Chapter Text
“Huh?”
“I said you can take the bed,” Izumi said over her shoulder, not looking back at the bemused expression on the face of Koji Tanaka, still wedged awkwardly as he was in the entrance to the main room of her modest but tidy apartment. “You’re too tall for the sofa, anyway.” She put her bag and keys down on the squat dining table, laying the smooth cream envelope with her new IDs down next to them.
“But... this is the only room,” he mumbled.
“Want to sleep in the tub instead?”
Koji registered her soft sarcasm with an eye roll. “No, I mean—” he broke off, trying to articulate his concern. He couldn’t, not before Izumi herself cut him off.
“It’s a studio apartment, Koji. It’s fine. I’ll take the sofa.”
“...No.”
“What?”
“No. This is putting you out. I’ll find somewhere else.”
He spun on his heel and started walking back toward the genkan, fumbling for his coat on the way with his own envelope crushed under one arm. She straightened and watched him for a moment; that day she’d killed those government men to free him flickering back to mind. She hadn’t saved him to help her stop Sato, although that’s what she told the others… even what she’d told him. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t easy to put into words, so she’d just told him to run, and to meet near Shibuya park when things died down a bit. And...
“Koji—”
Twice now she’d used his given name; he had to admit to himself it was nice... not something he heard any more, and it stopped him before he reached his boots. But he could hardly stick around a place so small, getting in the way. Taking up her bed. Sharing such a close space...
“Just wait, will you?”
He held up, turning back around to face her. She came right up to him, diminutive but as immovable as ever, looking squarely into his tired, doleful eyes. He felt the envelope and coat being pulled gently from his grasp. “Get warm, at least. Take a shower. Stay until tonight, if you have to go.”
“Really want me to stay, don’t you?”
She huffed with mild exasperation. “Why else would I suggest it?” He was still prickly, still needing that nudge, not willing to stick his neck out before she put hers well and truly on the block. She’d stuck her neck out for him plenty already... but now he was here, a little more wouldn’t matter, she supposed. “Yes, I do.”
The smallest of sheepish smiles curled one corner of his mouth; he nodded slowly. Snagging his coat back onto the hanger, she lead back down the narrow hall, glancing to make sure he really was following this time. Had she not known him quite the way she did, Izumi Shimomura would have found the brusque yet timid way he broached the invite and the apartment strange or even comical for a guy of his size and looks. But she did know him, and what was probably bothering him, and why he gazed around with a lost look, a look of complete displacement.
“It’s pretty quiet here, if you want to rest. Better than a car or the shelter. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Koji didn’t think he looked that bad, all things considered, catching his reflection a few times on the way to the park; he’d only half-expected her to show, anyway. As it happened, both of them turned up early, but he’d spent the night thinking about the meet-up more than he’d liked, as well as convincing himself it was probably a waste of time—whatever she had to tell him so bad wouldn’t make a difference. Going back to her place hadn’t even crossed his mind. Now he was there, he wasn’t sure what to do.
“I’ve been looking at a bigger apartment up the street from here… so, in a few weeks maybe…” she went on, looking toward the sliding windows with the balcony outside. Beyond it the rain clouds were gathering.
“Why, though…?” Koji thought to himself, then realized he’d said it aloud.
“Why what?”
He reached up to rub the back of his buzzed head uneasily but fixed her with his long, almond eyes. Why do you care so much about me, those eyes said. And yet he guessed the answer already. Being inside her mind—even if only for a moment—back in the Forge building, he knew she was lonely. And sad. He’d been angry back then, angry she’d been on the wrong side, hadn’t been strapped to a table and torn apart like he was, angry when he felt her numbness to it all. She wasn’t burning up, maddened by his fate, or even her own. She was glacial. Frozen. Later, he supposed it wasn’t as though she had much choice; her life had been pain too, but of a different kind. Just like he’d trusted Sato, she believed in that Tosaki guy... put everything on hold for it. Every day she wasn’t in that vivisection room along with him was proof of the risk the government suit had taken for her. She’d felt guilt, more than anything. Guilt, and a locked-up longing for something she dared not admit, even to herself.
When he said nothing, Izumi blinked, and understood the question. It would be a while yet before Koji Tanaka would trust anyone. Especially someone that said they wanted to ‘help’ him.
“Who else is going to help us now?” she sighed, turning away to lay the two envelopes together. “We both lost our...” she trailed off, realizing there was no word that seemed right for what she meant. Sato had saved him from a living hell, Tosaki-san had saved her from suffering the same. Both now were gone. In Koji’s case, that was a good thing. But now they were alone, with nobody who could possibly understand what they’d been through. Especially what he’d been through. He was still adjusting to life outside of being captive, and outside of the world Sato had painted red for him. Perhaps the only person left who had even a vague idea of it was standing right in front of him. “Just let me help you out,” she said. “Until the weather lifts, or—”
“You don’t have to do this just because of what I—”
“I know.” A vague smile touched her lips, something he hadn’t seen before. “And you don’t owe me anything.”
He could’ve pushed harder, but seemed to give up the struggle inside himself, relaxing in the shoulders just a little. After a silence in which she continued to put her belongings away, more to put him at ease than anything else, he shrugged. “I could use a shower... I guess.”
“First door on the left.”
“...Thanks...”
As he wandered back to investigate the side room cautiously for a light switch, her smile dropped away. He really doesn’t have anywhere else to go, she thought. Didn’t bring any belongings with him, or go back to get any. Were his parents still alive...? Tosaki-san would’ve known if they were, but there was no way for her to find out now. Or maybe Koji didn’t want to risk trouble for them by going back after all that had happened, his name being on the national news, a terrorist and all... even if he had defected in the end. Either way, he wasn’t doing too well, and she didn’t want to say or do anything to make him feel used. That much she certainly knew about him: he had been all too used by too many people, he was nervous, and wasn’t at all sure what to do with his new-found freedom.
A sudden bumping and a surprised yelp from the washroom told her he must have discovered her broken washer unit with a shin rather than the light switch. “Watch out for the washer in there,” she called, apologetically. “I got a new one but the other's in there for now 'til I can get it taken away.”
Great start.
An irritated grunt floated back, told her he would continue the mission to find the light switch. When he did, the room turned out larger than expected, even for him. And it was clean—a far cry from the ones he’d gotten used to in Sato’s company. It smelled of new linen and cherry shampoo and was still damp from having been used a short while before. From atop the broken washer by the door a towel had been knocked to the tiles, and he bent to pick it up, catching sight of himself properly in the lighted mirror as he did. The sharp face and dark, stony eyes staring back at him still looked unrecognizable. It was taking time to mentally reconcile the man he’d become with the rangy kid who’d gone on the run ten years before. A life cut in half, sewn back together… never to be the same.
“Use any soap in there you want. I’ll go get supplies,” he heard her say from behind the door. “Want anything?”
“Uhh…” he called back, still looking at the frown on his face. “No. No I’m... fine.”
He wasn’t feeling fine, as he glanced around the space again. He couldn’t tell if it felt at all right to be there or not, and a part of him was already feeling guilty. She didn’t owe him this. And he hadn’t exactly been warm to her in their time together. Did she understand he needed some time to pick through the bomb site that comprised his life? To get things together…
She’s going out. If you wanna stay out of this, now’s the time to split.
A feeling he might be choosing a very different future if he showered next to that tub instead of slinking away seemed to crawl up his back and neck, but her kindness had already touched him and he had to look away, anywhere but into his own dark-circled eyes. They came to rest instead on a plastic clothes airer near the window above the tub, from which several pieces of petite, female underwear were hanging up to dry.
Ooookay. This was a bad idea—
He stretched for the door, hoping his feet would simply take him right out of there and he wouldn’t see her on the way, wouldn’t have to say another word—
“Oh.”
“Fresh towel,” she said, from where she just happened to be, right outside the washroom and about to leave a dry, folded bath sheet next to it. He stopped short, gripping the door frame tightly. She handed it to him instead, her expression inscrutable. “I won’t be long, so just make yourself at home, okay?”
He nodded blankly.
Man…
Backing into the room again, he closed the door softly and rested his head against it. Just ‘till tonight. Get a scrub, sit around, think of some vaguely serviceable excuse to hit the road. He eyed the tub again, the array of dainty bathroom wash-products perched nearby, and the clothes airer with its collection of unmentionables. He sighed, willing himself to sidle over and pluck the airer out of the way, looking for somewhere out of mind to place it. Under the towel he’d knocked off the washer, maybe. Finally, he slithered out of his clothes, trying to keep his long limbs from bumping anything else while he figured out the shower.
Huh. Who’d have thought I’d ever be taking a shower at her place.
It occurred to him he hadn’t done too many normal things in a normal room like getting clean for what felt like an age. In the government lab, he died so often it was hardly needed. In the abandoned factory, his chief memory of taking baths was for Sato’s unpleasant side-hustle selling organs; he soon came to dread the old man’s “shower time” hints when they came up. Hell, the last time he must have taken a relaxing bath or a normal shower must have been in his late teens…
He was still learning the trick of trying not to think about the lab or the factory, or Sato, or any of the last few insane months of his life, and the shower wasn’t the best place not to do any thinking about life. Izumi’s floral collection of body wash didn’t help matters, but smelling like a “sakura sorbet” would have to do, he figured, reading the bottle in bemusement as he squeezed some of it out and started with his hair. At least the hot water felt good, and for the first time in a long time he let himself think back to the time before it all started—before the accident with the harvester. Ajins had only been discovered a handful of years earlier, but even he’d heard about them all the way out in the sticks.
To think the idea of being an Ajin sounded pretty cool to me, he thought wearily, as he scrubbed himself. Before I found out. Before the news spread like wildfire in the village and they all ‘dropped in’ to get a look at him. His folks couldn’t have guessed how it would have turned out...
Just thinking about that mob made him tense again, and he stopped washing to calm his breathing. Thoughts turned to his parents, the last look on his father’s face in the car was still clear like it was yesterday.
Dad, the things they did to me in that lab.
And the things I’ve done since… you’d never…
He wanted to think ‘understand’ was the word. But the word that came stronger to mind and refused to leave was different.
...Forgive.
He closed his eyes and bowed his head under the spray, but nothing could ever wash those things away, or out of his head. Nobody could forgive. Nobody would understand.
Except. . .