Chapter Twenty Six: The Deception Part One
Over the next few days, Uxi and Honda watched as Watanabe visited Harusame's apartment more and more.
The cat and the bat, forced to be silent (and in Uxi's case, hidden), observed as the tall young man took the place of their master on Harusame's carpeted floor, as they chatted about her possible future career in photography.
Harusame knew she had no future career in photography – she had no future full stop – but somehow Watanabe's encouragement and praise of her beautiful pictures were exactly what she needed. She was quickly becoming the centre of attention in school thanks to her photo of Hades, which it seemed every girl in her class had saved as wallpaper on their mobile phone.
She was humbled by all the sudden popularity, but also wished that her other photos would be taken into consideration. It gave her a prickly feeling inside to think that she owed her success only to Hades, who hadn't even the grace to compliment or even notice it.
He had stopped sleeping at her apartment and hadn't come by since their fight; something which she told herself she was happy about, though the burning sensation in her chest told her differently. It was only in the dead of night, in the witching hour where all is silent and still, that she allowed herself to weaken and think of him, tears stinging her eyes and soaking her pillow.
Hades also thought he was doing brilliantly without her. 'After all,' he reminded himself constantly, 'it was only a temporary arrangement. I'd have had to get used to life without her eventually.' Then why, he wondered, did it all suddenly seem so utterly pointless again?
He spent more time than ever wandering various places in the human world, although this too seemed pointless as no matter where he went he had no destination. So instead, a creature of habit, he returned to the park across from the café, where Dawson continued to play shogi with any opponent he could find.
'Hey old man,' he said, appearing in the rain one day. 'Got the time for a game with me?'
Dawson gave him a wide smile and gestured for Hades to take a seat with one ham-sized fist.
'For you, sonny? Always.'
The black and white, win or lose simplicity of the game helped clear his mind, which seemed to be straining underneath a great weight. If he lost then he lost; that was all there was to it. Maybe he just wasn't meant to win in life. Maybe he wasn't meant to be happy.
The last thing in the world he would ever admit, either to himself or anyone else, was that he missed the Technicolor memory, the sanctuary of her room with fairytales, warm baths, a view of the stars and the smell of honeysuckle.
*
Honda found he liked sitting on the swings in the park waiting for Treielle, even when he suspected he might never see her again.
He was supposing that old habits really did die hard, when a pair of hands grabbed him from behind. The cat in him yowled loudly, preparing to scratch the face of his attacker, but it turned out their face had already suffered some damage.
'Treielle,' he mewed, 'your eye...!'
The girl just smiled sadly and sat down on the swing. She placed the cat onto the swing next to hers, and gripped the chains.
'I'm so glad...you came back,' he said nervously.
'It was the first thought I had when I was reborn into this form,' she said. 'I just knew I had to go to the nearest swing set, though I had no idea why. Isn't that funny?'
Honda was so moved by this that he couldn't speak, so he settled for a low, rumbling purring sound.
'I got all my memories back,' she said. 'It's no wonder that I wanted to forget what happened. I did the most appalling thing to you, Honda, and then I tried to erase it just like a coward.' She covered her remaining eye, her hand shaking. 'But although I erased my memories I couldn't erase my crimes. I can only pray that someday I will be forgiven, and I do pray every night. I pray with the pendant that you gave me. Remember?'
As the silver cross was pulled out, reflecting the sunlight, Honda felt as though his chest would explode with love for her.
'You...kept that?' he asked, disbelieving, and she smiled again, more genuinely this time.
'Of course I kept it. The whole time this was around my neck, I felt like you were with me. I had something to believe in, even before I knew what I was believing in.'
'I guess that's what faith is,' said Honda simply. Then he asked the question they'd both been avoiding. 'That night after I died...you shot yourself, didn't you? That's how you died, and why you have that bullet wound on your head.'
Treielle nodded, her ringlets bobbing. 'I never particularly felt I had much to live for, Honda. When you died...by my own hands...I had nothing at all left. But even in death I couldn't find peace. This echo kept repeating in my head: that you'd left me and that it was all my fault.' Honda glanced at her, and her face was pinched as she spoke. 'By the time she found me, all I could remember was that someone important had left me. I could feel myself giving in to the darkness, but I didn't care anymore. Becoming a Ker...it is like having a chain around your ankles; a dead weight that drags your spirit down into the depths of despair. In my case, the ball and chain was made of guilt.'
'You don't think I felt guilty too? You don't think I felt like I'd let you down? God Treielle, why do you think I came back? You think I could carry on to heaven without you? It wouldn't be heaven unless you were there with me!'
'I'm not going to heaven. Heaven is for good people. My hands are stained with blood, remember?'
'Then I'm going to hell right alongside you!' Honda yelled, his back arched and fur standing on end. She stared at him in shock.
'Honda...!'
'No! I'm not listening to this anymore. You're a good, kind and sweet person, and I love you, Treielle-Marie! I'll love you forever!' Treielle winced as her full name was spoken, but Honda continued. 'I know you had it hard all alone with just Iwanami to feed you lies, and I know I was lucky to have kind people like Uxi-san, Izuki-san and even the boss to look out for me, but you can't tell me you regret coming back like this; look at all the good that's come of it! We got to go on dates, and I got to take you around the town, a second chance to do all the things we never did before! And there can be so many other things too Treielle...we can never return to the way we were. Our lives are over. But for better or worse, no matter what awaits us in the next life, I'll be by your side! If you let me...Treielle.'
His frantic emotional energy spent, the cat wilted on the swing, but Treielle was transfixed at a vision just behind him, out of sight to everyone but her.
Her own reflection was watching her, dressed in pure white and without an eye patch, and for the first time Treielle understood who she was.
'Marie...?'
The girl nodded. 'A real big sister has to look out for her little sister, right?'
Treielle gave her a watery smile. 'You're only older by four minutes.'
Marie smiled back, her blue eyes wise. 'It's time to let go, Treielle. Let go of me, and your guilt, and your sorrow, and take the hand of the boy that loved you so much he came back from the dead just to be with you. Move forward,' said the girl, as all three of their aqua eyes glazed with tears, 'and be happy.'
'Thank you, Nee-san,' said Treielle, and though the vision was gone from her eyes, she could feel her sister in her heart, where she'd always been. Treielle knelt before Honda in the grass.
'I remembered one other thing,' she said, as tears spilled down her cheeks. 'Abracadabra.'
As the human Honda appeared she held him, and he held her back, and this time there was no gate to separate them, as there never would be again.
'Wherever you're going next,' she whispered, her head buried happily against his chest, 'please take me with you.'
*
As Uxi climbed into bed that night, her work finally finished, she suddenly heard singing coming from the other room. Not the haunting, spine tingling type of singing that had previously filled the Underworld upon Treielle's visit, but just as unusual.
'Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world. She took the midnight train goin anyyyywheeeeeere.'
Her teeth set on edge, Uxi stormed through to Hades' office to find him playing with a small transistor radio.
'It's two in the morning, Master!' she hissed.
'Hello Ux.' He leaned backwards to greet her and nearly fell out of his chair at the sight of her face.
Under the mask of green Uxi frowned.
'I put this on every night, it's meant to help cool my skin and get rid of the blisters that make-up can't cover,' she explained briskly.
'Oh. Thought you'd gone Incredible Hulk on me for a minute. Where was I?' He turned his attention back to the radio, and continued singing.
'Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit. He took the midnight train goin anyyyyywheeeeeere.'
She winced at his off-key singing, and noticed the radio wasn't even switched on.
'What the hell are you doing?' she demanded, too tired to care about niceties.
Hades grinned as he messed about with the tuning dial. 'Can't get this thing to the right station, so I'm making up my own tunes. She likes this song. She sings along and cranks up the volume every time it's on, so I've learned all the words.' As though that explained everything, he resumed whistling 'Don't Stop Believing.'
Uxi glared at him, her wrath building.
'Have you been drinking?'
He looked up at her innocently. 'I can't not say that I haven't not been drinking.'
'Oh for heaven's sake Master.' She put a hand to her face in exasperation and immediately found it covered in herbal green goo. Closing her eyes and begging for inner patience, Uxi pulled up a chair next to him. 'Why must you always go off the rails and become a train wreck first thing in the morning?' she said, wiping her hand clean. 'Can't you wait until a more civil hour like most people? I'd thought we'd just got you and Haru-chan back on track.'
'There is no track,' said Hades flippantly, now pulling at the dial. 'There is no train and there are no rails. There's just me, and her,' the dial came off in his fingers, 'and Watanabe in the middle.' He chewed on his lip thoughtfully. 'I could go bump that guy off right now. Bet nobody would miss him.'
Uxi snatched the radio and the dial from his fingers and put them back; fixing them with a resourceful, quick efficiency that only a woman could manage at that hour of the morning.
'You'll do no such thing,' she told him as she worked. 'Why do you hate the idea of Haru-chan having friends so much?'
'Because she told me I was her only friend. Her best friend.' He glowered as he said the last words, and Uxi looked up at him.
'You're not acting like much of a friend, are you? Going off and sulking like this. You haven't spoken to her in days. If you'd only talk to her and apologise-'
'Apologise? For what? I haven't done anything wrong; it's her that should apologise.'
'You're acting like a spoiled child,' said Uxi. 'It's little wonder Haru-chan threw you out again. I'd do the very same if you didn't own the place.' She slammed the radio, now mended, down in front of him. 'I'm going to make you some coffee; it sounds like you need it.'
'I'm not drunk, Ux, I'm just losing my mind.' He dropped his head into his hands and sighed, sounding so weary and hopeless that Uxi's face softened. 'Her time is nearly up, and still I can't tell her.'
'What can't you tell her?'
His voice was now muffled by the tabletop. 'You can tell her for me. Tell her that she sings much better than me. Even though she sounds like a cat caught in a dishwasher, nobody hears her the way I do. Tell her I know that when she says she's going to top up her lip gloss she's really going into the bathroom because she doesn't want me to see her taking her pills. Tell her I know that she only uses so much perfume because she's afraid she'll smell like the hospital, but she doesn't. Her skin smells like peaches. Tell her that I like walking her to and from work, even though I bitch about it, because I get to see her wearing that cute little uniform. Tell her that whenever she's chattering about her day I am listening to her, even though I act like I'm not. Tell her she should have gotten permission from me before showing that bloody photo to the whole world and his wife.'
Uxi made a mental note to hide the framed copy she had in her bedroom.
'Tell her that stupid, cramped little room is the only place I've ever felt safe and happy, just because that's the place where she lives. And tell her that when she said she'd spent her whole life waiting for someone, it wasn't Watanabe she was talking about. It was me. Tell her he's not the one who holds her hand when she cries in the night, or puts up with multiple bite wounds from that mangy little mutt she loves so damn much, or looks at the stars with her. Tell her I'm the one going crazy because I can't see her every day.'
His rant finished, Hades glumly lifted his head from the tabletop and gasped as Uxi enfolded him into a bear hug.
'Tell her yourself,' she said firmly.
*
Iwanami stared into the cracked mirror. She grinned at the face that stared back at her, the face that was not her own, but the one she had gazed upon for so long. It was the face of the man she desired – the only man who could bring her the sweet release of oblivion, the man who was being bewitched and deluded by that terrible woman, all over again.
'But I'll save you, my darling,' she said in a voice far deeper than her usual breathy tones. 'Your eyes will only be on me this time, once I get rid of that girl. You're the only one who can erase all my suffering.'
The only physical feature she had had trouble duplicating was the eyes. Crimson leaked into their violet and blue depths, and her pupils were still snake-like slits.
'Other than that it's a perfect likeness,' she murmured, running one hand down the flat, muscular chest she now called her own. 'What a handsome guy you are. You're going to be...all mine.'
Iwanami missed the sound of her own voice – it anchored her to sanity when the screeching voices within her head began to chatter. Many of them were suggestive, seductive voices that poisoned her brain with ideas of murder and mayhem, but one quiet little voice in particular was bothering her. It was youthful and sad, and very familiar. It was telling her that what she was doing was wrong.
It was the sound of her own voice from a long, long time ago.