he read somewhere.
"Schrodinger's cat. Have you heard of it?" he asks out loud. Talking to her makes her seem more real, and now he can hear a bit of her voice, though it's masked by that awful radio noise. She nods.
"It's a thought experiment. As long as he's not observed, the cat is both alive and dead."
He closes his eyes again.
He thrust his left hand forward and closes it. He doesn't feel anything, only an all encompassing chill.
And then, he pulls. One hand out of the void, and the other closing down the hole. He opens his mind eye again. The hole is mending by itself, and he can't see anyone else around himself. There's only himself, and the wall from which he closed the hole.
The wall stretches in all directions infinitely. Perhaps this is the edge of the universe she- Tokiko spoke about, the end of the black hole where all the information of the world is recorded.
He looks at it more closely, but it just looks blank to him.
Huffing a laugh, he turns away from it and opens his eyes.
He's surprised to notice he's not by his lonesome anymore. They're keeping a bit of distance, but Date, the Mizukis, and even Boss came to check up on him. When they see him open his eyes, they start to approach him.
"Hey, you OK?" Date voices their concerns.
"You looked like you were deep in thought. We were on our way to you when Tama stopped us."
His eyes go from one to the next one, and he smiles, a bit bashful. "I'm..."
He inhales deeply, and notices how there's a weight off his back.
"I think I'm actually fine, for once. More than OK, even."
The tension in their shoulders drop, and Date hooks an arm round his shoulders and Bibi hooks her arm around his, and between them they drag him back to the party.
In the back of his mind, in that little room Tama made for herself, she sits in her velvet chair, and asks, "Did you do it, then?"
"You see, I don't actually know. And I think I don't care to know."
Tama smiles softly, "it wouldn't be you otherwise," she says, fondly.
"But, being honest, I'd be glad if I never see her again."
"That makes two of us! Good riddance, hear ye!"
Her smile turns more predatory. "But, you know, seeing you all resolute like that it’s pretty sexy. I think you've earned yourself a good dream tonight."
"Huh?"
His dumbfounded question gets no answer, instead the curtain that separates the room closes. Before he can ponder on it anymore, he's brought back to the outside world when Boss pushes another champagne glass into his hand.
"Everyone!" Lien's voice raises above the chatter, and everyone turns to look at him. Besides him, Kizuna has a professional-looking camera in her hands. A tripod stands beside her.
Everyone gets into whatever position they can manage. Ryuki ends up in the front and near the middle, both Mizukis on one side.
Without warning, Tama and Aiba project themselves to fill the missing spots. Aiba besides Date and behind the Mizukis, and Tama at his other side.
There's a flash of the camera.
He looks at himself in the photo over Kizuna's shoulder. He's really smiling after what seems years ago. In the photo, he also sees the people he managed to save in this world.
This happiness, it was worth protecting, and he would never allow anyone else to take it from him.