nano
totally female
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◦ echoing, your voice is echoing again ◦
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dream⇅001
The Golems That Vex You
Wake up.
Please. Please.
It was those tears.
Those very same tears that used to melt him on the spot, streaming down like lava but with a temperature much more grave. He must have seen them dozens of times before, small creeks of raw emotion gently carving down the milky-white skin of her cheeks, slowly. Oh, so slowly! Those beads puddling at the corners of her slim eyes, the whites of which masked with branches of red, red, red. Those bloodshot streaks surrounding her troubled eyes. No, not troubled.
Not troubled. Not troubled at all.
Those hazel orbs... they were tranquil. More tranquil than anything he had ever seen. Behind the wavering sticks of irritation and the swollen bottoms of her eyes, behind that facade of pure torture, behind everything that was clearly logical and right in front of him. Behind of all of that... was something that didn't make sense. Where was her pain?
Where was it?!
He was upset. No, he was angered! There was nothing in the past that could have alluded to this kind of reaction. Where was the pain in her eyes, the shaking and uncertainty of what was to come - the pain that he knew all too well. Where was the pain that she alone administered unto him? He couldn't find it. And though his fists clenched and his teeth began to grind against each other, sounding off inside of his mouth with an irritating metronome only he himself could pick up, he wasn't surprised in the least. This was the kind of the kind of person she was. He had always known it. He had always wanted to call her out on this ugliness, because there was no physical flaw half as disgusting as that to be found on body. But he couldn't.
Then, he might have used the excuse that he would not stoop so low, to her level, he would say. But that's all it was - an excuse. He had had the misfortune of maturing, of learning that his mistakes were nothing but results of his own lack of character. The fact was he couldn't stoop to the level he wished because he was too much of a coward to deal with the consequences.
This was safe. It had always been safe. And she knew that he was wrapped around her finger. And unless he could manage to free himself from such a curse, he would always be wrapped around it. No, he'd be wrapped even tighter. But even if he could...
There were those tears.
The tears that once melted him.
It was those very same tears, without a discernible difference in appearance or consistency, that were now freezing his heart. The emotion he had always mistaken for raw, for unabated feelings being poured out of her eyes, were nothing more than artificial waterworks put on for show. They pitied him. He pitied himself.
It felt as if they were alone, not only in the coffee shop they were talking to each other in, but in the entire world. Before, he might have had that feeling also, but in an entirely different aspect. Then, then he would have looked at her if she was the only person that mattered. That they were the only two people in the world, or at least the only two that mattered to him. He would look only at her, and he thought she would look only at him.
Now however, the feeling of isolation was one of fear. He couldn't get her out of his mind, and it was because of her that he felt so weak. His thoughts were under what seemed like constant distress, and it was tough just to think straight anymore. He was with her always because he knew of nothing else. And it was eerie, the way they interacted. It really felt as if they were the only two in the world, and that everyone else was just some lifeless puppet programmed to be around them.
The coffee shop was delicately designed. They were painted in a soft yellow light by the fixtures hanging above them, and their sheer presence was increased in drama by just being bathed in those very same rays of light. He had ordered something, but couldn't quite remember just what it was he asked the waitress for, despite it only being a few minutes since he placed the order. That's how unfocused his mind was these days.
Darker than a moonless night. Hotter and more bitter than hell itself.
It was decaf.
She had ordered something sweeter and decidedly more feminine. It smelled of caramel, only slightly, and not too overpowering. It was soothing, kind of. It painted the air around them with a beautiful aroma, and critically so, since the aura they were both emitting was dark, dark. She had a sweet flavored bread to go with the beverage she had ordered, and was nibbling on it cutely, even despite the sorry state her face was in from excessive crying. No, that made it cuter. He didn't know why. He never knew why.
"Tell me," she said, that emotion he had incorrectly identified as real still in effect, with slight peaks of falseness showing through. She had the gall to ask him - no, to demand of him - and he was too much of a fool, or too much of a coward, or too much of both to ever think of anything but obliging.
"Tell you what?" he replied coolly, but no longer looked at her in the eye. Even in this moment of distress for her, as falsified as it was, her eyes pooled up twice the confidence his ever could. Behind their puffy and red facade, wet with tears - those tears - was something that he could never possess, nor could he ever properly understand. It was strength. He couldn't look at her in the eye. Not because she had that fire hidden in the glare beneath her tears, but because he was afraid she would see that there was no such flame in his. The confidence that she kept proudly on display as anyone would was noticeably absent in his wavering eyes. And so he locked his gaze on the gray sky above them.
"Everything. Tell me everything. So I can forget- so I can finally be done with you."
The words left her mouth slowly. So, so slowly, as if they were in the perfect tempo with the water crawling down her cheeks. And he was wrapped around those words, as soon as they were for both of them to hear. He hated it. He couldn't ever recall hating anything more.
It was suffocating. Why did it have to be this way?
He remembered.
Not the reason why. He remembered her smile. That smile. The antithesis to those tears. Or at least it used to be, before he was able to decipher her artificial code. It was that smile, the one that looked like sunshine trapped in porcelain, seeping out in brilliance, that flashed in and out inside of the corners of his mind. That smile was one he hadn't seen outside of his sleepy eyes for a long, long while. It occurred to him that he wouldn't ever be seeing it again.
He should have been sad - he was wrapped around that smile, without a doubt. He was wrapped around everything about her. But he wasn't sad. He was angry, just like he had been when he saw no pain in her eyes as soon as she started crying. Pain that should have been inherent with the action of tearing up. Why was all of this being taken away from him? What sins had he committed to be ripped to shreds like this?
Oh, right.
He had the misfortune of being different.
"Did you fall in love?" he asked her, unsure if he even really wanted an answer. "With another..." he tried to say, as his voice trailed off into a forced stop. He was becoming more and more angry, though his face wouldn't show it. His ears were starting to turn a cardinal hue, and the sound of his teeth grinding was becoming louder. But he would die before his face betrayed his inner emotions. That's the kind of man Rafa Daisetsu was.
Or rather, that was the kind of man Rafa Daisetsu had been reduced to.
There was a time when he was much more. That time seemed to be completely out of sight, out of mind. But not because it had been so long - no, it hadn't been more than a few months. Or maybe it was longer - Rafa couldn't quite get a handle on the concept of time outside of the bar. But it wasn't like time had anything to do with it. Rafa had decided that he didn't want to play superhero anymore, and that this normal life was the one he cherished the most. That's also where he made his first mistake, because the bartender was wrong in ever assuming that he had the right to resume that normal life - if it was even his, or even normal, to begin with.
That's how it was.
"I don't know," she responded, just as coolly as he did before, as if she was certain he had already seen through her artificial teary facade. Or maybe she just didn't care anymore, or didn't think him worthy of such a show. Whatever the case, that side of her, though technically never there, was up and gone. Rafa would be a liar if he said he didn't miss it. Because it was those tears that had him here in the first place. She continued, "It's not the same. It's not the same as when we..." She paused. Their eyes met for a split-second, before Rafa broke off the gaze. He was still hiding that part of himself.
"It's not like that."
He knew he was a fool. He knew it well. Normal men are fools aren't they? Normal men are pitiful and weak and cowardly, right? These are the traits of normal people. This is what he told himself. But he knew he was a fool, and he knew they were lies that would help him keep going. That's what fools do.
He was unfit for a life like this. It was ironic, wasn't it? How he had so easily taken on the life of a secret agent, one with freakish powers that should have been fit only for a circus sideshow, how he had the ability to take everything so life threatening in stride with little more than a witty remark and a few gunshots. Life threatening...
He didn't even realize that he was putting his life on the line back then until he made the comparison there and then. It also felt like a game to him. Like he had a second life waiting for him if he ever bit the dust, hidden away ready to spawn. Like his ammo would automatically refill if he was ever in the unfortunate situation of running out of it. Like a cheat code would make everything better and rescue from wherever he had stuck his head into last.
He used to be invincible. Now he was this Rafa Daisetsu, one that was being torn apart with little more than a sad face and some soft words. And yet, he still couldn't discern which one of him he liked more.
Because he hated them both. Rafa was at this unfortunate crossroads, where the choice he had to make was, ultimately, going to be one that he would grow to hate. No matter what. That's how it was, and that's how it was always meant to be. There was nothing he could do about it, and he, however reluctantly the front he put up was, knew it well.
His fists clenched again, baring knuckles hidden beneath tightened skin, becoming more and more a subtle shade of red as he squeezed his balled fists. It wasn't that he couldn't remember what it was that brought him to this crossroads, but because he desperately, desperately wanted nothing more to forget about it. To leave it in the past and move on. To just go on with life, and pretend that incident never happened.
He couldn't do that, though. He wouldn't ever be able to forget that - at least, not the way he was attempting to right now. There were other steps he was to take if he truly wanted to bury his past in an unmarked grave, and completely forget the location of the shifted sands, but he knew that that plan of action required a level of courage and confidence his soul would never encompass. It would be easier to put an end to everything.
He had thought about that, too. Just giving up with the charade he was putting on, and going ahead and turning it all over. He had the tools to kill himself - the very same ones he had employ to overpower foes so often in the past. He had built up his skill with them to where he was sure he'd be able to put a bullet in his brain, quick and painlessly. He was sure that would be the most efficient way to unencumber all the weight he had been carrying on his back. The weight of stress that he had, without pride or any thought, draped across his body and carried with obvious repercussion.
It peeked out from behind the front he had shielded his face with. Tired, tired eyes, as evidenced by the dark circles that, despite his best intentions, discolored the face he used to be so proud of. Whenever he had the misfortune of catching a glimpse of the gaunt figure he had felt he'd been reduced to, he could have sworn that those marks drooped down all the way to his chin. It was untrue to anyone else - as his appearance was only flawed by the slight markings of one who hadn't been able to rest, or rest peacefully, at least, for an extended period of time.
It was nigh indiscernible.
Too him however, the toll that his body had taken due to this stress was unlike anything he had ever witnessed in his decidedly short life. He felt like a leper, and he felt he looked like one as well, and when he saw that his own feelings about his appearance were not reciprocated in the few people he had surrounded himself with, he only felt more pathetic. Rafa was unsure if it was because he was a person to be pitied, or if this gaunt person who stared back at him every time he saw his reflection was indeed just something he himself had created.
Too him, both were disgusting. That's how things were these days - Rafa Daisetsu had felt he was only given a fool's idea of freedom. He felt that he had the ability to make his choices, and yet every time the opportunity arose, he was only faced with decisions that he hated to the very bone. There was nothing good for him these days.
Then, however, things were not so bad. Oh, cruel irony!
In a grass is always greener moment, he had the gall to reject that lifestyle he now coveted so much. The lifestyle where he always felt he never had the freedom to make his own decisions, that by some cruel misfortune he was doomed to only the life of a secret agent - one who, despite being a bastion of light in a steadily crumbling society, never once. received an ounce of the praise he felt he had deserved. Not once! And yet, he knew it was to be that way. Who would ever praise a person that only worked behind the guise of mystery? How would they ever even know who to thank?
He used to hate it. It used to feel utterly predetermined, that he had to follow that path no matter what. Destiny, and all that jargon, oh how he hated that word! Destiny? Where was the right he had ascertained as a human being to carve out his own path, or at least be given the foolish notion that he was doing so, even if he was not? He had deserved at least that much!
Those were the thoughts he had. It was those thoughts that ultimately led to this, this pseudo-lifestyle he had claimed for himself. He never knew how lucky he was, how carefree he used to be, how it was only because he had the idea of predetermination wedged firmly in his brain. Now that he had "achieved" what he was looking for, it wasn't worth it anymore. It wasn't worth it at all.
He wanted to go back. He needed to.
It was because of those tears. It was those tears that coaxed him to leave the life he had made for himself, lied to him and whispered poison in his ears. Those tears that managed to pry him from a life he had actually enjoyed, one where he lived how he liked with the people he had managed to convince to like him. His friends, as they were. But he left it all behind. And yet, all he could remember was those tears. That smile. Her beautiful face.
And now that was being pried away from him too? How was this happening? Just what had he done to deserve this hate?
He couldn't remember. It became increasingly clear that the gaps in his memory were plentiful, and that this was something to look into.
He couldn't remember why.
He just couldn't remember.
Why couldn't he remember?
What was there? What had been taken from him?
There were dozens of memories he knew he should have had. Hundreds, maybe thousands even. But all he could remember were bits and pieces, tiny snippets of what was supposed to be his personal recollection of the journey he had taken.
But as his clenched fists began to loosen, shaky and uncertain, he tried to make sense of what he had been reduced to. None of it made sense. Even more than usual, even - there was absolutely nothing that made sense of this situation. His journey...
All of a sudden, his journey felt more like a trip. A vacation, even. It shouldn't have felt that way. He tried to force his memories into fruition. He tried to remember everything that he could not, the things that he knew should have been there, fresh and ready for him to look back upon. All of those moments, seemingly all of those moments had disappeared. And yet, he still managed to remember almost everything that he was certain he had pushed far, far in the very corners of his memory archives. The things that he had wished to hide were on display, mockingly so, but he couldn't even recollect one experience that he could look back upon even somewhat fondly. All the things he had managed to learn from, the things he could even remember looking back on in the past were all gone.
Just what was this? What was going on?
He was still looking out at the dismal grey sky. It was still raining, in the exact same fashion as it had been this entire time. It's as if time had been standing still, that the world was just following a routine, that the uncertainty the weather usually presented was replaced with a well oil machine that poured out in perfectly measured portions and covered the sky with a predetermined amount of grey. Everything felt the same - no, not felt. Everything was the same, nothing had changed, not even a little bit. Nothing but the emotional front that he had shrouded his face in, that is. That shroud had been exposed for the thinly veiled farce it had always been - by these realizations, and by Rafa's mental instability. It was completely gone, and though he was looking outside that coffee shop window, never once looking back at her in the eye, his face had felt the effects of the mind games that he felt he was stuck playing by himself. That shroud had completely disappeared, and it showed, plain and simple, his emotions hanging on his facial features.
His eyes were closed together tightly, wrinkling at both ends of their almond shape with branches of scrunched together skin. His brow sunk ever so slightly on top of the bridge of his nose, forcing the skin into an angry point, sour, sour as the taste in his mouth. His lips were lacking in their normally pinkish hue, looked completely white as he pursed them together. A cold sweat shone on his forehead, gleaming slightly under the moderate yellow lighting of the coffee shop. Just a bit above was his hair, normally and wavy and brown. Rafa ran a hand through that hair, pulling back in frustration, and then another hand. They massaged his temples in a foolish attempt to make things better. They wouldn't. He was a mess. He was a total, total mess.
And even Rafa wasn't sure when this look appeared on his face. It's as he had been feeling for months, but wouldn't let his expression betray. For all he knew, it had been there the entire time, and the facade he felt he was putting up to mask it, was never in face materialized like he thought. Just like everything else - he couldn't even trust his thoughts. He didn't even know the things that he alone should have known. It was killing him. And his expression only worsened as he devoted more time to thinking about the predicament.
It didn't matter. There was far more going on to be worried about. More than he could have ever understood, even.
She, of course, wouldn't have cared. Because he was wrapped around her finger - and he never once found it odd. Not until now, where it was becoming increasingly clear to Rafa just what happening to him. It was back. The thing he once feared most, the thing that forced his hand into taking up a firearm and beginning to fend for himself. And it was in front of him the entire time.
Foolish.
That what he was. He told himself what a fool he was, hoping that he would have the inner backbone to refute it. There was, however, nothing to refute. Rafa Daisetsu was a fool. A tragic, tragic fool
He was right before. He was someone to be pitied. Rafa just never knew how true it was. He was a sorry human being - but this...
This was just too much. But at least now, he had the opportunity that he once wished so hardly for. He was a fool. He was so much of a fool it was uncanny. How he ever thought he could skirt the line between was and wasn't was an utterly ridiculous notion. But he had the ability to change that now. He had a chance.
This wasn't reality. It wasn't real.
Not in the sense that Rafa wanted everything of this to be untrue, but rather that none of it was in the first place. All the dots that felt they were connected weren't so at all. It was as if someone erased a multitude of those specks, crudely hammering in their own lines to take a shape that they saw fit.
Rafa was going to change everything. Once and for all, he was going to get things back.
Those very same tears that used to melt him on the spot, streaming down like lava but with a temperature much more grave. He must have seen them dozens of times before, small creeks of raw emotion gently carving down the milky-white skin of her cheeks, slowly. Oh, so slowly! Those beads puddling at the corners of her slim eyes, the whites of which masked with branches of red, red, red. Those bloodshot streaks surrounding her troubled eyes. No, not troubled.
Not troubled. Not troubled at all.
Those hazel orbs... they were tranquil. More tranquil than anything he had ever seen. Behind the wavering sticks of irritation and the swollen bottoms of her eyes, behind that facade of pure torture, behind everything that was clearly logical and right in front of him. Behind of all of that... was something that didn't make sense. Where was her pain?
Where was it?!
He was upset. No, he was angered! There was nothing in the past that could have alluded to this kind of reaction. Where was the pain in her eyes, the shaking and uncertainty of what was to come - the pain that he knew all too well. Where was the pain that she alone administered unto him? He couldn't find it. And though his fists clenched and his teeth began to grind against each other, sounding off inside of his mouth with an irritating metronome only he himself could pick up, he wasn't surprised in the least. This was the kind of the kind of person she was. He had always known it. He had always wanted to call her out on this ugliness, because there was no physical flaw half as disgusting as that to be found on body. But he couldn't.
Then, he might have used the excuse that he would not stoop so low, to her level, he would say. But that's all it was - an excuse. He had had the misfortune of maturing, of learning that his mistakes were nothing but results of his own lack of character. The fact was he couldn't stoop to the level he wished because he was too much of a coward to deal with the consequences.
This was safe. It had always been safe. And she knew that he was wrapped around her finger. And unless he could manage to free himself from such a curse, he would always be wrapped around it. No, he'd be wrapped even tighter. But even if he could...
There were those tears.
The tears that once melted him.
It was those very same tears, without a discernible difference in appearance or consistency, that were now freezing his heart. The emotion he had always mistaken for raw, for unabated feelings being poured out of her eyes, were nothing more than artificial waterworks put on for show. They pitied him. He pitied himself.
It felt as if they were alone, not only in the coffee shop they were talking to each other in, but in the entire world. Before, he might have had that feeling also, but in an entirely different aspect. Then, then he would have looked at her if she was the only person that mattered. That they were the only two people in the world, or at least the only two that mattered to him. He would look only at her, and he thought she would look only at him.
Now however, the feeling of isolation was one of fear. He couldn't get her out of his mind, and it was because of her that he felt so weak. His thoughts were under what seemed like constant distress, and it was tough just to think straight anymore. He was with her always because he knew of nothing else. And it was eerie, the way they interacted. It really felt as if they were the only two in the world, and that everyone else was just some lifeless puppet programmed to be around them.
The coffee shop was delicately designed. They were painted in a soft yellow light by the fixtures hanging above them, and their sheer presence was increased in drama by just being bathed in those very same rays of light. He had ordered something, but couldn't quite remember just what it was he asked the waitress for, despite it only being a few minutes since he placed the order. That's how unfocused his mind was these days.
Darker than a moonless night. Hotter and more bitter than hell itself.
It was decaf.
She had ordered something sweeter and decidedly more feminine. It smelled of caramel, only slightly, and not too overpowering. It was soothing, kind of. It painted the air around them with a beautiful aroma, and critically so, since the aura they were both emitting was dark, dark. She had a sweet flavored bread to go with the beverage she had ordered, and was nibbling on it cutely, even despite the sorry state her face was in from excessive crying. No, that made it cuter. He didn't know why. He never knew why.
"Tell me," she said, that emotion he had incorrectly identified as real still in effect, with slight peaks of falseness showing through. She had the gall to ask him - no, to demand of him - and he was too much of a fool, or too much of a coward, or too much of both to ever think of anything but obliging.
"Tell you what?" he replied coolly, but no longer looked at her in the eye. Even in this moment of distress for her, as falsified as it was, her eyes pooled up twice the confidence his ever could. Behind their puffy and red facade, wet with tears - those tears - was something that he could never possess, nor could he ever properly understand. It was strength. He couldn't look at her in the eye. Not because she had that fire hidden in the glare beneath her tears, but because he was afraid she would see that there was no such flame in his. The confidence that she kept proudly on display as anyone would was noticeably absent in his wavering eyes. And so he locked his gaze on the gray sky above them.
"Everything. Tell me everything. So I can forget- so I can finally be done with you."
The words left her mouth slowly. So, so slowly, as if they were in the perfect tempo with the water crawling down her cheeks. And he was wrapped around those words, as soon as they were for both of them to hear. He hated it. He couldn't ever recall hating anything more.
It was suffocating. Why did it have to be this way?
He remembered.
Not the reason why. He remembered her smile. That smile. The antithesis to those tears. Or at least it used to be, before he was able to decipher her artificial code. It was that smile, the one that looked like sunshine trapped in porcelain, seeping out in brilliance, that flashed in and out inside of the corners of his mind. That smile was one he hadn't seen outside of his sleepy eyes for a long, long while. It occurred to him that he wouldn't ever be seeing it again.
He should have been sad - he was wrapped around that smile, without a doubt. He was wrapped around everything about her. But he wasn't sad. He was angry, just like he had been when he saw no pain in her eyes as soon as she started crying. Pain that should have been inherent with the action of tearing up. Why was all of this being taken away from him? What sins had he committed to be ripped to shreds like this?
Oh, right.
He had the misfortune of being different.
"Did you fall in love?" he asked her, unsure if he even really wanted an answer. "With another..." he tried to say, as his voice trailed off into a forced stop. He was becoming more and more angry, though his face wouldn't show it. His ears were starting to turn a cardinal hue, and the sound of his teeth grinding was becoming louder. But he would die before his face betrayed his inner emotions. That's the kind of man Rafa Daisetsu was.
Or rather, that was the kind of man Rafa Daisetsu had been reduced to.
There was a time when he was much more. That time seemed to be completely out of sight, out of mind. But not because it had been so long - no, it hadn't been more than a few months. Or maybe it was longer - Rafa couldn't quite get a handle on the concept of time outside of the bar. But it wasn't like time had anything to do with it. Rafa had decided that he didn't want to play superhero anymore, and that this normal life was the one he cherished the most. That's also where he made his first mistake, because the bartender was wrong in ever assuming that he had the right to resume that normal life - if it was even his, or even normal, to begin with.
That's how it was.
"I don't know," she responded, just as coolly as he did before, as if she was certain he had already seen through her artificial teary facade. Or maybe she just didn't care anymore, or didn't think him worthy of such a show. Whatever the case, that side of her, though technically never there, was up and gone. Rafa would be a liar if he said he didn't miss it. Because it was those tears that had him here in the first place. She continued, "It's not the same. It's not the same as when we..." She paused. Their eyes met for a split-second, before Rafa broke off the gaze. He was still hiding that part of himself.
"It's not like that."
He knew he was a fool. He knew it well. Normal men are fools aren't they? Normal men are pitiful and weak and cowardly, right? These are the traits of normal people. This is what he told himself. But he knew he was a fool, and he knew they were lies that would help him keep going. That's what fools do.
He was unfit for a life like this. It was ironic, wasn't it? How he had so easily taken on the life of a secret agent, one with freakish powers that should have been fit only for a circus sideshow, how he had the ability to take everything so life threatening in stride with little more than a witty remark and a few gunshots. Life threatening...
He didn't even realize that he was putting his life on the line back then until he made the comparison there and then. It also felt like a game to him. Like he had a second life waiting for him if he ever bit the dust, hidden away ready to spawn. Like his ammo would automatically refill if he was ever in the unfortunate situation of running out of it. Like a cheat code would make everything better and rescue from wherever he had stuck his head into last.
He used to be invincible. Now he was this Rafa Daisetsu, one that was being torn apart with little more than a sad face and some soft words. And yet, he still couldn't discern which one of him he liked more.
Because he hated them both. Rafa was at this unfortunate crossroads, where the choice he had to make was, ultimately, going to be one that he would grow to hate. No matter what. That's how it was, and that's how it was always meant to be. There was nothing he could do about it, and he, however reluctantly the front he put up was, knew it well.
His fists clenched again, baring knuckles hidden beneath tightened skin, becoming more and more a subtle shade of red as he squeezed his balled fists. It wasn't that he couldn't remember what it was that brought him to this crossroads, but because he desperately, desperately wanted nothing more to forget about it. To leave it in the past and move on. To just go on with life, and pretend that incident never happened.
He couldn't do that, though. He wouldn't ever be able to forget that - at least, not the way he was attempting to right now. There were other steps he was to take if he truly wanted to bury his past in an unmarked grave, and completely forget the location of the shifted sands, but he knew that that plan of action required a level of courage and confidence his soul would never encompass. It would be easier to put an end to everything.
He had thought about that, too. Just giving up with the charade he was putting on, and going ahead and turning it all over. He had the tools to kill himself - the very same ones he had employ to overpower foes so often in the past. He had built up his skill with them to where he was sure he'd be able to put a bullet in his brain, quick and painlessly. He was sure that would be the most efficient way to unencumber all the weight he had been carrying on his back. The weight of stress that he had, without pride or any thought, draped across his body and carried with obvious repercussion.
It peeked out from behind the front he had shielded his face with. Tired, tired eyes, as evidenced by the dark circles that, despite his best intentions, discolored the face he used to be so proud of. Whenever he had the misfortune of catching a glimpse of the gaunt figure he had felt he'd been reduced to, he could have sworn that those marks drooped down all the way to his chin. It was untrue to anyone else - as his appearance was only flawed by the slight markings of one who hadn't been able to rest, or rest peacefully, at least, for an extended period of time.
It was nigh indiscernible.
Too him however, the toll that his body had taken due to this stress was unlike anything he had ever witnessed in his decidedly short life. He felt like a leper, and he felt he looked like one as well, and when he saw that his own feelings about his appearance were not reciprocated in the few people he had surrounded himself with, he only felt more pathetic. Rafa was unsure if it was because he was a person to be pitied, or if this gaunt person who stared back at him every time he saw his reflection was indeed just something he himself had created.
Too him, both were disgusting. That's how things were these days - Rafa Daisetsu had felt he was only given a fool's idea of freedom. He felt that he had the ability to make his choices, and yet every time the opportunity arose, he was only faced with decisions that he hated to the very bone. There was nothing good for him these days.
Then, however, things were not so bad. Oh, cruel irony!
In a grass is always greener moment, he had the gall to reject that lifestyle he now coveted so much. The lifestyle where he always felt he never had the freedom to make his own decisions, that by some cruel misfortune he was doomed to only the life of a secret agent - one who, despite being a bastion of light in a steadily crumbling society, never once. received an ounce of the praise he felt he had deserved. Not once! And yet, he knew it was to be that way. Who would ever praise a person that only worked behind the guise of mystery? How would they ever even know who to thank?
He used to hate it. It used to feel utterly predetermined, that he had to follow that path no matter what. Destiny, and all that jargon, oh how he hated that word! Destiny? Where was the right he had ascertained as a human being to carve out his own path, or at least be given the foolish notion that he was doing so, even if he was not? He had deserved at least that much!
Those were the thoughts he had. It was those thoughts that ultimately led to this, this pseudo-lifestyle he had claimed for himself. He never knew how lucky he was, how carefree he used to be, how it was only because he had the idea of predetermination wedged firmly in his brain. Now that he had "achieved" what he was looking for, it wasn't worth it anymore. It wasn't worth it at all.
He wanted to go back. He needed to.
It was because of those tears. It was those tears that coaxed him to leave the life he had made for himself, lied to him and whispered poison in his ears. Those tears that managed to pry him from a life he had actually enjoyed, one where he lived how he liked with the people he had managed to convince to like him. His friends, as they were. But he left it all behind. And yet, all he could remember was those tears. That smile. Her beautiful face.
And now that was being pried away from him too? How was this happening? Just what had he done to deserve this hate?
He couldn't remember. It became increasingly clear that the gaps in his memory were plentiful, and that this was something to look into.
He couldn't remember why.
He just couldn't remember.
Why couldn't he remember?
What was there? What had been taken from him?
There were dozens of memories he knew he should have had. Hundreds, maybe thousands even. But all he could remember were bits and pieces, tiny snippets of what was supposed to be his personal recollection of the journey he had taken.
But as his clenched fists began to loosen, shaky and uncertain, he tried to make sense of what he had been reduced to. None of it made sense. Even more than usual, even - there was absolutely nothing that made sense of this situation. His journey...
All of a sudden, his journey felt more like a trip. A vacation, even. It shouldn't have felt that way. He tried to force his memories into fruition. He tried to remember everything that he could not, the things that he knew should have been there, fresh and ready for him to look back upon. All of those moments, seemingly all of those moments had disappeared. And yet, he still managed to remember almost everything that he was certain he had pushed far, far in the very corners of his memory archives. The things that he had wished to hide were on display, mockingly so, but he couldn't even recollect one experience that he could look back upon even somewhat fondly. All the things he had managed to learn from, the things he could even remember looking back on in the past were all gone.
Just what was this? What was going on?
He was still looking out at the dismal grey sky. It was still raining, in the exact same fashion as it had been this entire time. It's as if time had been standing still, that the world was just following a routine, that the uncertainty the weather usually presented was replaced with a well oil machine that poured out in perfectly measured portions and covered the sky with a predetermined amount of grey. Everything felt the same - no, not felt. Everything was the same, nothing had changed, not even a little bit. Nothing but the emotional front that he had shrouded his face in, that is. That shroud had been exposed for the thinly veiled farce it had always been - by these realizations, and by Rafa's mental instability. It was completely gone, and though he was looking outside that coffee shop window, never once looking back at her in the eye, his face had felt the effects of the mind games that he felt he was stuck playing by himself. That shroud had completely disappeared, and it showed, plain and simple, his emotions hanging on his facial features.
His eyes were closed together tightly, wrinkling at both ends of their almond shape with branches of scrunched together skin. His brow sunk ever so slightly on top of the bridge of his nose, forcing the skin into an angry point, sour, sour as the taste in his mouth. His lips were lacking in their normally pinkish hue, looked completely white as he pursed them together. A cold sweat shone on his forehead, gleaming slightly under the moderate yellow lighting of the coffee shop. Just a bit above was his hair, normally and wavy and brown. Rafa ran a hand through that hair, pulling back in frustration, and then another hand. They massaged his temples in a foolish attempt to make things better. They wouldn't. He was a mess. He was a total, total mess.
And even Rafa wasn't sure when this look appeared on his face. It's as he had been feeling for months, but wouldn't let his expression betray. For all he knew, it had been there the entire time, and the facade he felt he was putting up to mask it, was never in face materialized like he thought. Just like everything else - he couldn't even trust his thoughts. He didn't even know the things that he alone should have known. It was killing him. And his expression only worsened as he devoted more time to thinking about the predicament.
It didn't matter. There was far more going on to be worried about. More than he could have ever understood, even.
She, of course, wouldn't have cared. Because he was wrapped around her finger - and he never once found it odd. Not until now, where it was becoming increasingly clear to Rafa just what happening to him. It was back. The thing he once feared most, the thing that forced his hand into taking up a firearm and beginning to fend for himself. And it was in front of him the entire time.
Foolish.
That what he was. He told himself what a fool he was, hoping that he would have the inner backbone to refute it. There was, however, nothing to refute. Rafa Daisetsu was a fool. A tragic, tragic fool
He was right before. He was someone to be pitied. Rafa just never knew how true it was. He was a sorry human being - but this...
This was just too much. But at least now, he had the opportunity that he once wished so hardly for. He was a fool. He was so much of a fool it was uncanny. How he ever thought he could skirt the line between was and wasn't was an utterly ridiculous notion. But he had the ability to change that now. He had a chance.
This wasn't reality. It wasn't real.
Not in the sense that Rafa wanted everything of this to be untrue, but rather that none of it was in the first place. All the dots that felt they were connected weren't so at all. It was as if someone erased a multitude of those specks, crudely hammering in their own lines to take a shape that they saw fit.
Rafa was going to change everything. Once and for all, he was going to get things back.
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Black. Blacker than black. A sea of never ending black.
His hazel eyes broadened, dim and unabashed, solitary where they once looked as if they traveled in vast herds. It took all the strength in the world to force open his eyelids, clamped down as they were, encumbered by a malicious cocktail of negative emotions. How pitiful he looked just then! The obvious fear trapped in his wavering pupils, dancing a frightened dance in the see of dim, dim hazel, the familiar branches of red littered about the pools of off-white in his eyeballs.
"You..." he mouthed, finding a tiny bit of offsetting strength in that short word. "You..." he repeated and repeated and repeated, as if the mantra on his breath would make this bad dream abruptly stop. It started to become louder, and louder still, until he was nearly shouting it at the top of his lungs. But he found no solace in mentioning it. He only found more anger, more fear, more negativity. It was tearing apart at the insides of him, tearing his soul in two as the syllable danced on his shaky tongue and shot out of his wretched mouth. But he wouldn't stop saying it. He couldn't stop saying it. As if it was the only word in his vocabulary - No, as if it wasn't a word at all. It was as if it was an expression of his innermost grief and pain. A grunt or a cry or a howl. It was an instinct, nothing more.
He may have been better off leaving his eyes closed. The coffee shop, the small one in the urban city he had hidden himself away in... was no longer where he found himself. He couldn't tell where he had been transported to, or rather he couldn't identify the location exactly. But it was familiar, somehow. So familiar. He'd been here before.
But he hadn't. Had he? Rafa couldn't remember.
What a pathetic feeling it was. To feel, but unable to know. To understand that his greatest and most precious belongings had been completely stripped away from him in some manner. He had been denied the only thing he found solace in. Not only that, but the things he treasured were being paraded in front of his face, yet just barely, barely outside of his grasp. It was like he was being toyed with, led by carrot and stick to retrieve things that he should have never been confiscated from him.
He glanced about with his tired and puffy eyes, wet with an onslaught of tears being held back just ever so slightly. He wouldn't cry. He needed to retain at least that much.
Lanterns hung festively from the intricately designed buildings above him, raining about in a myriad of bright colors and turning so rhythmically in the soft night breeze. It was summer, he discerned from the warm temperature, even after nightfall. It was summer, and it was beautiful. He saw the lines of kanji hanging on lines strung between rooftops, each displaying a different positive character. He was outside of a large city, in a much smaller and much more traditional village, and the geographic clues littered about all pointed towards Sapporo. It must have been the Tanabata festival.
Rafa looked down at himself. His clothes, the style he had clothed himself in for as long as he could remember were gone. The slim-fitting suit that hugged his body, the pefectly knotted skinny tie, his crisp, crisp pants and polished wingtips - they were all replaced by a festive yukata, beautifully garnished with blue and red and gold intricacies. The cloth was thin and easy to move around in, characteristics that perfectly fit with the season and the festival vibe. It was, for lack of a better word, surprising. The whole situation should have been at least somewhat surprising to the bartender, but this was a different kind of feel.
Refreshing. It was refreshing.
He brought his eyes back to his surroundings, and took a much longer look at what this new environment. He was greeted only with the colors he had seen before. The slight whisper of the wind slipped into his eardrums with a whoosh, but that was the only sound he could hear. Rafa was literally but a few feet away from a running river, one large and blue with a fast current, and he could even see some Koi beneath the crystal clear water swimming haphazardly. But there was no sound emanating from it. But he could see it move! He saw it racing downstream to whatever body of water it would eventually pour into. He saw it! But why couldn't he hear it?
The wind might have been the only sound for miles. No, there was another. It was the echo - his echo. His loud yells from before were still resonating on the air, seemingly coming from absolutely nowhere. It clicked.
There were no people here. Not a soul. He was the only person at this festival, celebrating it all alone. And then they appeared.
As if his eyes materialized them all on their own, dozens and dozens of people manifested in front of him. Men and women, boy and girls, all clad in their summer yukatas and talking and laughing and living. They moved together naturally, as if they had been there the entire time, and it was he - Rafa - who was too daft to see them at first. Shop vendors appeared behind their booths, offering everything anyone could possibly imagine - delicious festival food that the kids yearned for at the start of every summer, like fried takoyaki or spicy rice cakes skewered on sticks, even western sweets like cotton candy and various fried doughs. Other vendors offered games for adults and children alike, like ring tossing and fish catching, showing off the myriad of prizes they had on display for those fortunate enough to beat the odds - shelves full of every popular character in plush form being the most coveted, but with plenty of other paraphernalia fully stocked as well. Still others offered retail services, and the mask shops were already gaining quite the crowd, each of which waving around cash at the establishment owner.
The people weren't the only thing to materialize. So too did the sound that was once absent from this world. The newly appeared denizens mouths chit-chattered in what seemed like a universally happy tone, and almost immediately, cries of "Mom, mom, buy me this!" floated around the air and into Rafa's ears. The whoosh of the water finally accompanied the visual he had been seeing of the lake's fill careening down quickly to its destination.
And the cicadas! It was as if they were playing a song just for the festival, just for him! Their buzz was as soothing as the season itself, and within seconds this false setting that Rafa had opened his eyes up to had materialized into a living, breathing world.
He couldn't forget how artificial it all was, though. And it showed on his face - sharp eyes, darting back and forth at all these new additions to this virtual space and an expressionless mouth, wavering slightly. His emotions on the situation were draped across his face in an almost embarrassingly raw fashion.
If these people were real, they might have laughed. They might have pitied him, just like everything else. But they weren't real, no matter how convincing they were. They were like Artificially Intelligent programs, built on a routine, skinned for this particularly time and voiced by something that could say the things that they, as false beings, could not.
He didn't hate them, though. Rafa enjoyed the throngs of people, fake as they were, that materialized in this otherwise gloomy atmosphere. He enjoyed the sound of rushing water, of cicadas buzzing and buzzing in a rhythmic fashion. He enjoyed it more than anything he could think of. But he couldn't let himself be happy. There was more to this than he could see, and even though he knew it was all fake, he didn't know what was to come.
"You remember this place, don't you?" that voice called out again. The voice he couldn't stand, that resonated in his ears like nails on a chalkboard under an amplifier. He still couldn't cough out anything to say to the beast. "Yes, of course you remember! I've made it so. This is where something important happened, right? Of course, I know all about it... even if I wasn't there! But you... You just can't quite put your finger on it, can you? Ah, what a pity!"
"Just tell me!" he shouted. His voice was raw, as if he hadn't spoke a word for years. Longer, even! It was raw, and it felt like fire in his lungs, bursting out in an angry, boisterous spew of sound that raced through his throat and scalded his tongue before erupting on his breath. He had every right to be angry. He had deserved an explanation. He had done all the right things, and he should have been given at least this much in return.
But he got nothing.
"Tell you?" the beastly, shrieking voice said with obvious laughter held back, "tell you what, exactly? You should know this situation better than anybody, shouldn't you? After all, it was you who lived through this experience all that time ago. If you did that... then you should know what it is you need to do here, right? This is your very first trial, Rafa Daisetsu. The very first of many, many, many more to come. Think of it as... a practice run. Yes, that's what it is. Practice. A gimme, even. This is a gift - as the other trials are... not so easy."
Just as fast as the voice appeared, it vanished. Even with the wealth of question he had yet to ask, Rafa couldn't help but think that an end to that lecture couldn't have come sooner - this was a testament to just how much he despised that voice, and, of course, the being that it belonged to. And yet, he knew that had he possessed the strength to ask those questions, there was the strong possibility that he would again be denied. There was nothing fair about this game. The only justice to be served was of the type he himself would have to create. That was the magnitude of the situation.
He ran a hand through his light brown hair and closed his eyes tight. It was this kind of action that helped him think, and thinking was the only way he was going to get through this trial. There was something here, something that he did or...
He couldn't remember what it even was. But he was sure that whatever it turned out to be, that was the answer to this riddle he had been thrust into. For now, he would have to investigate. Not any kind of normal investigation, like the ones he carried out before as an agent of Orpheus. This was a whole different beast altogether, an investigation in where he alone held the answer. The clues were all about, however. They were what he needed.
He suddenly heard bells. Not just bells, but drums also. The pounding of drums, a metronome-esque beat being created not too far away. Thump, thump, thump, they went as they neared Rafa. Thump, thump, thump. Thump, thump, thump. His mind started to think in rhythm with that thumping, clearly and without distraction. Rafa felt he was nearing something important, something intricately tied to these sounds, this thumping and the ringing of bells, each growing in volume. It was there. It was there! He continued to focus all of his brainpower into this lead and he could feel this thinking coming to a head when a familiar voice called out behind him.
"Rafa! Rafa!"
He tried to drown it out inside of his head.
"Rafa! Hey Rafa!"
No! He was so close!
"Rafaaa! Hey!!!"
His head turned on a swivel. It was her. Of course it was her.
Her voice was like honey dripping down his ears. It was soft and sticky, oozing gently down the canals inside of his head. It was no wonder he had once characterized himself as someone who was figuratively wrapped around her finger - that voice, that voice was charming enough to drop even the most formidable man to his knees. The soothing honey-like words, even as unattractive as they should have been had him completely and utterly enamored, just like before. The words that twisted his emotions back and forth like they had before, from sullen and sorrowful to as angry as he had ever been, and then countless others. He thought it disgusting. And it was.
She was, in fact, the same girl from the coffee shop. The one he had apparently fallen in love with - though he couldn't even say that for sure, considering the mental hell he'd been through in the short time since then.
It was a short time right? It felt like ages. It couldn't have been more than a few hours.
He still couldn't place her image as someone he knew. She must have been important though, he figured, as she was the only face he could even vaguely remember right now. Rafa took it with a grain of salt, however. It was being increasingly clear that whatever was important to him held no bearing in this artificial world. If that were the case, he would have at least some sense in security that his actions were completely delegated by him alone - but he didn't have that luxury. This, even in the realm of his own memories, was not his turf. He did not have home-field advantage. He didn't even have a clear image of what was going on. Everything was clearly stacked against him, and he wouldn't ever have a say in the matter. Not until it was all over would he ever have a chance at getting back what was rightfully his.
"It's you," he replied. The words had a certain sense of deja vous laced all about them. He did know this woman. Somehow, he did. But he couldn't tell how he had come to know her or why or anything like that. Just that she was someone he knew. It could have been nothing more or nothing less.
It's you. These words were familiar. He wouldn't know it, but he had directed them at her already before. He would learn that, despite her overflowingly natural appearance, beautiful and petite, she was not at all how she seemed. She could try to mask it with the gorgeous yukata she was wrapped in, one dyed a brilliant light-blue color with magenta colored details scattered here and their on the fabric to match the similarly colored sash that held the ensemble together. She could try to cover it up with the charming up-do she was sporting, showing off the beautiful fruits of her effort in styling her hair. She could try to make it nigh discernible by speaking in that gooey, honey-like voice.
It wouldn't change the fact.
He continued, "Do you know what we're doing here? I think I'm a bit lost, actually." Rafa said it in a way that was completely natural. His voice should have betrayed all of how he felt about her. It should have been sharp and suspicious, almost contrite. But it wasn't. He was trying his hardest to stay as natural as possible, trying to lull her into a game of his own. It was then that it was obvious that the bartender had already figured it out, but he couldn't be completely sure. He needed her to confirm it.
"It's Tanabata, silly! We're here to celebrate!" she replied gleefully, almost as if she was forcing a natural tone herself. "Now come on, we have to experience absolutely everything! I want to get some spicy rice cakes, and then we really, really need to try some fried takoyaki - I hear it has something different than octopus inside! And then we need to play some games and some more games and then some more until the fireworks show starts! Oh, and we have to get masks, too! Those are the best part of Tanabata, don't you think?"
Masks - how ironic. She could wear a thousand masks and it wouldn't matter. Besides, she already had more than enough.
"Well then, what are we waiting for?" he said with similar happiness on his tongue. "Let's go and get something to eat!"
He reached for his wallet.
It was gone. No, his wallet was still there... but where was his utility belt? The one that housed his two guns, Miss Mars and zombie-talkeR? He was certain he had it equipped, even as recently as on his hip at the coffee shop?
Now was not a time to be unarmed. Luckily, he wasn't. Rafa still had his quick-thinking head, and it was about as close as he was going to get to a weapon anytime soon. He'd have to make good use of it, though, because without the firepower to back up his actions, it was unlikely that there would be any second chances here. No, he'd have to be perfect. It was time to put that silver tongue to use.
He followed her to the food stand she wanted to go to so desperately, where the vendor was selling freshly made spicy rice cakes. He hadn't ever tasted them before, even in true reality, so the bartender was a bit wary at the incredibly spicy scent they emitted. It flowed through his nostrils with vehement strength, tickling the follicles of his nose hairs as it traveled deeper and deeper into his sinuses. It stung.
Rafa winced at the feeling, scrunching up his nose with obvious distaste. But the feeling was fresh. Eye opening, even. His mind cleared with the fumes, as much as it possibly could in the circumstances he had been presented. It felt good, for a second. But that's all it felt good for. As soon as that piece of time had passed, the grim false reality he was wading through appeared right back in front of his eyes.
Not that it had ever left. Not that it ever would.
"Ahhhhh~" she said suddenly, snapping him out of the drone that had taken over. His head snapped to look at her, and for the most part he was surprised. She stood on the tips of her toes to try and match his height, her apparent lack of balance being put on display as she wobbled left and right, desperately struggling to stay upright.
It was cute.
Her face seemed real. Who was he to say that it wasn't? Even though Rafa had seen the denizens of this false world materialize right in front of his eyes, why did they seem to be more natural than he was? They were human in every aspect. She, too, seemed to follow that mold - from her gorgeously shaped face, starting from her slender V-Line shaped jaw, and traveling up to the small pink kiss of a mouth positioned so immaculately on her face, the one that seemed to be perpetually upturned at the sides in a cute smile, at least in this particular universe. Her nose was small and dainty, the feature that she herself felt was most lacking, since it's tininess made her face just a bit flatter than she would have liked (never mind that she was dead wrong), the type of nose that made its owner look five years younger.
Her eyes spoke for themselves.
How could he ever describe them? It was as if these eyes were the one deciding factor that this girl, this beautiful, beautiful, girl, was indeed a fake. They were large and almond shaped, with a pair of barely there double eyelids, and beneath them were those moderately sized puffs of skin present on so many Asian girls. The kinds of puffs that forced those large, almond-shaped eyes into the most beautiful crescents when she smiled. Her eyelashes were long and dark, almost as if they were the false type, curled and applied with mascara - but they weren't. And her irises...
Hazel.
He wouldn't do any injustice to them by trying to fit them into any kind of pre-made category. There wasn't a category in the history of the world that they would fit into, really. But that bright, bright, green-brown color that flickered whenever it caught a glimmer of light, the dark freckles scattered about in those pools of pure color placed almost symmetrically.
No, perfectly symmetrical. Perfect. They were perfect.
She was perfect.
He could have fallen in love. Rafa was the type to fall head over heels whenever a pretty face passed by, without even knowing her name.
Name. Name.
What was her name?
He was sure he knew it. It was on the tip of his tongue.
It was a unique name. The kind of name that is imprinted in its own space in one's brain upon meeting the owner of it, the kind of name that you never forget. The characters danced around in the wisps of his mind, and the syllables rung within his ears. What was her name?
"Ahhhhh~!" she said again, breaking him out of a trance yet again. She was still on the tips of her toes, holding a small bowl of the spicy rice cakes in the palm of her left hand and a pair of wooden chopsticks in her left - her left hand with chopsticks that were tightly clutched around a rice cake being waved back and forth in front of Rafa's face. "Ahhhhh~~~!!" she said once more with evidence, as the bartender's mouth complied, opening wide for the food she was feeding him. With a plop, she dropped the rice cake on his tongue and he could feel the heat expand into the back of throat.
He chewed and chewed and chewed on the thickly cut rice cake, and chewed some more. It was as tasty as it was spicy, and the extraordinary heat often called for gaping inhalations of air to cool down the bartender's overheating mouth.
It was weird. He was half expecting the spicy rice cake to not taste like anything, that it wasn't going to mesh with palate. He was waiting for this world to reveal itself as fake or shabby, waiting for something that was as mundane as a sense of taste in the real world to be far too complex for this fabricated land to reciprocate. But as he continued to wait patiently for that one fatal flaw it became increasingly clear that there was none. It struck him.
Why would he want to leave this place? It wasn't so bad, was it? It was a carbon copy of the world he could remember, and due to the gaping holes in his memory it might as well have been better. There was a girl - a perfect girl - who loved him here. There wasn't the stress of being a superpowered freak here. There was a normal life here.
He swallowed.
Had he always been this weak minded? Only a few moments ago he had made the decision to do everything he could to escape. Now he was looking for an excuse to stay. Perhaps if he was a bit stronger willed - no, it was certain, that if he had the mental and physical strength that he so desired, he would have never been in this predicament in the first place.
"It's tasty isn't it?" she said with a smile.
Rafa wasn't listening.
The decision stood firm once again in his mind. And yet he couldn't be sure weather or not he loved it or hated it. But Rafa accepted it.
She didn't seem to mind the silence her question garnered. Perhaps she mistook it as an exaggerated expression of the taste of the spicy rice cakes, or maybe she didn't care at all. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. She grabbed Rafa's hand and lead him to the next station that caught her eye - the one that had a myriad of comical masks for sale, each one seemingly more colorful than the one next to it. Right off the bat the bartender could identify a few of the characters whose faces had been manufactured into plastic molds - a good deal of Kamen Rider masks in various alternate colors, a few iterations of Astro Boy, even a handful of Pokemon were stocked meticulously on the racks that covered the stall.
Speaking of which, her eyes seemed to be locked on a cute Pikachu mask. The stars that shone deep within her gaze only broke for a second, and it was as she turned her head away from the mask - and towards to Rafa, pleadingly. It didn't matter which world he had been living in, such a gesture was as clean cut as gestures got, and the bartender immediately reached for his wallet in retaliation.
He opened it with some surprise. There was a great number of bills populating the respective area for money notes, and each slip for plastic seemed to be encasing some type of high profile credit card. Rafa was by no means a poor individual, as he recalled, but he sure wasn't the type to carry this kind of money, either. It was odd. The way it was all presented was as if it was some kind of incentive. As if it was an offering for him to stay put, to enjoy the life he had been thrown into. And as far as he could recall, the vast amount of paper and plastic that dug into that wallet... it wasn't there earlier. Earlier as in when he first checked, back when he paid for the spicy rice cakes.
They were scared. They were on their heels.
The money appeared because it was becoming increasingly clear that Rafa wasn't going to stand around and do nothing. He had that thing on its heels.
Not that he even had a face to picture when he thought about it.
Rafa could lie to himself all he wanted. His morale wasn't increasing. He was still the rat in the cage, he was still the victim. There was no mistaking that. Even as bad he wanted to convince himself he had a shred of an advantage, there was absolutely no mistaking it.
Rafa would never come to terms with it, though.
He paid for the mask that she picked, though the bartender couldn't quite get around the choice she made. A pikachu - she didn't seem like the type. At any rate, she wore it on the side of her, tilted just slightly, and just like all the other girls with their boyfriends were wearing the masks that they had managed to coax out of their beaus. It was cute, he thought again, in an odd sort of way. The way she wore that second face almost seemed too natural. And at the same time, there was nothing natural about her. Even the way she walked, the distance between steps and the angle at which her heels struck the ground with every step seemed like it was incredibly calculated, like an algorithm developed over a number of years.
They all seemed to walk that way, and though the speeds they traveled at were different, some times you'd see their legs move in unison as if Rafa's hunch that they same code was being powered to run all of these "people's" leg motions. He was sure of it, but like everything else he was sure of, he couldn't be sure of it. Not in this world, not by the rules he was being forced to play by. So all he could do was regard it as a cute tendency she had. And that's what he did.
He looked at the mask again, and he continued to wonder why it looked so natural on her, as if the mask she wore was just a second face, a backup to the one she already had. Mask's seemed like second nature to her. The mask on the side of her face could have very well been the one that encased her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her everything. There was something there, too. He knew it, and he knew that when he felt something like this, his gut was to be trusted. It hadn't let him down yet, as far as he could recall.
Or at least as far as the broken him could recall. The confidence he had built up on what was left of what he could remember might have been nothing to base this confidence upon, and maybe that was a good thing. It was more likely a bad thing. At this point however, Rafa felt that if he couldn't trust the image that he thought he once portrayed, then he'd absolutely no one to trust at all. In this world, as fake as it was - and that couldn't happen. No. He'd have to believe himself at least this much if he had any hope of getting out of this place in one piece.
And so he kept believing, in both himself and in his circumstances. He couldn't tell just what the heck he was doing in this place. And he wasn't getting an answer from anyone around, either. There was something here that needed to be done, however. He could feel it. There was something that would put this nightmare to rest. Something that should have happened, something that he should have orchestrated.
He couldn't remember. Just how long had he been tampered with? Just how far back had his memory been corrupted, just how long ago was it done? Had he lived a portion of his life thinking these things, these nightmares had never happened? The answers would reveal themselves soon enough, he felt.
No. They wouldn't reveal themselves. He would have to uncover them with his own his hands. The secrets were well hidden, and for a purpose. Things here were hidden from him. They were hidden from him alone. There was nothing here that he would stumble upon by accident, nothing to guide him along the way. It wasn't a video game or a movie or anything like that. The answers were hidden, and he would have to find them.
Rafa sighed. It was Tanabata, and he couldn't relax for a second. It was painted all over his face, too.
"Rafa, what's wrong? You're not looking so good." she said. Rafa wasn't even sure which mouth was talking, the one that he had previously described as soft and pink or the black one shoddily crafted on the manufactured Pikachu mask. Her voice, as soft and honey like as it was, never truly felt as if it was the one being forced out of her body. It felt like a canned sound effect, one that could have been placed in any body. That's why it felt like it might as well have been eked out of the yellow mouse monster face just as much as it could have been coming out of the humanlike one with which its syllables were synced with lips.
"It's... uh... nothing," he replied. He wanted to tell her everything for a second. Not that he could exactly pinpoint why - he just felt that he needed to talk to somebody. "It's just that..." Rafa tried again before stopping himself in a similar fashion. It was right then that this girls started to feel less like a harmless AI program...
... and more of an enemy.
"What is it? What can't you talk to me about? I thought we were more than this, Rafa! I thought we were more! Don't tell me tha-"
Like any strong-willed man, Rafa managed to drown out her words. The way she snapped at him was so strange, he felt, the way her eyes turned from a light shade of hazel to something much more sinister. He could of sworn her teeth were sharper, that they were primed and ready to launch an assault. Her words were sharper as well, and when she snapped at him he could feel their piercing attributes. Like bullets ripping through his skin.
Not that he knew what that felt like.
She went on and on with her tirade as he just stared at her newly devilish features. He wondered if she had noticed the appearance she had taken on while in this state, or if it was something else. It felt less natural than he would have expected, instead it was like all of her other artificial nuances. It felt stiff and planned, not so reactionary, like a real humans. It was almost as if it was something programmed directly into her, a kind of specific pathway for her to take in the case that her subject - or Rafa, specifically in this situation - acted in a way that did not warrant her normal cutesy responses.
There must have been something that she - or whoever was behind her clever design - wanted to get out of Rafa. Oh, how foolish he felt! He had so assuredly announced that he had this puppetmaster on their heels not but a few minutes ago, and already it was obvious that the trap that was set for him was working miraculously. Whoever or whatever it was new that this kind of setting would take a toll on him emotionally, and that he was just like the patrons he used to serve as a bartender - loose-lipped, in those kind of situations. He was ready to talk. He was so close to talking.
He survived by luck. He was already sure that everything in this false reality was against him, but it was for sure now. There was nothing here on his side. And he would have to continue to play the fool if he wanted to reach the exit point. And so he just continued to stare and stare and stare as this virtual girlfriend, the one he could not even recall the name of, continued to yell at him. At this point, he couldn't even remember what the whole situation was about. And she would only continue to talk and talk and talk, and would do so for what seemed like ages. It wasn't until a great deal later that she stopped.
Rafa noticed it then. The sun was beginning to set, and he could remember it taking its place in the highest point of its arc when he first arrived into this nightmare world. He couldn't tell why, but the bartender felt like it was a deadline. Something was supposed to happen soon, something important. Whether this memory was a real or false one, he couldn't ascertain. But there was no other clues to follow, and his gut was the only thing pointing the way. There was no way to tell if this path was the correct one.
Rafa felt that if he continued to stand around and do nothing, it wouldn't have mattered anyways. Whatever needed to be done, needed to be done soon.
"I'm sorry" he replied to the girl. He wanted to add something on to it, but Rafa found it increasingly hard to fake sincerity when he couldn't even recall this puppet's name. "It's just that...It's just that this is something I need to find out on my own. You understand that, right? I'm doing this because it's something that will make me...okay. It's something we'd both benefit from."
He was lying through his teeth. And, since he was unaware of the situation between them, he wasn't even sure what he was saying. But she seemed to be relieved by it. The puppetmaster controlling her strings however, might not have been so pleased.
"Now come on," he piped up in a much cheery voice. "It's Tanabata! Let's go do something we've never done before. There's something every couple has to do on Tanabata, you know. I'm sure you already know about it."
"Rafa, I'm not that kind of girl!" She didn't know about it.
"No, no, nothing like that. On Tanabata, you make wishes, you know? You wish for everything you want for the next coming year. You wish for what's most important to you, or what you want to be most important to you."
"I'm not sure what this has to do with us being a couple...?" she looked at him with a puzzled face.
"Relax, just come with me!"
Rafa grabbed her hand and they hurriedly made their way to the center of the festival. They were running quickly and dodging people here and there, taking note of the most beautiful yukatas they came by.
He wouldn't know it then, but his emotions made a complete one-hundred and eighty degree turn. Rafa wasn't the type to experience mood swings like this, but they had been prevalent ever since landing in this false world. It was something about this place that excited him, and then his own idea of what should have been that brought him back down. There was no mystery about this anomaly. It was still Rafa trying to figure out if he really wanted to leave this place, to leave this girl. Somehow, it seemed as if he had decided.
They continued to run however, the clip clop of their wooden sandals hidden the ground in a rhythmic fashion. They ran and ran and ran, and for a few seconds, for both of them, even, it was fun. They laughed as they hurried down to the center of the festival as they held hands like children.
It was fun for her, too. The one behind these technological marionettes. Rafa wouldn't know that, either. And even she, hidden in the depths of her realm, would refuse to admit it. Even if they met, she wondered, even if they met she would keep it hidden. But she knew deep down that a meeting was imminent. She hadn't counted on the Rafa Daisetsu she had taken captive to react this way.
But this, this fun, might have made it all worth it. Until this world came to an end.
They were running when Rafa bumped into a familiar someone, it might have never happened if the woman behind it all hadn't lost her composure when she was, by proxy, holding hands with Rafa, but it did.
It was him. Rafa was staring at a carbon copy of himself - no, maybe the real one. He was still dressed in the attire he had always known, the slim-fitting suit and tie with his grave-keepeR OTIs on both hips. They looked at each other for less than a split second, and the real suit-and-tie Rafa managed to mouth something to the yukata clad one.
It was a name.
The girl he was holding hands with urged him to keep going, to hurry and get the to the center of the festival to which he promised he would take her. It wasn't clear if this was some kind of quick cover-up the one in charge had her puppet do, or if it was something this AI was doing on her own. It wouldn't matter.
They ran to the center of the festival with no other problems. And there it was - the bamboo tree that Tanabata was famous for. The festival had one bamboo tree in which wishers would hang their wishes on, and it was said that the if done appropriately, that wish would come true. More recently, beau's would write the name of their loved one on the tag, to ensure a happy relationship.
Rafa grabbed the tag and pulled out a pen, and she did the same. He smiled at her as he wrote her name.
His hazel eyes broadened, dim and unabashed, solitary where they once looked as if they traveled in vast herds. It took all the strength in the world to force open his eyelids, clamped down as they were, encumbered by a malicious cocktail of negative emotions. How pitiful he looked just then! The obvious fear trapped in his wavering pupils, dancing a frightened dance in the see of dim, dim hazel, the familiar branches of red littered about the pools of off-white in his eyeballs.
"You..." he mouthed, finding a tiny bit of offsetting strength in that short word. "You..." he repeated and repeated and repeated, as if the mantra on his breath would make this bad dream abruptly stop. It started to become louder, and louder still, until he was nearly shouting it at the top of his lungs. But he found no solace in mentioning it. He only found more anger, more fear, more negativity. It was tearing apart at the insides of him, tearing his soul in two as the syllable danced on his shaky tongue and shot out of his wretched mouth. But he wouldn't stop saying it. He couldn't stop saying it. As if it was the only word in his vocabulary - No, as if it wasn't a word at all. It was as if it was an expression of his innermost grief and pain. A grunt or a cry or a howl. It was an instinct, nothing more.
He may have been better off leaving his eyes closed. The coffee shop, the small one in the urban city he had hidden himself away in... was no longer where he found himself. He couldn't tell where he had been transported to, or rather he couldn't identify the location exactly. But it was familiar, somehow. So familiar. He'd been here before.
But he hadn't. Had he? Rafa couldn't remember.
What a pathetic feeling it was. To feel, but unable to know. To understand that his greatest and most precious belongings had been completely stripped away from him in some manner. He had been denied the only thing he found solace in. Not only that, but the things he treasured were being paraded in front of his face, yet just barely, barely outside of his grasp. It was like he was being toyed with, led by carrot and stick to retrieve things that he should have never been confiscated from him.
He glanced about with his tired and puffy eyes, wet with an onslaught of tears being held back just ever so slightly. He wouldn't cry. He needed to retain at least that much.
Lanterns hung festively from the intricately designed buildings above him, raining about in a myriad of bright colors and turning so rhythmically in the soft night breeze. It was summer, he discerned from the warm temperature, even after nightfall. It was summer, and it was beautiful. He saw the lines of kanji hanging on lines strung between rooftops, each displaying a different positive character. He was outside of a large city, in a much smaller and much more traditional village, and the geographic clues littered about all pointed towards Sapporo. It must have been the Tanabata festival.
Rafa looked down at himself. His clothes, the style he had clothed himself in for as long as he could remember were gone. The slim-fitting suit that hugged his body, the pefectly knotted skinny tie, his crisp, crisp pants and polished wingtips - they were all replaced by a festive yukata, beautifully garnished with blue and red and gold intricacies. The cloth was thin and easy to move around in, characteristics that perfectly fit with the season and the festival vibe. It was, for lack of a better word, surprising. The whole situation should have been at least somewhat surprising to the bartender, but this was a different kind of feel.
Refreshing. It was refreshing.
He brought his eyes back to his surroundings, and took a much longer look at what this new environment. He was greeted only with the colors he had seen before. The slight whisper of the wind slipped into his eardrums with a whoosh, but that was the only sound he could hear. Rafa was literally but a few feet away from a running river, one large and blue with a fast current, and he could even see some Koi beneath the crystal clear water swimming haphazardly. But there was no sound emanating from it. But he could see it move! He saw it racing downstream to whatever body of water it would eventually pour into. He saw it! But why couldn't he hear it?
The wind might have been the only sound for miles. No, there was another. It was the echo - his echo. His loud yells from before were still resonating on the air, seemingly coming from absolutely nowhere. It clicked.
There were no people here. Not a soul. He was the only person at this festival, celebrating it all alone. And then they appeared.
As if his eyes materialized them all on their own, dozens and dozens of people manifested in front of him. Men and women, boy and girls, all clad in their summer yukatas and talking and laughing and living. They moved together naturally, as if they had been there the entire time, and it was he - Rafa - who was too daft to see them at first. Shop vendors appeared behind their booths, offering everything anyone could possibly imagine - delicious festival food that the kids yearned for at the start of every summer, like fried takoyaki or spicy rice cakes skewered on sticks, even western sweets like cotton candy and various fried doughs. Other vendors offered games for adults and children alike, like ring tossing and fish catching, showing off the myriad of prizes they had on display for those fortunate enough to beat the odds - shelves full of every popular character in plush form being the most coveted, but with plenty of other paraphernalia fully stocked as well. Still others offered retail services, and the mask shops were already gaining quite the crowd, each of which waving around cash at the establishment owner.
The people weren't the only thing to materialize. So too did the sound that was once absent from this world. The newly appeared denizens mouths chit-chattered in what seemed like a universally happy tone, and almost immediately, cries of "Mom, mom, buy me this!" floated around the air and into Rafa's ears. The whoosh of the water finally accompanied the visual he had been seeing of the lake's fill careening down quickly to its destination.
And the cicadas! It was as if they were playing a song just for the festival, just for him! Their buzz was as soothing as the season itself, and within seconds this false setting that Rafa had opened his eyes up to had materialized into a living, breathing world.
He couldn't forget how artificial it all was, though. And it showed on his face - sharp eyes, darting back and forth at all these new additions to this virtual space and an expressionless mouth, wavering slightly. His emotions on the situation were draped across his face in an almost embarrassingly raw fashion.
If these people were real, they might have laughed. They might have pitied him, just like everything else. But they weren't real, no matter how convincing they were. They were like Artificially Intelligent programs, built on a routine, skinned for this particularly time and voiced by something that could say the things that they, as false beings, could not.
He didn't hate them, though. Rafa enjoyed the throngs of people, fake as they were, that materialized in this otherwise gloomy atmosphere. He enjoyed the sound of rushing water, of cicadas buzzing and buzzing in a rhythmic fashion. He enjoyed it more than anything he could think of. But he couldn't let himself be happy. There was more to this than he could see, and even though he knew it was all fake, he didn't know what was to come.
"You remember this place, don't you?" that voice called out again. The voice he couldn't stand, that resonated in his ears like nails on a chalkboard under an amplifier. He still couldn't cough out anything to say to the beast. "Yes, of course you remember! I've made it so. This is where something important happened, right? Of course, I know all about it... even if I wasn't there! But you... You just can't quite put your finger on it, can you? Ah, what a pity!"
"Just tell me!" he shouted. His voice was raw, as if he hadn't spoke a word for years. Longer, even! It was raw, and it felt like fire in his lungs, bursting out in an angry, boisterous spew of sound that raced through his throat and scalded his tongue before erupting on his breath. He had every right to be angry. He had deserved an explanation. He had done all the right things, and he should have been given at least this much in return.
But he got nothing.
"Tell you?" the beastly, shrieking voice said with obvious laughter held back, "tell you what, exactly? You should know this situation better than anybody, shouldn't you? After all, it was you who lived through this experience all that time ago. If you did that... then you should know what it is you need to do here, right? This is your very first trial, Rafa Daisetsu. The very first of many, many, many more to come. Think of it as... a practice run. Yes, that's what it is. Practice. A gimme, even. This is a gift - as the other trials are... not so easy."
Just as fast as the voice appeared, it vanished. Even with the wealth of question he had yet to ask, Rafa couldn't help but think that an end to that lecture couldn't have come sooner - this was a testament to just how much he despised that voice, and, of course, the being that it belonged to. And yet, he knew that had he possessed the strength to ask those questions, there was the strong possibility that he would again be denied. There was nothing fair about this game. The only justice to be served was of the type he himself would have to create. That was the magnitude of the situation.
He ran a hand through his light brown hair and closed his eyes tight. It was this kind of action that helped him think, and thinking was the only way he was going to get through this trial. There was something here, something that he did or...
He couldn't remember what it even was. But he was sure that whatever it turned out to be, that was the answer to this riddle he had been thrust into. For now, he would have to investigate. Not any kind of normal investigation, like the ones he carried out before as an agent of Orpheus. This was a whole different beast altogether, an investigation in where he alone held the answer. The clues were all about, however. They were what he needed.
He suddenly heard bells. Not just bells, but drums also. The pounding of drums, a metronome-esque beat being created not too far away. Thump, thump, thump, they went as they neared Rafa. Thump, thump, thump. Thump, thump, thump. His mind started to think in rhythm with that thumping, clearly and without distraction. Rafa felt he was nearing something important, something intricately tied to these sounds, this thumping and the ringing of bells, each growing in volume. It was there. It was there! He continued to focus all of his brainpower into this lead and he could feel this thinking coming to a head when a familiar voice called out behind him.
"Rafa! Rafa!"
He tried to drown it out inside of his head.
"Rafa! Hey Rafa!"
No! He was so close!
"Rafaaa! Hey!!!"
His head turned on a swivel. It was her. Of course it was her.
Her voice was like honey dripping down his ears. It was soft and sticky, oozing gently down the canals inside of his head. It was no wonder he had once characterized himself as someone who was figuratively wrapped around her finger - that voice, that voice was charming enough to drop even the most formidable man to his knees. The soothing honey-like words, even as unattractive as they should have been had him completely and utterly enamored, just like before. The words that twisted his emotions back and forth like they had before, from sullen and sorrowful to as angry as he had ever been, and then countless others. He thought it disgusting. And it was.
She was, in fact, the same girl from the coffee shop. The one he had apparently fallen in love with - though he couldn't even say that for sure, considering the mental hell he'd been through in the short time since then.
It was a short time right? It felt like ages. It couldn't have been more than a few hours.
He still couldn't place her image as someone he knew. She must have been important though, he figured, as she was the only face he could even vaguely remember right now. Rafa took it with a grain of salt, however. It was being increasingly clear that whatever was important to him held no bearing in this artificial world. If that were the case, he would have at least some sense in security that his actions were completely delegated by him alone - but he didn't have that luxury. This, even in the realm of his own memories, was not his turf. He did not have home-field advantage. He didn't even have a clear image of what was going on. Everything was clearly stacked against him, and he wouldn't ever have a say in the matter. Not until it was all over would he ever have a chance at getting back what was rightfully his.
"It's you," he replied. The words had a certain sense of deja vous laced all about them. He did know this woman. Somehow, he did. But he couldn't tell how he had come to know her or why or anything like that. Just that she was someone he knew. It could have been nothing more or nothing less.
It's you. These words were familiar. He wouldn't know it, but he had directed them at her already before. He would learn that, despite her overflowingly natural appearance, beautiful and petite, she was not at all how she seemed. She could try to mask it with the gorgeous yukata she was wrapped in, one dyed a brilliant light-blue color with magenta colored details scattered here and their on the fabric to match the similarly colored sash that held the ensemble together. She could try to cover it up with the charming up-do she was sporting, showing off the beautiful fruits of her effort in styling her hair. She could try to make it nigh discernible by speaking in that gooey, honey-like voice.
It wouldn't change the fact.
He continued, "Do you know what we're doing here? I think I'm a bit lost, actually." Rafa said it in a way that was completely natural. His voice should have betrayed all of how he felt about her. It should have been sharp and suspicious, almost contrite. But it wasn't. He was trying his hardest to stay as natural as possible, trying to lull her into a game of his own. It was then that it was obvious that the bartender had already figured it out, but he couldn't be completely sure. He needed her to confirm it.
"It's Tanabata, silly! We're here to celebrate!" she replied gleefully, almost as if she was forcing a natural tone herself. "Now come on, we have to experience absolutely everything! I want to get some spicy rice cakes, and then we really, really need to try some fried takoyaki - I hear it has something different than octopus inside! And then we need to play some games and some more games and then some more until the fireworks show starts! Oh, and we have to get masks, too! Those are the best part of Tanabata, don't you think?"
Masks - how ironic. She could wear a thousand masks and it wouldn't matter. Besides, she already had more than enough.
"Well then, what are we waiting for?" he said with similar happiness on his tongue. "Let's go and get something to eat!"
He reached for his wallet.
It was gone. No, his wallet was still there... but where was his utility belt? The one that housed his two guns, Miss Mars and zombie-talkeR? He was certain he had it equipped, even as recently as on his hip at the coffee shop?
Now was not a time to be unarmed. Luckily, he wasn't. Rafa still had his quick-thinking head, and it was about as close as he was going to get to a weapon anytime soon. He'd have to make good use of it, though, because without the firepower to back up his actions, it was unlikely that there would be any second chances here. No, he'd have to be perfect. It was time to put that silver tongue to use.
He followed her to the food stand she wanted to go to so desperately, where the vendor was selling freshly made spicy rice cakes. He hadn't ever tasted them before, even in true reality, so the bartender was a bit wary at the incredibly spicy scent they emitted. It flowed through his nostrils with vehement strength, tickling the follicles of his nose hairs as it traveled deeper and deeper into his sinuses. It stung.
Rafa winced at the feeling, scrunching up his nose with obvious distaste. But the feeling was fresh. Eye opening, even. His mind cleared with the fumes, as much as it possibly could in the circumstances he had been presented. It felt good, for a second. But that's all it felt good for. As soon as that piece of time had passed, the grim false reality he was wading through appeared right back in front of his eyes.
Not that it had ever left. Not that it ever would.
"Ahhhhh~" she said suddenly, snapping him out of the drone that had taken over. His head snapped to look at her, and for the most part he was surprised. She stood on the tips of her toes to try and match his height, her apparent lack of balance being put on display as she wobbled left and right, desperately struggling to stay upright.
It was cute.
Her face seemed real. Who was he to say that it wasn't? Even though Rafa had seen the denizens of this false world materialize right in front of his eyes, why did they seem to be more natural than he was? They were human in every aspect. She, too, seemed to follow that mold - from her gorgeously shaped face, starting from her slender V-Line shaped jaw, and traveling up to the small pink kiss of a mouth positioned so immaculately on her face, the one that seemed to be perpetually upturned at the sides in a cute smile, at least in this particular universe. Her nose was small and dainty, the feature that she herself felt was most lacking, since it's tininess made her face just a bit flatter than she would have liked (never mind that she was dead wrong), the type of nose that made its owner look five years younger.
Her eyes spoke for themselves.
How could he ever describe them? It was as if these eyes were the one deciding factor that this girl, this beautiful, beautiful, girl, was indeed a fake. They were large and almond shaped, with a pair of barely there double eyelids, and beneath them were those moderately sized puffs of skin present on so many Asian girls. The kinds of puffs that forced those large, almond-shaped eyes into the most beautiful crescents when she smiled. Her eyelashes were long and dark, almost as if they were the false type, curled and applied with mascara - but they weren't. And her irises...
Hazel.
He wouldn't do any injustice to them by trying to fit them into any kind of pre-made category. There wasn't a category in the history of the world that they would fit into, really. But that bright, bright, green-brown color that flickered whenever it caught a glimmer of light, the dark freckles scattered about in those pools of pure color placed almost symmetrically.
No, perfectly symmetrical. Perfect. They were perfect.
She was perfect.
He could have fallen in love. Rafa was the type to fall head over heels whenever a pretty face passed by, without even knowing her name.
Name. Name.
What was her name?
He was sure he knew it. It was on the tip of his tongue.
It was a unique name. The kind of name that is imprinted in its own space in one's brain upon meeting the owner of it, the kind of name that you never forget. The characters danced around in the wisps of his mind, and the syllables rung within his ears. What was her name?
"Ahhhhh~!" she said again, breaking him out of a trance yet again. She was still on the tips of her toes, holding a small bowl of the spicy rice cakes in the palm of her left hand and a pair of wooden chopsticks in her left - her left hand with chopsticks that were tightly clutched around a rice cake being waved back and forth in front of Rafa's face. "Ahhhhh~~~!!" she said once more with evidence, as the bartender's mouth complied, opening wide for the food she was feeding him. With a plop, she dropped the rice cake on his tongue and he could feel the heat expand into the back of throat.
He chewed and chewed and chewed on the thickly cut rice cake, and chewed some more. It was as tasty as it was spicy, and the extraordinary heat often called for gaping inhalations of air to cool down the bartender's overheating mouth.
It was weird. He was half expecting the spicy rice cake to not taste like anything, that it wasn't going to mesh with palate. He was waiting for this world to reveal itself as fake or shabby, waiting for something that was as mundane as a sense of taste in the real world to be far too complex for this fabricated land to reciprocate. But as he continued to wait patiently for that one fatal flaw it became increasingly clear that there was none. It struck him.
Why would he want to leave this place? It wasn't so bad, was it? It was a carbon copy of the world he could remember, and due to the gaping holes in his memory it might as well have been better. There was a girl - a perfect girl - who loved him here. There wasn't the stress of being a superpowered freak here. There was a normal life here.
He swallowed.
Had he always been this weak minded? Only a few moments ago he had made the decision to do everything he could to escape. Now he was looking for an excuse to stay. Perhaps if he was a bit stronger willed - no, it was certain, that if he had the mental and physical strength that he so desired, he would have never been in this predicament in the first place.
"It's tasty isn't it?" she said with a smile.
Rafa wasn't listening.
The decision stood firm once again in his mind. And yet he couldn't be sure weather or not he loved it or hated it. But Rafa accepted it.
She didn't seem to mind the silence her question garnered. Perhaps she mistook it as an exaggerated expression of the taste of the spicy rice cakes, or maybe she didn't care at all. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. She grabbed Rafa's hand and lead him to the next station that caught her eye - the one that had a myriad of comical masks for sale, each one seemingly more colorful than the one next to it. Right off the bat the bartender could identify a few of the characters whose faces had been manufactured into plastic molds - a good deal of Kamen Rider masks in various alternate colors, a few iterations of Astro Boy, even a handful of Pokemon were stocked meticulously on the racks that covered the stall.
Speaking of which, her eyes seemed to be locked on a cute Pikachu mask. The stars that shone deep within her gaze only broke for a second, and it was as she turned her head away from the mask - and towards to Rafa, pleadingly. It didn't matter which world he had been living in, such a gesture was as clean cut as gestures got, and the bartender immediately reached for his wallet in retaliation.
He opened it with some surprise. There was a great number of bills populating the respective area for money notes, and each slip for plastic seemed to be encasing some type of high profile credit card. Rafa was by no means a poor individual, as he recalled, but he sure wasn't the type to carry this kind of money, either. It was odd. The way it was all presented was as if it was some kind of incentive. As if it was an offering for him to stay put, to enjoy the life he had been thrown into. And as far as he could recall, the vast amount of paper and plastic that dug into that wallet... it wasn't there earlier. Earlier as in when he first checked, back when he paid for the spicy rice cakes.
They were scared. They were on their heels.
The money appeared because it was becoming increasingly clear that Rafa wasn't going to stand around and do nothing. He had that thing on its heels.
Not that he even had a face to picture when he thought about it.
Rafa could lie to himself all he wanted. His morale wasn't increasing. He was still the rat in the cage, he was still the victim. There was no mistaking that. Even as bad he wanted to convince himself he had a shred of an advantage, there was absolutely no mistaking it.
Rafa would never come to terms with it, though.
He paid for the mask that she picked, though the bartender couldn't quite get around the choice she made. A pikachu - she didn't seem like the type. At any rate, she wore it on the side of her, tilted just slightly, and just like all the other girls with their boyfriends were wearing the masks that they had managed to coax out of their beaus. It was cute, he thought again, in an odd sort of way. The way she wore that second face almost seemed too natural. And at the same time, there was nothing natural about her. Even the way she walked, the distance between steps and the angle at which her heels struck the ground with every step seemed like it was incredibly calculated, like an algorithm developed over a number of years.
They all seemed to walk that way, and though the speeds they traveled at were different, some times you'd see their legs move in unison as if Rafa's hunch that they same code was being powered to run all of these "people's" leg motions. He was sure of it, but like everything else he was sure of, he couldn't be sure of it. Not in this world, not by the rules he was being forced to play by. So all he could do was regard it as a cute tendency she had. And that's what he did.
He looked at the mask again, and he continued to wonder why it looked so natural on her, as if the mask she wore was just a second face, a backup to the one she already had. Mask's seemed like second nature to her. The mask on the side of her face could have very well been the one that encased her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her everything. There was something there, too. He knew it, and he knew that when he felt something like this, his gut was to be trusted. It hadn't let him down yet, as far as he could recall.
Or at least as far as the broken him could recall. The confidence he had built up on what was left of what he could remember might have been nothing to base this confidence upon, and maybe that was a good thing. It was more likely a bad thing. At this point however, Rafa felt that if he couldn't trust the image that he thought he once portrayed, then he'd absolutely no one to trust at all. In this world, as fake as it was - and that couldn't happen. No. He'd have to believe himself at least this much if he had any hope of getting out of this place in one piece.
And so he kept believing, in both himself and in his circumstances. He couldn't tell just what the heck he was doing in this place. And he wasn't getting an answer from anyone around, either. There was something here that needed to be done, however. He could feel it. There was something that would put this nightmare to rest. Something that should have happened, something that he should have orchestrated.
He couldn't remember. Just how long had he been tampered with? Just how far back had his memory been corrupted, just how long ago was it done? Had he lived a portion of his life thinking these things, these nightmares had never happened? The answers would reveal themselves soon enough, he felt.
No. They wouldn't reveal themselves. He would have to uncover them with his own his hands. The secrets were well hidden, and for a purpose. Things here were hidden from him. They were hidden from him alone. There was nothing here that he would stumble upon by accident, nothing to guide him along the way. It wasn't a video game or a movie or anything like that. The answers were hidden, and he would have to find them.
Rafa sighed. It was Tanabata, and he couldn't relax for a second. It was painted all over his face, too.
"Rafa, what's wrong? You're not looking so good." she said. Rafa wasn't even sure which mouth was talking, the one that he had previously described as soft and pink or the black one shoddily crafted on the manufactured Pikachu mask. Her voice, as soft and honey like as it was, never truly felt as if it was the one being forced out of her body. It felt like a canned sound effect, one that could have been placed in any body. That's why it felt like it might as well have been eked out of the yellow mouse monster face just as much as it could have been coming out of the humanlike one with which its syllables were synced with lips.
"It's... uh... nothing," he replied. He wanted to tell her everything for a second. Not that he could exactly pinpoint why - he just felt that he needed to talk to somebody. "It's just that..." Rafa tried again before stopping himself in a similar fashion. It was right then that this girls started to feel less like a harmless AI program...
... and more of an enemy.
"What is it? What can't you talk to me about? I thought we were more than this, Rafa! I thought we were more! Don't tell me tha-"
Like any strong-willed man, Rafa managed to drown out her words. The way she snapped at him was so strange, he felt, the way her eyes turned from a light shade of hazel to something much more sinister. He could of sworn her teeth were sharper, that they were primed and ready to launch an assault. Her words were sharper as well, and when she snapped at him he could feel their piercing attributes. Like bullets ripping through his skin.
Not that he knew what that felt like.
She went on and on with her tirade as he just stared at her newly devilish features. He wondered if she had noticed the appearance she had taken on while in this state, or if it was something else. It felt less natural than he would have expected, instead it was like all of her other artificial nuances. It felt stiff and planned, not so reactionary, like a real humans. It was almost as if it was something programmed directly into her, a kind of specific pathway for her to take in the case that her subject - or Rafa, specifically in this situation - acted in a way that did not warrant her normal cutesy responses.
There must have been something that she - or whoever was behind her clever design - wanted to get out of Rafa. Oh, how foolish he felt! He had so assuredly announced that he had this puppetmaster on their heels not but a few minutes ago, and already it was obvious that the trap that was set for him was working miraculously. Whoever or whatever it was new that this kind of setting would take a toll on him emotionally, and that he was just like the patrons he used to serve as a bartender - loose-lipped, in those kind of situations. He was ready to talk. He was so close to talking.
He survived by luck. He was already sure that everything in this false reality was against him, but it was for sure now. There was nothing here on his side. And he would have to continue to play the fool if he wanted to reach the exit point. And so he just continued to stare and stare and stare as this virtual girlfriend, the one he could not even recall the name of, continued to yell at him. At this point, he couldn't even remember what the whole situation was about. And she would only continue to talk and talk and talk, and would do so for what seemed like ages. It wasn't until a great deal later that she stopped.
Rafa noticed it then. The sun was beginning to set, and he could remember it taking its place in the highest point of its arc when he first arrived into this nightmare world. He couldn't tell why, but the bartender felt like it was a deadline. Something was supposed to happen soon, something important. Whether this memory was a real or false one, he couldn't ascertain. But there was no other clues to follow, and his gut was the only thing pointing the way. There was no way to tell if this path was the correct one.
Rafa felt that if he continued to stand around and do nothing, it wouldn't have mattered anyways. Whatever needed to be done, needed to be done soon.
"I'm sorry" he replied to the girl. He wanted to add something on to it, but Rafa found it increasingly hard to fake sincerity when he couldn't even recall this puppet's name. "It's just that...It's just that this is something I need to find out on my own. You understand that, right? I'm doing this because it's something that will make me...okay. It's something we'd both benefit from."
He was lying through his teeth. And, since he was unaware of the situation between them, he wasn't even sure what he was saying. But she seemed to be relieved by it. The puppetmaster controlling her strings however, might not have been so pleased.
"Now come on," he piped up in a much cheery voice. "It's Tanabata! Let's go do something we've never done before. There's something every couple has to do on Tanabata, you know. I'm sure you already know about it."
"Rafa, I'm not that kind of girl!" She didn't know about it.
"No, no, nothing like that. On Tanabata, you make wishes, you know? You wish for everything you want for the next coming year. You wish for what's most important to you, or what you want to be most important to you."
"I'm not sure what this has to do with us being a couple...?" she looked at him with a puzzled face.
"Relax, just come with me!"
Rafa grabbed her hand and they hurriedly made their way to the center of the festival. They were running quickly and dodging people here and there, taking note of the most beautiful yukatas they came by.
He wouldn't know it then, but his emotions made a complete one-hundred and eighty degree turn. Rafa wasn't the type to experience mood swings like this, but they had been prevalent ever since landing in this false world. It was something about this place that excited him, and then his own idea of what should have been that brought him back down. There was no mystery about this anomaly. It was still Rafa trying to figure out if he really wanted to leave this place, to leave this girl. Somehow, it seemed as if he had decided.
They continued to run however, the clip clop of their wooden sandals hidden the ground in a rhythmic fashion. They ran and ran and ran, and for a few seconds, for both of them, even, it was fun. They laughed as they hurried down to the center of the festival as they held hands like children.
It was fun for her, too. The one behind these technological marionettes. Rafa wouldn't know that, either. And even she, hidden in the depths of her realm, would refuse to admit it. Even if they met, she wondered, even if they met she would keep it hidden. But she knew deep down that a meeting was imminent. She hadn't counted on the Rafa Daisetsu she had taken captive to react this way.
But this, this fun, might have made it all worth it. Until this world came to an end.
They were running when Rafa bumped into a familiar someone, it might have never happened if the woman behind it all hadn't lost her composure when she was, by proxy, holding hands with Rafa, but it did.
It was him. Rafa was staring at a carbon copy of himself - no, maybe the real one. He was still dressed in the attire he had always known, the slim-fitting suit and tie with his grave-keepeR OTIs on both hips. They looked at each other for less than a split second, and the real suit-and-tie Rafa managed to mouth something to the yukata clad one.
It was a name.
The girl he was holding hands with urged him to keep going, to hurry and get the to the center of the festival to which he promised he would take her. It wasn't clear if this was some kind of quick cover-up the one in charge had her puppet do, or if it was something this AI was doing on her own. It wouldn't matter.
They ran to the center of the festival with no other problems. And there it was - the bamboo tree that Tanabata was famous for. The festival had one bamboo tree in which wishers would hang their wishes on, and it was said that the if done appropriately, that wish would come true. More recently, beau's would write the name of their loved one on the tag, to ensure a happy relationship.
Rafa grabbed the tag and pulled out a pen, and she did the same. He smiled at her as he wrote her name.
He watched in a morbid awe as he saw everything disappear once again.The denizens of this world that had materialized in front of his eyes what felt like hours ago, were now employing a similar effect - in a reverse fashion. He saw these people, or programs, whatever they were, disintegrate into tiny squarelike pixels of the colors that they were comprised of. Rafa couldn't have ever said that he saw them anymore than the advanced graphics that they were, but this fate seemed... disgusting. To see something, no matter what it was, broken down and desaturated into their very smallest and most vital parts was nothing like anything he had seen before.
The bartender, for a second, would have had an easier time seeing a living, breathing, human being bleeding out from gunshot wounds than something like this. At least with real life death, a purpose had been served. It was clear as can be, and according to Rafa's beliefs, there was a clear path afterwards, as well. But what about these beings? These things that didn't even have personalities of their own? Soulless, but otherwise human in every aspect, what about them? They couldn't have deserved a fate like this, could they?
They were created for him. They were created to populate this lonely world, to make him want to stay. And he pushed them away. He said, "No, thank you." No, he didn't even have the courtesy to do that - he just nipped them in the bud, before any attachment could be designed.
Soon, they were all gone.
Except for one.
She looked at him with those eyes, looking more human and scared than ever before. And he looked at her with those eyes as well, cold and calculating, wavering with obvious suspicion like they always were. He wouldn't be able to explain it, but for that one moment... it was like they understood each other. Not the puppet program. No, not her or it or whatever.
It made sense to him. This world, it started to make sense, and he started to understand it.
The puppet girl faded away just like the other fake townspeople, and soon too did the town.
The bartender, for a second, would have had an easier time seeing a living, breathing, human being bleeding out from gunshot wounds than something like this. At least with real life death, a purpose had been served. It was clear as can be, and according to Rafa's beliefs, there was a clear path afterwards, as well. But what about these beings? These things that didn't even have personalities of their own? Soulless, but otherwise human in every aspect, what about them? They couldn't have deserved a fate like this, could they?
They were created for him. They were created to populate this lonely world, to make him want to stay. And he pushed them away. He said, "No, thank you." No, he didn't even have the courtesy to do that - he just nipped them in the bud, before any attachment could be designed.
Soon, they were all gone.
Except for one.
She looked at him with those eyes, looking more human and scared than ever before. And he looked at her with those eyes as well, cold and calculating, wavering with obvious suspicion like they always were. He wouldn't be able to explain it, but for that one moment... it was like they understood each other. Not the puppet program. No, not her or it or whatever.
It made sense to him. This world, it started to make sense, and he started to understand it.
The puppet girl faded away just like the other fake townspeople, and soon too did the town.
_____________________________
◦ never know it. never know it for real. ◦
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_____________________________
◦ these tears... they can't be mine, can they? ◦
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dream⇅002
Tecumsheh, or One Such as Yourself
Blue.
Bluer than blue.
Bluer than he had ever seen before.
◦ never know it. never know it for real. ◦
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
_____________________________
◦ these tears... they can't be mine, can they? ◦
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dream⇅002
Tecumsheh, or One Such as Yourself
Blue.
Bluer than blue.
Bluer than he had ever seen before.
It was everywhere. Through two blurry eyes, barely possessing the strength to part the heavy lids that framed his vision in black-red-black, Rafa saw it all. It was mostly all he could see, stretching out for miles and miles. Calm cerulean rippled about him delicately, as if it were guiding him by the hand. But when he looked out to where this current was taking him, he still couldn't discern anything but the colors. Blues and browns and greens. Puffs of white, cotton white, riding high above him. The burgundy glow his eyelids took on in the bright sunshine when he closed them again.
Rafa brought his hands to his face in the form of clenched fists, like a boxer slipping his knuckles into padded gloves. They found solace in the nooks of his face, fitting like puzzle pieces in the indentions between his eyes and his nose. Rubbing. Wrist motions that were barely there, rotating this way and that. It wasn't as soothing as the idea of the process was, but Rafa kept rubbing. It was instinct.
His hands were sandpaper rough, like a pocketful of echidna tongues. They scratched, but it was refreshing. He was hesitant to uncurl his calloused fingers, to remove the chunks of clay that fit so perfectly, so harmoniously in his naked face. It was that sense of security they gave him. Shielding his eyes from everything he had to be afraid of seeing, blanketing his face from the harshness of uncertainty, ironically, with uncertainty. Eventually, he removed his jigsaw-like hands from their resting place, and straightened out his stiff fingers. The stretch felt good on the long bones as Rafa brought them in and out, flexing between an open palm and a closed fist. He couldn't see the veins on his hands flexing like swollen bamboo chutes. Because his eyes were still closed.
His hands were gone from his face, but his eyelids would not part. There would be no more blur to censor the world he would awake in. Tighter. The skin on the outside corner of his eyes creased into talons. Tighter still, like vacuums in the dead of space.
No.
No more of this.
Rafa was human. No, more than that - he was a man. And he wanted to reclaim the him that he felt was taken away.
And he understood that should he ever want out, if he really, truly was committed to a real life, he would have to open his eyes. Hesitation. A hard squeeze, a grimace of unseen pain. And then...
Like the slow parting of tan colored seas revealing brilliant pools of hazel underneath, the lashes of Rafa's eyes separated from their crude, interlocked fashion. A key, it seemed, had been found. Construed of a completely unique shape that fit perfectly in unison with that lock of fibers, turned slowly, so slowly on its axis that - Click.
They opened. A flood of bright yellow-white exploded in Rafa's eyes in a frightening fashion, and his hands jumped instinctively to cover them up again. Midway though, he stopped them.
And the white became less scary. It started to dull out, to bloom into every other color. The blurs of greens and blues and browns he saw through tired and wet eyes before, were crisper and clearer. Bathed and basking in a soft yellow overhead, Rafa could see it all. And what was truly scary... was just now making itself known.
His blindness shrugged off, Rafa could survey the things that surrounded him. And though he had an idea of where he currently stood in the landscape, it became apparent that he could have never truly envisioned it without seeing.
Ebb and flow. Blue crashing upon blue, and a white foam emerging from the cerulean collisions.
Water. Everywhere, it was water.
[video=vimeo;27614169]http://vimeo.com/27614169[/video]
And then, all of a sudden everything hit him. All of the real, all of the surreal, all of everything flashed in Rafa's mind. The danger, the brevity of the situation he awoke in, the very same one he responded to so passively behind blurred vision, it all started to come together.
The realization shot through his brain and then to his feet. With a jolt in his movements, Rafa stood quickly, and stumbled. His quick ascent came paired with a slight feeling of Vertigo, but the clouds and cobwebs in his head weren't the cause of his shaky feet. He was too late to realize it, but there was no solid ground beneath his feet - instead, there was a moderately-sized raft, messily put together with pieces of driftwood and tied here and there with bits of string.
His stumble brought him to his knees, while the raft threatened the excessive movements with imminent capsizing. Had it actually occurred, Rafa might not have been able to discern the difference between the rocking of the raft and the deep sea - his heaving breaths and grimaced face already depicted the visage of a drowning man fighting for air. Finally, he vomited. His mind wandered, and should he not have felt the trail of warm bile slither down his chin, Rafa would not have known that his belly had become more hollow, that he had become that much closer to starving to death. The acids burned his throat like the sun burned his skin, like the photons were permeating his dying shell and singed his innards with a kiss. His hands reached to his throat, but they were unfortunate and dense, unlike the sun rays that antagonized him. His red skin stopped those hands in their tracks the moment they reached the large, dry lump in his neck, but they squeezed anyway. The whites of his knuckles that appeared hastily contrasted greatly to Rafa's tomato-hued flesh as they choked him hoping to quell the fire that raged in his esophagus. He might as well have tried to grab the grey of smoke before it drifted into vapor transparency.
Regardless, the discharge helped. He wouldn't feel any better, but Rafa could breathe. He could think. The pain of his situation hurt, which meant he wasn't dead. That was all that he could hope for right now.
And as he brought his head up, he saw that nothing had changed. The ocean still surrounded him, gently pushing him along its current. In the distance, the greens and browns he had seen before manifested themselves as some kind of series of islands, barely close enough for Rafa to make them out. The water was guiding him there, to those isles.
How long... have I been drifting like this?
He didn't think he'd make it to see those shores. No, Rafa was positive. He had awoken not but mere minutes before, but his body was in terrible condition. Dehydration was slowly consuming him, as the ocean mocked him with its leagues of blue, terrible blue. He stuck a hand in the water, his fingers and palm bent in the crude shape of a cup.
Deeper. He could feel the salt scratch up against his skin, as his hand disappeared from visibility in the ocean.
Just a bit more. His dry, dry lips quivered with anticipation.
And then, as he pulled his cup full of bad intentions towards his face... a tug. Something pulled back on his hand.
He pulled harder, naturally, but to no avail.
Finally, Rafa mustered up all of the strength he could, and pulled up on his arm.
And the ocean pulled back again - this time, with a frightening force that that swallowed the bartender whole. The thin strings holding the shoddily put together raft finally succumbed to the ocean as well, and in a brilliant display of weakness, exploded from one unified whole into numerous, divided pieces of wood.
But Rafa wasn't scared. He might not have been able to summon the fear within him in the first place, on account of his entire body beginning to fail him in its continuing deterioration. But no, it was more than that. The suction like pull that forced him deeper and deeper into the sea didn't feel like it was doing so with a murderous intent. It was as if the current was taking care not to go to fast, like it was generously waiting for Rafa to formulate the situation in his head. This was no normal sea, no, this was something unlike anything Rafa had ever encountered.
And Rafa began to realize it. His eyes, huge and open, were not irritated by seawater as they should have been. His lungs, which should have been burning, struggling for a mouthful of oxygen, had no such desire. His body should have felt the pressure of what seemed like an endless descent into dark, dark ocean - but Rafa felt lighter than air.
It didn't make any sense. Even in his cloudy condition, it didn't make any sense.
Unless... could he have...?
Was this... death?
No.
It was inaudible. No, his face read in a shout, the corners of his mouth pulled tightly, baring white teeth filtered in ocean blue. Water rushed into the newly opened crevice in torrential quickness, filling his cheeks with liters of brine.
Salty. It was salty. Like a mouthful of liquid sunflowers dancing on his tongue, leaving a goldenrod trail of saliferous total war on the roof of his mouth. But still, no pain. No pain. No pain.
Just sleepiness. A heavy weight had encumbered the muscles that comprised Rafa's face the moment the seawater penetrated his lips. They drooped further and further down the deeper he traversed, and soon it took all of his willpower to keep his eyelids from locking again. But his willpower wilted in the face of the blackness of the sea, the creeping fears of the deep dampening what flicker the flame in his heart held on to. Dampening, dampening, until it was all out. If this was death, Rafa wasn't ready for it. He struggled to think how anyone could be - agony, was the word he clinged on to. If this was his own journey into the afterlife, he would have much preferred purgatory.
No, he screamed again. And again, and again, and again. And where the only proof of his struggle was in the trail of bubbles that hurried out of his lungs and to the surface he so longed for, his eyes closed.
He wouldn't see the dance of bubbles escape from his nose and mouth as the la
Wretched and worn, with the peaceful face of a lost one, Rafa quivered. It was slight, a twitch just above his right eye, just enough to portray a grimace for a split-second before his face returned to a sleepy normalcy. The next few came in quick succession, emotion exploding in his soft skin like a constellation of supernovas. Then nothing.
Delicate breath escaped his nostrils before they claimed another lungful of oxygen in its place. The chest he was resting on rose a negligent centimeter with each of these breaths, and with every exclamation, his body was reclaimed by the earth. One half of his face was intimate with this dirt, half-buried in cool grains of alabaster sand. Had that part of him also been overcome with spasms, like the jerking movements of a marionnette underneath the plucking strings of a puppeteer, it could not be seen as clearly as the half coddled by the air.
Here, was Rafa's physical self.
The flashes of pain that decorated this earthly shell told not the story of the Rafa in this plane.
If only they had.
Air, thick and stale, like a mixture of dust and wheat. No more sand under his cheekbones, but though Rafa's face and body rested just like it had before, wherever it was, he couldn't feel the texture of anything underneath him supporting it. It was as if nothingness had been shaped into the world he inhabited before, just because it was comforting.
He was still breathing, but apart from the occasional flare of nostrils, signs of life were scarce.
And he was alone, it seemed. Wherever he was, he was the only one there. Just his body, surrounded by black.
Whether that black went on forever, or just past the length of his body was indiscernable.
But when the booming voice was accompanied with no echo, it was apparent that the darkness didn't end anywhere soon.
And then they were gone.
"Wait... please!" The tired and groggy words leaked out of Rafa's mouth with all the effort he could muster up. His body stayed stagnant, and even his face only made the necessary movement for his cry to be heard. Not even the grimace that usually accompanies the kind of excrutiating pain he felt in his gut coul manifest itself in his expression - he didn't have nearly enough strength to create the frowns and crevices, not nearly enough bravado to clench his teeth and furrow his brow.
That strength was a luxury.
"Wait..." he said again, almost sure that there was no one to hear him out. The words seem to echo in the chamber he had been left for dead in, even though the dark horizon yielded no end, and his words escaped his lungs with so little impact. They called back out at him, mockingly it seemed. Wait, wait, wait.
How long was he to wait? Just how long did he have left?
"Please..." Another murmur from his dying body. The drain he felt was no longer satisfied with his physical shell it seemed. His mental capacity was in dire straits, and it might have very well been that the two words he could do nothing but repeat were the only two that he could drudge up from the vocabulary archives in the corners of his mind.
Then, tears. His face still sans grimace, tears began to flow down Rafa's face. Thin and delicate, like some he might have known. Various amalgations of the two words he could cough out continued to find ways out of him, losing pace and volume with each iteration. Wait, please. Please. Please. Wait. Soon, they were nigh unintelligible. But he kept on.
"Get up, Rafa." It was a different voice than the ones from before. Softer, sweeter. Genuine and sincere, even.
Rafa's eyes tightened shut, but not of his own accord. There was no physical contact brought down on his lids, but it was not he that shut them.
It was something else. Something powerful. The kind of power he would forfeit his soul for if it meant that he could pick himself up. If it meant that he could lift his legs and walk again. If it meant that he could clench his teeth and his fists again. If it meant that he could laugh, smile, anything again.
He would make that deal in a second.
"Get up, Rafa," the voice said again. There was not a thing different in the delivery of the words. To his ears, Rafa couldn't discern if this voice human, or rather, real - or just some recording.
His eyes were still forced shut, it had been long enough for his tired brain to begin to assess the situation. And thus, paranoia. Hurried, hyperventilated breaths pumped out of his stationary body. He was scared, terrified of what was going on beyond his closed eyelids.
A bright flash lit up his vision with a pure, crystalline white for two, maybe three seconds.
And immediately, his muscles began to feel warm. Rafa's heart started beating stronger, thumping and thumping with robust rhythm. His toes and fingers wriggled with strength. Knees and elbows began to feel less like stone, and more like joints.
Half of a minute ticked by, and Rafa pulled himself up into a sitting position. Thirty seconds later, he was standing, shaking with an impossible amount of strength in his body, especially considering the way he had just been on the ground. He was even having trouble taking in oxygen - as the husk he had just abondoned, his breaths were few and far between, slow and long-drawn, like the dying breaths of a dying man.
His lungs were mountains now, and they drew air so strongly that the feeling made him lightheaded, airy, whimsical.
But his eyes were still shut tight. Tighter, perhaps.
"Welcome back, Rafa," the sincere voice whispered in close proximity. The soft, humid feel of her breath ricocheted off of Rafa's eyes, melthing them open like secret words. Slowly they parted, and the familiar flood of bright white exploded into his vision.
One. Two. Three.
As his vision returned, Rafa saw that he was no longer in the dark chamber he remembered. This was a place wholly different.
A gigantic disk in the sky, floating by means not apparent to the bartender. Acid stained colors like the windows of cathedrals decorated the floating landmass with vibrant blues and greens and reds.
And the imaged depicted on this disk in stained glass... was that of Rafa. Adorned like a King and sitting in a majestic throne, surrounded by riches and piles of royal items.
The image took him aback several feet - to where Rafa met the edge of the floating disk. His feet were never planted, and his body toppled over the lip, but he did not fall. Where gravity should have sent him downward, another force propelled him up, the same force he felt when his eyes were shut by proxy. Before he could even gasp, Rafa was laid back down on the floating disk, the only remnants of his rescue were a flutter of sakura petals that swayed away nearly immediately.
Rafa's eyes followed them as they fell off the disk with whimsy and glimpsed at what lied underneath the disk. Below them danced the wispy tops of clouds, and pockets of blue sky similar to the color that was wrapped around the top of this world.
"It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"
Rafa swung his head like it was on a swivel. The body of the voice that brought him back to life, stood there with solemnity. A girl, no older than he, with a face sporting no flaws, milky white skin and long dark hair, dressed modestly in a short white dress.
"W-where are we?" Rafa asked.
She smiled, genuinely and sincerely just like her voice.
"This is the last stop, Rafa."
The realization shot through his brain and then to his feet. With a jolt in his movements, Rafa stood quickly, and stumbled. His quick ascent came paired with a slight feeling of Vertigo, but the clouds and cobwebs in his head weren't the cause of his shaky feet. He was too late to realize it, but there was no solid ground beneath his feet - instead, there was a moderately-sized raft, messily put together with pieces of driftwood and tied here and there with bits of string.
His stumble brought him to his knees, while the raft threatened the excessive movements with imminent capsizing. Had it actually occurred, Rafa might not have been able to discern the difference between the rocking of the raft and the deep sea - his heaving breaths and grimaced face already depicted the visage of a drowning man fighting for air. Finally, he vomited. His mind wandered, and should he not have felt the trail of warm bile slither down his chin, Rafa would not have known that his belly had become more hollow, that he had become that much closer to starving to death. The acids burned his throat like the sun burned his skin, like the photons were permeating his dying shell and singed his innards with a kiss. His hands reached to his throat, but they were unfortunate and dense, unlike the sun rays that antagonized him. His red skin stopped those hands in their tracks the moment they reached the large, dry lump in his neck, but they squeezed anyway. The whites of his knuckles that appeared hastily contrasted greatly to Rafa's tomato-hued flesh as they choked him hoping to quell the fire that raged in his esophagus. He might as well have tried to grab the grey of smoke before it drifted into vapor transparency.
Regardless, the discharge helped. He wouldn't feel any better, but Rafa could breathe. He could think. The pain of his situation hurt, which meant he wasn't dead. That was all that he could hope for right now.
And as he brought his head up, he saw that nothing had changed. The ocean still surrounded him, gently pushing him along its current. In the distance, the greens and browns he had seen before manifested themselves as some kind of series of islands, barely close enough for Rafa to make them out. The water was guiding him there, to those isles.
How long... have I been drifting like this?
He didn't think he'd make it to see those shores. No, Rafa was positive. He had awoken not but mere minutes before, but his body was in terrible condition. Dehydration was slowly consuming him, as the ocean mocked him with its leagues of blue, terrible blue. He stuck a hand in the water, his fingers and palm bent in the crude shape of a cup.
Deeper. He could feel the salt scratch up against his skin, as his hand disappeared from visibility in the ocean.
Just a bit more. His dry, dry lips quivered with anticipation.
And then, as he pulled his cup full of bad intentions towards his face... a tug. Something pulled back on his hand.
He pulled harder, naturally, but to no avail.
Finally, Rafa mustered up all of the strength he could, and pulled up on his arm.
And the ocean pulled back again - this time, with a frightening force that that swallowed the bartender whole. The thin strings holding the shoddily put together raft finally succumbed to the ocean as well, and in a brilliant display of weakness, exploded from one unified whole into numerous, divided pieces of wood.
But Rafa wasn't scared. He might not have been able to summon the fear within him in the first place, on account of his entire body beginning to fail him in its continuing deterioration. But no, it was more than that. The suction like pull that forced him deeper and deeper into the sea didn't feel like it was doing so with a murderous intent. It was as if the current was taking care not to go to fast, like it was generously waiting for Rafa to formulate the situation in his head. This was no normal sea, no, this was something unlike anything Rafa had ever encountered.
And Rafa began to realize it. His eyes, huge and open, were not irritated by seawater as they should have been. His lungs, which should have been burning, struggling for a mouthful of oxygen, had no such desire. His body should have felt the pressure of what seemed like an endless descent into dark, dark ocean - but Rafa felt lighter than air.
It didn't make any sense. Even in his cloudy condition, it didn't make any sense.
Unless... could he have...?
Was this... death?
No.
It was inaudible. No, his face read in a shout, the corners of his mouth pulled tightly, baring white teeth filtered in ocean blue. Water rushed into the newly opened crevice in torrential quickness, filling his cheeks with liters of brine.
Salty. It was salty. Like a mouthful of liquid sunflowers dancing on his tongue, leaving a goldenrod trail of saliferous total war on the roof of his mouth. But still, no pain. No pain. No pain.
Just sleepiness. A heavy weight had encumbered the muscles that comprised Rafa's face the moment the seawater penetrated his lips. They drooped further and further down the deeper he traversed, and soon it took all of his willpower to keep his eyelids from locking again. But his willpower wilted in the face of the blackness of the sea, the creeping fears of the deep dampening what flicker the flame in his heart held on to. Dampening, dampening, until it was all out. If this was death, Rafa wasn't ready for it. He struggled to think how anyone could be - agony, was the word he clinged on to. If this was his own journey into the afterlife, he would have much preferred purgatory.
No, he screamed again. And again, and again, and again. And where the only proof of his struggle was in the trail of bubbles that hurried out of his lungs and to the surface he so longed for, his eyes closed.
He wouldn't see the dance of bubbles escape from his nose and mouth as the la
Wretched and worn, with the peaceful face of a lost one, Rafa quivered. It was slight, a twitch just above his right eye, just enough to portray a grimace for a split-second before his face returned to a sleepy normalcy. The next few came in quick succession, emotion exploding in his soft skin like a constellation of supernovas. Then nothing.
Delicate breath escaped his nostrils before they claimed another lungful of oxygen in its place. The chest he was resting on rose a negligent centimeter with each of these breaths, and with every exclamation, his body was reclaimed by the earth. One half of his face was intimate with this dirt, half-buried in cool grains of alabaster sand. Had that part of him also been overcome with spasms, like the jerking movements of a marionnette underneath the plucking strings of a puppeteer, it could not be seen as clearly as the half coddled by the air.
Here, was Rafa's physical self.
The flashes of pain that decorated this earthly shell told not the story of the Rafa in this plane.
If only they had.
September
12:35 p.m.
⁂
12:35 p.m.
⁂
Air, thick and stale, like a mixture of dust and wheat. No more sand under his cheekbones, but though Rafa's face and body rested just like it had before, wherever it was, he couldn't feel the texture of anything underneath him supporting it. It was as if nothingness had been shaped into the world he inhabited before, just because it was comforting.
He was still breathing, but apart from the occasional flare of nostrils, signs of life were scarce.
And he was alone, it seemed. Wherever he was, he was the only one there. Just his body, surrounded by black.
Whether that black went on forever, or just past the length of his body was indiscernable.
But when the booming voice was accompanied with no echo, it was apparent that the darkness didn't end anywhere soon.
And then they were gone.
"Wait... please!" The tired and groggy words leaked out of Rafa's mouth with all the effort he could muster up. His body stayed stagnant, and even his face only made the necessary movement for his cry to be heard. Not even the grimace that usually accompanies the kind of excrutiating pain he felt in his gut coul manifest itself in his expression - he didn't have nearly enough strength to create the frowns and crevices, not nearly enough bravado to clench his teeth and furrow his brow.
That strength was a luxury.
"Wait..." he said again, almost sure that there was no one to hear him out. The words seem to echo in the chamber he had been left for dead in, even though the dark horizon yielded no end, and his words escaped his lungs with so little impact. They called back out at him, mockingly it seemed. Wait, wait, wait.
How long was he to wait? Just how long did he have left?
"Please..." Another murmur from his dying body. The drain he felt was no longer satisfied with his physical shell it seemed. His mental capacity was in dire straits, and it might have very well been that the two words he could do nothing but repeat were the only two that he could drudge up from the vocabulary archives in the corners of his mind.
Then, tears. His face still sans grimace, tears began to flow down Rafa's face. Thin and delicate, like some he might have known. Various amalgations of the two words he could cough out continued to find ways out of him, losing pace and volume with each iteration. Wait, please. Please. Please. Wait. Soon, they were nigh unintelligible. But he kept on.
"Get up, Rafa." It was a different voice than the ones from before. Softer, sweeter. Genuine and sincere, even.
Rafa's eyes tightened shut, but not of his own accord. There was no physical contact brought down on his lids, but it was not he that shut them.
It was something else. Something powerful. The kind of power he would forfeit his soul for if it meant that he could pick himself up. If it meant that he could lift his legs and walk again. If it meant that he could clench his teeth and his fists again. If it meant that he could laugh, smile, anything again.
He would make that deal in a second.
"Get up, Rafa," the voice said again. There was not a thing different in the delivery of the words. To his ears, Rafa couldn't discern if this voice human, or rather, real - or just some recording.
His eyes were still forced shut, it had been long enough for his tired brain to begin to assess the situation. And thus, paranoia. Hurried, hyperventilated breaths pumped out of his stationary body. He was scared, terrified of what was going on beyond his closed eyelids.
A bright flash lit up his vision with a pure, crystalline white for two, maybe three seconds.
And immediately, his muscles began to feel warm. Rafa's heart started beating stronger, thumping and thumping with robust rhythm. His toes and fingers wriggled with strength. Knees and elbows began to feel less like stone, and more like joints.
Half of a minute ticked by, and Rafa pulled himself up into a sitting position. Thirty seconds later, he was standing, shaking with an impossible amount of strength in his body, especially considering the way he had just been on the ground. He was even having trouble taking in oxygen - as the husk he had just abondoned, his breaths were few and far between, slow and long-drawn, like the dying breaths of a dying man.
His lungs were mountains now, and they drew air so strongly that the feeling made him lightheaded, airy, whimsical.
But his eyes were still shut tight. Tighter, perhaps.
"Welcome back, Rafa," the sincere voice whispered in close proximity. The soft, humid feel of her breath ricocheted off of Rafa's eyes, melthing them open like secret words. Slowly they parted, and the familiar flood of bright white exploded into his vision.
One. Two. Three.
As his vision returned, Rafa saw that he was no longer in the dark chamber he remembered. This was a place wholly different.
A gigantic disk in the sky, floating by means not apparent to the bartender. Acid stained colors like the windows of cathedrals decorated the floating landmass with vibrant blues and greens and reds.
And the imaged depicted on this disk in stained glass... was that of Rafa. Adorned like a King and sitting in a majestic throne, surrounded by riches and piles of royal items.
The image took him aback several feet - to where Rafa met the edge of the floating disk. His feet were never planted, and his body toppled over the lip, but he did not fall. Where gravity should have sent him downward, another force propelled him up, the same force he felt when his eyes were shut by proxy. Before he could even gasp, Rafa was laid back down on the floating disk, the only remnants of his rescue were a flutter of sakura petals that swayed away nearly immediately.
Rafa's eyes followed them as they fell off the disk with whimsy and glimpsed at what lied underneath the disk. Below them danced the wispy tops of clouds, and pockets of blue sky similar to the color that was wrapped around the top of this world.
"It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"
Rafa swung his head like it was on a swivel. The body of the voice that brought him back to life, stood there with solemnity. A girl, no older than he, with a face sporting no flaws, milky white skin and long dark hair, dressed modestly in a short white dress.
"W-where are we?" Rafa asked.
She smiled, genuinely and sincerely just like her voice.
"This is the last stop, Rafa."
_____________________________
◦ i could read the psalms in your eyes forever ◦
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[18481]
◦ i could read the psalms in your eyes forever ◦
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
[18481]