[He types and erases and re-types his question several times. have you ever killed someone is his first pass, but it’s too direct, too uncomfortable if Kitsuragi says no. The second attempt is what’s the worst you’ve ever fucked up but that’s too indirect, meanwhile—Kitsuragi’s answer might not be relevant to his situation at all.
Several minutes of the interminable bouncing of the typing dots later:]
have you ever hurt someone i don’t mean punched them or some shit messed up their life real bad
Either Aragaki did something terrible, or a new arrival has brought some of his dark past home to roost. He's teased details out of the boy bit by bit, and none of it has painted a terribly flattering picture. Kim considers the question -- a simple 'no' would have him retreat, which may be for the best. ]
I have, yes.
[ He's ended lives, after all. ]
One of the perils of being alive. We can't always avoid it. Why?
[He doesn't answer the question just yet; he's sure it's more or less obvious at this point that it isn't simple curiosity that's drove him to ask at this hour, after all. Might as well finish what he started first.]
you see em again after that?
[He'd like to ask, did they hate you, but the last thing he wants is for Kitsuragi to assume he's concerned about being hated, when that's the opposite of his problem here.]
[But there’s a significant pause after that, as though he’s debating whether to say more or simply go to bed and leave Kitsuragi alone. He’d probably prefer not to have to deal with this anyway—especially with how their last conversation turned out.
At length:]
he wants to be friends but he shouldn’t it’s my fault he’s like us
[ Emotional danger rather than physical danger, then. It's not a shame, necessarily, but Kim is far less capable of dealing with this particular evil. ]
Like us? What do you mean by that?
[ Facts first, probable misplaced guilt later, like an itemized list he has in front of him about dealing with vulnerable youth: safe space first, fixes later. That's what it says in the manuals. Not that Kitsuragi's ever been much good at it, but here, he's Aragaki's best option. ]
he did though he used to but now its like he feels bad about it since i died stupid
[The request for context takes him a little longer to think about. The idea of laying the whole sordid, miserable tale bare is both tempting and terrifying. A push-pull of conflicted desires, guilt and self-punishment, instinct to guard his heart versus take the razor to it himself. What does he want from Kim? To be judged? Punished? Understood? He's not sure. He's a little afraid to find out.
But it is 3 in the morning, and he has woken Kitsuragi for something. The mortification of being a coward now might be worse than the pain of ripping himself open.]
it's hard to explain
[He admits. It's a start. Now he just has to keep going.]
remember how when we met i mentioned the city bein so empty seemed kind of like the weird shit that happens at midnight where i'm from
those of us who can experience the dark hour like that're said to have "the potential" it's called that because we might be able to summon these beings from our soul--persona
i know all that probably sounds insane, i thought i was losing it too, first time i was awake for the dark hour important part is, personas are the only thing that can fight the shadows, these monsters that come out during it, feed on people's minds and leave 'em in comas
there were three of us back then, fighting shadows one night a shadow got loose from the place we usually fought em and we chased it down to this neighborhood and uh
[This is the difficult part, of course. The typing dots linger a while as he tries to work up the will to write down what happened.]
i lost control of my persona it went on a rampage and crushed a house with the kid's mom in it and he watched it happen and i swear if you're gonna try to tell me it wasn't my fault this conversation's over
[ In truth, Kim had half-expected Aragaki to turn him away, to say that it was nothing, to leave him with nothing. He wouldn't blame the kid. The weight of orphaning a child is a heavy one -- a weight that he himself bears, but without the same sense of remorse and regret, with the distilled clarity of a grown man who had known what he was doing, who had done it intentionally. He does not expect anyone to divulge that sort of thing to him.
But slowly, steadily, the story appears on his screen in flashes of text, as impassive as though he were reading a case report instead of hearing the story of the troubled young man he has come to know in some shape or form over the past few months. A few months ago, he would have thought that Aragaki was having a significant psychic break, and would be remorseful that there was no mental health practitioner he could send him away to.
Now? He's seen too much to doubt the kid's story now. ]
I see.
[ He can't say it wasn't his fault. What now? ]
I'm sorry it happened. To all of you.
[ He's quiet for another couple of minutes as he mulls over what to say next. ]
So. This kid. He came after you blaming you for his mother's death. And then he saw what happened to you when you first arrived, how you had been shot. And now he wants to rebuild a relationship with you. Have I got that right?
[...That'd probably be easier than the truth, frankly. Shinjiro sighs, rubbing at his face. He's never told the story to anyone else before; the only ones who knew had been there. He continues writing it up for the man, though it goes slow. Sometimes one line at a time and nothing further for several minutes. Sometimes the typing dots hang interminably before disappearing, and it's possible he's abandoned the story without finishing it. But eventually, the whole picture begins to emerge.]
it's more complicated than that i passed out sometime while my persona was goin wild, so i dunno exactly what happened to him afterward if he got shipped off to some orphanage like me or if he had other folks to take him or what but he had the potential, and he ended up with my old group a couple years later he was looking for me, to get revenge
i would've let him have it, but we got interrupted
[He hesitates here, considering whether it's actually worth getting into Strega and the nature of that interruption, but ultimately decides it's too long and complicated of a tangent, especially since it requires the explanation of the suppressants he'd avoided last time, too. He'll stick to the bare bones.]
that's its own long story but the short version is, the kid was gonna get killed because of shit i did trying to make up for the first mess i made and i couldn't let that happen now it's like he thinks he owes me or some shit when i'm the reason he was in that mess in the first place and i'm the one who ruined his life
he's literally sleeping down the goddamn hall right now because it's not like i could fucking tell him not to stay with me i don't know what to do
[ All right. This is all very complicated, and is dealing with supernatural matters far beyond Kim's own comprehension. Which means that he needs to break it down properly for himself to figure out how to respond. He hasn't worked in Juvie for a while - wasn't good at this shit even when he was in Juvie - but now he's wishing he kept more up to date on the literature.
Not that the literature ever did him any good. He was a traumatized kid too - though to a much, much, much lesser degree - and he never felt any of it rang true. So, dispensing with the supernatural nature of it all, he has it broken down like so, pen tapping in his notebook, pages that will soon be torn out and burned:
Aragaki, an orphan, was taken on by a - deeply unethical - organization for their own subterfuge and warfare. In one of those missions, he accidentally shot a young boy's mother. Aforementioned young boy was later taken on by the same organization, which clearly peddles in using traumatized youth for their own means, in an effort to find the one who killed his mother and to exact his own revenge. Only, after he had it in his grasp, it was taken from him, only for him to have to deal with the ramifications. He writes, Aragaki: shot protecting child? and circles it twice. That sounds about right. Now they're both here, and... things have changed.
Okay. He can work with this. Well, he can't, but he can at least try. ]
Okay. I think I've got a handle on the situation. I am sorry that you both went through this, for the record. It's not the sort of thing anyone should go through. Nor the sort of thing anyone would be able to cope with, immediately afterwards.
[ It feels important to point that much out. ]
He's in a strange new place, with nobody he knows. Of course he would latch onto the familiar, in spite of, or because of, your history. Think you can slip out without waking him up? This conversation might be best had in person. And we're both awake anyway.
[It's a nice sentiment, of course; no, neither of them should've gone through it. He'd give anything to take it back if he could, but you can't change the past. It had always been straightforward to him, the notion of simply fading away and letting others move on without him, but now that he's confronted with the very evidence of the future that's carried on without him, he feels off-balance.
So he doesn't really know how to react to Kitsuragi's compassion when it comes, nor his very sensible understanding of the position Amada was in as a newcomer to this strange, terrible place. Instead, he reacts to the most straightforward part of the message:]
sure your place or somewhere else
[Shinjiro's not just going to assume he's welcome to drop by the man's place again even when he's been otherwise open to this conversation. At the same time, he's not going to insist on some neutral location either, if the man would prefer not to inconvenience himself any more than he already has.]
That depends. If the kid wakes up and goes looking for you, is he going to be all right if you're as far as my place?
[ He had clung to Aragaki in a moment of weakness, or so it seems, someone he had previously known as dead. To wake up and find him missing - even with a note - may be... startling. But as of right now, that's his biggest concern. ]
You can leave a note, of course. If you think it'll be fine, then come here. If not, I'll come to you.
[Shit. He hadn't thought of that. Would Amada be alright, if he woke up in the middle of the night and found himself alone? Shinjiro's instinct is, of course, he's a tough kid. Volunteered to be part of SEES and everything. The idea of giving someone else an accounting of his whereabouts, too, is discomforting; he'd prefer no one pay attention to or care about his existence to the extent that his absence for a few hours might be noticeable. But then, leaving the kid alone again feels like a shitty thing to do, when he has nobody better to take him. Watching Amada's back is the least he owes him, as far as not being in the ground goes.
There's a long stretch of silence, probably a good five minutes or more of internal debate, before the next response.]
i'll leave him a note
[...It's selfish of him, he knows it. But he can't bear the risk of Amada waking up and actually overhearing them talking. What's one more shitty thing on his conscience, on top of everything else?]
[ As the minutes draw by, Kim practically thinks that Shinji has lost his nerve, changed his mind, chosen to stew in the dreadful discomfort of the situation he's found himself in. Or had fallen asleep, body crashing after the thrum of adrenaline he must have been running on for so long. But eventually, Kim's communicator buzzes again, and Kim steels himself for the difficult conversation to come.
This, at least, Kim is at least halfway equipped to talk about. Not the loss, not the responsibility of bearing the weight of a child's well-being, not being plagued with the devastation of all this at Shinji's young age -- but guilt is an old bedfellow of Kim's. A stranger that dogs his steps, shadowing his step, a gentle lover that slips into bed with him and wraps him in its arms, a parent leaving a light on in the window and beckoning him home.
By the time Shinji arrives, Kim hasn't bothered changing out of his sleep clothes - grey sweats with the drawstring strung tight and a loose white shirt, hair stubbornly rumpled - but the familiar smell of coffee permeates the air. ]
Hello. Coffee's on, if you don't intend to sleep any more tonight.
[As Shinjiro makes his way over, he has the slow-dawning uncomfortable realization that this will be the third time Kitsuragi has invited him into his space to handle a difficult situation. The first had been fresh from arrival, when he was still healing from the gunshots and the man had wanted him to have a safe, clean place to rest for a few hours. The second, he'd wandered there in a daze, not even realizing where he was going until he'd landed at Kitsuragi's doorstep shaking and hyperventilating.
Now here he is heading over there by choice to talk about his shit because he can't sleep. It's embarrassing. At the back of his mind he wonders if there's anything the man needs done around his place...maybe he can ask later. Seeing Kitsuragi with his sleep tousled hair and informal clothes is jarring in its own way, too, and he half-wonders if the man had been entirely honest about having already been awake when Shinjiro had contacted him, but he pushes the thought aside and nods at the man's greeting. ]
Thanks.
[He makes no move toward the table where they sat at before, though, simply lingering inside his threshold while he waits to be directed wherever Kitsuragi would prefer he goes.]
[ Kim locks the door behind Aragaki, gesturing for him to sit down at the table. Kim's place looks nearly as sparse as it did last time, if Aragaki has the presence of mind to look around; there is a crossword puzzle half filled out in pen on the table, the book folded over on itself, traces of a tv dinner cardboard shell neatly folded and tucked in the recycling as though recycling means anything in this place, a pair of dark blue weights inobtrusively placed in a corner. Kim sets two mugs of coffee down on the table between them, dehydrated milk powder and a small bowl of sugar already waiting for them.
Kim tries to take his coffee black for the most part, but for this conversation, he allows himself a spoonful of sugar as he looks Aragaki over. He looks just about as tired as Kim would expect him to look.
For all that Kim's appearance is uncharacteristically disheveled, the way he sits perched on the edge of his chair, spine straight and expression stoic, creates the illusion that he may well be in uniform. ]
So. Things here have become even more complicated than they already were, hm?
[He finds himself feeling a lot more aware of the space than he did before, perhaps because he was simply too out of it to be self-conscious either previous time. Now, every little thing he's intruding upon, such as the unfinished crossword, stands out in sharp relief.
The coffee makes for a great distraction, though; he's not quite so much of a tough guy that he needs to pretend to like coffee black on a good day, and the idea of pretense tonight is especially exhausting. He does up the coffee to his own taste before he looks up, taking a sip to buy him a moment before speaking.]
You can say that again.
[A small sigh. He stares back down at the mug after a moment, feeling a little too exposed and vulnerable to hold the older man's gaze.]
I heard this kind of thing could happen, but I never actually expected it would.
[He's been here five months already with no sign of anyone he knew, from SEES or otherwise. Most seemed to have their fellows from their world with them upon arrival or shortly thereafter. It's weird.]
What, people from home arriving? I suppose that must have come as a surprise.
[ It's something Kim has been preparing for himself, even if a larger part of him doubts that he'll ever see anyone again. It was difficult not to think of it, after everything that happened in the shopping mall. To prepare for criminals he had long since handed over to the MoralIntern, the bereaved families he never cared for just right, Eyes -- hell, even his parents. Who knows? Nothing here is an impossibility.
But Aragaki must not have even wanted to dwell on such a painful thought. Too bad. What you want, what you deserve, and what you get are most frequently three disparate concepts. ]
But we deal with what comes to us. I never expected to be here either. [ He rubs his thumb - bare, absent of the gloves he's almost always wearing - against the rim of his cup, radiating heat. ] I suppose the question is now... what is your priority, now that he is here? Will you try to get him to live somewhere safe away from you? Or will he stay with you?
...More like, people showin' up from after I died.
[It's a little pathetic, maybe, that he would've had an easier time if Amada came from a time when he still wanted revenge, but instead he no longer really knows where he stands in the kid's life -- they're now tied together mostly by a sense of mutual obligation and guilt rather than any true camaraderie.
He rubs at his neck somewhat uncomfortably as Kitsuragi shifts toward the practicalities, though. That is ultimately the crux of his current crisis, after all.]
I mean...s'like I said, I ain't about to tell him he can't stay with me. When I ran into him, I told 'im if he never wanted to see my face again, to say the word and I'd disappear.
[There's a long, hesitating moment where he considers confessing the favor he'd been prepared to ask, if Amada had taken him up on that offer, but ultimately thinks better of it. Better he doesn't saddle Kitsuragi explicitly with the notion that he has nobody else. He shakes his head with a sigh.]
But he didn't, so. Here we are.
[Of course, if it were as simple as that, he wouldn't have been trying to get advice at 3 am, but he's not sure how to grapple with his complicated feelings or even how to define them. He keeps staring into his coffee, as though the liquid might hold some great answers for him along with his reflection.]
It's not...the living together part that's the weirdest. We shared a dorm for about a month before I died. If we were just stayin' together temporarily for convenience again, that'd be different, y'know?
[It wouldn't be so terrifyingly close to forgiveness.]
[ Kim laces his fingers together, humming a little under his breath as he considers the situation. It's a thorny one, and one he has no business sticking his nose into. He has no answers, barely has a good grasp on things as it is; underneath different circumstances, he would urge Aragaki to ask a teacher, a mentor, a parental figure, a mental health professional, someone with a better idea of where Aragaki is coming from. This feels too much like getting involved. It may well backfire on any one of them, and then who's to blame?
But it's gone a little beyond the sole purpose of duty now. If it was still duty alone, perhaps he wouldn't feel so uneasy. He cares, though, wants life to be easier for this poor kid - this dead kid - grappling with things beyond most adults' grasp. He wonders, momentarily, if he should be advocating for Aragaki's well-being or the new kid's.
Or perhaps their well-being is one and the same, in the end. ]
Guilt is something that... sometimes you feel that you must live with it, in order to atone. It's a natural way to feel. But even if it doesn't feel that way, guilt can be a very selfish emotion. We have to wonder who it's serving to feel that way, and why. How it can burden the very people we want to do right by.
[ He looks up at Aragaki. He will not share who he's thinking of in this moment. He cannot. In many ways, he is not as strong as Aragaki is; it has been years since Eyes' death, and yet it still pains him too much to speak on it. But he can't help but think of the horrible aftermath, how his guilt did nothing but burden the wife and child that Dom had left behind, how what they needed was support and not the murmured apologies and cringing deference of the partner who had survived. It had been a terrible thing to grapple with. He had half hoped to be reprimanded, hit, scorned.
That's not what they needed. They needed someone to share in the good memories. To bring groceries to their door. To crouch by his child and play with her, in Kim's own graceless way. His self-recrimination did nothing but hurt them, nothing but wounded misery in his wife's eyes until Kim managed to sit down and speak with her like a human being.
He removes his glasses, polishing them with his shirt. The way the world is cast in blurry shadows makes this easier. ]
If you want to do right by this kid, sometimes that means letting go of what you think you deserve, and accepting what he thinks you deserve. It's the only way for him to heal too. Don't get me wrong -- it's a difficult pill to swallow. It's more difficult to bear forgiveness than blame, sometimes. And it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice yourself to look after him either, if living with him is too painful for you both. But -- it is something for you both to consider.
[ He exhales, putting his glasses back on. There is something heavy in his bearing. These aren't platitudes; this is the life he's lived. ]
[Kitsuragi's unease perhaps isn't exactly unmerited; at this point, he is the closest thing to a mentor figure that Shinjiro has ever had. Perhaps it began with duty, but over time, he has proven himself a reliable and trustworthy figure even as Shinjiro's been difficult and cagey in return. Even now, the message he'd sent had been a shot in the dark, a whim he wouldn't have thought twice about if Kitsuragi hadn't responded.
And in truth, he hadn't really anticipated the conversation to be more than a diversion, something to occupy himself with until he could pass out from sheer exhaustion. It's a natural way to feel hits him right in the gut, though. His hand freezes in midair, the act of reaching up for a sip of tea suddenly stalled out. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
It's a natural way to feel.
In two years, that might be the first time he's heard it. He's so used to the attitude that his feelings are unreasonable, unnecessary, that he ought to be able to get over it and move on with his life. Kitsuragi really does get it, doesn't he. At least the sense of obligation, the burden that feels wrong to even consider setting down. Kitsuragi doesn't elaborate on his own experience, but Shinjiro doesn't need him to. The only reason Shinjiro had bothered to say anything about himself was because he'd been the one to initiate this whole thing in the first place; he doesn't expect reciprocation.
His throat's suddenly gone dry, but he sets down his arm with the tea anyway. Seems too much effort, now. The older man's words are turned around and around his mind, each seemingly more pointed than the last. His kneejerk instinct is to reject it, of course, but at the back of his mind, he ultimately knows Kitsuragi isn't wrong. For all his discomfort, he couldn't bring himself to actually push Amada away, to reject the hand reached out to him if only because he's always known he could never deny the kid anything. His life has belonged to Amada ever since that day two years ago, and if he's obligated to live for now, if only to keep from leaving the kid all on his own again, so be it.
It's just ... it's just forgiveness that tears at his insides. More difficult to bear than blame, another thing Kitsuragi somehow understands, and he's gone and lived on all these years past it. Shinjiro can justify himself all he wants that it's different, that Kitsuragi comes from an ordinary world in which he might have made mistakes but he can't cause harm simply by existing, but it can't quite stem the flow of what-ifs and uncertainty. Could he have done anything differently? He's never thought so, but it's not like his life isn't a whole trash heap of mistakes and bullshit, like his track record in life isn't filled with failures in the few places in life he'd bothered to even make an effort.
He doesn't know what to think. His stomach hurts. There's a moment his eyes go sort of distant, like they were that night Kitsuragi had found him curled up on his doorstep, but he's gotten better at catching himself since then with the method Kitsuragi showed him. His breathing comes in too-measured and rhythmic for the next few moments, until he feels like there's air in his lungs again.
At length:]
...You know what the news headline was when she died? [he starts, non-sequitur at first glance] That a drunk driver crashed into her house and died along with her. Because she died in the Dark Hour, nobody could know what really happened.
[He stares down into the tea.]
For the two years it took the kid to find me...he was the only one that knew her killer wasn't dead. And I ain't stupid, not like the truth'd change anything when we're both in the ground now anyway, but it just seems like --
[He grits his teeth, struggling with the words. To even figure out what he's feeling, exactly. It's confusing. It hurts.]
I dunno. After everything, after the choices I made dealing with all that, I dunno how I can just ... pretend like we can start over like none of it happened. Like it doesn't matter, when...when he's gotta go move on with his life again, after all this.
Edited (5 million nitpicks rip) 2023-11-21 04:49 (UTC)
[ The finality with which Aragaki keeps on reiterating his own death only barely fails to make Kim flinch. He doesn't, of course. He has a better poker face than that, one he's been working on since early childhood, able to look at anything in the eye unflinchingly, unchangingly. It does not mean that he is unaffected. It just means he's good at not showing it. But it's still a difficult thing to swallow, the unjustness of it all. A part of him wants to protest and say that it's very much possible to come back from a bullet wound - he's done it himself, after all - provided he was given immediate care, that if he is alive here, then he is alive in the only way that matters, but...
He knows that will only be a comforting lie. He tries not to tell those, as a general rule. They only come back to bite him in the ass later, even if the only person he is telling them to is himself. So he remains silent, quietly nursing the uncomfortable fact that Aragaki seems to take more comfort in his death than dread. All discomfort is his own, to be managed in his own time. He sets it deliberately aside. ]
We all lose people. And we all have to move on.
[ He takes a sip of his coffee, letting the sweetness linger on his tongue. ]
You might need to pretend for a little while. He may not be ready to confront it immediately -- just give him time. But in time, you two will have to talk about it and sort things out. There's no getting around that one. [ It is undeniably tragic that the kid had to live so long with vengeance burning at his heels, with a mystery at the heart of his mother's death, but that, too, is not so unfamiliar to Kim. He's from a generation of children who don't know precisely how their parents died, who is responsible, where even they're buried. Kim visited the mass grave where his parents were purportedly buried once. He didn't find that it gave him the closure others said it would. He doesn't think that killing their executioner would do it either. Dead is dead. ]
I don't know if the difficult part is the fact that he's got to move on. I think the true sticking point we're looking at here is that you have to as well.
[It's a little like a bucket of ice water to the face, to feel understood in one moment and utterly not in the next. On the one hand, it does hit differently to hear the same words from someone who has actually hurt people himself than it had from Aki, but it comes back around to the same thing, doesn't it? Forgive yourself and move on. Let go of the past, stop beating yourself up over it, it wasn't your fault. He feels like he's heard every possible variation releasing him from culpability and he's just so, so tired.
His death was meant to give the kid closure, back then. Just being alive now is ripping those wounds back open, but there's a difference between something like that which he has no choice in and building some kind of relationship with the kid, letting him get to know the person behind his mother's killer. The thought of it makes him feel sick, even as obligation has prevented him from refusal. It's not so simple as "losing" him the way Aki had lost Miki, after all; it would be building something new in full awareness that it is destined to be dashed on the rocks sooner than not--layering grief upon grief, something Shinjiro can only see as a cruelty. One he's supposed to inflict for the kid's own good? What a joke.
And yet for all his dismay at that notion, it really doesn't compare to how much that last part hurts, liquid fire all through his veins. Indeed, for half a moment he looks for all the world as though he's been decked, here, before his teeth grit, nails digging into his palms hard enough that he risks drawing blood.]
Tch...don't you get it? There is no moving on, for me. It's already done and finished with, I made my choices an' reached the end of the line, and there's no goin' back on any of that. I didn't even want anything to do with the shit around here, but I ain't scum enough to let him rot in this cage with me. But that's all I've got to give him, understand? There's nothin' else left here.
[He has been dragging along the shambling husk of his for years, now, just waiting for it to finally crumble. And now he doesn't even have that much. He's just a pathetic ghost trapped haunting its own corpse, and people keep acting as though he should pretend this is some kind of gift.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Several minutes of the interminable bouncing of the typing dots later:]
have you ever hurt someone
i don’t mean punched them or some shit
messed up their life
real bad
no subject
Either Aragaki did something terrible, or a new arrival has brought some of his dark past home to roost. He's teased details out of the boy bit by bit, and none of it has painted a terribly flattering picture. Kim considers the question -- a simple 'no' would have him retreat, which may be for the best. ]
I have, yes.
[ He's ended lives, after all. ]
One of the perils of being alive. We can't always avoid it. Why?
no subject
you see em again after that?
[He'd like to ask, did they hate you, but the last thing he wants is for Kitsuragi to assume he's concerned about being hated, when that's the opposite of his problem here.]
no subject
[ Generally, they wound up imprisoned or dead. He's in as much of a hurry to visit them in prison as he is to visit their gravestones. ]
I'm afraid I won't have much advice on that front. Do you believe yourself to be in danger?
no subject
no
[But there’s a significant pause after that, as though he’s debating whether to say more or simply go to bed and leave Kitsuragi alone. He’d probably prefer not to have to deal with this anyway—especially with how their last conversation turned out.
At length:]
he wants to be friends
but he shouldn’t
it’s my fault he’s
like us
no subject
Like us? What do you mean by that?
[ Facts first, probable misplaced guilt later, like an itemized list he has in front of him about dealing with vulnerable youth: safe space first, fixes later. That's what it says in the manuals. Not that Kitsuragi's ever been much good at it, but here, he's Aragaki's best option. ]
no subject
yknow
an orphan
no subject
[ Hm. ]
If he still wants to be friends, that is a clear indication that he doesn't hold you truly responsible for what happened.
If I ask you what happened, will you tell me?
no subject
he did though
he used to
but now its like he feels bad about it since i died
stupid
[The request for context takes him a little longer to think about. The idea of laying the whole sordid, miserable tale bare is both tempting and terrifying. A push-pull of conflicted desires, guilt and self-punishment, instinct to guard his heart versus take the razor to it himself. What does he want from Kim? To be judged? Punished? Understood? He's not sure. He's a little afraid to find out.
But it is 3 in the morning, and he has woken Kitsuragi for something. The mortification of being a coward now might be worse than the pain of ripping himself open.]
it's hard to explain
[He admits. It's a start. Now he just has to keep going.]
remember how when we met i mentioned the city bein so empty seemed kind of like the weird shit that happens at midnight where i'm from
those of us who can experience the dark hour like that're said to have "the potential"
it's called that because we might be able to summon these beings from our soul--persona
i know all that probably sounds insane, i thought i was losing it too, first time i was awake for the dark hour
important part is, personas are the only thing that can fight the shadows, these monsters that come out during it, feed on people's minds and leave 'em in comas
there were three of us back then, fighting shadows
one night a shadow got loose from the place we usually fought em and we chased it down to this neighborhood
and uh
[This is the difficult part, of course. The typing dots linger a while as he tries to work up the will to write down what happened.]
i lost control of my persona
it went on a rampage and crushed a house with the kid's mom in it and he watched it happen
and i swear if you're gonna try to tell me it wasn't my fault this conversation's over
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But slowly, steadily, the story appears on his screen in flashes of text, as impassive as though he were reading a case report instead of hearing the story of the troubled young man he has come to know in some shape or form over the past few months. A few months ago, he would have thought that Aragaki was having a significant psychic break, and would be remorseful that there was no mental health practitioner he could send him away to.
Now? He's seen too much to doubt the kid's story now. ]
I see.
[ He can't say it wasn't his fault. What now? ]
I'm sorry it happened. To all of you.
[ He's quiet for another couple of minutes as he mulls over what to say next. ]
So. This kid. He came after you blaming you for his mother's death. And then he saw what happened to you when you first arrived, how you had been shot. And now he wants to rebuild a relationship with you. Have I got that right?
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it's more complicated than that
i passed out sometime while my persona was goin wild, so i dunno exactly what happened to him afterward
if he got shipped off to some orphanage like me or if he had other folks to take him or what but he had the potential, and he ended up with my old group a couple years later
he was looking for me, to get revenge
i would've let him have it, but we got interrupted
[He hesitates here, considering whether it's actually worth getting into Strega and the nature of that interruption, but ultimately decides it's too long and complicated of a tangent, especially since it requires the explanation of the suppressants he'd avoided last time, too. He'll stick to the bare bones.]
that's its own long story but the short version is, the kid was gonna get killed because of shit i did trying to make up for the first mess i made
and i couldn't let that happen
now it's like he thinks he owes me or some shit when i'm the reason he was in that mess in the first place and i'm the one who ruined his life
he's literally sleeping down the goddamn hall right now because it's not like i could fucking tell him not to stay with me
i don't know what to do
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Not that the literature ever did him any good. He was a traumatized kid too - though to a much, much, much lesser degree - and he never felt any of it rang true. So, dispensing with the supernatural nature of it all, he has it broken down like so, pen tapping in his notebook, pages that will soon be torn out and burned:
Aragaki, an orphan, was taken on by a - deeply unethical - organization for their own subterfuge and warfare. In one of those missions, he accidentally shot a young boy's mother. Aforementioned young boy was later taken on by the same organization, which clearly peddles in using traumatized youth for their own means, in an effort to find the one who killed his mother and to exact his own revenge. Only, after he had it in his grasp, it was taken from him, only for him to have to deal with the ramifications. He writes, Aragaki: shot protecting child? and circles it twice. That sounds about right. Now they're both here, and... things have changed.
Okay. He can work with this. Well, he can't, but he can at least try. ]
Okay. I think I've got a handle on the situation. I am sorry that you both went through this, for the record. It's not the sort of thing anyone should go through. Nor the sort of thing anyone would be able to cope with, immediately afterwards.
[ It feels important to point that much out. ]
He's in a strange new place, with nobody he knows. Of course he would latch onto the familiar, in spite of, or because of, your history. Think you can slip out without waking him up? This conversation might be best had in person. And we're both awake anyway.
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So he doesn't really know how to react to Kitsuragi's compassion when it comes, nor his very sensible understanding of the position Amada was in as a newcomer to this strange, terrible place. Instead, he reacts to the most straightforward part of the message:]
sure
your place or somewhere else
[Shinjiro's not just going to assume he's welcome to drop by the man's place again even when he's been otherwise open to this conversation. At the same time, he's not going to insist on some neutral location either, if the man would prefer not to inconvenience himself any more than he already has.]
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[ He had clung to Aragaki in a moment of weakness, or so it seems, someone he had previously known as dead. To wake up and find him missing - even with a note - may be... startling. But as of right now, that's his biggest concern. ]
You can leave a note, of course. If you think it'll be fine, then come here. If not, I'll come to you.
onto action?
There's a long stretch of silence, probably a good five minutes or more of internal debate, before the next response.]
i'll leave him a note
[...It's selfish of him, he knows it. But he can't bear the risk of Amada waking up and actually overhearing them talking. What's one more shitty thing on his conscience, on top of everything else?]
be there in ten
action!!
This, at least, Kim is at least halfway equipped to talk about. Not the loss, not the responsibility of bearing the weight of a child's well-being, not being plagued with the devastation of all this at Shinji's young age -- but guilt is an old bedfellow of Kim's. A stranger that dogs his steps, shadowing his step, a gentle lover that slips into bed with him and wraps him in its arms, a parent leaving a light on in the window and beckoning him home.
By the time Shinji arrives, Kim hasn't bothered changing out of his sleep clothes - grey sweats with the drawstring strung tight and a loose white shirt, hair stubbornly rumpled - but the familiar smell of coffee permeates the air. ]
Hello. Coffee's on, if you don't intend to sleep any more tonight.
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Now here he is heading over there by choice to talk about his shit because he can't sleep. It's embarrassing. At the back of his mind he wonders if there's anything the man needs done around his place...maybe he can ask later. Seeing Kitsuragi with his sleep tousled hair and informal clothes is jarring in its own way, too, and he half-wonders if the man had been entirely honest about having already been awake when Shinjiro had contacted him, but he pushes the thought aside and nods at the man's greeting. ]
Thanks.
[He makes no move toward the table where they sat at before, though, simply lingering inside his threshold while he waits to be directed wherever Kitsuragi would prefer he goes.]
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[ Kim locks the door behind Aragaki, gesturing for him to sit down at the table. Kim's place looks nearly as sparse as it did last time, if Aragaki has the presence of mind to look around; there is a crossword puzzle half filled out in pen on the table, the book folded over on itself, traces of a tv dinner cardboard shell neatly folded and tucked in the recycling as though recycling means anything in this place, a pair of dark blue weights inobtrusively placed in a corner. Kim sets two mugs of coffee down on the table between them, dehydrated milk powder and a small bowl of sugar already waiting for them.
Kim tries to take his coffee black for the most part, but for this conversation, he allows himself a spoonful of sugar as he looks Aragaki over. He looks just about as tired as Kim would expect him to look.
For all that Kim's appearance is uncharacteristically disheveled, the way he sits perched on the edge of his chair, spine straight and expression stoic, creates the illusion that he may well be in uniform. ]
So. Things here have become even more complicated than they already were, hm?
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The coffee makes for a great distraction, though; he's not quite so much of a tough guy that he needs to pretend to like coffee black on a good day, and the idea of pretense tonight is especially exhausting. He does up the coffee to his own taste before he looks up, taking a sip to buy him a moment before speaking.]
You can say that again.
[A small sigh. He stares back down at the mug after a moment, feeling a little too exposed and vulnerable to hold the older man's gaze.]
I heard this kind of thing could happen, but I never actually expected it would.
[He's been here five months already with no sign of anyone he knew, from SEES or otherwise. Most seemed to have their fellows from their world with them upon arrival or shortly thereafter. It's weird.]
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[ It's something Kim has been preparing for himself, even if a larger part of him doubts that he'll ever see anyone again. It was difficult not to think of it, after everything that happened in the shopping mall. To prepare for criminals he had long since handed over to the MoralIntern, the bereaved families he never cared for just right, Eyes -- hell, even his parents. Who knows? Nothing here is an impossibility.
But Aragaki must not have even wanted to dwell on such a painful thought. Too bad. What you want, what you deserve, and what you get are most frequently three disparate concepts. ]
But we deal with what comes to us. I never expected to be here either. [ He rubs his thumb - bare, absent of the gloves he's almost always wearing - against the rim of his cup, radiating heat. ] I suppose the question is now... what is your priority, now that he is here? Will you try to get him to live somewhere safe away from you? Or will he stay with you?
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[It's a little pathetic, maybe, that he would've had an easier time if Amada came from a time when he still wanted revenge, but instead he no longer really knows where he stands in the kid's life -- they're now tied together mostly by a sense of mutual obligation and guilt rather than any true camaraderie.
He rubs at his neck somewhat uncomfortably as Kitsuragi shifts toward the practicalities, though. That is ultimately the crux of his current crisis, after all.]
I mean...s'like I said, I ain't about to tell him he can't stay with me. When I ran into him, I told 'im if he never wanted to see my face again, to say the word and I'd disappear.
[There's a long, hesitating moment where he considers confessing the favor he'd been prepared to ask, if Amada had taken him up on that offer, but ultimately thinks better of it. Better he doesn't saddle Kitsuragi explicitly with the notion that he has nobody else. He shakes his head with a sigh.]
But he didn't, so. Here we are.
[Of course, if it were as simple as that, he wouldn't have been trying to get advice at 3 am, but he's not sure how to grapple with his complicated feelings or even how to define them. He keeps staring into his coffee, as though the liquid might hold some great answers for him along with his reflection.]
It's not...the living together part that's the weirdest. We shared a dorm for about a month before I died. If we were just stayin' together temporarily for convenience again, that'd be different, y'know?
[It wouldn't be so terrifyingly close to forgiveness.]
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[ Kim laces his fingers together, humming a little under his breath as he considers the situation. It's a thorny one, and one he has no business sticking his nose into. He has no answers, barely has a good grasp on things as it is; underneath different circumstances, he would urge Aragaki to ask a teacher, a mentor, a parental figure, a mental health professional, someone with a better idea of where Aragaki is coming from. This feels too much like getting involved. It may well backfire on any one of them, and then who's to blame?
But it's gone a little beyond the sole purpose of duty now. If it was still duty alone, perhaps he wouldn't feel so uneasy. He cares, though, wants life to be easier for this poor kid - this dead kid - grappling with things beyond most adults' grasp. He wonders, momentarily, if he should be advocating for Aragaki's well-being or the new kid's.
Or perhaps their well-being is one and the same, in the end. ]
Guilt is something that... sometimes you feel that you must live with it, in order to atone. It's a natural way to feel. But even if it doesn't feel that way, guilt can be a very selfish emotion. We have to wonder who it's serving to feel that way, and why. How it can burden the very people we want to do right by.
[ He looks up at Aragaki. He will not share who he's thinking of in this moment. He cannot. In many ways, he is not as strong as Aragaki is; it has been years since Eyes' death, and yet it still pains him too much to speak on it. But he can't help but think of the horrible aftermath, how his guilt did nothing but burden the wife and child that Dom had left behind, how what they needed was support and not the murmured apologies and cringing deference of the partner who had survived. It had been a terrible thing to grapple with. He had half hoped to be reprimanded, hit, scorned.
That's not what they needed. They needed someone to share in the good memories. To bring groceries to their door. To crouch by his child and play with her, in Kim's own graceless way. His self-recrimination did nothing but hurt them, nothing but wounded misery in his wife's eyes until Kim managed to sit down and speak with her like a human being.
He removes his glasses, polishing them with his shirt. The way the world is cast in blurry shadows makes this easier. ]
If you want to do right by this kid, sometimes that means letting go of what you think you deserve, and accepting what he thinks you deserve. It's the only way for him to heal too. Don't get me wrong -- it's a difficult pill to swallow. It's more difficult to bear forgiveness than blame, sometimes. And it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice yourself to look after him either, if living with him is too painful for you both. But -- it is something for you both to consider.
[ He exhales, putting his glasses back on. There is something heavy in his bearing. These aren't platitudes; this is the life he's lived. ]
Does that make sense?
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And in truth, he hadn't really anticipated the conversation to be more than a diversion, something to occupy himself with until he could pass out from sheer exhaustion. It's a natural way to feel hits him right in the gut, though. His hand freezes in midair, the act of reaching up for a sip of tea suddenly stalled out. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
It's a natural way to feel.
In two years, that might be the first time he's heard it. He's so used to the attitude that his feelings are unreasonable, unnecessary, that he ought to be able to get over it and move on with his life. Kitsuragi really does get it, doesn't he. At least the sense of obligation, the burden that feels wrong to even consider setting down. Kitsuragi doesn't elaborate on his own experience, but Shinjiro doesn't need him to. The only reason Shinjiro had bothered to say anything about himself was because he'd been the one to initiate this whole thing in the first place; he doesn't expect reciprocation.
His throat's suddenly gone dry, but he sets down his arm with the tea anyway. Seems too much effort, now. The older man's words are turned around and around his mind, each seemingly more pointed than the last. His kneejerk instinct is to reject it, of course, but at the back of his mind, he ultimately knows Kitsuragi isn't wrong. For all his discomfort, he couldn't bring himself to actually push Amada away, to reject the hand reached out to him if only because he's always known he could never deny the kid anything. His life has belonged to Amada ever since that day two years ago, and if he's obligated to live for now, if only to keep from leaving the kid all on his own again, so be it.
It's just ... it's just forgiveness that tears at his insides. More difficult to bear than blame, another thing Kitsuragi somehow understands, and he's gone and lived on all these years past it. Shinjiro can justify himself all he wants that it's different, that Kitsuragi comes from an ordinary world in which he might have made mistakes but he can't cause harm simply by existing, but it can't quite stem the flow of what-ifs and uncertainty. Could he have done anything differently? He's never thought so, but it's not like his life isn't a whole trash heap of mistakes and bullshit, like his track record in life isn't filled with failures in the few places in life he'd bothered to even make an effort.
He doesn't know what to think. His stomach hurts. There's a moment his eyes go sort of distant, like they were that night Kitsuragi had found him curled up on his doorstep, but he's gotten better at catching himself since then with the method Kitsuragi showed him. His breathing comes in too-measured and rhythmic for the next few moments, until he feels like there's air in his lungs again.
At length:]
...You know what the news headline was when she died? [he starts, non-sequitur at first glance] That a drunk driver crashed into her house and died along with her. Because she died in the Dark Hour, nobody could know what really happened.
[He stares down into the tea.]
For the two years it took the kid to find me...he was the only one that knew her killer wasn't dead. And I ain't stupid, not like the truth'd change anything when we're both in the ground now anyway, but it just seems like --
[He grits his teeth, struggling with the words. To even figure out what he's feeling, exactly. It's confusing. It hurts.]
I dunno. After everything, after the choices I made dealing with all that, I dunno how I can just ... pretend like we can start over like none of it happened. Like it doesn't matter, when...when he's gotta go move on with his life again, after all this.
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He knows that will only be a comforting lie. He tries not to tell those, as a general rule. They only come back to bite him in the ass later, even if the only person he is telling them to is himself. So he remains silent, quietly nursing the uncomfortable fact that Aragaki seems to take more comfort in his death than dread. All discomfort is his own, to be managed in his own time. He sets it deliberately aside. ]
We all lose people. And we all have to move on.
[ He takes a sip of his coffee, letting the sweetness linger on his tongue. ]
You might need to pretend for a little while. He may not be ready to confront it immediately -- just give him time. But in time, you two will have to talk about it and sort things out. There's no getting around that one. [ It is undeniably tragic that the kid had to live so long with vengeance burning at his heels, with a mystery at the heart of his mother's death, but that, too, is not so unfamiliar to Kim. He's from a generation of children who don't know precisely how their parents died, who is responsible, where even they're buried. Kim visited the mass grave where his parents were purportedly buried once. He didn't find that it gave him the closure others said it would. He doesn't think that killing their executioner would do it either. Dead is dead. ]
I don't know if the difficult part is the fact that he's got to move on. I think the true sticking point we're looking at here is that you have to as well.
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His death was meant to give the kid closure, back then. Just being alive now is ripping those wounds back open, but there's a difference between something like that which he has no choice in and building some kind of relationship with the kid, letting him get to know the person behind his mother's killer. The thought of it makes him feel sick, even as obligation has prevented him from refusal. It's not so simple as "losing" him the way Aki had lost Miki, after all; it would be building something new in full awareness that it is destined to be dashed on the rocks sooner than not--layering grief upon grief, something Shinjiro can only see as a cruelty. One he's supposed to inflict for the kid's own good? What a joke.
And yet for all his dismay at that notion, it really doesn't compare to how much that last part hurts, liquid fire all through his veins. Indeed, for half a moment he looks for all the world as though he's been decked, here, before his teeth grit, nails digging into his palms hard enough that he risks drawing blood.]
Tch...don't you get it? There is no moving on, for me. It's already done and finished with, I made my choices an' reached the end of the line, and there's no goin' back on any of that. I didn't even want anything to do with the shit around here, but I ain't scum enough to let him rot in this cage with me. But that's all I've got to give him, understand? There's nothin' else left here.
[He has been dragging along the shambling husk of his for years, now, just waiting for it to finally crumble. And now he doesn't even have that much. He's just a pathetic ghost trapped haunting its own corpse, and people keep acting as though he should pretend this is some kind of gift.
He is so god damn tired.]
cw: suicide discussion
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