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He meets them in the words left unwritten, in the pauses at the end of innocuous sentences, in the words with emphasis where it shouldn’t be placed. He meets them over and over, a different them every time, and every time he reads it feels as though he’s both trying to force his mind into the box of ‘Ushiromiya Battler’, and like he’s trying to pry open the door to the box named ‘Yasuda Sayo’, and he’s terrified that in order to do the latter he must first do the former.
Each and every word feels as though it is stained red with blood, flowing impossibly from the pages, leaking red into the corners of his vision, as though taunting him, laughing at him, her blood-stained hands clinging to his. He’s aware that it’s nothing more than his imagination, that this isn’t her but his mind, but he cannot deny it. The words on the page are, to him, the blood of her pierced heart that he himself speared with his words on that day, each and every one leaking her emotions and her wishes, if only he could understand them.
Even more ridiculously, it’s as though the rough plotline of her stories are her very bones, settled into the pages as though begging for him to dig them up. When he touches the pages, should he not feel her heart beating? Should he not feel the smoothness of her flesh, the warmth of her body? Should his hands not come away red with her essence, with her truth, which spills from the pages, this hidden, glorious confession?
He’s captivated, enthralled by her. By Beatrice? By Yasuda Sayo? They who are one and the same, and yet not. The thin veil of ink that separates him from her seems endless. This person that he barely recalls, and yet so dearly recalled him, and yet has made him a star in her very own last will and testament, has softened every edge of his into this foolish, beloved hero. Perhaps this is his gold bar, his souvenir from the Golden Land, that will drag him, too, down into the depths of hell, where she awaits him.
Ikuko tried to stop him, at some point earlier, during his first read. “You don’t have to read these,” she had said. “There’s no need to worry about a past that you cannot reclaim.” He was aware. Ushiromiya Battler was dead. But, the one he wanted to take from Rokkenjima wasn’t his past self, but the figure that had now gripped his heart, that now haunted him.
His memories up until Rokkenjima were so bright and clear, if he tried to recall them, but they were almost absolutely, utterly worthless. Because he wasn’t Ushiromiya Battler, he couldn’t return to Ange, who, even though Eva was surely taking care of her… must definitely miss Battler. But he was Hachijo Tohya. And so, it was useless, entirely useless, to remember those things.
What he found important was the smile of a person he had barely known, but that had wished so desperately to be known that she had written these pages now spread out in front of him. He remembered that day, almost faintly, vaguely, like it was a dream - Sayo, who had given their heart over to Battler with words that he could barely recall, faint and yet still somehow echoing in Tohya’s ears. Sayo, who had drowned in her regrets.
Sayo, who, it felt to him, was now screaming. He felt as though he could hear it. As though, still drowning, still falling to the bottom of the sea, there was their hand, there was their voice, screaming, crying out to be understood, to be saved, and yet - with their voice stolen away by the waves, he was the only one who could hear it…
Tohya sighed. The letters seemed to blur in front of his tired eyes, as though mocking his efforts. One more time, he thought. And then, just for tonight, he would stop. His tired mind made the pages seem akin to Sayo herself; as he read deeper and deeper into the meaning beyond them, he was stripping Sayo of all illusions, of all garments, and peeling back the layers of their heart, dripping red with blood… Ha. He really was tired.
He looked up from the book to check the time, as there was an old-fashioned clock on the wall. “Already this hour, isn’t it…” However, he had no intention of stopping. Rather, he hoped that perhaps even his exhaustion would lead him to some new insight…
As he resumed reading, there was a small knock at the door. “Who is it?”
“Who would you like it to be?” Ah, so it was Ikuko.
“Come in, then.”
He turned his focus back onto the pages, which were marred with various notes as he’d circled and analyzed this word or that.
“Ha, my Tohya defiling a book like this?” Ikuko ran one slender, pale finger along the current page’s set of notes. “What are you trying to find?”
Tohya answered without pause. “The heart.” It was, after all… what he’d used to talk about all the time, back then. The heart of the culprit was the heart of the mystery - the most important part. It was what he had, as a child, found lacking in so many stories. And why he’d been so happy when Shannon had accepted his perspective…
“How many times have you read this so far?”
“I’ve lost count… I’ve been going over it since this morning, though.”
Ikuko sighed and, without any warning, closed the book. “There’s no point in this, then. You’ve gone over the material so many times that you might as well chase your own tail, Tohya.” She giggled quietly. “Don’t you think you should go to sleep, and think over this more in the morning?”
Tohya sighed. He had thought about that before, that reading it over and over obsessively like this would cloud his perspective. “Still… I feel as though this can’t wait. If I wait, if I cease, then I’ll lose my ability to understand anything… I must pursue the truth to the utmost.”
“And now you speak of truth, Tohya. Again, what is it that you’re seeking?”
“The culprit’s heart.”
This time, rather than a quiet giggle, Ikuko had to put her hands over her mouth to muffle her laughter. Tohya, if he had been pressed, wouldn’t have been able to answer why she was laughing…
“And how are you to do that if you seek, instead, to find the truth? Do you wish to find the truth of what happened, or the truth of the culprit?”
“Aren’t they one and the same?”
“Truly? Whodunnit, howdunnit, and whydunnit are all one, now is it?” Ikuko almost cackled as she said this, leaning in close to Tohya, placing one hand over his…
“I see… Then, you’re saying that I should give up on the first two, and focus on whydunnit entirely?”
“Indeed.”
“I see… perhaps it was wrong of me to seclude myself like this.”
Ikuko’s lips curved up into a smirk that could only be called a smile by the most generous of viewers. “Indeed. Tomorrow, shall we go over it again, together this time?”
Tohya nodded. “Yes. Let’s go over it again tomorrow. Thank you for helping me realize the faults in my perspective.”
Ikuko picked up the bound copy that he had been reading, and tucked it under her arm. “Indeed. Good night, Tohya.”
Tohya smiled at her. She truly was looking out for him, even though he was being so uncooperative. “Good night, Ikuko. Sorry for not involving you earlier.”
Her smile seemed to brighten even more, as though her joy had been deeply enriched by Tohya’s confession. “No problem at all. I understand how easy it can be to get lost in such things…” As she said this, she quietly left, closing the door behind her with one last glance at Tohya.
Tohya slumped down in his chair for a moment before preparing for bed. As he laid down and closed his eyes, despite the peaceful atmosphere of the room, he could still recount so many of those painful, cutting words from her writing. He could still picture, exactly, the last time he had seen her face.
He had closed his eyes, hadn’t he? He hadn’t even been able to see it. He hadn’t even been allowed to witness the last expression on her face. There was no body for Beatrice, there was no burial, there was only one witness and the cries of the waves. Why? Why couldn’t he have opened his eyes, and caught her? Why could he only understand her now? Hell, why was it so difficult even with these two message bottles before him?
She had torn her heart open and spilled it onto the pages, and yet here he was, pitiful Tohya who should have died on that day, whether with the rest or with her, unable to even comprehend it.
He was incapable of anything at all except reaching for her and failing to grasp anything but his own delusions of self-worth, which were just air. He wished that Ushiromiya Battler had died on that day, that he could have never remembered these things. Or that, at least, he could have died with her on that day, and then ‘he’ would never have been born.
Or, more than anything else, that he had opened his eyes, that he had held on more tightly and dragged her up, that she had simply not jumped, that she had lived - and that was the most painful idea of all, of her living, of her still breathing, of being able to hear these posthumous emotions and words not from the pages, from her dead flesh, but from her own mouth. That was why he remained. Because he refused to leave this world without hearing them. Because he refused to leave behind Ikuko, who would surely then feel the pain that he did now.
Ikuko, who had saved him, who had protected him, who even now would help guide him to Sayo’s heart. And Sayo who had drowned in the depths, and whose soul was surely trapped on Rokkenjima alongside the family she loved and hated, for all eternity. For all eternity… just like he surely was and would be.