So, in addition to putting in the order for the art supplies, while at the console, I’d also made an executive decision in my capacity as part of the triune head of Ward E’s CMT to have Mr. Himichi’s case assigned to me.
Now, with only Andalon to accompany me, I stood on my dead, tired legs at the side of the bed of my childhood hero, painfully aware I was being selfish. Yes, Kosuke Himichi was in need of help, but so were countless others. But he was important to me, and, I admit, that importance gave him power over me. The yearning for gods we could hoist above ourselves was, perhaps, the quintessential human longing. Through them, the world received the order we wished it to have. They let us believe the leviathan had a tamer.
So, when one of your gods came to you, battered and broken, how could you not give them all of your everythings?
Or was I just rationalizing it?
Andalon sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up at Mr. Himichi in wonder.
“That’s really Mr. Michi?” she asked, for the third time.
Yes, I thought-said, really really.
Andalon cried tears of joy as she basked in his presence.
Though I didn’t mind Andalon being there, she couldn’t help but be an uncomfortable reminder of all that had transpired since the world had begun to end. It was nothing she did; her presence alone was enough.
Even at the earliest stage of her manifestations, Andalon had demonstrated knowledge of Himichi’s Catamander Brave. Most importantly, she had cited that story’s wyrms as the reason why she, herself, was turning people into wyrms.
As in the manga, it turned out salvation was wyrm-based. Who would’ve thunk it?
“Andalon did!” Andalon said.
(Recall, she can hear everything I think.)
Also, somehow, the manga was connected to the Angel—Angels; plural, I thought, correcting myself—Hell, and the Last Days.
And now, the guy who’d written it all was three feet in front of me, looking up at me from under the covers with an attentiveness that stole my breath away. He sat up in his bed, blinking and sniffling. The streaks of tears on his cheeks had only just begun to dry. His lips pawed at the air, reaching for speech, but not quite finding it.
Well, at least I wasn’t the only one to be tongue tied.
I didn’t know how to begin, let alone where. My thoughts snowballed down a hill, spinning faster and faster, but never going anywhere, except to the metaphorical rocks where they dashed to pieces to the accompaniment of me trying to clear my throat.
After a couple of seconds going nowhere, I realized I wasn’t as ready for this as I thought I was, and so I pressed the pause button—figuratively speaking—and let time slow to a crawl.
Honestly, if I ever met the Angel—our Angel—I would complain that He hadn’t given human beings this self-pause ability. It would have solved so many problems.
Anyhow, my surroundings transformed as I recentered my consciousness into my Main Menu. The cluttered, close-quarters of Mr. Himichi’s hospital room gave way to an endless expanse of still waters and day’s sky.
I dematerialized my hazmat suit with a thought. Yes, I might have still been wearing the darn thing out in Thick World, but in here, I was just a figment of my own imagination, and I had standards, and not being hot, sweaty, and miserable was absolutely one of them.
I ran my fingers through my hair.
Angel, that felt good.
I was fully me again—human me—100%.
All of five seconds passed before my doubts took over. I glanced down at the ground and muttered. “Who am I kidding? This is going to be a disaster.”
Andalon looked up at me. “What’s a matter, Mr. Genneth?”
“I can’t do this, Andalon. I can’t.”
“You said that before,” she said, “but… then you did the stuff. The thing.”
“This is different,” I said.
Andalon glanced down in thought, and then looked back up at me. “Is it ‘cause of Mr. Michi?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very yes.”
“Why?” she asked.
“So, ignoring the fact that I’ve literally dreamed of this happening… Mr. Himichi has probably already begun to lose his memories. The moment I open my mouth and start talking about the wyrm stuff, he’s going to think I’m crazy.”
Andalon paused. “Why?” she asked.
“Because normal people don’t talk about wyrms and the afterlife and apocalypses,” I said.
“Why?” she asked.
Yes, it was cute—especially if, as I suspected, she wasn’t doing it intentionally—but, other than that, it was not helping!
I ran my hands through my hair. (Again, this felt very nice.)
“You could always just wait for him to go away,” Andalon said.
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“When he becomes a ghost, I mean,” she said.
“That’s called dying, Andalon.”
Oddly, Andalon shook her head. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “Dying is when you go away forever. But Mr. Michi would still be here, he’d just be all ghosty.”
Her words hit me like a bucket of ice water.
“Angel…” I muttered.
I was looking at this the wrong way. I was treating this as my one and only shot to learn the truth from him, but that wasn’t what it was. It wasn’t an end, it was a beginning—or, at least, the beginning of a beginning.
I needed Mr. Himichi to get to know me now, while there was still time. There was no predicting might happen going forward. If I wasn’t nearby when he died, his soul might get uploaded into another transformee, and then I’d never be able to find him. But, if he knew who I was, then, at least a chance. He could pester his wyrm to go find me.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I muttered, as I closed my eyes and moved my consciousness back into my body.
I let time roll on like it should, though I still didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Mr. Himichi took the liberty of breaking the ice for me. He did it with a question and a breath.
“So, you’re a doctor, are you? Well,” he said, “what kind?”
“I’m uh,” I stammered, “I’m a neuropsychiatrist.”
“Really?” he asked, flatly.
Mr. Himichi sniffled again, his eyes threatening to water. For a moment, he turned his head to the left, watching the hallway through the room’s window wall.
I walked up to the glass and drew the curtains closed.
“Thank you for that,” he said.
I nodded. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ve known you for only a little bit of time,” he said, “most of it less sane than I would like, but, already,” turning slowly back to me, “I wish,” he glanced down, “I wish more people would do as you did—listen and act, rather than conclude and react, or turn their heads away like nothing ever was.”
Without looking away—how could I turn away?—I reached back and palmed the air until my gloved fingers landed on the supple faux leather of a wheeled stool, which I then rolled under me and sat myself down in, minding my tail. I wouldn’t have been able to keep standing, even if my legs weren’t brittle and dead; not with the words I had on my mind.
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“I’ve done my fair share of work in our Mental Health Department in Ward C,” I said. “As useful as the tech might be, sometimes, there’s no substitute for the old fashioned approach,” I said. “The t-tactile stimulus, you know.”
There was a pause. “I’m dying.”
“Th—”
“—Don’t take me for a ride, Doctor—”
He squinted at me, but wasn’t able to read my name-tag.
“—Howle,” I said, “Genneth Howle.”
“I’ve been dying for a while,” he coughed, “and not just because of the chemotherapy.”
“W-What?”
Mr. Himichi had cancer?!
Andalon looked up at me. “What’s cancer, Mr. Genneth?”
A nasty disease, I thought-said. It kills people.
Mr. Himichi rolled his eyes over to me. “Eh, it’s a kind of slow-growing multiple myeloma. It has a long name which is difficult to pronounce, and which I no longer remember.” He chuckled. “They told me it’s treatable, but not curable, but… look at me now. I’m no longer worried about blood cancer.” His expression turned distant. “Now… everyone is dying.” He gave me a wry look. “You’re probably dying, too,” he said, “only I’m better at it.”
He managed a smirk, but then, there came a pause. In the silence, I watched his thoughts wander down some pensive trail.
“I can feel my mind going,” he said, softly. “I made the mistake of turning on the television. There aren’t any shows anymore, only ads. One showed a beach and, in front of that, the sea, but it took me a minute to remember what the sea was. Until I did, all I saw was the nameless bigness beneath the sky.” His face turned to stone. “It took me a minute to remember that I was looking at the sea.”
He coughed again, wincing in pain.
Unable to bear the sight, I stood up, picked up the toppled IV stand and set up the morphine drip. But as I moved to insert the IV line into the port on Mr. Himichi’s arm, he lifted his hand and shook his head.
“I don’t want false hope, Dr. Howle. I don’t have enough time for it.” He looked askance as he spoke, avoiding my eyes. “My mind is already growing cloudy. The drugs make it worse, and… I don’t want that.”
I bowed my head in apology. “I’m sorry.” I removed the bag from the drip.
It was almost empty, anyway.
Mr. Himichi tilted his head toward me slightly. “I thank you for intervening in that ridiculousness back there, and thank you even more for having art supplies sent to this room.” He raised an eyebrow. “They will be coming soon, won’t they? The supplies?” He stared at his hands. “I worry about how much time I have left. The sand grows finer with each passing moment,” he added, in a rough whisper.
“Yes,” I said, nodding, “they’ll be here. Soon.”
He nodded back. “Good, good. Now, if you do not mind, unless you have something to say, I would appreciate if you—”
“—Thank you,” I muttered.
They were so inadequate, those words. I felt like a dog offering its master a dead bird it had found in the road.
Mr. Himichi wheezed in response. I wondered if I was to blame.
Sitting back onto the stool, I leaned forward, scooting the stool a couple inches closer to the side of his bed.
“Thank you,” I repeated. The words were stronger, clearer than before. “Thank you for the heart of my childhood,” I said. “Thank you for all the daydreams. And,” my voice nearly broke, “thank you for getting Cat back home.”
For once, I wasn’t the most astonished person in the room. Expressions mixed on his face in a four-way collision of smirk, sigh, smile, and a sob. He looked at me for a while, and again—even more strongly than before—I felt like the dog who’d brought his master the dead bird.
“If you’re here to ask about the release date of my next project,” he said, “I’m afraid it’s going to be delayed,” he said, almost casually dismissive. And yet, beneath his pursed lips, his eyes had gone a-twinkle.
“The fans always want me to get back to work, but, you know,” he said, “no matter how much they want it, I want it even more. More than they could ever know.”
So, moment of truth, over the course of my life, I’d sent hundreds of letters to him—all the fan mail you could imagine. But never once had he responded. And there’d always be a little part of me that resented him for that. I resented his silence and anachoresis.
Why did he hide himself away from the world?
Yet that resentment would never overtake my adoration for him. It couldn’t.
“I would never even think of ordering you around, sir,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not my place.”
Mr. Himichi let out a sound that, at first, I thought was a cough, but then I realized, no, it was a scoff.
“Nonsense,” he said. “You’re the audience. You order me around just by existing. In fact, I’d say it was your duty to order me around.” He raised an eyebrow. “You’re doing it now, even as we speak—as well you should.”
“Excuse me?” I said. I felt as timid as a mouse. This was my god I was talking to, after all!
He smiled kindly. “It’s really quite simple. The audience tells me if I’ve done a good job. How else am I to know, except through them?”
“But… you’re… you!” I said. “You’re a genius.”
Mr. Himichi nodded. “That may be true, but… in the end, what does it matter? We’re all wanderers in the dark, looking for signs of light. Having others around gives me a reason to try to shine.”
He coughed terribly. By the time he’d finished, I’d already gotten up and brought him some water in a plastic cup, which he graciously accepted.
“A libation,” he said, approvingly. He drank it down, despite his trembling grip on the cup. “Ah,” he added, with a kind smile, “just what the doctor ordered.”
He winced with pain as he repositioned himself and his pillow.
“Dr. Howle,” he asked, turning to face me, “do you mind if I tell you a story? You are here, and the tale is important to me, and… I need the practice.” His expression grew quiet. “This is something I don’t want to forget.”
“It would be an honor, sir,” I said.
Andalon and I looked on in wonder as the old man spoke.
“I had a fearful childhood, growing up in Noyoko. I was introverted and shy, scared of nearly everything that moved. I took refuge in my imagination. I loved kaiju movies. Those fearsome creatures were so big, so strong; they weren’t afraid of anything.” One of the corners of his mouth curled in the slightest of smiles. “When I was on my own—which was often, for my parents worked long hours—I used to pretend I was a kaiju. I’d knock over play-sets and action figures, drunk on the fantasy of it all. Of course, my imagination only made it that much harder for me to make friends.” He lowered his head. “No one likes the chūnibyō.”
He coughed.
“I… remember when the Trenton Prelatory was overthrown. I was young so I didn’t understand what it meant, but I felt it. It was like the world was turning beneath my feet. I’ll never forget that feeling. I remember thinking that that strange, far-away place called Trenton must have been a magical land, the way people raved about riches to be gained there. It was like the legends of Uminokami, only this time, everything was turning out right. ‘Friendship’ was the word in everyone’s mouth. The Turentu émigrés had already brought so much wealth to our lands. People were agog with the thought of how much more they could gain, now that Trenton was liberalizing. It was a mad scramble. Even us kids were affected. It was the age of the transfer student, and I was one of them. My father took me out of my middle school and transferred me to one of the émigré schools, where anyone who was anyone would go, to get a bilingual education.” Mr. Himichi’s gaze fell. “I had struggled so much to form what few connections I had, and all of them vanished overnight, leaving me more alone than ever.”
“And yet…” he drew in a long, quavering breath, “that’s where I met her.” He gulped. “Riri…”
That last word was unlike the rest. There was no trace of an accent in any of his words. Like Suisei, Mr. Himichi’s Trenton was even cleaner than mine. But, with that last word, he’d dropped any pretense of rhoticity. He could have easily said, “Lily,” but he didn’t.
“I think everyone is born incomplete,” he said. “We are pieces of a puzzle, and we live out our lives searching for the parts that are missing. The question is: what are you willing to do in order to find it? And what happens when you finally do?”
I didn’t know what to say.
Tears trickled down his cheeks.“Riri was my missing piece. She and her family were from here—from Elpeck. They’d moved because her parents had gotten a job as localization consultants for real estate developers here in Mu. But, at the time, I hadn’t known any of that, nor had I cared. I only saw her.”
Here, his language turned to poetry.
“She was the girl with hair like the sun,” he said. “I was the boy with hair like the night. Silence bound us to one another. I didn’t talk to anyone because I was too afraid to open my mouth; she didn’t talk to anyone because she didn’t know how.” He nodded. “In a city where the skyscrapers press up against the mountains and the sea, you might be forgiven for thinking magic had gone away—but you would be wrong. The tea gardens in Noyoko are the things of fairy tales. Just go and sit on a pier at the edge of a moon bridge where it soars over the placid waters, and you’ll know it for yourself. Sitting there, over the water, watching the koi among the lily pads, the sounds of the twenty-million footsteps melts away, until all you can hear are swan-wings beating on the water as time itself breathes.”
I was spellbound.
“In those mystic gardens,” he said, “we fell in love, her and I. We fell in love a thousand times over. And when, at last, we were wed… I was happy, truly, and perfectly. They were halcyon days, the kind that make life worth living. But,” he shuddered, “they did not last.” He looked me in the eyes, his voice breaking, “It was because of a wire, Dr. Howle. That’s what shattered it. A wire short-circuited, so a signal failed to send, and a track failed to turn, and a train derailed, taking everything I had with it.” He scoffed and coughed. “And they said I was one of the lucky ones.”
“H-How did you survive?” I asked, breathlessly.
Mr. Himichi looked away from me. He winced in pain as he swallowed hard.
“The derailment happened at the front of the train, but… I wasn’t there. I’d gotten up to go to the bathroom, you see. The nearest working one was several cars down from where Riri and I were sitting.” He paused. “I paid for my survival with months of braces, pain, and shame. They had to put screws in my bones, just to keep me from falling to pieces. For solace, I turned to drawing, one of the few things I could still do. It had always been a hobby of mine, but, by the end of my recovery, it had become something more. In many ways, I never left that hospital room. I’ve been there all this time, waiting for someone who will never come.” He looked up to the lights. “Even now, I still dream of the train, of those last moments, and of what might have been.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” I said.
“But that’s just not true,” he said. “Before I’d gotten up from my seat, I could have told her I loved her. I could have drawn her close and stayed there with her, even if it was only for a moment. It’s so often the smallest moments that have the deepest dignity.”
He coughed, hard and harsh.
“Here,” I rose from the stool, “let me get you some more water.”
I took his cup and went back to the sink, where I filled it to the brim. With my legs so weak, I had to take extra care not to spill it on the way back.
After Mr. Himichi had gulped it down, he let the empty cup roll down his body to the foot of the bed. He took another deep breath, and it sounded clearer, but only a little, and not for long.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” I said. “It…” I teared up. “It means a lot to me.”
He nodded approvingly. “I’m glad. All stories want to be loved.” He sniffed and snorted, trying his best to clear his throat. “Now that I’ve shared something with you,” he said, “as per the sacred rules, you must share something with me. I can’t promise I’ll be able to remember it for long, but I will try my best to listen.”
He looked at me expectantly, as did Andalon.
Where to begin?