Archive of Our Own ^beta

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

— William Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper

Truth was a word that slotted itself into a labyrinthine narrative, a story, its mysteries and evasive characters latching onto the keystone that held them together. Truth was unambiguous; the Word was not. Yet, despite this, the Word, the Language, its complexities and nuances all encompassed, formed the Truth, laid it out in the space between two people.

Word could be Truth; Word could be Untruth. And one’s Thought, in its own language, could be ineffable, unexplainable, or only explained through Words, plural, in hopes of obtaining the specificity of that Thought.

Wordsworth rolled off Ryuunosuke’s tongue with practiced ease, the unfamiliar English syllables moulded with precision in his mouth. The poem danced, pushed a breath into his lungs, held his arms and guided him into a waltz with the stanzas, socked feet brushing over the tatami like the strokes of Asougi’s writing on each page of his books, strewn haphazardly across his desk. He sat at the low table, weight balanced leisurely on his hand as he listened, posture loose in the setting summer sunlight that graced his cheek.

Routine served as protection: recitation was just that. It assured Ryuunosuke in his path, kept him from veering off into the limbo that had instilled itself into space between him and Asougi. Asougi, who was audacious, a catalyst, an idealist, a man who saw injustice in every corner, a duty not necessarily to prove himself but to incite change in others.

Asougi was someone who wanted to be the initiator of some righteous revolution, this intrinsic belief etched into the marrow of his bones, and showed itself in the fiercest sense of justice he had ever encountered, his voice commanding as he argued his cases, his boisterous laugh, one that would turn heads and be met with scorn from his teachers to his peers.

Asougi was someone who challenged everything relentlessly, spoke with passion about reform, about justice, and it entranced Ryuunosuke in a way few things could. He wasn’t one to devote himself passionately, to plunge his nose in order to fill his mouth with the mountain of words he could not yet grasp, to satisfy a hunger in him that surpassed their teachers’ desire to suppress it.

Asougi was a man who frightened him sometimes, with this immutable gap between them. He could only turn away from it, cling to the conversations they shared deep into the night with sake meddled in their bloodstreams, stomachs warm and full of sukiyaki.

Yet, Asougi was a man who turned to him with keen eyes, never once hesitant, to solicit his opinion, as if it was worth as much as his own stance on a matter. He handed him his case files, asked him to challenge his logic and pick out flaws in the details he might have overlooked, a gleam in his eye brightening whenever he caught onto a subtlety he had seemed to want him to notice.

They shared a common English language class, for which he discovered Asougi had a fervent desire to master, and he would often turn to Ryuunosuke for help on his pronunciations.

It surprised him, when Asougi expressed genuine curiosity in him, of his opinions on his case studies, on the book he was reading. It surprised him, when the man praised him for his intelligence, his wittiness, his ease with words, that he saw worth in a person such as himself.

He hoped he understood the gleam in Asougi’s eyes.

“You got that last stanza down brilliantly,” he said, smile easy on his face as he reclined back to prop his head on his palm.

Asougi’s praise of him came like breathing, commending him for his eloquence, or admiration for his apparent ease with discourse. He fed off it, held onto an inexplicable feeling of assurance he gave with his words, slotting into place as if he were doing something meaningful with his life.

Ryuunosuke sat down next to him, weight pitched on his hand, close enough that the tips of his fingers could graze the front of Asougi’s shirt if he inched the slightest bit closer.

“You would say that,” he said instead, noting the sweat-slick strands falling into his eyes.

Asougi laughed, something Ryuunosuke would almost qualify as uncharacteristically shy, eyes flitting to the ground. “Take the compliment, Naruhodou.”

He was pliant, loose, the setting sun softening his shoulders, dusted orange, into someone more malleable than he usually was. Ryuunosuke had only seen him like this after a few drinks, arm slung over his shoulder, pressing close, yet now, in the growing heat of summer, as routine would unwind slowly into handiwork back home, he gazed upon him with a melancholy he wasn’t prone to showing.

His shirt gave way to a sliver of his chest. 

“What is it?” Asougi asked him, eyes boring intently into his own. They flitted between Ryuunosuke’s own, as if he were looking for something Ryuunosuke ought to be hiding.

He had caught him staring, often, a sort of wonder in his gaze before he’d turn back to his drink, the alcohol simmering in his blood with selfish hope for that gaze to mean something more.

Asougi’s attention was all-encompassing. The rambunctious laughs he drew from him, the press of his shoulder against his own, heat bleeding through the fabric of his shirt, they were proof, as Asougi was wont to explain, of the tangibility of his trust in him.

Ryuunosuke thought himself a judicious man, never stepping a toe out of line, careful to abide by the rules written by his forefathers. In a sense, it was Asougi’s assertive nature that had drawn him to him. And yet, in his clean-cut bellicose personality, there was always this rigidness, this unwavering need for perfection, an ambition that drove him to uphold ideals in the name of something greater, the inherent contradiction of a samurai of times past with devoted words of revolution for his country. 

“I’m not misreading, am I?” Ryuunosuke said, looking at the wall, the words teetering on the edges of the silence that had been growing between them. Then he looked back towards Asougi.

In the intimacy of his room, of Ryuunosuke’s presence, Asougi retained that cautious air to him, imperceptible to those who didn’t frequent him often, but that Ryuunosuke was now all too familiar with, a wall he couldn’t look past into the depths of Asougi’s soul.

His mouth was slightly ajar, eyes transfixed on Ryuunosuke, half hidden behind his fringe. “Misreading what?”

His voice, unlike how he usually carried himself, was hesitant. Ryuunosuke knew he was stepping in dangerous, unknown territory. The contradiction was written in his words, he who was so sure of himself, crumbling under the weight of his own question. He passed the hand over to Ryuunosuke, answering his question with another, his usual response to an argument in hopes of catching his opponent at fault.

Now, though, he was the one caught in fault, and he stepped around the answer Ryuunosuke wanted to coax out of him. With this returned question, he wanted Ryuunosuke to take the initiative, pushed him forwards instead, in the most contradictory of moves, stance open wide for Ryuunosuke to lunge at him with the blade that was his tongue.

Asougi, despite his apparent impermeability, made him brave, led him with a sure hand forward in the ocean of uncertainties they were drowned in. 

Ryuunosuke placed his hand next to Asougi’s head, pitching his weight slowly forward to align their faces. Asougi fell back onto the tatami. “Am I misreading?” he repeated in the space between their lips.

Asougi’s eyes widened, black pupils swallowing him whole, his face melting into an expression of sheer want that burned its way into Ryuunosuke’s stomach. He could hear the shortness of his breath, too loud in the quietude of his room, chest quivering under his shirt, the thinnest sheen of sweat glistening on his skin.

His hair was splayed out in a halo around him, falling onto the mat beneath. The fabric of his shirt strained against his chest, stilling to contain the breath he had just inhaled. Ryuunosuke held his form, heart hammering against his ribs. He was calculating, assessing with his keen eyes Ryuunosuke’s intentions, as if he would be one to lay a trap for him, deceive him, humiliate him in a moment Ryuunosuke hoped to be of vulnerability. 

As the heat in his stomach prickled his skin under Asougi’s careful contemplation, and with a purposeful glance down between their torsos, Asougi reached back, pressing the palm of his left hand hot on his waist, the contact burning his ribs and sending flint to the embers dormant in his stomach. With the other, he reached out to graze the molten skin of Ryuunosuke’s cheek.

This, now, was not recitation; this was not routine. If Ryuunosuke were a more controlled man, if Asougi weren’t the one to see through him as he did, Ryuunosuke would have bit his tongue and turned his head away, with a lie not-so-casually forming on his lips. If he weren’t so weak to Asougi’s eyes transfixed on him, always on him, enquiring for his opinion, for his advice, Ryuunosuke would not have leaned over him, tentative, Asougi’s arm grazing his wrist, heart stuck in his mouth, to brace his head with his hands.

So it was Asougi, then, true to himself, after the briefest moment of surprise, the quietest noise muted in his throat, who called him, called his Name, — Ryuunosuke — trembling under him as he never did, and who pulled him close, strong arm winding around his waist, calloused fingers slipping under his shirt, lining up their bodies with purpose, tugging the invisible thread that tied Ryuunosuke’s heart to Asougi’s soul. Ryuunosuke, in turn, with the bravery Asougi praised him for, a sigh spilled into his lips, smothered a Truth in his mouth, one Word, his Name.

Kazuma.

The Courtroom was the table of Truth, laid bare on the plates of three parties, committed to, through their Words, to reach the Truth, One Truth, and establish a just verdict. One man against another, one defendant, one judge.

As the presiding judge of hell invited the prosecution to make its opening statement, Kazuma felt his body wade through the thickness of the air around him, weighted and poisonous, as if the Truth he had kept himself from uttering in the space of confidence he and Naruhodou had built between them in the past year had crystalised into the particles trickling into his lungs.

Kazuma stood, disarmed by Ryuunosuke’s foolish act of selflessness, with the knowledge of the Truth behind the person throning the courtroom, an impassive wall of judgement, masking a devil with Words of death, of manipulation, of deceit. The man who had given him the only chance for Truth, for Justice, in the name of his father, tied to the stake and burned for the misdeeds of another man. A man whom he had trusted more than anything. 

The trial itself was a farce.

Naruhodou found himself a chess piece on a shogi board in the midst of a battle of stakes he hadn’t the faintest idea of. He thought himself an average man, yet he was now the centrepiece to a game Kazuma had vowed himself would never happen to play out for anyone, and it felt like the outcome was a mockery intended to pry out the rotting anger of his guts for the closed courtroom to see. He stood at the bench for the accused, surrounded on all sides by the highest members of Japan’s judiciary, surveilling, knives hidden under their vests.

Jigoku’s voice thundered within the sombre walls of the courtroom, with every concession to the prosecution, though justified, feeling like his large hand was tightening its grip on Kazuma’s throat.

Would you risk this? he said, eyes sliding over to him from his throne. Would you want to leave him here, within my grasp? Would you step out of line?

Kazuma had an obvious answer to his challenge, but when it came down to it, had Jigoku needed to threaten him with the life of his dearest friend? Had he needed to use one of the only people who had never turned from him, never sneered at his grandiose words, to cross the first bridge towards the point of no return?

The Truth was that he hadn’t, and the simple threat of being confined to home soil was enough for him to concede to his offer. It was a step into darkness, bloodied mud at his feet, creeping up on his dark uniform. Kazuma hoped it was dark enough to hide the Truth of his actions, hide the sullying of his soul for his father, soul confined to the blade relegated to him, fastened dutifully at his hip.

He would lose Naruhodou, now, the man with unearthed brilliance lying in his mind, with an openness few people possessed, and he would be witness to the unjust verdict at his side, as his father had once been ten years from now. Naruhodou, who placed himself on the shogi board to defend himself in Kazuma’s place, to protect his chances of going abroad, to complete a mission he couldn’t bring himself to admit to the man.

Naruhodou, who, with the lack of knowledge of his crime, would lay his life for a dishonest friend. He stood firm, used Kazuma as his crutch, and weaved himself a path out of the accusations held against him, with one objective to find the Truth, with the precision of his Words, his quick mind and wittiness an attrait of his that never ceased to surprise him. Kazuma had always wondered at Naruhodou’s ease with picking apart his opponents' arguments, his muted interest in debates he rarely partook in because of an inherent sense of inferiority to those around him.

He thought, selfishly, Would he stand by you? Defend you when you would need it, as a lawyer? Trust you, you who has sullied himself, lied to him, just to keep him at your side?

And Kazuma knew, as Jezaille Brett took the stand to testify, as Naruhodou, with his ever so keen attention to detail, latched onto the loose knob that held the case in the prosecution’s favour, that he was a man far more brilliant than he himself ever was. He understood that he would push her to her limits with a clear mind, no matter the condescension, the pushback from the prosecution, or the challenge from Jigoku. He knew that the Truth would be revealed, and that the woman, just like he would when the time came, would walk away harm-free. 

Then, with all the commotion in the courtroom as the Truth unveiled itself with Naruhodou’s Word, the gavel resounded within a decisive thud as the verdict was pronounced. Naruhodou’s shoulders loosened, cheek turned from him as he gazed at the Englishwoman in what Kazuma could barely believe as defiance. 

His friend stood an innocent man beside him, a miracle, within his reach, yet, with all the certainty of the judge’s verdict, he placed a firm hand on Naruhodou’s shoulder as a reassurance for himself that he hadn’t lost another loved one to the corrupt justice of the government. 

He held onto it, that sturdiness of his shoulder, shifting slightly under his palm as Naruhodou turned back towards him.

And, later, in the private space of Naruhodou’s room, he’d kiss him, swallow him, desperate hands clawing at each divot of his flesh, relishing in the pull of his hair, and beg for him to never leave his side, even in the land of the dead, and hoped that one day he would brave the last wall between them that remained, the wall of Truth.

It was odd, to miss a language. Words came to him a second too late, a conversation followed with a limp, its flow retarded by a necessary mull to digest the sentences.

Susato-san spoke to him in cold English when the books were opened. The little Japanese she addressed him was clipped, explanatory, analytic, only employed when Ryuunosuke enquired her on terms he couldn’t fully grasp the meaning of. Under her watchful gaze, he poured over Asougi’s well-read books, loose papers with translations falling from their pages, with specifics on legal terms he’d only sometimes heard from Asougi’s lips when they had studied together.

He held onto the Goodnight, Oyasuminasai, Naruhodou-san, offered to him with a bow and averted eyes, the only word she offered him that came close to something personal. She always turned from him, walked down the hall back to her cabin, without looking back.

Susato-san broke when he apologised, yet again, for a mistake, another mistake, her frustration and grief flooding out of her eyes, nails digging into her palms as she apologised to him, apologised for hating him, for being incapable of hating him, for hating Asougi, for hating Nikolina, for hating, simply, hating that there was no one responsible for the death of the one who Ryuunosuke learnt was akin to her brother.

She apologised, her head bowed in the way she always did, but this time with sob-racked shoulders, trembling hands fisted together, and she couldn’t have looked more like the sixteen year-old girl that she was in that moment.

It was the most she had ever addressed to him in Japanese since Asougi’s body was removed from his cabin, and with this she unburied the grief he had stuffed deep in his guts, swallowed over the past week he had spent dedicating himself to a task he had hoped would ease the young girl’s sorrow. He only hoped he hid his own bitterness enough too. 

London came with the racket and brouhaha of men and women in Saint Pancras Railway Station engulfing them like the waves upon their shores. The smell of coal was suffocating, the bustle frantically oppressive, and Ryuunosuke was unsuspecting of how demanding the British streets would be for the two of them in the coming days.

Sholmes enunciated his words eloquently, minding not to speak too fast, almost, to make sure he and Susato-san caught onto each of his words. His thoughts would often get ahead of himself, and his hungered sentences would become incomprehensible, yet he’d backtrack, repeat himself with an overly exuberant laugh, verging on teasing yet never condescending, for which Ryuunosuke was grateful, because McGilded tended to truncate his words, courtesy of a heavy Irish accent, and Gina spoke with a thick, quick Cockney dialect he was less than familiar with.

It was one thing to study the language, learn it from the books he’d devoured and from the mouths of his professors at Yuumei, yet being plunged into the melting pot of dialects that was London, brimming with tradesmen from not only all over Britain but from the world, overwhelmed him.

The amalgamation of accents was fascinating, yet Ryuunosuke discovered, despite all his efforts, that he knew next to nothing of the British tongue. Each sentence he formed, carefully constructed, earned him a scorn, not unlike Gina, whose every word was dismissed and questioned, her steely eyes filled with resentment, and the more the day went on, the less precise his words got. 

It was almost humiliating. The R’s got harder to pronounce, tongue thickening in his mouth as if he were chewing leather, and Lord van Zieks’ off-handed remarks grated him.

He had prided himself in his ease to pick up the English accent. Asougi had praised him endlessly for it, too, but Gregson’s condescending attitude towards him, Lord van Ziek’s outward contempt for him affected him more than he let show. His thoughts were hindered, mind thrumming as words eluded him, years of learning slipping through his fingers leaving him without a crutch to lean on. Susato-san helped, always, translated when he stumbled, as he did for her when she required, and they picked each other up in the unforgiving city that was the British Empire’s capital.

It was like walking with a ghost, stiltedly following its traceless footsteps, and earning a judgmental gaze with every turn.

He was eternally thankful for Susato-san. They didn’t speak often of Asougi, yet he still lingered in the looks they shared before parting ways for the night, and her steadfastness in her teachings matched his own will to accomplish what his friend had come to do. There was a mutual understanding forged between them, Asougi left in between the lines of their rapprochement, she, with her red-rimmed eyes and courageous smile, and himself, with a plaintive cry stuck in his throat, the emptiness of the bed they had shared imprinted into his back.

He wondered if in another world, a better world, she herself would be a lawyer, her grief-ridden heart stirring with a discreet passion, evident in her shining eyes as she flicked through the well-worn pages of her book. 

Ryuunosuke vowed to walk the same path, navigating their way together through the busy, cobbled streets of London, for a future where she would choose her career freely, and in the name of his friend who held that passion on the seams of his sleeve. She was his buoy, his lighthouse, the star keeping him tethered to their homeland with her familiar lilt of the Japanese tongue, and with each praise he gave back to her, he hoped he could be somewhat what she was to him. She was his guide in the sea of uncertainties.

It was odd, to miss a man. A friend, a partner, a gaping wound at his side.

He wondered how Asougi would have reacted to it all. In Susato-san’s quiet frustration, he saw his friend.

He never would have stifled his indignation.

What was it, that he was? What was it he searched for, longed for, with vehemence seeped into his bones? They were leaden, familiar yet not, moving with the energy emitted from a chemical reaction in the middle of a story already initiated by forces beyond his control.

His head throbbed, light searing his retinas. Someone was speaking over him, words slurred and unintelligible. He felt deft fingers press into his cheeks, head lolling to the side. Were they calling to him, perhaps? Calling out his Name, perhaps? There was a surprised cry, the hand coaxing his face straight again, and a groan.

It came from his own mouth, he realised, as his limp body was jostled roughly, hoisted into a sitting position. His head pounded, the piercing ache from the side of his skull bled into his eyes, lids too heavy to open.

The hand — a different one, perhaps? — was on his cheek again, thumb pressing into the bone, tipping his head back. The ground beneath him tilted, pitching him sideways, and a sudden, brutal wave of nausea washed over him. The vomit seared the back of his throat, phlegm coming up through his nose. He thought he registered some commotion, but his attention was drawn to the warm liquid spreading over his hand. Or perhaps it was the hand again, pressed against his forehead, joined by another on his chest? A light voice spoke, to him, he thought, and he answered it, slurred, and it reminded him of—

His mouth wasn’t cooperating, someone was wiping his face with a cloth, and he felt shame for something he couldn’t grasp.

He ran from it. He ran, feet sinking into the black mud cloying at his skin, dreadful, into his flesh, into his bones.

He ran, tearing his muscles apart, choked, yet the darkness swallowed him whole.

He came to in a haze, the smell of salt permeating through the air, raising goosebumps on his cold skin. The pulse behind his eyes was dull, his surroundings filtering into view as his lashes fluttered open. The saliva in his mouth was acidic, tongue dry and sticky, and in spite of his muscles screaming, he pushed himself up.

It felt natural, to move. Something ingrained in his bones despite the ache. Rigour, perhaps, drilled into the tissue of his muscles. His hip felt light as he walked, unbalanced, each step taken with a clumsy bend of a knee. 

The unfamiliar quays of the harbour spread out in front of him, a strange feeling of unease creeping up on him at his heels. 

A man called out to him, words muddled in his migraine-addled brain, and he realised, with the surrounding hubbub deafening in his ears, asphyxiating, incisive, that not only had he no recollection of who he was, but he was also an alien, unspeaking, amongst the people of these shores. The seagulls roamed overhead, patient, with yellowish, beady eyes waiting for him to collapse so that they could soar in and pluck his skin raw. 

The nausea rolled under his tongue, coaxing, but he swallowed, couldn’t stand losing his guts, losing what he had inside his body, when his head had been taken from him. Who was he, here on these shores? Who was he among these people, a foreigner in his body and a foreigner in this land? 

Who was he without a purpose?

The hollowness of his skull lapped at his nape like a shadow seeking a nail to be held down with. His stomach clawed at his insides, a hunger familiar yet not, one he knew to chase, unwavering, as he settled his eyes consciously on a greengrocer’s stall. The nausea washed over him like the ebb of the ocean, acerbic, but the cry of his stomach, that temptation, ugly as it was, was easy to quell, as he stalked forward, decisive, to glide amidst the meandering crowd, calculating, and slip a fruit in his hands to sink his teeth into its supple flesh.

His saviour came in the form of a man who spoke in a language he somehow recognised. It wasn’t his mother tongue, but the syllables were familiar, and evoked in him a fury, a call to action, these foreign words with no significance to him yet with an importance he could not grasp. They drilled a spike in his head, dull throbbing pulsating into something piercing, and one Word, one Name, tugged him forward to the burly man who had spoken them over the crowd, Words meant of encouragement for his men, as if he were one of them.

You are going to London, he said, a fact, a Truth. Take me with you.

The Words were odd, deformed, butchered, the disdain from the blue-eyed man evident on his rugged features. He cast him a sideways look, thick arms crossed over his broad chest, sizing him up, up and down, as if he were looking for ill intent in his posture.

What could he find, really, in this empty casket of a living corpse? His body contained no soul, muscles stuck to heavy bones, organs functioning to the beat of a hollowed heart. He was a vessel to be filled, the One Word uttered by the man before him the stick to swipe at the nurikabe blocking his path.

That Word was his stick, as was the foreign tongue, sliding unnaturally from his mouth despite his apparent proficiency in it. He had honed it, sharp, a weapon to accomplish a deed, a deed borne out of resentment, rage, coiling in his gut like a snake.

What else had he, if not this?

With a grunt of approval, the captain led him up the ramp to show him onboard the ship. With nothing but the clothes on his back, he stepped forward, and swung the Word at the nurikabe’s feet.

Homesickness was a thistle in his throat he had become accustomed to ignoring in the months since his last trial. The law books had become his sole focus, his devotion to keeping his promise to Susato-san, to Asougi, no matter how much their absence riddled his veins, kept Ryuunosuke alive in the mild summer of London.

He threw himself into the piles of law books borrowed from the British Judiciary’s library, found comfort in the smell of their pages and the nostalgia it gave him of his time at Yuumei. With every report he made to Lord Stronghart, he comforted himself in the knowledge that he was making progress.

He had made progress, and, with six months of arduous learning, the Lord Chief Justice allowed him to take up a case.

The first chink in his armour came in the form of a hooded man kneeling in Lord van Zieks’ office.

Ryuunosuke had thought that he had learnt to swallow around the yearning for his homeland, for Susato-san, but the posture, the crossed feet on the cushion, the way the hands were folded on the man’s thighs, was perfect.

He hadn’t considered the extent to which the loneliness had debilitated him. The days spent studying alone had piled up quietly in the mundaneness of the attic at 221B Baker Street, like the stacks of papers on his desk he couldn’t make himself put away.

He had missed Japan, with the gentle humming of conversations in the streets, in the restaurants, in his room, with the easy syllables and dipping intonations of a query. With the hot humidity of its summers, cloying at his skin under the light fabric of his yukata, sweat itching under his arms. With its clear-cut ways of address, bowing to the woman at the nearby dango kart near Yuumei’s campus with a fond smile she reserved mostly for him. He had missed Japan, in the smells of food wafting through the air lingering outside restaurants, and the burn of sake in his throat after a week of exams, and the heat of a body pressed up against his own.

He had missed Japan, because he had never needed to face judgement and scrutiny for passing someone by in the streets.

Because English felt more and more like a language of depersonalisation.

It moved something in him, then, as the cogs of his life were set in motion after six months of polishing, that a presence, so muted, so still amidst the grand walls of Lord van Zieks’ offices, washed over him with the familiarity of the shores of his homeland.

The rust he had learned to avoid, to accept, rekindled the stiffness in his joints. It was ironic, almost, that it was after six months of longing for Susato-san’s presence at his side, that he was met with the ghost of the man they had both grieved in the silence of Sholmes’ attic.

So, when Susato-san appeared next to him as if she had never left, whatever the doubts that riddled his heart, with the mysteries behind her untimely summon back to the homeland, whatever wishful thoughts he had about the mysterious man in Barok van Zieks’ office, he would turn from them towards her, their future, and look ahead.

Yet, after the trial, with a furrow in her brow, she mentioned Asougi’s name, and upon learning that there had been no grave to visit when she got home, Ryuunosuke’s uncertainties crumbled from his skin and left nothing but the weak bones of his past.

Her words were Truth, and they were all the more proof of the unease, the hope, the sincere hope that the masked man he had encountered, the one that now stood in front of them, in front of him, once again, cloaked, five, no, six paces away, was the man they had both grieved, the man that had brought them together. She spoke his name, desperate, the name he had wanted to call out when Ryuunosuke had first seen him, with a tremor in her voice, disbelief at the sight of a ghost resurrected. She spoke his name, his Name — One Truth? — and, while it was no proof, not physical, no certainty of his true identity, it was something, not Truth, but something so close to it, unsubstantiated, that stoked the flames of hope in his chest.

It wasn’t Truth. Yet, the man froze, as he had done in Lord van Zieks’ office, a pause Ryuunosuke noted with desperation, grasping at the frays of his memories to corroborate the similarities in their movements, and dispel his wishes for a friend to return from the dead. It wasn’t Truth, yet, the man turned, with a shake barely noticeable under the weight of his dark hood, and repeated, in the breathiest of voices, his Name.

“Kazuma?”

What had made him pause was the man’s gaze, fixated on him, face blanching as if he’d seen a ghost, and he had had half a mind to turn around, but he knew, somehow, that he was also drawn in the same way to the other’s presence.

What had made him pause was the girl next to him, clad in a pink kimono — this he knew — with petals embroidered into the silk fabric, her face even more transparent than her counterpart’s, and her voice, her plea, her calling out to him in a language, his language, their language, the one he had not spoken, uttered, since he had awoken on the quays of Hong Kong.

What had made him speak was a word, a name, bursting from the seams of the young girl’s lips with the desperation of a woman whose resilience was held by the most feeble of threads. It was as if, with a name thrust upon him, he had had to repeat it, a recognition in it which he couldn’t yet grasp, that terrifying knowledge that he had a name, that he had a history, with two people who did not belong in a city where he himself did not belong, and had made his way to, patiently, resolutely, and had clung to that one purpose to stifle the incessant prodding at his brain.

He straightened himself, shaking, and stepped around the earth quaking beneath his feet, threatening like it often did, with a pulse at his skull, just beneath the white scar, with the weight of the memories he had lost.

For the second time in his life, he ran.

His past — or was it? — catching up to him — or did it? did it really? — in the face of a man, square-jawed, kind-eyed, and a girl, with gentle hands — he knew, he knew — with the same warmth of skin, the same thickness of hair, the same slant of eyes as he did, opened up a hole in his stomach, the unknown, the knowledge which he sought yet dreaded with every look they cast his way.

Their English, he’d overheard, was accented, with a familiarity that moved something in his chest. He had heard the same faults coming from his own mouth, the same slip of the tongue around the Th’s and R’s, the same pacing of their words and flow of their sentences.

It wasn’t Lord Stronghart’s English, nor that of the sailors he had slaved under for months to set foot on the Empire’s soil. It wasn’t demeaning, laced with a poisoned form of imperium that set him on edge, uncompromising on any advance he would make to assert himself as more than a tool for work.

It wasn’t Lord van Zieks’, either, authoritarian yet hesitant, probing carefully around his existence like he would find a trap laid beneath his mask, yet indulgent enough to accord him his diligent teachings.

It was theirs, honest and desperate, hopeful, longing for familiarity in someone he didn’t know. The dread of it could only paralyse him.

It was then, with the resounding clang of the wax figure’s metal mask falling to the floor, as decisive as the judge’s gavel, that Asougi Kazuma realised, as the eyes of his father, his lover, his sister, his sworn enemy, bored into him, that he had lost himself, lost his Truth, the promise he had sworn himself to accomplish, and that he was not, and never should have allowed himself, to be a tool.

The professionalism of it all pricked at his heart. Susato-san’s presence beside him was muted, she herself wrought with confusion at the ghost of her brother, teeth bared and hands shaking, fingernails tearing through his gloves onto the polished wood of the prosecution’s bench. Asougi was ruthless in his arguments, sliced down Ryuunosuke’s case with stoic logic, firm hand on the bar to make his points.

It was like seeing a ghost of his former self. In the few moments they had managed to get a hold of him in the days preceding Lord van Zieks’ trial, ever since he had stalked out of the Old Bailey with his katana restored to its rightful place at his hip, he had refused to address them a single word in Japanese. 

Who was he, the friend whom he’d known so intimately, had grieved with his heart in his hands, beating a steady rhythm in the silence of the room allocated for the one who had meant to be in his place? Who was this ghost, enraptured with venom in his words, eyes sharp and distant as he professed his commitment to the Truth, to condemning the man who had sent his father to the gallows, to exposing the lies upon which the British Judicial System was built?

Who was this man, so righteous and just when he had known him, blinded by the rage that had festered silently in his veins?

Who was this man, who refused to speak to him in his mother tongue, to address him by his name without the English particle stuck in front of it?

Had he truly not known him? Had he truly been so caught up in the sweep of their friendship that he had been blinded to the man’s true face? His English was different, too, a strange sort of intonation he never could really grasp when they practised together. The syllables now had been driven into him, his R’s sometimes more rhotic, the remnants of events Ryuunosuke had not been present to witness in the past year he had been grieving his friend.

Mister Naruhodou, he’d call, with a smirk that didn’t land as it used to, or with an intense gaze that held a broiling storm, darker than it used to be, his stance, lean body, thinner yet more muscled, almost a mockery of the man he knew, or— was it, really? Was he simply the man he had always been, a man he had been infatuated with, for his unrelenting passion, his stubbornness, his obsession for justice, for Truth?

Had he been so inebriated off their endless discussions, off Asougi’s attention, off his praise, his interest in him, of all people, that he couldn’t recognise the sorrow that had rotted into the hostility he wielded towards even those closest to him? Had he always been so caged, to go as far as admitting his Truth in the tongue they had both learnt, both practised in the intimacy of their rooms, under the oath imposed on him by the court? Had he always been one to flee from honesty, from the space of confidence they had shared, that he would not dare to speak of his transgressions in his mother tongue?

Had Susato-san been blind to it as he had?

Karuma hadn’t been chipped, when he’d pointed it at the Scotland Yard Inspector, but he’d trembled, the culmination of his life’s grievances, his hatred, his unflinching commitment to absolve his father’s legacy spilling from the confines of his soul. Seeing the man, hands stuffed in his pockets without a single thought of defending himself, recognition painting itself slowly on his features as he looked at the sword aimed towards his neck, had inflamed the resentment that had clotted his insides in the past ten years of his life. His silence had filled Kazuma with a sense of unfulfilled desire to cut the man down.

He had been so close to doing so.

He was unravelling, the closer Naruhodou dug to his core, his Truth, peeling back the layers of his rotten soul, unflinching as he stood at the end of the chipped katana. He saw in front of him a man whose resolve was stronger than his admiration for him. 

Naruhodou called him for what he was, the counterpart to the one who had framed him for murder a year prior. He unravelled his Truth, the one he had never been able to confess to him, with a furrow of sadness in his brow, a plea in his eyes, searching for a reason, one he couldn’t give, had refused to give, one he despised over all else.

“What really brings you here? To this courtroom?” Kazuma asked him, the depths of his soul crumbling under the threat of his fears. He thought, Will he look for the truth? Will he concede defeat for it? Will he look at the man he chose to defend and see him for the murderer he is?

Naruhodou watched him, distant, hands splayed with conviction on the polished wood of his bench. “I’m not doing this for you,” he said after a beat, in perfect English, meeting him with terribly honest eyes, unwavering as they always were when he spoke. 

He inhaled a breath, steady, sharp eyes boring into his, and with a firm hand, he turned Kazuma’s cheek from his prey, the object of his hatred for the last ten years of his life, to the man presiding the courtroom.

“I’m doing this for the truth.”

The Truth let itself out like a thunder in the newspapers thrown out with a holler into the frantic streets of the British Empire’s capital. In the end, a verdict of innocence was handed to the man accused of terrorising the people of the city, and in his place, the man who represented justice, was to be tried in the following weeks to take responsibility, the proceedings to be made public by virtue of royal decree.

And it had left a man, so blinded by his need for revenge, to grapple with the knowledge that he had betrayed the very principles he had vowed to uphold in his quest for justice.

In the end, it left a man, son of the scapegoat, the one who had spiralled so far into his life’s obsession it had rendered him incapable of trusting any of his loved ones, with the burden of the knowledge that he had almost become the thing he had sworn to destroy. And, in doing so, had wounded a relationship he claimed to have treasured above all else.

Ryuunosuke stepped out from the omnibus. In the dimming light of London’s December afternoons, the red bricks of the apartment building before him seemed muted. It didn’t stand out in any way from the others that lined the busy street, especially in comparison to the grandness of London’s Judiciary Offices further down towards the plaza, its pristine columns stained red with paint and surrounded by throngs of protesters flocking at its steps.

When the elderly landlady opened the door, she regarded him with a bewildered look on her face, as if his presence were to have held a certain importance to her. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be the lawyer who took Lord van Zieks’ defence in that trial, would you?” she asked, wrinkled eyes wide with wonder.

“Oh!” he said, back straightening. “Y-yes, ma’am, that would be me…”

She held her breath in her throat, then tilted her head forward, hands clasped on her cane. “I want to thank you for what you did. I don’t think any British lawyer would have had the courage to go through what you did last week.”

Ryuunosuke’s surprise must have been evident on his face, since she quickly added, “I apologise, it was forward of me to catch you unsuspecting.”

“Ah— no, it’s all right, really,” he stuttered, fidgeting. “I thank you. The newspapers haven’t exactly been lenient to me, I just wasn’t expecting the compliment.”

She nodded, lips pursed into a sympathetic smile. “You are here to see Mister Asougi, I presume?”

“You would be right,” he chuckled, half a breath let out in surrender.

“He’ll be on the first floor, the second door to your right when you’re up the stairs,” she pointed to the wooden staircase at the end of the narrow corridor.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he bowed, old habits never failing to seep through.

She inclined her head in return, offering him a gentle wave as he turned towards the staircase. The wood creaked under his feet, the strangest sort of announcement for his arrival.

The polished door, like the building itself, had nothing special to it, its brass handle worn with age like the one at 221B Baker Street. He wanted to reach out and touch it, caress the metal Asougi had grasped to turn each morning, each night, keys jingling in his hands as he locked and unlocked the door, as if the heat of his touch had lingered long enough he could still feel it if he did.

He considered Asougi, maintaining a routine he himself followed diligently each day, as they had once both done back in Tokyo. Waking with the sun, slipping on his shirt and fastening the buttons with his dextrous fingers, fingers he had felt intimately, once, upon the smoothness of his skin.

With a held breath, he knocked on the door.

“One moment!”

Asougi had made no statements to the press in the wake of van Zieks’ acquittal, leaving the burden of Stronghart’s treason in the hands of his underlings, grasping at the bare remnants of respect for the British courts left in the public eye. Lord van Zieks too had disappeared, and in their silence Ryuunosuke only saw the anguish the truth had uncovered, one more macabre than he had ever conceived. 

So, when the door clicked open, he was unsurprised to find that despite the assurance he wanted to exhibit, Asougi’s face was gaunt, exhaustion pressed into each crevice of his eyes, his cheeks. The white shirt he wore wasn’t buttoned to the neck, his shoulders stiff under the crinkled material, hesitance spreading on his features as he took Ryuunosuke in.

“Asougi,” he said, melancholy seeping into his name. It was foreign on his tongue, the pronunciation of it without the English address preceding it left it oddly naked in the space between them. Too truthful. “Susato-san told me where to find you.”

Asougi stiffened, mouth falling open around—

“Walk with me,” he interrupted, firm. Pleading.

He let out an aborted breath. “All right,” he answered, finally, in Japanese, surrendering to his demand.

Ryuunosuke walked ahead of Asougi. His friend held back, a split-second of hesitation had left him open to take the stride ahead, so unlike how they used to do back in Tokyo. London’s winter fog stuck to the rows of buildings lining the cobbled street, grey as it always was, wet, cold against his neck.

The heels of his lacquered boots clicked against the pavement, the silence between them not uncomfortable but awkward, that same feeling of uncertainty that lingered in their unfinished sentences.

The commotion near the Judiciary’s Offices faded out behind them, the protesters’ outcries lingering in their ears an echo of the clamour that resonated within the confines of the Old Bailey a week prior. It was too early to scope out the extent of the repercussions of the events that had unfolded, but, as much as the foundations of the world’s leading legal system now vacillated with the loss of its most illustrious pillar, Ryuunosuke could not say the same for what remained of a relationship he had never considered to be so fragile. 

His feet led him to a nearby park, near deserted as the evening drew closer, save for a single lamplighter methodically making his way down the street they were walking. It was not cold enough yet for the water of the vast boating lake to have frozen over, but the chill had settled wetly into the blades of grass, specks of white powdered over the greenery. 

“Susato-san has probably told you this already, but I’m returning to Tokyo in two days,” he told Asougi, looking over the gentle waves of the lake. “With Mikotoba-sensei.” The water rippled gently against the stone, lapping just below his feet, oddly reminiscent of the waves at sea he would once again be acquainted with in the coming days. Tokyo felt odd in his mouth.

Asougi’s careful footsteps slowed behind him, silent in his acquiesce, the odd rhythm he’d maintained with his strides flailing because of his words. Why did it feel like they were still in court?

The frosted grass crunched under his shoes as he walked over to the ledge. Asougi followed, quiet. His language felt foreign in his mouth.

“You are here, now, as the student you were supposed to be, so I’m going back to study law, properly this time, and work to become a lawyer there,” he answered the question he knew Asougi begged to ask. “I’ve seen the good it has brought, and I understand, now, the passion you and Susato-san have for it. I want to help others as I have done here.”

They had had a similar conversation, over a year ago now, half-slurring their words under the pale moonlight trickling over the rooftops lining the streets of Tokyo, of their prospects in the land they had fixed their sights upon. Asougi had exuded so much enthusiasm, so much relief at Ryuunosuke’s acceptance, he had found himself delirious with the brashness of his decision to follow him. In one year, Ryuunosuke had not thought he would grow to think of their time together wondering at the boisterous achievements they would accomplish in the heart of the world’s leading empire to be the naïve aspirations of two young men with the pretentiousness to bring upon change without any unforeseen pushback. He knew, now, as the sun set once again, as the world turned as it always had, on the city whose very foundations were shattered to their core, that taking the responsibility to chase the Truth was an ideal steeped in depravity, one that was closer to home than he had ever believed.

London would linger with its tainted souls and sullied paths, Ryuunosuke thought, when he would step foot in their homeland, and he would see Asougi in the space next to him walking through the streets of Tokyo as he would gaze upon his people with the judgement Asougi had known to have years before they had crossed ways. 

“Ryuunosuke.”

The broken syllables coaxed his head towards his friend, the man who had been the last person to call him by his name, the day before his death. The ghost of Kazuma’s fingertips lingered on his cheek, the touch that hung on the precipice of something forbidden, yet there he stood, alive, the remains from the idealised shell he’d fabricated of the man he had thought to be his only compass in life.

Asougi bowed deeply, arms held straight along his sides. His fringe fell in front of his eyes, Ryuunosuke would almost call it a shield, if not for Asougi but for himself, grief and bitterness welling up inside of his throat.

He had forgotten his scarf in his haste, and hadn’t paid attention to the cold up until now, but the nostalgia of home swept through him like the wind, ruffling his hair affectionately like his mother once did.

Asougi stood bowed amidst the trees, whose barks were wrinkled like the spines of the books he had poured tirelessly over his desk, the ones Ryuunosuke had found himself combing through in his stead when Sholmes had placed him on the foreign checker’s board after his memory had been taken with the waves. The perpetual shadow that loomed behind him had faded, and the outline of his body seemed to have slotted into the hole he needed to fill. There was still a gap, yet still.

“Ryuunosuke,” he repeated, sounding almost as if he’d been wanting to speak his name for the longest time. Asougi didn’t lift his head. “I’ve been a poor friend to you.” He swallowed, taking a breath. “I have lied to you, taken advantage of the endless generosity you have given me, honestly and without hesitance, and I used you, used your inconceivable admiration for me and clung to it because for the first time in my life, I had someone beside me who never scorned me whenever I spoke. For the first time in my life, I had a friend, a friend who listened, who laughed, who spent time with me despite the ugliness that consumed my every waking thought, one I couldn’t bear showing lest I lose the one mercy that has been granted to me in all my living years.

“I couldn’t bear losing you,” he said, hands fisted in the cotton of his trousers, the confession torn from his chest with so much honesty Ryuunosuke felt its vulnerability in the blood pumping in his fingers. “I couldn’t bear losing your friendship, your love, something so unimaginable to me in the endless depths of the grief that has consumed me, and I neglected your advances and avoided admitting you the truth.

“When I accepted that mission, over a year ago now, I crossed the threshold into perdition and realised, as I saw your pride when I told you of my going abroad, that I would have to walk the path I had set myself upon all those years ago without your presence at my side. That I would have to continue to live through that grief, alone, and risk losing the last piece of sanity that I had left. 

“I thought that the friendship we had forged would make you keep me on the right path, would steady me in this hatred that has festered in me, and I persuaded you to come with me to London because I believed you were the only person who could be my compass. That you would see me and keep me on the righteous path. I had found myself lost in a maze of my own making, I needed you to keep me straight, yet I couldn’t trust you enough to confess my sins. For that, I could not be more sorry.”

The sound of Asougi speaking for so long in their mother tongue coursed through his soul.

“Ryuunosuke,” he repeated again, though a little wetter than before. “You do not have to accept my apology. And I can’t thank you enough for your commitment to the truth. You have the makings of a formidable lawyer. This, I have believed since you’d defended yourself in court a year ago. But I’m sorry, Ryuunosuke, I am so sorry for imposing on you my need for your presence at my side in my quest to absolve my father of his crimes without telling you anything when you had your entire life ahead of you in Tokyo.” He took a breath, hands fisted at his sides. “I’m so sorry.”

When he had presented his speech, once upon a time, on their first encounter, Ryuunosuke had marveled at his assurance and the steadiness of his voice. He had wondered at his conviction, his poise, his unflinching gaze at the murmurs of the onlooking crowd, discomfiture spreading amongst them like a ripple caused by Asougi’s Word. He hadn’t felt pride when the jury had declared himself the winner, because Asougi, despite his fumbling, had been audacious, had been dauntless, had been enthralling, speaking of righteousness in his cause and integrity in his arrogance, daring to speak Truth in front of an institution, of a country, built upon the foundations of respect of their forefathers. He had been right, and Ryuunosuke enraptured, captivated by the extraordinary devotion the man had to his beliefs.

In his honesty now, he shook, voice wavering as he enunciated each syllable, each word with a firm conviction despite the pauses, the hesitant breaths to steel himself against the evening chill, nipping at their ears with a harshness reminiscent of that they had both endured of London’s unforgiving nature. He shook, just as when he had begged in the cold night following Ryuunosuke’s trial, eyes averted, hands stiff in hopes of disguising their tremor, those hands that had pressed deep into his skin, dug into each divot of his ribs, as Asougi had mouthed his plea into the dip of his stomach. 

He shook, just as when he had first whispered his name, his given name, the moment before he had embraced him, rolled into him with want, with openness and desire concealed beneath his impenetrable heart, tucked away behind the walls of his grief.

“Asougi,” he said. His surname came out awkward at the seam of his lips. “Kazuma,” he tried again. “My initial aspirations may not have been in law, but my time here has shown me how influential my role as an attorney has played in the lives of people like Gina and Prosecutor van Zieks.” Asougi bristled at the name. “I’ve seen what corrupt courts can do to people like your father, how easily manipulated the jury can be, and the threat that looms over those wrongfully accused. I, myself, have been in the position.” He caressed the tree next to him, and exhaled a misty breath before continuing. “I’ve always admired you, you know,” he admitted, brushing his fingers against the rough bark before putting his hand back in his pockets. “You’ve always been driven by something larger than yourself. When you told me you’d wanted to reform the judicial system in Japan, I’d found the aspiration so grand it gave me the feeling that you were always a little out of reach.

“My life up until this point has been a series of coincidences, and the choices I’ve made by deference have led me now to seeking my own path. You have helped me forge it, whether through selfish intentions or not. What I have experienced when tried in court and here in London has led me to understand your aspirations for a better legal system, and made them my own.” He turned back to Asougi, who had straightened his posture, wide eyes meeting his gaze head-on. “I have come to this resolution through my own volition.”

The ground beneath his feet felt more firm, and his stance more steady. Asougi looked like he wanted to ask a million questions, but stopped himself and hung onto Ryuunosuke’s lips.

A soft laugh escaped him. “Kazuma,” he breathed, “I’ll admit that I followed you recklessly on that ship when I had my own responsibilities back in Yuumei. It was foolhardy of me to get caught up in your absurd plan, yet what was I to do?” His words caught in his throat. “You were desperate, and I was infatuated with you. I followed you at the expense of my place at university, a potential job there… I left everything to follow you, with the only viable plan of mine being to find connections in Britain to translate Japanese literature to be published, because you pleaded to me with an honesty you had never dared show me before. Looking back on it now, I see how thoughtless I was.” Ryuunosuke looked up at the bare branches of the thick oak tree. “With all the unforeseen events that have happened since then, with all the grief I’ve carried for you, I’ve grown into myself. I intend to continue down this path I’ve started and work for it properly.”

Asougi wiped his eyes with a gloved hand. It was an odd sight, to see the man whom he’d always seen as steadfast and unwavering, crumple under the guilt and remorse of his own actions. His shoulders quivered, so unlike him, yet Ryuunosuke could not have wanted to see this true side of him more. In the end, he could never hold resentment for him.

“Kazuma,” he said, breaking into a whisper. “I have never lied to you. My admiration for you was genuine, and had we not met, I would not be half the man I have become in the past year we have been apart. Yet one thing that hasn’t changed since we’ve met is my unwavering trust in you. I may have doubted, I may have realised the extent to which I may have been blinded by my affection for you, I may have discovered a facet of you that you have kept privy to everyone in your life and— resented you for it, but despite it all—” he clenched his jaw, swallowing down the swelling in his throat. “Despite it all, Kazuma, I consider you my friend.” He took in a breath. “Never once have I regretted following you on that ship a year ago. But now, I’d like for you to trust me in return.”

Asougi’s gloved hands dug into the front of his coat.

“You had tried, back then, had you not?” Ryuunosuke stepped towards him. “You had tried to tell me.”

The man, his friend, bowed his head. “Of course I did.”

“Then I trust you will not hesitate to confide in me from now on.”

Asougi crossed his arms in front of his chest, the familiar stance he always took when they spoke. This time, it was protective, his head lowered, with tears rolling down his cheeks. “How can you not hate me for this?” he asked, quietly, as if he hoped Ryuunosuke wouldn’t hear.

He stepped forwards, the mist of his breath hovering between them, and wound his arm around Asougi’s shoulders. He was broader since the last time he had held him, but he was pliant despite the hesitance to lean into him. His hair was longer, too, as Ryuunosuke threaded his fingers through the short strands at the back of his neck, thumb daring to graze the shell of his ear in the low light.

“Of course I hated you,” he said, gazing over his shoulder at the trees. Asougi dug his nose into his woolen coat, squeezing his arms around his own chest. “I had to learn from Susato-san that she was essentially your sister,” he whispered, regret welling in his throat. “I had to learn of your grief, your anger, your pain, all of your suffering from the mouths of everyone but yours, and I had to stand all the way across that courtroom as you fell apart in front of me.” The skin of his neck was hot under his palm, and it was the most physical reminder of how alive he felt to be with him. “Kazuma— I hated you more with every word you refused to address me in Japanese and every word you simply did not. I hated myself more for not noticing earlier how much your grief had affected you.” He thought of Susato-san, eyes shining with sorrow onboard the S.S. Burya. “I hated it all.”

Asougi’s breath was ragged in his ear, muffled wetly into the fabric of his coat, his frame shaking under his hands. 

“I hated it,” he continued, pulling back, settling his hands on Asougi’s arms. “So I hope now that you will not hide yourself from me, however much you may hate yourself.”

Asougi let out a sob with a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. He reached up with his hand to wipe his cheek, a feeble excuse to hide it. “I promise I’ll write,” he answered. The Truth.

The sun had yet to pierce the horizon, thin light washing slowly into the gradually blueing night sky. Seagulls roamed overhead, threading through the frosty breeze cutting through Dover’s port. In this early dawn, six people stood amidst quiet boatsmen, hauling carts onboard the steamship as routine would have them do, orders from their captain almost drowning in the southern wind. Their souls were appeased, the thick fog of the prior days lifted from their shoulders, the Truth casting a soft glow on their cold-ruddy faces.

One man turned to his friend, features soft, with a confession on his tongue as he gifted him with his soul. This was One Truth, handed with careful hands and entrusted to ones even more so, Two Words, a promise, spoken in the space of confidence rebuilt between them. A promise to write, and to meet again.