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If parallel worlds exist, just as Iris would say, they better be kinder, because this one? It's going to suck, Mizuki realizes when Date comes home on that November Tuesday. The rain pounds on the windows, unrelenting, and everyone she's ever loved is dead.
Thank god Mizuki's school is understanding. They let her take the time off to grieve. She's missed just a few days now, but they feel like years, millennia, a line dividing past Mizuki and present Mizuki. Kinda like something in her soul was paralyzed. She's been wondering about things like that, curling up on the sofa under a blanket. She's had a lot of thoughts — but she would also have none, would stare at nothing at all with her mind totally wiped out. Empty.
In the late evening, Date's finally back, and she sees the same emptiness in his eyes. Uncomfortable, Mizuki tears her gaze away. As she moves to her armchair, the reality returns into focus. After taking off his coat and dropping it on the floor, Date gives her a nod and sits on the couch, elbows on his knees and head hung low. Mizuki chews on her bottom lip. Tastes blood.
(If she closes her eyes, she can also see the blood on her hands too. She can almost hear the accusing voices of Mom, Daddy, Iris, Ota... The list goes on, day by day. Mizuki gazes into the abyss and it gazes back. She's too young to be this tired.)
"We caught the killer," Date says without any inflection. "Have you heard of that explosion in Hibiya?" Mizuki nods; she saw the news. Three deaths, four more injured. "It was how he killed Hitomi." The next words barely register, Mizuki's heart stopping. "Turns out he also murdered Boss."
Miss Hitomi. Her teacher, her kind, compassionate teacher, who would give her little chocolate snacks and warm hugs. Dead. Explosion? Mizuki's mind flashes back to the other corpses she saw, to how... horrible they were, and she barely manages not to throw up. And Date’s Boss, and three more people. Collateral damage. It’s hard to imagine the reason someone would be this ruthless.
(Another voice. Her fault, her fault, it was all because of her, if only she wasn't born, stupid, useless child, she murdered them all— Mom's voice. But isn't she dead? )
A hand on her shoulder. The familiar smell of cheap cologne and car exhaust. Inhale, exhale. Mizuki blinks once, twice. Date's face, pale and exhausted, warped with worry. It's him. He's here. He's still here.
"I'm fine," she murmurs, her lips numb when she moves them. Date withdraws, frowning.
"There's a lot happening," he says in the end. "But — we know who the killer is. And — who I am."
“Who you are?”
"Yeah." He shakes his head with a grimace. "You ought to know."
Tells the story. Not too gruesomely, but without hiding important details.
Saito Sejima.
That's when Mizuki does end up throwing up. Mom was dead for a year already and no one realized, not even her own daughter— Her vision blurs, fog creeping in. She grips the edge of the toilet until it audibly cracks. Date, holding up her hair, curses. Talks to himself, sounding panicked. Mizuki squeezes her eyes shut and wishes, without words, without knowing what she even wants. Her head hurts. The acid burns her tongue but even drinking a glass of water seems like a titanic effort.
She must've fallen asleep at one point. Things went blurry but in her memories there's being picked up, a wet towel dabbing on her face, a murmur of a conversation. Her coat sliding off her shoulders. The familiar feel of her bedpillow. A voice, hoarse, apologetic. The lights go out. She sleeps in short moments, waking up every so often to the darkness and sound of breathing. Still here. Still here. At one point, she stumbles into the bathroom to rinse out her mouth. Tucked in under her duvet, Mizuki glances at Date, as usual snoring away on the couch with hair all over his face. This is just like every other night, she realizes, only to fall asleep soon after.
There are patches of sunlight filtered through the blinds, bright as every other day, as if the world hasn’t stopped. Mizuki turns back to face the wall and closes her eyes, hoping for a few more hours of fitful sleep. Her thoughts curl up and yawn, their sharp teeth glistening in the bloodied maws, before falling asleep as well. There's a moment of relative peace. She relishes it.
The next time Mizuki opens her eyes, it's to a dull ache in her stomach. Makes sense, to be honest. What was the last thing she ate? Some rice yesterday, around noon, barely half a bowl… And now it's — she unlocks her phone — two in the afternoon already. She groans.
"Oh, you're finally awake." Startled, Mizuki shoots up and sees Date, sitting by his computer with his arms crossed as he stares at the screen.
"Why aren't you at work?" is the first thing Mizuki's mouth says, Mizuki's brain not fully engaged. Then it turns on and she cringes at her question. "Right. Sorry."
Corners of his lips twitching in an exhausted smile, Date shakes his head. "It's fine. At this point, who knows what's gonna happen to my job anyway." He pauses as if listening to something and winces. "Shit. Sorry, you don't need to—"
"What's wrong with ABIS?" Mizuki asks, furrowing her brows. "Is it because of the Boss?"
"Kind of, but… we'll see." Date looks like he regrets this entire conversation. If she had the energy, she'd pester him hard. "I just heard some rumors that HQ is royally pissed off with us. No wonder."
Nodding, Mizuki glances away and pushes the covers away, slipping out of bed. Her dress is wrinkled and kinda smelly, but the concept of changing her clothes and cleaning up seems hopelessly exhausting. Mizuki inhales deeply and tells herself not to be a baby. No one else is gonna do that for her now.
The bathtub takes a long time to fill up, with Date's apartment being so cheap its plumbing absolutely sucks. Mizuki stares at her reflection in the mirror and tries to zone out, to finally stop listening to the not quite audible sounds of Date talking to himself. Well, to Aiba. Who Mizuki has yet to meet. Isn't that exciting? She sighs, aware that, if she had her normal zeal, she would be happy to talk with someone that knows all of Date's dirty (e.g. good for blackmail) secrets. But — instead, she can't find it in herself to feel anything. She closes her eyes, focuses on the steady whooshing of the water slowly filling the tub. A river darting through a mountain terrain, steady, unreleting. That’s a nice picture to hold. Maybe, one day, she could experience it. She shakes off the daydreams and reaches for her shampoo.
At one point during her bath, she pinches her nose shut and pushes her head under the surface. It's peaceful there. Quiet. Mizuki wonders what would it be like to drown, if she’d find the same serenity in that. Her lungs burn as she holds her breath for as long as she can; she gasps for air after resurfacing. Her eyes are pricking. Stupid. She finishes up, meticulously not thinking about anything, anything at all. The water’s a soothing shade of light blue, like an iceberg far, far away.
When she’s wrapping a towel around her head, Mizuki hears a sudden yell. She tenses, panic squeezing her throat, before realizing it’s Date. He sounds angry, and the rhythm of his voice makes her realize he’s most likely in the middle of a heated conversation. She slinks out of the bathroom and to the main room, where Date’s standing by the window as he shouts away without noticing her.
“—to do, Pewter? There must be another option!” He scowls, apparently listening to the response. “No, I'm not saying that, the bastard deserves much worse, but you can’t expect me to be okay with this plan. It’s— Hold on.” Turning around to face Mizuki, Date gives her a tight-lipped nod. “Let’s finish this talk later, maybe you'll have better ideas. Yeah. See you.”
“You can use your fake eye as a phone?” Mizuki curls up on her chair. “That’s creepy.”
“More like convenient,” Date retorts, but there’s none of the usual levity in that. He looks exhausted, shadows dark and deep under his eyes as he rubs at his face, grimacing. Probably waiting for Mizuki to ask about his talk with Pewter, but the pit in her stomach prevents her from wanting to find out more. At least for now. She feels brittle, like a small bone after cremation when the slightest touch can cause it to fall apart. Picking at the skin by her thumbnail, she watches Date scurry into the bathroom before reaching for her phone.
On each news site she checks, Mizuki sees at least one headline about the New Cyclops killings and the Hibiya explosion. The articles, as she skims through them, are mostly speculations based on whatever the police had said recently. A copycat? A terrorist attack? It almost makes her laugh. They don’t know, they couldn’t begin to know, to understand — there are only a handful of people who do and are still alive. Her mouth tastes of iron and salt.
No new text messages either. That, she expected. No one else left who really cares. Except Date, of course, but—
(Why does thinking about this make her see red? What is that anger, a vice grip on her throat that makes her fists clench? This is stupid, this is… This is all his fault, an alien part of her thinks, vindictive, despairing, but she immediately feels horrified. Saito killed people because of Date, but it doesn’t make the deaths his to blame. It doesn’t because if it did, Mizuki wouldn’t know what to do. She'd rather blame herself.)
When he comes back, he’s wearing his work clothes again, sans the coat. “I thought you were going to stay,” Mizuki says quietly. Date gives her a smile devoid of any happiness.
“Don’t worry, it won’t take long,” he says. He sounds calm — calm the way people are when they realize everything’s over, all steel and grim resolution. “There’s something I need to take care of. Then I’m going to come back and have a goddamn drink.” Mizuki hates the way he says it, the concept as well, but she’s twelve and too tired to make a difference. She stares at her phone, pretending to read when the doors shut. There’s not much to do, she finds out soon enough, but forcing down a sandwich and contacting her teachers kills some time. Two hours in, bored of waiting, she dozes off — she must've done so because Mom is dead, so there’s no way she could stand in front of Mizuki, one eye gouged out and the other full of anger.
This is a dream. But Mizuki doesn’t wake up when Mom reaches out and grabs both of her hands, interlacing their fingers, digging in the manicured nails. The veins jutting out and bruised under her pallid skin. Blood dripping down her face from the hole in her skull. Mizuki doesn’t scream, already knows she can’t. But she’s able to fight, to push Mom away, but she won’t let go, she starts laughing; Mizuki’s blinded by desperation so she pushes harder —
Mom’s on the ground. They’re in the cold storage warehouse. Iris’s body lies duplicated, one frozen solid, one bisected. The heavy stench of blood. Mom's throat a cold, clammy thing in Mizuki’s grip, Mom slapping her across the face. “Stupid girl,” she spits out. Mizuki blinks, the dream readjusts, and Mom’s gone. For a split second, it’s Daddy.
“Daddy!”
“Please,” and then it’s Date, of course it’s him— "Please."
Squeezing her eyes shut, Mizuki presses harder until something breaks.
She wakes up. Still here, she’s still here. Parallel universes don’t exist.
The sun has gone behind the horizon, and the room is only lit up by a small desk lamp by Date's computer. When Mizuki looks around, he doesn't see him anywhere, though. She checks her phone; raising her brows, she throws on her coat and scuttles out of the room.
The ladder to the rooftop of their apartment building is behind a padlock, but Mizuki simply crushes it in her hand and climbs up to the deck. In the faint glow of nearby streetlights, she can spot a figure sitting against the HVAC unit; she crouches by Date’s side and gives him a questioning look.
"Can't sleep?" she asks quietly. Instead of replying, Date raises the half-emptied bottle of sake to his lips and takes a long drink. His hands are shaking; with the gloves gone, Mizuki can see the blood underneath his fingernails.
She slides further down the wall and, crossing her legs, gazes at the night sky full of clouds. Heavy, about to burst, and maybe when it rains it won't ever stop. Water pouring out of the sky until everything has drowned in a great, beautiful, serene flood. Mizuki thinks it'd be nice. She doesn't want to think that.
"Saito is not gonna be a problem anymore," Date says, and Mizuki flicks her eyes to him. "I've dealt with that."
"Mm?" Mizuki knits her brows. "What happened?"
"If he went to trial and testified about everything, the MPD would be in very deep shit." Fiddling with the ends of his hair, loose from the usual bun, Date closes his eyes. "So he's dead now."
"Good," Mizuki spits out; Date flinches at that, and she frowns, confused. "What?"
"We had to stage a suicide," Date says, slowly, like the words hurt to say. "The explanation is that, during an interview, he attacked me and took my gun, but the truth is I…" He trails off, shaking his head. When he lifts the bottle again, once more her eyes are drawn to the blood.
Mizuki blinks owlishly, trying to find good words, proper words, because if she was to say what she felt… Dunno. She'd probably end up screaming until her throat gave up. She sniffles, the scent of alcohol burning in her nose. Date won't even look at her; he feels very far away, unnaturally calm and still. Mizuki shuts her eyes as well and balls her hands into fists. It would be nice to feel angry, sad, anything, but she's just tired.
She's tired, and the long silence that falls is like a funeral.
"We're the only ones left," she breathes out.
Date sighs. "I'm sorry, kid," he says. When she glances at him, she sees he's dried the entire bottle. Worrying. He gets stupid when drunk. "I'm really sorry for… all of this. Let's go home."
Despite sleeping for most of the day, she feels fatigued enough that she slides into her bed as soon as they're back inside. As her eyelids grow heavier and her thoughts start to scatter, Mizuki takes one last look at Date. There's another bottle on the table in front of him, and she hates hates hates the sight but can't ever make a difference. It's too late. Whatever choices she made, they all made, it led them down the wrong path. In the infinity of parallel worlds, theirs is the wrong one.
She dreams of Iris, smiling as the saw cuts her in half.
Mizuki wakes up early in the morning, still reeling from her nightmares. To her surprise, Date's not in the room, his fake eye resting on his desk, and the couch looks untouched. Confused, she gnaws on her bottom lip before getting up and dragging herself to the bathroom, only to find it locked. Weird. Mizuki knocks on the door and waits for an answer. When it doesn't come after five minutes, the confusion shifts to worry and she slams her arm against the frame. It cracks, and she stumbles inside.
There's a lot of blood. Maybe this is the rain Mizuki expected.