loligiary | Sashiko: The Darkest Timeline

Sashiko: The Darkest Timeline

Jigen's right arm ached, and that meant the weather was about to go sour.

Granted, it always ached, but it was aching in a very specific way right now, and also it was January in Paris so the weather was going to get fucked eventually. Everyone gave charitably around Christmas, but as soon as it flipped around to January 2 all that goodwill towards men dried up and the weather was even colder than before.

Jigen took up his usual position near the cafe and watched the patrons stroll by, eying them up to see who looked like a big spender. Men with dates sometimes liked to impress their girls, as did bachelorette parties. People on the way back from soccer matches were charitable, but only if their team won, and if they hadn't they had the risk of being mean drunks. Sometimes they'd be mean drunks anyway.

Okay, guy in a blue blazer, looked like a tourist from the back.

"Hey, buddy. Spare some change?" he mumbled, the phrase coming more naturally than most of his French. He said it enough these days for it to be nearly rote. The man turned and Jigen found himself unable to look the man in the face. Something about his pose said horror, maybe even disgust. He didn't have the energy to deal with that bullshit today.

"Don't worry about it," he said before the tourist could even speak, and turned around to trod off again. The battered hat he'd been using as a money bucket went back on his head. Behind him, he heard the man slowly back away. By the time Jigen looked at him again, the man in blue had run off into the crowd.

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Jigen went to bed and woke up with his face wet. So much for dreamless sleep. He didn't mind nightmares, you at least felt grateful to be awake once you came out of those. The dreams were so much worse because he woke up feeling unbearably, painfully, empty. The feeling that something was missing - lost, stolen, cut out with a knife - lingered after rousing, sometimes for hours. He didn't always remember what the dreams were but sometimes they felt more real than the world around him. Certainly they were always more beautiful.

This one...he'd been in a car, driving over a bridge somewhere in San Francisco, and the man had leaned over to light his cigarette

He lay still for a while, wondering if he'd woken his host up, until the sun rose enough to illuminate a note left on the coffee table.

Sorry. Work called me in early.

There were arrows directing him to the location of food, as if the fridge and coffeemaker were hard to find, and a spare room key taped to the paper. Jigen, again, considered whether he should just rob the place and get out, and what kind of idiot left a complete stranger alone in his hotel room. Idiot, or lunatic, or malevolant entity.

Still, robbing the guy just felt mean. And it was below freezing outside. Jigen lay on the couch for a while, idly watching tv and sipping coffee.

The dreams weren't too bad for the next few days. Barely a dull ache, sometimes not even there at all. Zenigata was always chatty when he came home but never about anything relevant. He seemed to want to just fill the air with chatter, any kind at all, to drown out...silence, maybe.

For his part, Jigen said nothing about his past beyond when he started living on the streets of Paris. No reason to ruin a good thing before its time, and eventually Zenigata would have to wise up and kick him out.

Eventually.

Most days Zenigata come home pretty normal. Sometimes between 5pm and 8pm, usually, though he finally got Jigen a pay as you go cellphone so he could reach him. It was no big deal. Not like it was fancy or expensive. Just one thing after another-- he earned little things like that by being... well, not a fucking asshole, honestly.

Zenigata seemed to really like Jigen over time. He was a good natured and gregarious man by nature, spoke easily and could tell all sorts of stories. Lots of them were work related, some of them weren't, and you know, some of them were probably 90% fiction but it was entertaining, right? It went on for a while like that.

Then one day, the key rattles in the lock-- scratching, missing, scratching again, and Zenigata staggered through. There's no 'hello', there's no 'how are you', there's just a guttural growl before he heads into the bathroom and loses what remains of his lunch.

Then he slaps a $50 on the table. He can't loook up -- one eye is unfocused, fixed.

"Go. Somewhere. Come back in four hours. No earlier. Don't text, don't call. Just go, and then come back."

Then he staggers into his room, half-shedding his coat as he goes, and shuts the door behind him. There was a few more rattled things, before the futon clanked as it folded outward, and creaked as Zenigata's body was dropped on it.

Probably not the best day at the office, right?

Usually when people said that they had a hooker on the other arm, but Zenigata looked about ready to die. He takes the money silently, and is already moving for the door before he looks at it again.

Fifty dollars. Dollars. No surprise that a man who worked internationally would have American money in his wallet, but damn. Too early in the day to be hung over, too. Jigen quietly sidled out of the house and went to smoke a cigarette by the waterfront.

The weather was starting to turn a little warmer by now, and the coat Zenigata had bought him was warm enough for him to tug the zipper down a bit as he paced. Occasionally he glanced at his phone, just in case Zenigata actually needed his help, but nothing.

He waited out the four hours without spending a dime (though the money would still be cached away for later, for that certain time when he'd be out on his own again) and quietly slipped back into the apartment.

Zenigata has emerged from the bedroom by the time he gets back, though the place is still dark. He's sitting on the futon by the window, with it cracked open enough to let the smoke trickle free in pale gray wisps. When the door opens, he squints, but then nods.

"Sorry," he says, and he does manage to sound repentant through the thickness of his gummy mouth. "I -- I should have maybe warned you, but my old friend Migraine-san dropped by."

Well, that's what he calls the hallucination that wobbles into his auras, anyway. It's sort of man shaped. And blue. Mostly blue.

"Sounds like a shitty friend. He come by often?" Jigen offered a sympathetic smile and wondered if it was because of that odd scar on the man's forehead. Something about it seemed...off. Like it shouldn't be there, like a smudge on a photograph.

Which was weird, because Jigen saw far uglier scars just by waking up in the morning. It was a pretty cute scar, really.

"Every couple of weeks, usually. Sometimes once a week, when things are shit," Zenigata said, voice still low. "I've heard people get auras-- but mine kind of looks person shaped. It's weird. Like somebody put a monkey in a blue coat and then stuck him at the corner of my eye."

He rubs his eyebrow over his left eye, as if to indicate on which side the man stood; sinister, not dexter.

"Sorry I threw you out. I was just-- right down the rabbit hole by the time I made it home." He grimaced; smoking and dry mouth were a terrible combo, but he needed the fix. "Best I did not to puke in the cabbie's car."

"Nah, nah, it's fine. If you're sick, you're sick. The monkey hallucination is new, though." He was picturing Curious George in a tiny jacket, and it was making him smirk despite his attempts to be sympathetic. "You ever see any other animals?"

"No, it's-- I've never heard of a migraine that causes persistent hallucination?" Zenigata stubbed out the last of his cigarette and got up and got to get a glass of water to ease his cottony mouth. "Doctors have never figured it out, but it's like... I was in a car chase when I got wrecked. Had migraines ever since. And when I do, I see this... he's a man in a blue coat. And he looks kind of like a monkey."

He shrugs once, before he drains his water, then presses the cool glass against his temple. "He's right right here, right over my shoulder, when I get a migraine. I hate the son of a bitch. But it's also -- like he's just supposed to be there? Like there's something that would be wrong if he wasn't there being an aggravating asshole making my head hurt."

He shrugged, this time more aggressively and definitely more frustrated. "Brain damage, I guess!"

Admittedly, Jigen didn't know shit about how migraines worked, or most any kind of medicine that didn't directly involve wound treatment (or wound creation). Maybe hallucinations were normal?

"I mean, that's not completely insane?" he offered, lighting up his own cigarette. "Brains can fuck with you. Sometimes I get weird dreams about a man who kinda looks like you're describing, so it can't be that uncommon, right? Never met the guy in my life, but I'll feel like I know him."

And sometimes wake up crying. Crying after a dream because of how beautiful it was and how deeply you've lost something you never actually had is normal, right?

Yes, completely and utterly normal. The Most Normal. How more normal can you get?

"I suppose not," Zenigata offered wryly, looking down at his hands for a moment. Migraine-san has been a boon companion when he was deep in; sometimes he talked to him. Who else was he going to talk to, in his life? "I mean, I hallucinate having an asshole friend, and apparently you dream about -- somebody like him, I guess."

Well, alright. Maybe he can talk to Jigen now?

"Yeah. Maybe it's...I dunno, one of those Jungian things." He didn't know a hell of a lot about psychology, but he knew a few mob goons who were hardcore into spiritualism and the occult. Criminals tended to grasp for any kind of luck that they could. "Like your teeth falling out. Lots of people dream about that. Maybe lots of people dream about guys who look like monkeys."

"Maybe. Is yours annoying? Mine is. Smirking bastard. Or maybe I'm personifying pain and that's a bad idea. I don't know." Zenigata was not about psychology, really, but he was a devout buddhist and his great-odd-grandfather had been elevated to kamihood. He believed in things beyond the explainable.

"Maybe he's someone from a past life. Red thread, and all that." He shrugged once. "Either way, if I meet him, I hope he makes a better husband than a friend."

He doesn't know why, but he feels abandoned after seeing him. Unimportant. Aggravating and unnecessary. Or maybe that's just the chronic depression and untreated PTSD talking.

"Husband? You think you'll be a woman in the next life?" Jigen chuckled, letting the smoke waft from his fingertips before sucking on the cigarette again.

"Nah, mine's...mine's complicated. Annoying but an annoying I need. The dreams I have with him in it...they feel more real than reality, sometimes."

More intense. More beautiful. Jigen's fingers tense on the cigarette, denting it.

There's a long drag and a pointed lack of answer to that question. He'll leave it for Jigen to interpret. Is he just ignoring it because he knows it's a stupid idea, or because he'd be fine with a husband in the here and now?

"Must be hard, living in the shit world, missing something so important." Zenigata exhaled the last of his smoke gustily, letting it plume above his head before the air pressure sucked it through the open window. He gets up, stubs it out, and then says, "Did you eat anything while you were out?"

Well, that was....a suspiciously specific avoidance of the question. Jigen packs the idea away for later; even if the guy is trying to fish it doesn't mean he wants Jigen specifically. He'd made that clear on day one, actually.

"I could eat," he says, equally noncommittal. He doesn't want to say he didn't spend a cent of the money. "And at least this shit world's real. If I wanted to live in dreams all day I'd go find something harder than liquor to hit."

Zenigata drags himself upright, rolling his broad shoulders before he straightens his button down. There was nothing for it, he had to eat, especially since he lost his lunch earlier. He stretches out, and then says, "Let's go pick up Thai-- ah, scratch that. Too far, too spicy. There's that takeaway place, with the sandwiches? It's out and around the corner."

He isn't cooking tonight that's for damn sure. He may not have Migraine-san on his shoulder, but he's still tired as hell.

"You want to order in? I'm thinking neither of us want to go out tonight." Jigen tidies up a little as Zenigata gets himself in order, trying to somehow make things better. Be less of a leech on the poor man who has enough problems with the brain damage and dead son.

There's a moment of contemplating, before Zenigata says, "Let's go out for takeaway. We'll come back, but I need some air."

And it won't be bright enough to fuck with his rush eyes now.

Both of them have left the house separately since their arrangement began, but they've never 'gone for a walk', and it's there that Zenigata might pick up something odd. Jigen walks with a long, loping gait that still never seems to take him too far away from the man beside him. He walks just a little behind but always ready to dart forward in case of...well, in case old habits prove useful.

Jigen walks like a bodyguard, despite the right arm hanging limp at his side and no gun to draw in Zenigata's defense.

He knows.

He's not jumping to tell him, but he's no fool. He's kind, but not stupid. Or maybe he is, taking on a dangerous man into his home. Maybe this is his most elaborate suicide attempt yet. Who can say?

Walking past the bridge, Zenigata pauses briefly to glance over, but then keeps going until there's at a bistro getting sandwiches. He watches out the window, a faraway look in his eyes.

A dangerous man who's walking as if Zenigata is his capocrimine, to be kept safe at all costs. The breeze ruffles the battered hat on his head, the one he's refused to give him for any longer than it takes to get it cleaned despite how threadbare the thing is.

If he leans into it a little, drifting closer into the protective bubble that Jigen creates despite his useless arm, well -- it might just be imagination. Perhaps it's nothing.

He pays in cash and accepts his change. But as they head back, he crosses the street to the bridge, near the water tower that once towered over him. He pauses, lights up, and then fishes around in his pocket among the change.

He finds a single franc, turning it over in his palm, before it flashes and flies out from his hand, hitting the water on the flat edge and skipping once like a stone before it sinks.

Zenigata explains nothing. He just turns to keep walking once the ritual is done.

"Making a wish, Pops?" Jigen watched the coin skip and vanish beneath the dark water. He hasn't felt this much at peace in a while, despite how frantic today has been. Zenigata makes him feel safe.

No, that's not right. Not safe from harm. Makes him feel...like he doesn't have to be watching over his shoulder, for once.

"Something like that," Zenigata says, but doesn't elaborate further. He turns away, and continues onward to the apartment.

He eats gingerly at first, before his hunger gets the better of him. Then it's messy chowing. He needs food, needs something in his gut.

Jigen went to bed in relatively good spirits. Unfortunately, that only meant the dreams hit even harder when they arrived.

At around 2am Zenigata would hear movement in the apartment. If he got up, eventually, he'd find Jigen sitting on the kitchen floor with Zenigata's service weapon cradled in his hands like a child with a baby doll. A bottle of wine was next to him on the floor, open and already partially drunk, with no accompanying glass to mediate it.

Jigen's eyes were reddened from tears and a bit glazed when he looked up. "S'all right," he mumbled. "Go back to sleep. Y'need it."

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