Chapter Text
Day 1,460.
Malbec is always a good choice; not too sweet, not too dry. It’s nice enough to not make her feel cheap, but inexpensive enough to afford on a regular basis.
Her earbuds are sitting on the desk now, set there when she went into the kitchen to refill her glass, and abandoned even after she’d returned. The music is still playing, but the sound is so far away that it sounds tinny. She can’t hear the bass line, can’t feel the subtle changes in the time signature. Despite the absence of this, the song is still a masterpiece, and she enjoys it from afar. ‘I felt you more on Sundays,’ Sylo Nozra croons. She smiles a little at the lyric.
1,460 days. 35,040 hours. 2,102,400 minutes. An endless number of seconds.
On day fifty-nine, she’d finally stopped crying herself to sleep. She’d traded the tears for sleeping pills instead, and that lasted until day seventy-seven.
She’d left the chain off at night until day ninety-two. It was a force of habit - there was never any need to put the chain on at night because Shinichi would always put it on himself when he came home. He’d always get home after she did.
It wasn’t until day ninety-eight that it sank in: Shinichi was never coming home.
The song goes off, and just for a few seconds, everything is silent and still… almost peaceful. Then she takes a deep, shuddering breath, and the illusion of calm is broken. The next song shuffles up, and the memory associated with it comes at her so swiftly and powerfully that she’s momentarily stunned.
***
“You know,” she starts, the corners of her mouth twisted up into a sly smile, “you’re pretty skilled on the dance floor for someone who claims he has cinder blocks for feet.”
"It’s all just counting,” he shrugs nonchalantly, but she catches - just for a second - the corners of his own mouth twitching up.
“Mmhm,” is all she’ll say. She inclines her head then, resting it on his chest and closing her eyes. Faintly, she can feel his heart beating, and the sound is reassuring. “Forever, huh?” She murmurs it softly, thinking the music will drown out the words.
“Yes,” he replies, lifting her chin so that he can look her in the eyes. “Forever.”
***
Forever was taken away from her, in the blink of an eye.
The pain was crippling at first: a sharp, searing thing that seemed to be the only constant in her life for more days than she could count. It was like a tooth that had been pulled, leaving sensitive, exposed nerves behind. Waking her up in the middle of the night to remind her, to make her remember what she’d lost. Showing up to knock her down with random crying jags in the middle of the day. Her grief was overwhelming, overpowering… the only thing she could see for miles, for a very long time.
Day 1,460, and the grief has become a dull ache. She often wonders if it’s to be this way for the rest of her life: if she will spend all of the days until she dies mourning the loss of the only man she has ever loved.
The buzzing of her phone shakes her out of her thoughts, and she turns her attention to the device, peering at it closely to see who’s calling. She smiles a little at the name that flashes up on the screen.
She swipes her thumb across the screen to answer, putting the phone up to her ear. “Hello?”
“Eri-neechan,” the warm, familiar voice on the other end of the line greets her. “Didn’t think you would pick up - shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Ryu, hi.” She glances at her watch. “It isn’t that late, is it?”
“Well,” her friend points out, “it’s a school night… although I suppose that doesn’t matter to you much because you’re not working tomorrow. But aren’t you catching an early train to Kyoto?”
“Not that early,” she laughs. “Besides, I was planning on turning in soon. I was just…” She pauses, biting back the words. I was just wallowing in old misery and thinking about your brother, my dead fiance. “I was just having a glass of wine to help me get sleepy.”
“Neechan...” The unsaid words are heavy in Ryu’s voice, and she closes her eyes, willing him to leave them unsaid. As if he can hear her thoughts, he sighs. “Will you be okay in Kyoto, alone?”
“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, hoping she sounds cheerful enough to make him think she means it. “Kyoto is one of the safest cities in the world.”
“I know, but---” He pauses. “That’s not what I meant. I know you’re taking this trip because you wanted to get away for the anniversary of Shinichi’s---”
“Ryu, please.” She cuts him off softly, her words a plea. “Don’t.”
“Eri…” There’s hurt in the way he says her name. She tries to ignore it.
“I’ll be fine,” she repeats firmly, her voice quiet. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
He wants to fight her on this. He can hear the pain in her voice. It’s slightly different from the pain in his own voice, but it is there nonetheless. He still mourns the loss of his older brother, and she mourns the loss of her fiance. It has been four years, and though the pain is not as fresh as it once was, it is still very much there. The two of them are connected by their pain, joined forever by the event that took away the most important person in both of their lives. He wants to scream at her to let him in, to talk to him about how she’s feeling, to stop tucking her grief away like some embarrassing secret.
Instead, he sighs again. “Well, please be careful.”
“I will,” she assures him. “I’ll text you as soon as I arrive in Kyoto, okay?”
It’s good enough for him; it’s all she’s willing to give him, and so it has to be good enough. “Okay,” he relents finally, urging a smile that he doesn’t feel into his voice. “Okay.”
***
Well, this is nicer than I thought it would be, she thinks to herself, stretching her arms above her head. It’s only been half a day, but she’s already enjoying herself in Kyoto. The city has thus far lived up to its reputation as the cultural capital of Japan and a hot tourist destination. It was a good idea, she commends herself, deciding to come during the off-season. As it is, there are lots of people here - I can’t imagine what it would be like during peak tourist season.
She pulls the guidebook out of her purse, chuckling a little to herself. A Traveler’s Guide to Japan’s Hottest Warlords. She’d bought it on a whim at the Visitor’s Center, mostly because the title had made her smile, but partly because the guidebook promised information on some good sightseeing spots. Her knowledge of said warlords was very limited; being a foreigner and not having had access to the history lessons taught in Japanese schools, much of what she knew about the country’s history had come from documentaries or research motivated by curiosity on her part about some name she’d heard in passing. She flipped through the book, trying to remember the name of the monument nearby.
“Honno-ji,” she murmurs, when her eye falls on the page. “A stone monument at the temple’s original location… oh, I do remember this guy. Oda Nobunaga - the man who supposedly almost unified all of Japan under his rule.” She peers up at the monument standing a few yards away. “This is it?” Looking down again, she reads on. “In the year 1582, betrayed by Akechi Mitsuhide, Oda Nobunaga committed suicide amidst the fiery wreckage of Honno-ji.”
I wonder if Oda Nobunaga would be disappointed with the monument, she thinks absently. She thinks of Shinichi then, and the simple headstone he was buried under. I wonder if Shinichi would be disappointed with his headstone. She cuts the train of thought off before it can go any further, shaking her head to banish it. It’s only then that she notices she isn’t alone at the monument.
A young man is standing off to her left, and Eri immediately puts herself on guard, quickly scanning him up and down. There doesn’t appear to be any malice in his serious face, but he’s wearing a lab coat, and the strangeness of it is enough to keep her on-guard.
He doesn’t seem to be paying her any mind, however; his eyes are fixed on the stone in front of them, staring intently at it. Eri opens her mouth to ask him if he knows anything about the monument itself, but a cold raindrop lands right on her nose, stopping her voice in its tracks.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she mutters, looking up at the sky. Dark gray clouds gather in sheets above them, ready to burst. “There was no rain in the forecast---”
Before she can finish her sentence, the heavens open up into a downpour.
“What poor timing,” the young man beside her finally speaks up. “Are you all right?” He turns to address her. “Do you have an umbrella?”
“I do,” she gasps miserably. “But it’s back at my hotel. I took it out of my purse earlier because it was making my bag unnecessarily heavy… and the weather report wasn’t calling for rain.” She looks up at the man sheepishly, ready to speak again, but the booming sound of thunder and a crack of lightning kills the words in her throat.
The noise is deafening, and when she turns back to where the lightning struck, her mouth drops open. The stone monument has been shattered, fragments of rock scattered around where it once stood.
“Oh my god--”
“Be careful,” the stranger in the lab coat warns, holding his hand out to her. Against her better judgment, she moves forward and reaches out to take it. Then the ground rushes up at her, and everything seems to bend and warp into the darkness. Vertigo? She thinks faintly as she closes her eyes to ward off the dizziness taking over her. What’s happening?
The dizziness passes, and she opens her eyes, intending to check on the stranger to see if he felt it, too.
She can’t see anything.
In all directions, her vision is obscured by heavy smoke. She takes a step forward, trying to get her bearings again, and it becomes immediately obvious that she is no longer standing in front of the destroyed monument to Honno-ji. Her feet land on ground that is softer than concrete, but firmer than carpet. It doesn’t take long for the alarm bells to go off in her head once the smell of smoke catches up to her.
She is inside of a building that is burning down very, very quickly.
Trying not to panic, she looks around for the young man in the lab coat, but can’t see him anywhere. Instead, her eyes fall on an unmoving lump on the other side of the room. Squinting, she moves closer.
“What the hell?” When she gets close enough to make out what the shape is, her eyes widen.
The lump is a man, dressed in a suit of ancient Japanese armor.
And he appears to be unconscious.
Eri acts without thinking, sprinting across the hot floor to the sleeping man. “Wake up!” She screams, leaning down and shaking him hard, with all her might. He opens his eyes, blinks at her once, twice, then sits up slowly.
“Who are you?” He asks, his voice deep and commanding. It startles her a bit, the intensity of his gaze coupled with the power of his voice.
“That-- doesn’t matter right now,” she stammers, motioning to the smoke around them. “We need to go before we both burn to a crisp in here!” She grabs this new stranger’s hand, pulling him up and towards the only exit she can see. She thanks the stars that he can run on his own - the armor and the man both look heavy, and she isn’t sure she would be able to drag him out on her own. The two of them run for their lives, not pausing even once to look back at the destruction behind them.