Chapter Text
This so-called “Nanamin”— or Nanami Kento as he introduced himself— came to fetch them approximately half an hour after Gojo had left, just as Gojo had said he would. Shoko left as he entered, and Arthur listened to the sound of her walking away, the squeak of her shoes bending sharp into the terse silence. Given his old clothes back just moments ago, he clutched the bundle in his arms— dry now— and listened, half-aware, as John took the time to describe their new minder.
He’s tall and fair-haired— handsome, but with the serious demeanor of a soldier in the midst of battle. He’s wearing a pair of…hm… spectacles? With shaded lenses and a metal frame. They look almost like sunglasses, only they’d hardly be practical to be wear inside if that were the case. Oh! And the color of his suit is also similar to yours, only he has on a deep blue button down and a loud, leopard-print tie.
Something about the way John said the word ‘loud’— as if the tie had personally offended him— brought the ghost of a smile to Arthur’s face.
Ah, John said. He’s just turned around to give us some privacy.
Arthur’s shoulders loosened.
“Right,” he said, and began unfolding the clothing from the neat stack they’d been folded into.
A gentle prickle of familiarity rubbed up against his fingertips as he did so, the warm wax drippings of a moment left behind. Noel had lent him this suit, he recalled. The memory was like a faraway dream. Somewhere between the ‘now’ and the ‘then,’ time had gaped open its wretched maw, and left him feeling an ocean apart from the man he’d been only days ago. How much more, he wondered, would he change before he found his way back?
He sighed, biting his lower lip.
As he changed out of the hospital gown and back into his old garments, the cotton of the shirt sleeves slid over his forearms and wrinkled against his chest, fabric sliding over skin, scraping at his scars with a pressure that made him aware of where every wound sat against his body. Then, together, he and John looped the tie around his neck.
His stomach turned as their fingers brushed.
It was nothing, just as every other touch had been in the past— necessary, not proprietary— but his increased awareness made it almost hellish. Unnatural wickedness leered at him, saw his body become a strange animal, demoted down from man. An unseen brand buzzed behind the surface of his fingernails and eyelids.
He bristled and shove John’s hand away.
“I’ve got it,” he said, then swallowed.
John rolled his eyes, but only watched, and Arthur briefly felt he like a losing racehorse with a judging crowd that would surely pick him apart. Sick bird fluttered inside Arthur’s arms, weakly pecking at his flesh for sustenance and making his muscles tremble, the tie slipping from his fingers again and again. Pride warred against utility.
His form sagged.
“John…” he began.
John hummed.
He ran his tongue along the backs of his teeth.
“I actually, or— ah, would you actually—?” Arthur motioned in the general area of the tie.
But I thought you said you said you ‘had it?’ John parodied, voice grinning.
He flushed.
“Yes, well— Look. Just, just hold the bloody tie.”
John chuckled, but said nothing else as he reached up to hold the fabric steady as Arthur wound the ends into a double Windsor. Then, once they’d managed to get the buttons done up on the waistcoat and the suit jacket on, he called out to Nanami, “Ready.”
“Good. Then let’s be on our way,”
His tone was smoother than Arthur had expected, older. Not quite low, but with depth, and the foreign lilt to the English that sounded unbothered by its own imperfection.
He’s holding the door to the infirmary open for you— it’s straight in front of us.
Arthur nodded.
“Right,” he said quietly. Then, with purpose, “Right.”
He started walking.
A little to your left— no, wait. There. Yes, keep going.
The cold of the floor against his socked feet was odd and grounding. It seeped through the fabric and kissed up against the bottoms of his steps. He listened to the sound of Nanami’s footsteps ahead of him, following the steady gait of them as John continued to call directions out to him. The sound tickled something in his mind, but for the life of him he couldn’t seem to recall what.
Click-clack.
There’s a corner coming up on your right.
Click-clack.
The walls are narrower here, walk a little to your left.
Click-clack.
Turn left again here.
Click-clack.
Click-cla—
“My shoes,” he blurted out suddenly.
“What?” He heard Nanami ask.
Arthur paused.
“I just, ah, realized that I haven’t got any—that we haven’t got any shoes on,” he said.
“Ah,” Nanami said.
And then they all stood still for a minute.
“Our shoes?” Arthur repeated.
“I don’t…” Nanami began. He sounded tired. “I don’t know.”
Arthur rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
“Wonderful,” he huffed, and if here he began to get a little snippy, then he felt that was his right as belligerent prisoner turned schoolteacher. “So I’ll just go traipsing around in my stockings, shall I?”
Nanami sighed.
“One moment, please.”
Then Arthur heard the sound someone taking a few footsteps away and of fabric ruffling.
Nanami has just walked to the other corner of the room. He’s, he’s pulling something out of his pocket, one of those little black devices.
Arthur’s brows raised.
“Is he doing anything with it?”
I’m… I’m not sure. He’s running his thumb over the side of it, and. Oh. It— it’s starting to glow, and now it’s got some sort of number pad, or— No, wait! He’s just slid his fingers over the symbols and the image changed. It’s a bunch of colorful little boxes now. One of them has a picture of a letter on it, one has a gear, another one is white with a blue compass on it. There’s… there’s so many.
Arthur’s head hurt just thinking about it.
“Could it be some sort of… fabrication device?”
I don’t know…Oh! It’s started buzzing, or maybe vibrating is more accurate. He’s putting it up to his ear now.
The sound of Nanami’s voice floated over to them and Arthur strained his ears to listen.
“I’ve just picked him up,” Nanami said, and Arthur noted that he was speaking in Japanese. “Why are his shoes missing?”
He’s talking into it, or more like around it, and he keeps pausing like he’s having a conversation.
Arthur tapped his toes against the floor.
“Maybe it’s a communicator?”
But there’s no wires anywhere. It’s not even connected to anything else, either. The whole thing is just about the size of your hand.
The more John described this thing to him, the less he could envision it.
“Do you see any—?” He began to ask. Just then, Nanami’s voice came into hearing range again, and as if powered by some shared instinct, both he and John quieted down at the same time.
“Don’t call me that,” they heard Nanami say.
A brief hold.
“Itadori-kun is a child,” he continued, voice tight. “It is the right of children to enjoy the youthfulness of their childhoods— but that is besides the point. Where are Lester-san’s shoes?”
More silence.
“That is ridiculous.”
Silence again.
“Please maintain some level of professionalism.”
The muffled side of the conversation grew louder than, and he heard Nanami say in a tone of finality, “Goodbye, Gojo-san.”
Then there was a quiet nothing yet again.
But, but it’s still not connected to anything else… John repeated yet again.
“I don’t understand it either,” Arthur said. “Maybe it’s some sort of sorcery device?”
Maybe.
Nanami’s footsteps once again clicked across the floor.
He looks more tired than he did before, probably the price of using that machine.
Arthur heard it as the footsteps drew to a stop in front of him.
“You may borrow my shoes for now,” Nanami said, back to his accented English now.
Arthur raised an eyebrow.
“What happened to ours?” He asked.
“My apologies, but… ah, they are currently being held by our research department.”
“They’re shoes.”
Nanami is rubbing at the bridge of his nose.
“I’m aware.”
He’s sighing and taking off his own shoes like he said he would. They look to be around your size— brown, leather cap-toed Oxfords— if not a bit too big. He’s just left them with the heel towards you on the floor about three steps in front of you. Bend down.
Arthur did so.
John grabbed the shoes, dragging Arthur’s bicep out along with him despite not technically having control of it, and pulled them back. Arthur slipped into one, then waited as John slipped into the other.
Better?
“Much.”
He clapped a hand against his thigh, straightening his spine.
“Right, then,” He said. “Onwards.”
Nanami is nodding. He’s motioning us to a set of double doors in front of us, which I’m guessing might lead to outside.
There was only one way to find out.
Arthur marched forward. As he stepped over the threshold, the atmosphere became hot and sticky with life. Already, he could imagine the way his dress shirt was surely going to be drenched with sweat by the end of this, which all seemed just a bit too unfair considering not but in the last twenty-four hours it had been raining hard enough to make Cape Cod jealous— even moreso because the room they’d come from had been a temperate oasis.
The second thing was the air.
The scent of something ancient lingered in the wind, something earthy and almost sweet— and ancient was distinctly different than old. Old was his mother’s wedding dress, the manuscript of an old lord’s stories, or a finely-carved table passed down from father to son. Ancient on the other hand, was petrified wood. It was secrets found in the dead of night— canyons worn away by the slow but steady thrum of flowing water against rock.
Ancient smelled like returning to the soil from which they’d been borne, the dwellings of mankind slipping back into mud and ash as dust became dust once again.
There was a gravity to that.
“Where are we?” Arthur asked aloud, unsure to whom he was speaking.
John answered him first.
Wherever it is, it’s… it’s breathtaking, he said. It’s so… green.
“This is Mt. Mushiro,” Nanami said.
I can’t, I can’t even seem to find the words— Arthur, this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s like a polar opposite to the hellish desert of the Dreamlands. Vegetation— inviting and serene-looking, not like the curled, withering knobs of the walking forest we encountered— is scattered across every surface. There are buildings surrounding us— old, oriental structures like something from a museum scroll painting— and they span outwards from where we’ve found ourselves, as though we are at the center of a complex. Beyond them on all sides are forests of trees for as far as the eye can see, slotting neatly into the background landscape of the grand green mountains sloping towards the sky behind them. It is as though we are in a wood-block print.
Arthur took in a deep breath of mountain air.
“It smells… clean.”
Sweetness blew lazily by his nostrils, ticking them with the faintest scent of earth. He was reminded of standing in wide atriums with wooden rafters that spanned the ceiling above, the way large spaces smelled when left open and untouched by human hands. Cabins in autumn time beyond the city of London, beyond the smog and sewer sludge, and into the thicket where a small creak flowed that he used to splash his feet in when he’d been young. Nature that smelled of growing up too quickly— comforting as it entered him but bitter with all the childhood he’d lost.
He might like to get buried in a wood like that.
“How long has this been here?” He asked.
Nanami is slowing his pace to match ours as we take in our surroundings, John said.
“The mountain?” Nanami asked.
Arthur waved his hand in the vague direction of the everything he was unable to see.
“All of it.” He coughed into his hand. “It’s just, well, I’ve never heard of any schools being built this high in the mountains.” He paused. “I mean, it is a school, isn’t it?”
“Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College,” Nanami confirmed. “One of two schools in Japan which train those adept in cursed energy in how to become sorcerers.”
Arthur hummed.
“And this whole ‘sorcery’ business— that’s a profession, then?”
“Indeed.”
He rolled the tension out from his shoulders and into his palms, squeezing and releasing and squeezing again.
“And how does that…work?” He asked.
“How much did my--” Nanami lips curled down here. “— my ‘colleague’ explain to you?”
John, in his usual eloquence, said with vehemence, Fuck-all.
“A little,” Arthur translated.
John huffed.
“Did he explain to you what your role here will be?”
“No,” Arthur said. “He didn’t.”
And that was technically true— Arthur and John weren’t meant to understand when Gojo had been speaking to Shoko at the end there.
“Ah,” Nanami said.
Arthur sighed and began to thumb at the button on his suit coat, feeling over its ridges, those mountains that peaked and then dipped low to form a plain where the button’s two little eyes poked through.
Nanami startled him when he started speaking again.
“Well. For reasons beyond comprehension, Gojo-san has enlisted you to be his teaching assistant.”
Ah, good to know the decision was just as mad to everyone else as it had sounded to Arthur.
Nanami continued, “He is what is known as a special-grade sorcerer— the highest rank a sorcery can be. Sorcerers of different ranks are expected to exterminate and cleanse the world of evil spirits made of negative emotions are called ‘cursed spirits.’”
Arthur stuck his hand into the pocket of his trousers. A jolt ran through him at the cool metal that greeted him there.
The lighter.
“Can anyone become a sorcerer, then?” He asked.
“No.”
“How does one get picked for the job?”
“You must first have the capacity to see curses to be able to exorcise them.”
There was that word again— curse. Cursed.
“And what are these curses— cursed spirits, I mean?” He thumbed over the lighter, listening to the sound of unfamiliar birds cawing amidst the sweltering air.
“Curses are negative ideas that have life. Spirits that bring harm to humanity.”
He hummed.
“And its a sorcerer’s job to execute these spirits, correct?”
“Yes.”
He flicked at the lid.
“Well, I’d hardly call John a ‘threat to humanity.’”
The man liked cows named after flowers and Robert Frost, for Christ’s sake.
I could be a threat, John said petulantly. If I wanted to be.
“Not helping,” Arthur said under his breath.
Nanami’s voice had a curious tone to it when he spoke again— stilted, slightly.
“I take it then that it’s also this… ‘John’ you’re talking to currently?”
His muscles coiled.
“And if it is?”
“Curses are dangerous,” Nanami said.
Arthur’s face hardened.
“Well, they can damn well get in line.”
“What,” Nanami paused. When he spoke again, there was a careful consideration in his tone. “What did you do before you came to Japan that was so filled with strife?”
Arthur turned away. He let go of the lighter.
“I.. I was a private investigator,” he said.
Nanami is adjusting his collar.
“I see,” Nanami said.
Arthur took a moment to breathe in deep again. The mountain air— it’s age-carrying scent, it’s grand feel compared to the shallow breath of man— seeped as good wine into his lungs, warming him with a calmness of spirit that allowed him to reach beyond his current state of malcontent and into a meditative thoughtfulness. Private investigators gathered information, he reminded himself. They didn’t flounder under the heat of the pressure, or start going red in the face before their investigation had even truly began— unless they were Parker. Then, they beat the shit out of people for information, which seemed for him to work just as well.
Arthur chuckled softly, somehow leaving his lips as an altogether sad and bitter sound. He sighed and flicked at the cap of the lighter again.
“About this whole ‘curse’ business…” He began.
“Hm.”
“Could you tell me anything more about it?”
Nanami cleared his throat.
“It would be more effective for you to learn during your training for the job.”
“There’s training?”
Nanami hummed.
“Think of it more as… remedial lessons.”
Arthur stilled.
“Remedial lessons.”
“…Of a sort.”
In his head, John muttered, Oh great.
Arthur felt much the same level of enthusiasm. Certainly, he thought to himself sardonically, it wasn’t as though it would be a frivolous waste of time to go back to grammar school while they were being tossed between the whims of lesser gods like the ball in a game of twisted jacks. Certainly it was a great use of their limited resources to attend lessons while the looming threat of eternal damnation for him and all those he cared for loomed over their heads!
He held his tongue, just barely.
“I see,” he managed to make himself say instead.
The conversation came to a halt after that, but less because Arthur was done asking questions and more because Nanami announced that they had arrived.
We’ve come to a building that seems worn on the outside, but overall well-maintained, John said as they slowed to a stop. It’s another one in the same style as the building we were in before, with a roof that curls out at the bottom, meeting at a point at the top like the stems of two cherries. Dark tiling acts as shingles, and the walls seem to be made an off-white paster, plain wooden beams occasionally interspersed throughout. There are windows visible in some of the sections, decently-sized ones that take up the upper portion of the walls.
“This is one of the older staff dormitory facilities,” Nanami began to explain. “You’ll be staying here on your own, as most of our staff live either in the building next door or off-campus. However, please be aware that— should you try to leave without permission— it’s a nearly two day journey through the mountains by foot, and it’s currently the middle of monsoon season. The chances of you being dead before we find you are high, and the chances of you being killed after we find you are even higher.”
He said this all in the same tone he said most other things, with a complete and utter seriousness that Arthur couldn’t tell if he appreciated or detested.
If you keep going about thirty steps, and then move a few feet diagonally to your right, the door will be right in front of you. There’s a small step just before it, so be careful.
Arthur moved to walk inside.
“Ah,” he heard Nanami say behind him. “Remove your shoes, please.”
They weren’t his to begin with so, however much he felt the urge to protest, he reluctantly handed them back to Nanami again— who he just realized had been presumably walking around in stocking feet as he led them across this mountain campus. Then they followed him down a long hallway, to what John said was the furthest room down on the left-hand wall. There was the sound of old wood creaking as they walked across the floorboards, a stark contrast to what he realized now had been the complete soundlessness of the floors in the infirmary building.
Nanami stopped, and a second too late, John said, He’s stopping.
Arthur had already run into his back at this point.
“Yes,” Arthur whispered, rubbing harshly at his sore nose. “I noticed.”
Louder, Nanami said, “Room 104.”
He’s holding out a thin, brass key and slipping it into a lock that’s been inset into the door.
There was the sound of a tiny ‘click.’
It seems like it slides open, John said.
A key was pressed into his palm.
“This is yours. Don’t lose it.”
Arthur immediately put it into his pocket.
“I won’t,” he said.
Nanami is nodding.
“Gojo-san will be here to pick you at around seven in the morning. Do you have a phone?”
Arthur turned to him. He raised an eyebrow.
“Not, not currently, no,” he said. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been afforded the luxury of his own personal rotary dial.
“Ah.”
Where would they expect you to have had access to a telephone? John grumbled. It’s not like you could just carry one around in your bag with you.
“What about your things?”
Arthur turned towards Nanami.
“Your ‘school’ has them.”
“Ah,” Nanami said back. “Yes. I’ll see what can be done about finding you a change of clothes.”
“And my shoes,” Arthur added.
“…And a pair of shoes.”
He’s bowing lightly.
“Yes. Until tomorrow,” Nanami said, and then Arthur listened to the sound of his footsteps as he trailed away.
Once he heard the front door shut and they were finally alone, he motioned to the door and asked, “John, would you…?”
Oh, yes.
John slid open the door for him. He stepped across the threshold
“Thank you. Could you describe the room for me?”
John hummed
First of all, it’s very dark. The curtains on the window are closed on the far wall, and they seem to be trapping all the light on the other side.
“Right, where?”
Straight ahead.
Arthur walked forward and reached out an arm, drawing it slowly back and forth through the air until he hit upon the feeling of thick cloth. He pulled it to one side, and immediately the heat of the afternoon sun streamed down to warm his arm.
“Better?”
Much.
Clearing his throat— a quirk which made Arthur smile, considering that John technically had no throat— John went on.
The room itself is a good size, moderate but not small. It’s not as dusty as I would have expected it to be, considering that Nanami mentioned how no one has lived here for quite some time, but it might still be good to open the window to air it out. A twin-sized bed is pushed up to the wall horizontally in the upper right corner— exactly to the right of where we are now. There is a desk opposite it to the left— on the other side of us— and in the foyer where we entered, a small kitchenette and what looks to be some sort of refrigerator are inset into the wall. There is also another door across from the kitchenette which may lead of closet.
Arthur walked to his right, waiting for his knees to bump against the bed frame. Once they did, he turned around and flopped back onto it, immediately hit by a wave of exhaustion.
“Ugh, I never thought I’d be so happy to have my own bed again.”
It even looks like it has clean linens on it.
“Wonderful,” he said. He was filled with the great temptation to merely fall ideeper nto the mattress now and never get up again for the next twenty years, but stayed himself with the thought of the mission that lay ahead.
He pushed himself up with a groan instead.
“Shall we explore the rest? I want to see what that door on the wall leads to.”
Alright. Once you get up, if turn away from the window and walk forwards, it should be on your left.
He made his way to the possible closet door, feeling up it for the handle. Once the cold metal was in his grasp, he turned the knob and and listened as it creaked open.
“Well?” He asked.
The question hung in the air.
Oh, Arthur.
John’s voice, dark as it was, could have been hued equally with terror or excitement for all that Arthur could differentiate the two. He shivered.
“John...?”
John, for his part, hummed slowly. Arthur, as he so often did at that tone, found himself on tenterhooks.
Well…It seems we’ll have our own personal shower.
—And then he slapped the wrist that belonged to John.
“You prick!” He huffed loudly. “I was actually worried.”
John chuckled.
It’s small, and the bathtub its connected to seems only large enough for us to soak in if we bend our knees, but I imagine we’ll make do.
His brain played the association game it always did: curls all waterlogged below the faucet, the clammy wetness of a tiny, naked body draped in the tub, how small she’d been.
God, she’d been so small.
He fisted his trousers.
“No baths,” he said. Even just the word made his voice waver. “No… no baths.”
Softer, in a pitying tone that Arthur couldn’t tell if he craved or despised, John said, Arthur—
“Just… just be quiet. Please.”
Arthur laid his hand against the doorframe and closed his eyelids. It was one of those vestigial instincts left over despite his total blindness. A hand came up to rest over his own and squeezed once before letting go. He gathered his breath.
“Okay,” he said. He drew himself up. “Here’s what’s going to happen next: I am going to take the longest, nicest shower known to man until the water goes cold, and then you and I are going to lay down in a real bed that is much nicer than the moth-ball ridden one in the motel we stayed in at New York City, and then I am going to sleep like the dead until the morning comes.”
At the idea of a full night’s rest, a slight giddiness rose up inside of him, the crisp sensation of at last having a moment to rest cracking across his knuckles. It belied the grief inside of him, and he wondered if the old saying was true about faking happiness until it became a reality.
Either way, he figured he would give it the old college try.
John played along.
Glad to see you have something to be excited about, he said.
Arthur made himself spin around.
“A shower, John. A proper shower.”
We seem to have developed very low standards.
“Oh, shut up.”
*********
He did, in fact, shower until the water began to turn cold.
Stooping low under the shower head, he enjoyed the heat of the water— once they finally figured out how to get the damn thing to turn on— and felt as tension pooled at his feet and slipped down the drain. There had been a lever on top of the sink which they’d had to switch, as apparently the pumps were only sufficiently suited to direct themselves towards the sink or the shower at any given time, not both. John, as he usually did during the rare chances they’d had to shower together, let Arthur clean his body by himself, which he was ever grateful for considering the strange state of mind that had been plaguing him all day— although he had helped with washing the shampoo out of Arthur’s hair. Rather than feeling strange, though, something about the gentleness with which he worked and the steam that hung in cozy coils in the air made Arthur feel safe rather than scared. He leaned into it and the touch mixed with warmth of the spray that ran against his skin, going beyond was just a physical cleansing. It found him clean and red-raw, pink-fleshed and feeling nearly new as he toweled off— yawning frequently and moving slow.
They didn’t have any other clothing to change into, so he changed back into the ones from earlier today-- where he found the scent of sun and sweat comforted him rather than a make his nose twitch. Instead of putting the jacket on properly though, he threw it over himself like a blanket as he laid back on their bed, snuggling into the mattress. His hand folded over his stomach and he turned his head to where he presumed the wall was.
“John?” He asked, yawning into the early evening air.
Arthur.
He rubbed at his eyes.
“How are you feeling?”
Generally? Or…
“After earlier. I’ve— I’ve never heard you sound like that before.”
I’m worried about you, he didn’t say.
John sighed.
I’ve certainly felt better.
Arthur shifted his legs against the linens.
“The pain— was it anything like losing our pinky in the Dreamlands?”
John’s hand picked at something— a wrinkle, a piece of lint— on the collar of their dress shirt.
No. Maybe. I don’t know. That, that was real, but surface level. This pain was something deeper. It felt like he had found a way to wrap his hands around my soul.
Arthur turned his head the other way.
“I don’t like that he can hurt you like that.”
John’s briefly grip tightened against the collar.
Trust me, I’m not exactly thrilled about it either.
Arthur nodded.
“I’ll bet.”
He sighed and curled his legs up, just barely too long to fit in the smallish bed. He tapped his fingers his thigh.
“It feels like we’re at the edge of a whirlpool, somehow,” he said.
John paused in his venture to rid Arthur of all great lint-based monstrosities.
What do you mean?
“Just… Gojo. The pink-haired boy with the eyes. Supposed sorcery. It’s like we’ve ben flung from one hell— but a hell we at least understood— into another. Somehow I get the feeling that whatever happened today, it was barely even scratching the surface.”
John made an ‘ah’ sound.
Out of the frying pan and into the fryer.
Arthur paused. He peeled himself up for a brief moment.
“Don’t you mean ‘and into the fire?’”
What? John said. No. That doesn’t make any sense.
“That’s how the saying goes: out of the fry pan and into the fire.”
John paused for a moment before responding.
Why would you take food from a frying pan and then ruin it by burning it to a crisp?
Arthur sighed again, falling back.
“It’s an idiom, John.”
It makes much more sense that it’s been lightly cooked in a frying pan and then fried if the people were planning to eat it later.
“I’ll be sure to let the inventors of the phrase know when I see them again at our quarterly,” he said sardonically. Then he felt his eyelids droop. His muscles felt sore from the strain of the earlier fight, old aches manifesting in new ways, and his jaw was tight from clenching.
It had been a long day.
He raked his hand through his hair, perhaps a bit more harshly than he needed to, and groaned.
“How does Gojo expect me to teach these children when we he doesn’t even know we speak the same language? Furthermore, why would he allow us to be around them at all, considering what he knows about us?”
It certainly does seem odd. John paused. Maybe he’s just that confident that he can protect them?
“Or he’s bluffing. Trying to get us to show our hand.”
What would he even want us to show?
“Maybe some sort of proof that you’re up to no good, or maybe just the chance to learn our movements before we can find a way to turn the situation against him.”
…I suppose.
John sounded as if he were pacing around in Arthur’s mind.
“I can hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere,”Arthur said.
John jumped on the offer.
I’ve been thinking and… what if we use this opportunity to our advantage?
Arthur hummed.
“I’m listening,” he said.
Well, think about it, John began. We don’t have any footholds here. No money, no connections, no place to weather through the night. Hell, we don’t even have our bag anymore after Gojo stole it. If we tried to leave now, who knows what sort of problems we might cause ourselves. But it seems like this place is relatively well-established, as well as being a font of knowledge on the esoteric in the future, which means…
“—Which means we might be able to use it to start looking for the Black Stone,” Arthur finished, grinning. “John, you’re a genius.”
Sounding far too pleased with himself, John chuckled and said, If you say so.
Arthur flicked the back of one of John’s knuckles playfully.
“Oh, shut up and accept the compliment gracefully, you arse.”
I’ve got no idea what you mean.
“I’m sure,” he said. Then he paused. “Do you… do you suppose we ought to discuss what happened earlier to day?”
John hummed.
Do you mean our sudden ability to understand a language we’d never heard before yesterday, or your new ice powers?
“Both, I’d imagine. It’s not like we’ll get a better chance to discuss on our own than now.”
I agree.
“I wonder if it has anything to do with what Gojo and that Nanami were talking about earlier— this so-called ‘cursed energy.’ Do you think its something that only exists in the future?”
It certainly would have been a useful ability to have in the past.
“Can you imagine how much easier Larson would have been to deal with if we could have just kept him on ice?” He laughed to himself. “But anyway, on the topic of our new language ability, I’d like to propose something to you.”
Oh?
“I’m thinking we should tell them we can understand them.”
Arthur—
“No, wait. Just listen.” He paused, and when John said nothing else, he continued to speak again. “We’re already hiding the fact that I can’t see, and the fact that we come from a different time. The more things we stack up, the harder it will be for us to keep track of them, and the easier it will be to make a mistake.”
Harder for you, maybe.
Arthur poked John’s arm at the sulk.
“John.”
Arthur.
“I’m just trying to think this through logically.”
You just don’t want to admit you can’t remember a cover story to save your life.
Indignant, Arthur scoffed.
“That’s not true.”
Laurence Holder, John said.
“I think I did a fine job there, thank you very much.”
Yes, well, I’m so glad you think so.
“I don’t want to hear that from a man who chose John Doe as his legal name.”
…it’s a perfectly reasonable name.
“Oh, my apologies,” Arthur said, sarcastic.
And I happen to like it.
Arthur raised a hand up into the air.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad name,” he said. “I’m just saying that it is also the name that we’ve used to identify nameless victims since… well, since forever.”
Well, before I met you, I was nameless, John said.
And Arthur appreciated that John didn’t use the word ‘victim’ to describe himself then. The two of them were many things, but neither of them deserved the kindness of calling themselves victims.
“Fair enough,” Arthur conceded softly.
Then, he felt it as a soft sort of exhaustion, the kind he hadn’t had the luxury of feeling in a long, long while, come over and whisper to him once more. It was the same as the thing that made his muscles feel heavy and his body sag against the plushness of the mattress, lulling him closer to sleep.
He yawned yet again, low and long.
“What do you do while I rest, anyway?” He asked.
Normally, I think.
He pressed his head deeper into the pillow, curling closer.
“About what?”
I make up stories, sometimes.
“Would you—“ A yawn interrupted him. He tried again. “Would you tell me one?”
…If you’d like, John said.
Voice barley above a whisper, he asked, “Please.”
Um… alright. Well. Ah….oh, I think I’ve got one. John cleared his throat. Once upon a time, there was a village on the outskirts of, of somewhere that I haven’t thought of a name for yet. But many years ago, it was cursed by an angry god who…
Arthur’s lips turned up of their own accord as John’s voice continued on, becoming a steady wave of warm noise— some young, quiet part of himself perking up from where it had been sequestered away for so many years.
He fell asleep, the sailboat of his body coasting off gently as the waves continued to lull him into the beyond.
*******
Falling asleep was odd in the same way that waking up was, both never memorable enough to be traced but real enough to know they had happened. This time was much the same as any other in that way; between one blink and the next, he could feel it as the warmth of his jacket disappeared and was replaced with a cold chill against his skin.
He stiffened.
“John?” He called out. It echoed back to him without response.
His shoulders hunched in and he scrubbed his hands through his hair. Both of them. On his normally numb foot, he found himself able to wiggle all his toes, far too aware of each and every muscle, and he was filled with a desperate hope that beckoned him to blink open his eyes. All that faced him back was the stark truth of his own condition— it was just as useful as if he’d been trying to see out his elbows.
Perhaps it would have been different if there was at least darkness. Darkness he could handle. Darkness would have at least implied the absence of something.
This, though, was a pure nothing. What did one see when facing a wall and trying to stare out the backs of their heads without moving an inch? What did the body see after the brain was dead? He was arrested with the sudden fear that, should he attempt to stand, there would be no floor beneath to catch him.
Around him, the quiet sat like judge and jury.
Still, he forced himself to rise, and the floor did not flicker out below his feet. The earth did not shake. He was still real.
Alone and witnessed, he began to walk around. His own soft footfalls, ginger and strange, were the only sounds to let him know he had not yet stepped over the edge into freefall. He rubbed at his eyes, feeling the pressure for a moment just to know that they were still inside his head, and wondered if he was back again— back in that weird space in between his mind and the waking world where John had been given form. Where there were bookshelves beyond what the mind could envision. Where there were impossible shapes sprawling in every direction.
The question answered itself as he bumped into a something, and as if it had thrown itself overboard, a book smacked suddenly against his nose.
“Ow.”
It kicked off his face, tumbled cartwheels over his chest, and then came to firmly land itself in the surprised grip of his outstretched hands with a muffled thump. Arthur, in a reflexive motion, tightened his grip.
“I get the feeling you’d like me to read this,” he called out to the empty air.
Of course, no confirmation came.
It was just as well. He wouldn’t know what to have done if the book had actually answered back.
As he’d done the last time he’d been here, he ran his fingers over the spine and puzzled on the braille that met him there. There was no moment between his feeling of the words and his understanding them. The moment he had slid his fingertips over the final bump, it was as if the knowledge had simply appeared in his brain.
The King in Yellow, it read, by Robert W. Chambers.
His body shuddered. He almost threw the book out of his hands. Instead, as if held long by some invisible leash, he opened it.
“Camilla. You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger. Indeed?
Cassilda. Indeed it’s time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger. I wear no mask.
Camilla (terrified, aside to Cassilda). No mask? No mask!”
He whispered the words silently as he touched them. In the same way that, up until hours ago, he had not known Japanese, he had not know Braille. Certainly, he could recognize it, but he could not read it.
Now, it was as if he’d known it his whole life.
He slammed the book shut with great force and his chest heaved. Still, he could not get his fingers to let it go. He saw nothing, and with unruly lungs took in breath.
A quote came to him suddenly.
“Hell is empty,’” he murmured. “All the devils are here.”
The room became awash with chill. Eyelids pricked with frost and fingers damp with sudden condensation, Arthur’s whole being seemed to tremble. Possessed, and like a tempest, he hurled the book across the room and listened to the sound of it’s heavy impact. Suddenly, books came flying off the shelves as if in offense— one and than another and then twelve more at that. A flood made of paper.
He blindly grabbed one out of the air, running his fingers across it with reckless haste, feeling mad and undone.
Faroe’s Lullaby, it said.
By Arthur Lester.
Hands fell upon him in a sudden stranglehold and he could not get out, he could not get out, he could not get out, could not get out, could not get out, could not get out, could not get—
He screamed.
*******
Arthur.
He awoke to the sound of someone shaking him violently.
Jesus Christ, Arthur, wake up — it’s not real.
He threw himself out of bed and hissed. Feeling at the air, grasping in desperation at the hands which sough to hurt him, he writhed against the pull at his skin. When he felt something, he held it with the tightness of a pliers gripped around a nail and rolled forward, shaking.
He was suddenly tripped by his own foot.
Hard floor slammed up to meet his side and knocked his prey out of his grip. A sharp tug drew at his scalp and gasping, his head was forced back. His body was stretched longer, his neck extended and offered up to some invisible demon, and he snarled.
Arthur, a voice he now realized he recognized called out, For fuck’s sake, calm down!
Panting, he asked, “J—John?”
There must have been something crazed in his tone because John spoke to him with such gentle caution as a tamer working not to spook a wild beast.
Yes, Arthur.
Arthur’s body sagged.
It was just John. He relaxed into the fingers tangled tight in his hairline. Then, hesitantly, the hand in his hair loosened, moving from restraining his head to running nails across his scalp, and Arthur moaned softly. He sprawled out against the floor, going limp.
“Oh, fuck,” he said quietly. He was fucking freezing.
Are you… alright?
Arthur, disbelieving, laughed.
“Are— are you? I just tried to break your wrist.”
I’m not the one who almost just froze himself into his bed, John said, and plucked a shard of ice from where it was plastered to Arthur’s other arm like a finger pointing into the night.
Arthur scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“Ah. That’s… not good,” he said.
No.
He shivered. Apparently, whatever power let him manifest ice wasn’t kind enough to make him immune to the cold, too. Just his luck.
“It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it?” He groaned and pushed up off the floor, patting at his sides to try and get off all the pieces of ice that has frozen to him.. “Has the sun even come up yet?”
John helped him pull some of the ice off.
It’s been about six hours since you went to sleep. For the first hour or two, you didn’t move at all, but then about three hours in, and you been were tossing and turning. Then, just a few minutes ago, you suddenly started convulsing and freezing over the whole room in fucking ice.
“Really?” Arthur said. “So that’s why I feel like I’ve barely rested at all.”
Probably.
He stretched, yawning.
“Do you… do you think I could go back to sleep? Just for a little while.”
Once we get all this goddamn ice off. You summoned it, do you think you could— I don’t know, make it disappear the same way?
“I’ve got no clue.” He tried thinking about it really hard. “…well?”
Nothing.
Arthur sighed and got back to work. It was going to be a long night.
*******
A puddle of ice water and a mild case of frostbite later, Arthur managed to fall back asleep again. Unfortunately, he was awoken far too soon by the sound of loud knocking on his door.
He groaned and rolled over.
Arthur, a voice said.
“Not…not now, John,” he mumbled blearily.
A finger began poking him in the cheek.
Arthur, that same voice said again. You need to get up.
“…ermph… ge’… get stuffed.”
He snuggled his head into the pillow, curling his warm knees closer to his chest.
There’s someone at the door.
He ignored it. Sometimes, if you ignored these sorts of things, he thought to himself, they would just go away. John would probably get tired eventually.
Contented with his own reasoning, he began to try and return to his fuzzy world of rest. He was thus summarily unprepared for when his pillow was ripped out of his grasp and tossed to the floor. He growled, the soft haze of the dreamworld leaving him with the cold harsh film of reality.
There was another knock at the door, louder this time.
The fucking door, Arthur!
For fuck’s sake. He tore off the sheets and marched over to the door, sliding it open so hard he could hear it when it bounced back against the wall.
“Jesus Christ, what?”
“Well, good morning to you too, Mr. Lester.”
This time, John’s hand reached out and was the one that slammed the door shut.
It’s Gojo.
Arthur’s lips pursed.
“I noticed.”
…We could always try jumping out the window.
“Somehow, I don’t believe that’s going to work.”
He reluctantly re-opened the door, putting on his politest “go away” expression.
“What do you want?” He asked, John glaring out of his eyes.
“Now is that any way to talk to the man who saved you from certain execution?”
Asshole.
Arthur smiled tersely, then dropped the expression just as quickly.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now, what the hell do you want?”
“Just coming by to pick you up— we have an appointment with the principal in about, oh… ten minutes.”
He’s pulled out a wrinkled bag from behind his back.
“— and look! I even brought you some shoes.”
They’re right in front of you, if you want to grab them.
Arthur snatched them up and pulled them close to his chest. He felt John’s hand as it rummaged inside before saying in confusion, These aren’t our shoes.
“These aren’t our shoes,” Arthur repeated for him.
“Well,” Gojo said, drawing out the ‘e’ sound so long it dangled like a party streamer coming down to tickle at Arthur’s shoulder. He wished he could bat it away. “You’re shoes are currently being examined as ‘evidence,’ so we got you the next best thing!”
It’s a pair of Oxfords which look remarkably similar to the ones we were lent yesterday, only these ones have a wingtip pattern rather than a cap-toe. They also have a more almond-shaped toe than our previous shoes did.
“Did. Did you say we have ten minutes until we’re meant to meet with this principal?”
“Yup.”
Arthur cursed.
Leaving the door open, he began to scramble around the room.
Arthur, John said. Arthur, calm down.
“We’ve got less than ten minutes to get dressed and be on our way, John,” he said peevishly, uncaring if Gojo heard them or not anymore.
You’re already dressed, remember? You went to sleep in your suit last night.
Arthur stopped. He quickly pat along his arms and down his torso.
“Oh, you’re right.”
“Ready?” Gojo asked, popping out like a god-damned demon from somewhere far closer than Arthur was comfortable with.
“God!”
Arthur clutched his chest
“Nope. Just me,” Gojo said.
Arthur forced himself not to scream.
“We’re ready,” he said instead.
“Great!” Gojo grabbed his arm. “Now, this might be a little uncomfortable.”
“Wait, what are you—“
He was never able to finish his question, suddenly whisked away through a wrinkle in space-time. He didn’t even have the chance to shut the door.