Backlash (Kazuo Saitou)
| Backlash (Kazuo Saitou) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 23 August 2023 |
| Location: | The Saitou apartment |
| Synopsis: | Kazuo is planning his evening when...
Concurrent with Scene 300. |
| Cast of Characters: | Kazuo Saitou |
Home from work, and Kazuo's hair is left half-damp to help dissipate heat as he pulls fresh clothes on post-shower. He's keeping himself busy by thinking ahead: change the bandages, not as bad a chore as it was when his mother first came home after the Incident, and with luck soon it'll be over altogether; then put something together for dinner, and swat his mother back out of the kitchenette every time she tries to step within range of, well, anything much. She hates enforcedly being still almost as much as he hates ... well, not everything anymore. Just most things. Maybe only many things.
He's getting soft, he thinks, and smirks at himself as he buttons as much of his shirt as he feels like dealing with --
There's a sharp shocking pain in his chest. He's fairly sure it's not the buttons. A hand drops reflexively to test, and his skin's intact, the muscle doesn't hurt with pressure, the heartbeat --
-- not his heartbeat --
And the dream rises up, here and now, while he's awake and standing. The dream that's plagued him most nights since the dance, since that singer -- Yellow something? -- unintentionally gutted him with words.
("If you gather more light, you can surely change this world...")
Only this time, he can see.
There is something that is not light, and it writhes in mad flows and patterns over the nighttime city of burning stone, over the strange-colored immense thing that hangs in the sky where a moon should be. They do not disturb him. He knows them; he reads them as automatically and surely as he reads the placement of his own limbs.
There is light. But the light is fire and blood, painting marble to crimson, deep blue cloth sticky clot-black. The sword is --
There is someone there, on the stairs. Three someones, but he only cares about one: the one who is bleeding, who is falling. The sword that should have freed him is thrust through him (who? the name - Kazuo remembers knowing it, but does not know it now), and he is trying to shape words, but there is no air for them, and blood does not carry the sound.
Someone else is screaming. It is not him. Not that he is silent. He's howling a refusal, a negation; this cannot be happening, this cannot be the outcome of all he's worked for. This cannot be. A world that would create this now cannot be allowed to have existed.
His eyes are clear, his mind is clear, but that clarity is itself a mockery: it is too late. There is nothing, nothing in all the world, that he can do to change this.
("If you believe in yourself more, you should surely be able to change your future. In this frozen world, despite being alone at dawn --")
There is no dawn. There will never be a dawn again.
In the dream, his throat is raw and he is trying to make a sound with no breath remaining. In his body, his muscles are locked, he can neither draw a breath nor let one out. He had been standing. Hadn't he? Did he hit his head? He can't tell --
"Kazuo?"
Oh, hell.
"Kazuo, are you all right?"
With careful attention, he pushes enough air out of his lungs that he can draw some back in. That's a start. A second breath.
"Kazuo!"
"I'm fine," he calls back, and he hopes it's not a lie. He shifts onto his side, then pushes himself up in the cramped quarters. No sudden stabbing pain in his skull. Good. Good. Something brushes against the side of his neck, but it doesn't seem to be either alive or blood, so he ignores it in favor of quick improvisation. "I think I overheated a little. Do you mind if I get something to drink first?"
"I thought you said you were being careful!"
"I was. Just ... maybe I need to be a little more careful."
"Or get a little more sleep! If you'd stay in at night --"
"I've been staying in at night for weeks, I promise." Two weeks is still a plural. Kazuo straightens his shirt and makes his way out into the main room of the apartment.
His mother frowns at him from the couch. "Then when did you get that earring?"
Kazuo blinks. The blank expression is unfeigned, and perhaps passes for still having heat trouble, because it gets him through to get a cup of water without having to talk again. He drinks the first, settling himself a little more firmly in the here-and-now rather than the dream-and-now, and breathes, and then reaches up to the thing that touched the side of his neck.
It is an earring. A dangling crystal.
He is absolutely certain that it wasn't there when he took the shower.
