Chapter 3

It was one of those nights where you’re too tired to sleep and you lie awake wondering about things that might have been. It was not close to dawn and the night was terrifyingly beautiful but all at once placid. The room was deathly silent and in the corners, the shadows were still, and the curtains were drawn, and I lay with my head back against the pillow encompassed by the warmth of my own body. Senses were groggy - neither awake nor asleep – and all I wanted to do was to sit and stare, but not think, oh no, never think. And yet my mind slipped and I thought about my sister. I thought about those last few years, how much of an idiot I was.

Admittedly, I had been drinking rather heavily in the hours previous, but I really wanted not to think about the past. Once I began to sober up in the early hours of a hot summer’s day, my gaze veered from the unmoving obscurities and shadows plastered to the wall out into the glistening dark and to the promiscuous moon that sat above me as a reminder of my throwaway existence. Then, suddenly, I became awfully aware of my own depravity and I was flooded with thoughts and feelings, all at once, overwhelming, prodigious and devastating.

When you first end up with those sorts of people, you don’t hesitate to do anything. We were all quite young, sixteen and below – I believe I was the youngest – but the boys below ten, like me, well. I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing or why.

With the shit that went down at home, it was no wonder I ended up with people like that – the kind your parents warn you about, the ones you’re not supposed to look straight in the eye. But that was all in the past and far behind me, and there was nothing that could be done about my actions.

When the banging on the door started, I barely moved, drifting in and out of restless sleep. Its persistence gradually roused me and I stumbled down the stairs, unwillingly, flicking a few lights on as I wandered drearily about. Yanking the door with any effort I could muster, I was greeted by a silhouetted figure whose features were dimly lit. The moon emitted the murky and obscured light from which I determined the outline of my visitor.

The angular shadows looked so severely weathered that they seemed soft and swirling behind his form. Unnerving and treacherous, the deathly silence made me apprehensive, and yet the words had been blurted out, sticky and powerful as they fell from my mouth. “Can I help you?”

The response was a shocking bout of laughter and a wisping murmur of, “Yes, I certainly think so,” and he seemed patently lacking in any sort of formal introduction that when he took a few steps forward so I would better see him, I froze.

He appeared young. I say this mainly because of his lips that rose up the right side of his face, curled into an expectant smile. His skin was dark, like soft oak and he had evident cheekbones that added to his youth; the moonlight hit the rounded point of his cheek and ran down the off-tan skin to his jaw that was pointed and slightly chiselled. His hair was a colour close enough to be called black, but it wasn’t – it was softer than that. I met his eyes last, and in that moment I decided he was very old, because that was what I saw; a great elapse of time, measured in pain and loss, in those sea-like eyes of his.

God, I thought, and probably for all the wrong reasons.

It was the guy from the market place – the one with the Japanese name, though he certainly didn’t look remotely Japanese. I bit my lip and looked out into the incongruity of the darkness behind him.

The man smiled at me grudgingly, coughing out, “Yeah, boy, I’m alone.”

I drew my eyes away from the dark, drawing them up to his face carefully. There was no trust in my veins for this man.

He snorted, shifting uncomfortably, head snapping around at the slightest inclination of sound. I opened my mouth to speak, but paused, my lips drifting to meet as Hiruko turned around, hands darting out of his pockets to the front of my face.

“Look,” he began, obviously nervous, with eyes wide and like glimmering orbs as if begging me to pay attention to his every word, “I swear it. I’m alone, I am – and that’s dangerous for an official, out here and-”

“Woah,” I murmured, “Woah, what do you mean by out here?” He stammered in response, swallowing slowly.

“I’m just not supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to be here at all,” he said, nodding encouragingly so I knew he was talking about the markets, “but I figured you’d do a runner if the First Division came down looking for you.”

My eyes shot up to him, “Woah,” I said again, retreating a few steps behind the threshold, “Shit, man, the First Division?”

Hiruko sighed, at an utter loss. “Look, can I come in?”

“Hell no!” I grunted, about to slam the door before the guy had pushed the difficult thing away and had slipped by me into the disgruntled wreck of the living room.

“Shit,” I said again, closing it behind him and sliding into the room. “They seriously got nothing better to do?”

Hiruko raised an eyebrow, turning to me slightly. “You know about this?”

I paused, scoffing. “What do you mean?” I crossed my arms, leaning myself against the wall. Hiruko slipped off his jacket and folded it carefully across the back of the peeling vinyl of the lounge chair, returning to me. “I stole the shit; I’d think I know about it.”

He sniffed. “Y-you stole – no, Aaron, that’s not what I’m here for.”

My shoulders slackened. “Oh. I – I thought-”

“What, you thought the First-bloody-Division would come down here for that, a petty crime?”

I shrugged, and turned away, a flash of burning red cheeks and pursed lips.

Hiruko relaxed back in his chair. “No,” he said again, “No, nothing to do with that.” He paused as I calmed myself. “And I’ll make sure that’s overlooked, for future reference.”

“F-future reference?” I mumbled. Hiruko waved me towards him, and I followed blindly so I was in front of him.

“Let me take a look at you,” he grunted, grabbing my jaw with pointer finger and thumb, drawing me close into the light. He clicked his tongue, eyeing me like some mounted prized butterfly, and for a second there was this silent passion in his eyes as if he’d waited for this moment for agonising years. And then, all too quickly, soft eyes turned cynical and the man recoiled, lightly slapping my cheek.

“You reek,” he murmured, looking down and away, almost apologetic.

I blurted out a quick, “Sorry,” and, sniffing, shot up with burning cheeks.

“You want a drink or something?” I asked, wandering away from the scent of his wafting cologne that sat blunt at the back of my throat – it was earthy and overbearingly fresh, touched with what I now know to be a hint of labdanum.

Hiruko chuckled out, “I think you’ve had enough already,” and could be heard sifting through his jacket pocket to wrench out a crumpled piece of paper that he laid out on his lap. I watched him from the counter with heavy eyes and he bit his lip, raising his eyes to meet my own. “Hmm?” I shrugged and he coughed out, “Oh right - just some water, thanks,” returning to the paper on his lap.

Sighing, I quickly popped two painkillers down my throat and filled a half-dirtied glass for the guest.

“Look, Hiruko,” I sighed, recoiling into the arm chair by his side, “I don’t even know who the hell you are. Like, really.” Hiruko inspected the dirtied glass before taking a quick swig. “Why are you even here?”

Hiruko’s head snapped up and a coy little smile appeared on his face. “So quickly, Aaron? I only just got here.”

I sighed, defeated, and slouched into the chair, feeling extremely uncomfortable with the entire situation. “W-well,” I stammered, looking about me, “What exactly do you propose?”

Hiruko quickly smiled and whispered, “Oh, simple conversation,” and suddenly we were both flung into a void of impenetrable silence that only managed to increase the awkwardness between us.

I closed my eyes. “Uh…um. W-” I sighed once more, “Where’re you from?”

His lip quivered and the right corner of his mouth was suddenly upturned into a smile resembling a sneer.

“Kiso village,” he bit his lip and sniffed, “Well,” he murmured, “Close to it. It’s a tiny little place in the Nagano Prefecture.”

“Japan?”

Hiruko smiled in response and looked down. “Beautiful place,” his eyes softened as he spoke, “And there was this forest. It stretched along the head waters of the Kiso River and,” he paused clasping his hands together, “it is perhaps the most serene place I’ve ever had the fortune to visit.” He smirked slightly, “I felt perfectly alone.” Hiruko shot up and met my eyes. “Do you know what it’s like to be so wonderfully at peace with the world that you stop hating everything?”

I stared at him. My mind ran blank and all I could do was stare with jealous eyes.

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“No.” I murmured, swallowing and turning away. “I really don’t.”

“Maybe you should pay a visit one day.”

I smiled brazenly, “Impossible. I can’t jump between worlds.”

“I can.” He murmured quickly, darting cocky eyes up to meet my own. “But that will come much later. For now, we’ll ignore that fact and focus on the now.”

I suddenly felt ridiculously apprehensive of the man before me; the feeling had been swept up inside me in a matter of moments and now it was all I could feel. In an attempt to overcome it, I stood up and smiled sheepishly.

“I, uh…” I sighed, “I kinda want you to leave…”

Hiruko’s face softened. “I’m sure you would,” he muttered, rising to meet me. “But I’m afraid that’s not currently an option.”

For a long moment he refused to look away from my eyes and I eventually let out a defeated sigh and returned to my seat slowly. He nodded once and did the same, looking down and biting his lip. “Today, at the market place,” he began, “I thought it might be safer – f-for me, I mean, as an official - to approach you in a public place.”

I nodded slowly murmuring, “Right,” and then drew my eyes away. “But what did you mean by ‘it’s coming’?”

Hiruko’s eyebrows drew together in a twist of silent torture. “The ultimate danger.”

I scoffed and raised a hand to my forehead, “W-which is what?”

He clasped his hands to together and shrugged, “Fate, destiny,” he looked cautiously behind him to check the curtains were drawn before murmuring, “death. Call it what you want. All I know,” he reclined into the peeling vinyl that curled around his thin frame as if welcoming an old guest, “is that I was sent a personal message to come get you off your ass and up to the fucking Governance because,” he let out a quick and riled sigh, “because it’s our belief we have a – a…” he trailed off, gesturing to the air with frenzied hands, “a situation on our hands.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Care to be more specific?”

Hiruko was a quick smile and a flare of nostrils before he murmured, “No, not really,” and quickly gulped down the remains of the water, reclining back into his chair.

“Are you a superstitious person?” Hiruko leaned forward in his chair as he spoke.

I frowned. “Ah… no, not really…,” fidgeting uncomfortably, I shrugged and murmured, “Why?”

“Even now, as you’re sitting in Purgatory?”

“I just – t-that sorta thing never really appealed to me, I guess, I dunno.” Quickly, a hand was raised to the back of my neck.

Hiruko lent back into the chair, hands in front of his shapeless figure, “Alright, alright,” he dropped them to his side where they joined again momentarily in his lap. “Try and drop your defences, kid, I’m trying to get to know you.”

Once again, I scoffed. “A stranger in my home. A bloody Tower Official strutting in here like you know me, not telling me what the hell you're doing here, let alone what the fuck you need me for, and you expect me to play along with your little games?”

Hiruko looked away, seemingly unhurt.

“I am Hiruko Yasukawa, General of the 2nd Division of the Complex Army.” He rose slowly as he spoke, “I lived for twenty-seven years in the world of the living, and I cheated fate to live here for hundreds more,” he stared me down with cold eyes. “I don’t care if I’m making you feel uncomfortable because I know this operation won’t last if it’s to be constantly subjected to your feelings, do you understand me boy?”

I could feel the fire behind my own eyes – it was a look of disgust that stared out onto the delicate but determined orbs of the man before me. An uncertain and misguided rage was building up inside me and it wasn’t long before I could taste the blood in my mouth surrounding the prickling, dull pain on the corner of my tongue, caused by a canine and molar digging deep into the fleshy organ. I remember thinking how unfortunate it was that those teeth were my own, and how I’d much rather prefer them to belong to another, preferably someone pretty and stupid, someone who would let me not think.

Riled as I was, the burning in my eyes disappeared as I closed them, tight, murmuring a bitter, “Just tell me what you want,” before I relaxed into the wrinkly confines of the lounge.

“It really isn’t what I want, Aaron,” he lent forward further, placing a hand on my own and staring me down once more, “I swear it. And I’m sorry, for whatever follows.”

I really didn’t understand what he was talking about or why he bothered to touch my hand to tell me it, but now I think he knew. I think Hiruko has always understood me a lot more than I’ve ever understood myself, and even if we’d never met before that night, he could tell what it meant to me to have someone even bother to look me in the eye.

I rose an eyebrow in response, and shrugged, and he realised I was bothered by his hand being where it was, so it was lifted off and away back to his lap.

He looked up with his eyes, rolling them around his head as if somewhere in the darkness behind them, an answer would be there. Then, suddenly, he latched onto something and pulled his lips together, and then said, “There’s this room,” he sniffed, “A tiny room that sits in a sealed off corner in the inner city, and though it looks entirely insignificant, it has been one of the most defining points in any decision we’ve ever made in the last,” he paused, rolling his hand around in my general direction, “several years.” He narrowed his gaze, “It was there before I began my command.”

I shrugged again, “And? What do I have to do with any of this?”

He smiled coyly, “Ah, you see, in this room are a great number of tapestries.”

The look on my face must have been completely bewildered, thus Hiruko carried on with slow deliberation, never breaking his gaze.

“The first one of these that was uncovered was hung in the office of the Governance. It depicted a battle, but a battle that had yet to occur.”

I furrowed my brow. “How did you know the battle had yet to occur?”

“Well, boy, I was in it.”

I raised an eyebrow, about to ask how he knew – I was entirely sceptical about the complete situation – when Hiruko said, “Our defining features were noted. You may think it was all a massive coincidence, as many members did, as the Governance did, and it was overlooked. Very few considered it to be essential to anything.”

“So?”

Hiruko smiled, “So, when a great battle emerged, and I along with many others from that tapestry were flung into the heat of it, when soldiers that were depicted bloodied and brutally murdered on the field ended up that way, that’s when everyone started paying attention.”

I swallowed and crossed my legs, waiting for him to continue. “Some more of the things were hauled out, and a room was created. It burns with the powerful magic weaved into those tapestries.”

I scoffed. I had avoided any mention of magic throughout my entire life. I had never encountered it. Never before had I the opportunity to witness these mystical properties, and I was not planning on taking a stranger’s word for it when he suddenly pointed at me.

“When did you do that to your hair?”

I frowned slightly, pulling down the bleached locks to my eyes and shrugged. “Shortly before I died.”

“Were you blond before?”

I nodded once, smoothing the hair back until it fell in its natural place. It felt like matted straw, I decided, unwashed and dying under the poisonous chemical I had lathered into my scalp when I was barely fifteen. For a second, I remembered staring into the fogged glass chipped and dirtied that had sat in the bathroom of an abandoned house. The side door had been boarded up, but one was loose; we’d noticed the nail hanging precariously from the hold, and in that moment I had wished so feverishly for shoes. After tugging at the thing for a short while, it had given way, and plunked to the ground where dry tufts of grass had sprung, up through the broken concrete, stubborn and thirsty. The plank was bent back and spun around on its single nail hinge until an entrance was visible – and of course, we were the perfect size. The three of us clamoured in, cursing and shoving our way into the structure while down the street the rest of waited in case we had to bolt, or we needed some help carrying out our findings. I’d found the glass cabinet overturned; shards were scattered, sharp and unavoidable, over the rotting floorboards. I had wanted to reach the cabinet, for whatever reason, and had taken off my shorts at the door – the other kids had laughed – and had used it as a means of avoiding the glass. I had placed them in a fairly clear spot and had jumped to them; kneeling in amongst the shards and fragments I had reached for the handle and pulled upwards and the glass that had been clinging desperately to the frame broke over my hand, splintering the flesh with a tiny shard of glass.

When I had screamed, the other two boys had ducked about, frightened the noise would alert someone of our presence.

“Fuck!” I grabbed at the wound, pushing back onto my shorts, frowning as I pulled the thing from the flesh. I watched the blood spurt out of the wound and flow over the flayed skin, and had tried to stop it with the bottom of my hand. The pain was sharp, acute and aware and my attempts to blunt it did nothing.

“Shit…” I murmured, looking up to the other two whose mouths were open, eyes wide and wary. “That seriously hurt”, I murmured, pushing myself up with legs alone and carefully stood where I was. Something caught my eye in amongst the fragments of the cabinet.

“Painkillers”, one of the boys said, jumping to my shorts and peering behind me. He sniggered, “Might be useful,” and carefully removed the bottle from the broken shards, lightly shaking any remains from the bottle’s surface.

I sighed, reaching in also, and pulled out something else – a plastic jar, open with lid slightly askew. I peered into and was sent away reeling with the smell.

“What is it?” One of the two asked as he examined the painkillers.

“Hair bleach,” I murmured, grinning, carefully making my way through the sea of broken glass with my shorts. One of them found an old rag and had tied it around the wound. It was out of mere luck the wound did not become infected. Once I’d stepped into my shorts, the idea came about to do it, and thus it was done.

They guided me to the bathroom and lathered the stuff in my hair. It had been the first time I’d seen myself in a mirror in months, and all I had done was stare. The dirt was plastered to my face, my clothes were torn and I had looked tired, I remembered, so extremely exhausted with everything that the circles under my eyes seemed permanent and the lines on my forehead spoke of ages rather than years. It was shortly after that that a fragment of my skull imploded into my brain.

When my eyes refocused, Hiruko was staring at me with soft eyes, hand slightly outstretched. His eyebrows furrowed together and lent back.

“I see,” he murmured, and turned his head away before muttering a soft, “I’m sorry. I’m quite sure you just want to waste away your existence here---”

“Yes,” I whispered, staring him down with the fire in my eyes, “Surely, that’s all I mean to do.” I swallowed, scoffing.

He smiled, “Evidently,” and before I had a chance to counter, he was up and out of the chair staring down at me.

“There is one of these tapestries, of you Aaron, and it is so clearly you, I can see the likeness down to the ice of your hair and the fire of your eyes.”

And for a good minute there, I could not breathe. That’s when my heart started picking up and slowly it rose to the thunderous crescendo at the speed of that of a hummingbird’s wings, whirring away behind the wiring of my chest.

I stared at him for a long while before murmuring, “And it’s me?” He nodded slowly, reclining back into the chair. I thought a lot of things then. I wasn’t sure if he was crazy or stupid or had some alternate agenda to go with the story, but he shot up and said, “I know it’s crazy, I know it, better than anyone. But it’s real. I swear it’s real, Aaron, and you’ve got to believe me, because there’s no way a battle should be happening any time soon but-”

“A battle?”

Hiruko gave a wry smile, “There’s an undeniable conflict within the tapestry.” After a moment of thought he said, “I’ll take you. After training, when everything’s got to be organised.” He was staring at the floor and I could see he was struggling, about to say something and then suddenly decided against it. “I sound crazy”, he whispered out, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or if he simply said to get it out of his head, to form the thing with words and send them out into the air.

“You do”, I said, rising to meet him. “Why don’t I know about any of this?” But before he could answer I put a hand to his face and asked, “You do know this is, like, bat-shit crazy, right?”

He looked at me for a moment before letting out a light chuckle. “I do”, he turned his head, snorting, “I really do, I know”, and then rose a hand to forehead, resting it there before looking at me with this content smile.

“Maybe we should continue this tomorrow or something”, I murmured, blurting out the invitation with such speed that by the time Hiruko had tilted his head and smiled his acceptance, I was feeling particularly horrified.

“That’s perhaps the best plan I’ve heard all century”, he murmured, and I very nearly laughed at the stupidity of the comment, but found myself too tired to manage it.

He looked at me as I scratched the back of my head and nodded. I’m sure he understood more than anyone the feeling of relief when one is finally overcome by sleep.

I pulled myself onto the rumpled sheets and closed my eyes. Then, just as the thudding of my heart got softer, the rain started.