Chapter 6: Nega-Yanagi
Life is irrational.
—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record
A little less than an hour beforehand, Akutagawa Yanagi arrived at a high-rise building. He stepped into a hotel lobby devoid of both staff and guests, made his way into one of the elevators, and pressed the button for his desired floor.
A moment later, the elevator lurched as it began to rise. It wasn’t a particularly noteworthy shudder—the same as any other elevator, really—but several days without sleep had rendered Yanagi so weak that it was enough to knock him off-balance and force him to lean up against a wall.
“Hah hah hah hah! Talk about a high-class joint to have a meeting in, huh?!”
The cause of his sleep deprivation—the voice of his sense of guilt, aka Nega-Yanagi—was still as skull-splittingly loud as ever.
“I mean, god damn, right? Habikino Hatsuhiko’s supposed to own this whole friggin’ building, isn’t he? And this is just one of Hearts’s hideouts, so...just how much money’s that guy even have?”
...
“Y’know, if you put in some actual effort to make a bit of dough, I bet you could have a building like this too before too long! Don’tcha think?”
Why bother...? What would I do with it?
“Uhh, whatever the hell you want to? Enjoy the views, use ’em to net you a girl or two, that sorta stuff.”
That’s just stupid.
“You’ve got no ambitions, man.”
Your ambitions have no point.
The elevator slowly rose toward the building’s upper floors.
“Honestly though, this is one hell of a shameless plan you’ve cooked up. Your best idea to clear out your guilt is to just walk right up to Habikino Hatsuhiko and apologize, seriously? Hah hah hah hah hah!” Nega-Yanagi cackled with an air of utter contempt.
An upfront apology to Hatsuhiko was the method that Yanagi had come up with to eliminate his feelings of guilt. It wasn’t the only method, to be sure, but...
It’s the quickest and easiest way of dealing with the problem, Yanagi explained. If he wanted to do away with his predicament and reclaim his ability to sleep, then this would be the most efficient means of doing so. Hamai Haneko doesn’t seem like a fighter, so I could probably take her out in single combat easily enough...but she’s probably going to be watching out for me, which complicates that option.
If Yanagi could kill Haneko, then the whole matter would be resolved, but the fact that she knew that and would be on guard meant it wouldn’t be that easy. It was hard to imagine that she’d be easy to find, for one thing, and the odds were good that she’d have a plan in place to deal with an attempted assassination, making Yanagi’s chances of pulling it off even lower. As such, he’d ruled the option out.
Then there’s the option of killing Kiryuu Hajime, like I promised... And, well, I considered it...
Since breaking his promise with Hatsuhiko was the source of Yanagi’s guilt, killing Kiryuu would instantly wipe that guilt away.
But...no. I’ll pass on fighting that guy.
In a contest of Kiryuu Hajime versus Akutagawa Yanagi—Lucifer’s Strike versus Dead Space—it seemed very likely to Yanagi that he would lose. The two of them had never actually clashed in any real capacity, so that was just conjecture on his part, but he felt certain nonetheless. He’d simulated battles with his boss in his mind a number of times just for the hell of it, and he’d never been able to find a method that would guarantee his victory. Even if Yanagi took advantage of his status as one of Kiryuu’s allies and staged a surprise attack, it didn’t seem like it would up his odds by all that much. Most people would probably be irked by that understanding, but Yanagi, of course, didn’t have it in him to be bothered at all.
So in the end...apologizing to Habikino Hatsuhiko is my quickest and easiest option.
“I guess I have to give it to you—in some ways, it’s probably your best possible move. He’s the guy you made the promise to and the guy you feel guilty about, so if you apologize to him and he agrees to forgive you, then all that guilt would go away, just like that. It feels like a loophole for sure, but compared to your other options, it’s probably the sanest choice you could make,” said Nega-Yanagi. “But, then again...do you seriously have no shame at all, or something?”
What’s that supposed to mean...?
“You thought you’d pulled a fast one on your enemies, only for it to turn out that you’d actually walked right up into a setup and put yourself into a corner, right? And now you’re planning on just walking up to those same people, bowing down, and saying, ‘I’ll give you all your money back, so please forgive me and let me join your team after all’? You know how pathetic that’s gonna make you look, right?”
Nega-Yanagi was certainly right about one thing: Yanagi had utterly underestimated Hatsuhiko during their first encounter. He’d taken him lightly, assuming that he was the sort of idiot who’d take a simple promise as binding and think that anyone would do his bidding if he waved a big enough wad of cash under their nose...but all of that had been a trap on Hatsuhiko’s part. Yanagi had been spectacularly set up—he’d failed to think the situation through and stumbled right into his current predicament in a comical pratfall. He’d been too busy laughing at his opponent’s stupidity to notice that his opponent was laughing right back at him. It was a humiliating position to be in, plain and simple. And yet...
If bowing isn’t enough for him, I’ll get down on all fours.
...Yanagi felt nothing. He acknowledged his mistake, but that was the end of it. He didn’t find anything about his situation humiliating, and he felt no shame for the groveling he intended to do in the immediate future.
“See? Totally shameless. How about manly pride? You got any of that?”
None of that’s rational. Shame this, pride that...it’s all just emotional nonsense.
“Huuuh.”
Habikino Hatsuhiko probably has a good idea of what my power and I are capable of. That means he’ll be more eager to use me than to kill me...well, as long as he’s not an idiot. He wouldn’t gain anything from leaving me debilitated like this.
Yanagi was aware that he was a capable person. That wasn’t him being vain—it was him making an objective assessment of his own worth. He looked at himself like he’d look at a total stranger, and per his evaluation, he was useful. That meant that to Hatsuhiko, there’d be value in keeping him around.
So, in the end, the apology is just a formality. A formality, or rather, a ceremony intended to make their relative standings clear and explicit. It would be a necessary step in a larger process. Following through with this will mean becoming his subordinate. And, really...that’s probably the whole reason he set things up to get you planted in my head in the first place.
“All that just to recruit you, huh?”
Following through with all these formalities will prove that he’s mentally superior to me, and put him in a position to use me...specifically, to use me to kill Kiryuu Hajime. He has some sort of obsession with the man, apparently.
“Hmm. So, long story short, you’re gonna let him use you and betray your boss, right? And you’re okay with this?”
How many times have I told you...? It’s the most efficient option available to me.
That was to say, of course, it was the most efficient way for Yanagi to do away with both his sense of guilt and Nega-Yanagi at the same time. Everything he did, he did to break out of his current deadlock and regain the ability to sleep. Becoming Hatsuhiko’s underling was just the next logical step in the most efficient route toward that goal.
“Hah hah hah hah! Just how badly do you want to sleep, seriously?!”
Thanks to a certain someone, I’m so tired it feels like it could kill me... This is a living hell, and I’d do anything to break out of it and sleep again.
Yanagi didn’t balk for a second at the thought of betraying his friends and serving a man he couldn’t stand. Attachment and sentiment played no part in his thought process—he was driven solely by cold, hard logic. He’d always been that way, and he had no intention to alter his lifestyle.
Soon, the elevator arrived at its destination. As Yanagi stepped out into the banquet hall and caught sight of Habikino Hatsuhiko, who stood at its far end, the first words that came out of his mouth were “I’m sorry,” coupled with a deep, polite bow. It came across as a gesture of purest sincerity, coming from a place of purest exhaustion. The exhaustion was real—he was, after all, so terribly tired that he could barely even walk straight—but the sincerity, needless to say, was entirely faked.
Yanagi acted like his life depended on it, playing the part of the tragic, pathetic loser. He apologized over and over, throwing in a few hacking coughs while he was at it and begging for mercy. He pleaded for his life, promising that he’d become Hatsuhiko’s most loyal lackey and do everything he was told without question. He returned the three million yen immediately as well, of course, with an extra two million on top of it to serve as compensation for the damages and nuisance he’d caused. He chose his words with incredible care, ensuring that nothing he said would sour Hatsuhiko’s mood, while at the same time subtly implying what a useful pawn he would be and throwing in a few scathing critiques of Kiryuu Hajime while he was at it.
“I see,” Hatsuhiko said with a satisfied nod after Yanagi had finished his remarkably convincing performance. He began flipping through the stack of bills, counting them up with the sort of practiced ease you normally only saw from bank employees. “Yes, I understand very well how you feel. I can’t say I’m particularly impressed to hear that you intended to deceive me and steal the money I offered you...but then again, my whole goal was to engineer precisely that situation, so I suppose I can’t exactly hold it against you. In fact, I should apologize to you for setting you up, Yanagi.”
The dry flipping of bills accompanied Hatsuhiko’s calm, genial voice as he spoke on. “I was somewhat hopeful that you’d kill Kiryuu Hajime for me, I’ll admit, but my most important goal was to draw you onto my team. You would be useful— Oh, excuse me. That’s not the nicest way of putting it, is it? What I mean to say is that you would be a powerful ally. With you by my side, defeating that man would be the simplest of tasks,” he said, then finished counting with one final flick of the banknotes. Hatsuhiko smiled. “Five million yen, on the dot. I really have no choice but to acknowledge such a clear show of sincerity on your part, don’t I?”
“Do... Do you mean it?” Yanagi said, his eyes sparkling with hope—entirely feigned hope. He made himself look genuinely relieved to hear Hatsuhiko’s response, even as internally, he let out a scornful laugh at Hatsuhiko’s willingness to play into his plans.
“I did consider the possibility that you’re a double agent. Maybe you’re only pretending to sell out Kiryuu, and in truth, you plan on selling me out to him...but, no, that doesn’t seem likely. You had an awful lot of less-than-kind words to say about him a moment ago, and I really don’t think you were faking that.”
That went without saying, seeing as Yanagi really hadn’t been faking that part of his speech at all. In the heat of the moment, he’d let his true feelings about Kiryuu slip out—and said true feelings had turned out to be surprisingly emotionally driven.
“But, in any case,” Hatsuhiko said as he walked over to Yanagi, who was still prostrating himself on all fours, “you’re on the team, Akutagawa Yanagi. Welcome to Hearts.”
As Hatsuhiko’s brand-name shoes came into Yanagi’s line of sight...he allowed himself a smile. Not just a smile, even—it was a full-blown sneer, obscured from Hatsuhiko’s vision by Yanagi’s current posture. It was an expression full of derisive scorn, as well as a touch of relief.
Good...I can finally sleep now, Yanagi thought. Any joy he might have felt at having deceived his opponent or anguish at having betrayed his friends was overwhelmed by the pure and simple desire for rest. In Yanagi’s mind, that was more important of a matter than anything to do with any of his friends or enemies.
“Feel free to stand up, new team member.”
Yanagi tried to do just that...but couldn’t. The back of his head bumped into something, and an instant later his face was shoved downward, grinding his nose into the floor. A gush of blood welled up from somewhere deep within his nostrils.
“Ugh! Ah,” Yanagi gasped. That pathetic little yelp of pain was all he could manage to spit out with his face pressed into the carpet. He quickly figured out what had happened: as he’d tried to stand up, just like Hatsuhiko had told him to, Hatsuhiko had grabbed him by the back of the head and forced him down again, violently slamming him into the floor. That floor was covered in relatively soft and shaggy carpeting, so the damage hadn’t been nearly as bad as it would’ve been if he’d been standing on dirt or concrete, but it had still been quite the impact. His nose might very well have been broken—blood flowed freely from it, staining a patch of the carpet red.
“What’s wrong, Yanagi?” a soft, calm voice rang out from overhead. “I told you that you could stand up, you know?”
Hatsuhiko didn’t let up even an ounce of pressure. He was leaning onto Yanagi’s head with the full weight of his body, pressing him further into the floor. His strength was nothing to scoff at, and Yanagi could hear an ominous creaking noise coming from his own skull.
“Wh-Wh... Why...?” Yanagi groaned. The pain in his nose and head was nothing compared to his utter confusion. Why would Hatsuhiko attack him? Yanagi couldn’t even begin to understand.
“Why? It’s simple: because you irritate me,” said Hatsuhiko. It was as plain and straightforward as a reason could be, yet so profoundly irrational that Yanagi could never have possibly understood it. “Akutagawa Yanagi. You like to think that you always make the most rational choices available to you, don’t you? When you first tried to swindle me out of three million yen, and when you came to me today to return it with interest and beg me to take you in as my ally, you thought you’d done so by throwing away all traces of self-respect and emotion, choosing the most coldly logical and efficient path possible, didn’t you?”
Akutagawa didn’t say a word.
“I’ll take that as a yes—and you weren’t wrong! In both cases, you did indeed make a logical, rational decision. You really would be quite useful to me, and if I were looking at this from a purely utilitarian perspective, seeking only to maximize my own personal benefit, then bringing you onto my team would be the right call. I don’t know how much of your apology was sincere, but it’s very obvious that you’re no big fan of the other members of Fallen Black, nor of Kiryuu Hajime himself. If I took you in, I seriously doubt you’d so much as hesitate to help me wipe them out. You’re exceptionally capable in combat, and you have a wealth of information regarding our enemies, making you an incredibly valuable asset,” said Hatsuhiko. “But...I don’t want you.”
“...”
“Why? Because you annoy me,” Hatsuhiko said, putting it so plainly it was almost nauseating to hear. It was maybe the most irrational, subjective reason he could have picked, and now that all the cards were on the table, he made no attempt to restrain his disgust from creeping into his tone.
“Your impertinent attitude grates on me. The fact that you show no deference to your elders infuriates me. The way I can look into your eyes and barely even tell if you’re alive or dead repulses me. Your habit of keeping your headphones on even when people are talking to you is appalling as well. You’re nothing more than a child who delights in looking down on everyone and everything around him, and I can’t stand that,” said Hatsuhiko, his cutting words icy, scornful, yet also totally detached. “In terms of pure merits and demerits, I really should join forces with you—but I don’t want to. I just want to hurt you. I want to show you how it feels to be looked down on by someone who’s far, far above you. I want to bask in the knowledge that you tried to outwit me, only for me to thoroughly play you instead. And it’s entirely because you get on my nerves,” he said, driving his point home further still as he drove Yanagi’s skull into the ground.
“Do you understand now, Yanagi? This is how humans are. We’re driven by self-interest, yes, but at the same time, we’re just as driven by our likes and dislikes. Nobody lives purely to maximize merit.”
“Ugh... Ahh... Agggh...” Yanagi moaned.
Hatsuhiko responded by pushing down harder than ever. “Humans just aren’t always rational beings,” he growled.
Yanagi had made the most rational choice available to him. He’d detached himself from emotions that he’d seen as pointless and chosen the most efficient means he could find. And yet...he’d failed. The situation he’d found himself in was beyond his wildest expectations. The idea that Hatsuhiko would completely disregard the potential for benefit, let his emotions take the wheel, and torment Yanagi for no good reason at all had never crossed his mind. He couldn’t comprehend how anyone could act in a manner so profoundly illogical.
“Generally speaking, I act to further my interests,” said Hatsuhiko. “I’ll always prioritize putting money in my pocket over the lives of strangers, and I fully believe that money can, in fact, buy love and loyalty with ease. That’s just the sort of person I am. However, unlike you, I don’t make any pretense of acting in a pure and rational fashion absolutely all of the time.”
Yanagi didn’t say a word.
“After all, the way I see it, constant rationality is an impossibility. People aren’t built that way. If you’re alive, you can be sure that you’re abandoning logic and rationality in some way or another. Life is full of futility, and futility is the essence of life.”
His words flew in the face of Yanagi’s very nature as a human being. It was a humiliation so intense, it felt like it might upend the very core of Yanagi’s identity. For as long as he could remember, Yanagi had detested the inefficiency of the world around him. Everyone was obsessed with pointless and meaningless nonsense, living their lives in the least efficient manner possible. The world was full of broken-down junk and wastes of flesh...and so, he’d decided to be the one and only person who would live a purely rational life. He’d live comfortably and quietly, without letting himself be tied down by meaningless trifles.
But now, that very lifestyle—his whole sense of values—had been denied outright. Hatsuhiko had confronted his ideals directly and declared them impossible to achieve.
“If you really want to live a purely rational life...then die,” said Hatsuhiko. “Kill yourself. Just end it. Jump out that window, here and now. That is far and away the most rational way to live.”
To live rationally is to die. It was, admittedly, a theory that Yanagi could understand. If your goal is to eliminate all of life’s inefficiencies and irrationalities, then ultimately, you’ll be faced with the inevitable conclusion that life itself is inefficient, and be left only with the decision to die. Being as living rationally was Yanagi’s ideal, it was, in some ways, an unresolvable paradox inherent to his lifestyle—a paradox that, deep down, he’d already been dimly aware of. And, when it was finally pointed out to him in plain and clear terms...
“...Aaaaaaaggghhhhhhhhh!”
...Yanagi flew into a rage. He let out a bellowing scream, louder than he’d ever shouted before, and pushed himself upward with all his strength, fighting Hatsuhiko’s grip. The effort he put into that burst of movement sent a stream of blood gushing from his nose, but he didn’t even notice—and, happily enough, the waterfall of blood made the carpet just slick enough to allow Yanagi to slip his head out of Hatsuhiko’s grasp and free himself.
“What?! Oh, shi—” Hatsuhiko gasped, but by that point, it was already over. Yanagi had staggered forward, blood still dribbling from his nose as he leaned into Hatsuhiko, at the same time jabbing the fingers of his right hand into his torso. Yanagi’s eyes were wide open now, and a gloomy, dismal, pitch-black sense of deadly malice dwelled within them.
The power of Dead Space pertained to gaps. It was not the ability to alter them, but rather, to create them. Akutagawa was capable of creating any form of gap conceivable. Be it a joint, a crack, a tear, a seam, a chasm, or a crease, he could use his power to generate a gap within anything even esoterically line-like, forcing it open and building a world of his choosing in between. The true essence of his power could be seen when he used it for the sake of defense...but that isn’t to say that it couldn’t be used to truly devastating effect offensively as well.
“...You’re wide open.”
With the slightest of motions—like the gesture one would use to zoom in on a smartphone’s screen—Yanagi spread apart the fingers of the hand he’d pressed into Hatsuhiko’s midsection, opening them up...and, at the same time, activating his power.
The human body is a veritable treasure trove of gaps. The average adult male has 206 bones, 365 joints, and 650 distinct muscles. In other words, the human body is riddled with dividing lines, to the extent that you could even say we’re made up of them entirely. And, if Yanagi chose to, he could use Dead Space to wrench each and every gap in one of those cobbled-together bodies open with immediate, violent force...to predictable results.
“...Gwaugph!”
A horrible garbled failure of a scream issued from Hatsuhiko’s dislocated jaw, and an instant later, he crumpled to the ground in a heap. He couldn’t stand back up—in fact, he couldn’t even try to stand back up. His limbs were bent and twisted like the tentacles of some deep-sea invertebrate, splayed out in all directions.
Yanagi, who’d been in terrible condition even before Hatsuhiko’s beating, collapsed backward to the floor and gasped for breath. He tilted his head upward, trying to slow the flow of blood from his nose, then glanced at the octopus-like mess that was Hatsuhiko’s body and flashed a wicked grin. “How do...you like that?” Yanagi wheezed. “How’s it feel to have every joint in your body dislocated and every bone detached from its tendons, all at once?”
Every joint between the bones in Hatsuhiko’s body and every tendon that connected those bones to his muscles had, by way of Yanagi’s power, been torn open. By creating gaps between each and every one of those dividing lines, he had severed their connections, and in the aftermath of the attack, Hatsuhiko was left in a state that could barely even be described as human. The pain was almost assuredly unimaginable, but with his joints and tendons having lost all function, he couldn’t even writhe.
The only part of the flabby pile of meat Hatsuhiko had been reduced to that could work at all was his muscles, which spasmed wildly and ineffectually. His dislocated jaw prevented him from speaking, though a guttural moan still leaked out from somewhere deep in his windpipe. Yanagi had lost himself to his anger and unleashed the full, horrific potential of Dead Space, leaving Hatsuhiko pitifully paralyzed, able to do nothing but lie there and suffer.
“Ha...ha ha,” Yanagi chuckled. His heart leaped with the thrill of his victory. The man who’d looked down on him, who’d lectured him from up on high, was now twitching on the ground like some sort of cephalopod or worm. The sight was equal parts pathetic and hysterical, not to mention delightful above all else.
“Ha ha... Haaa ha ha ha ha ha! Serves you right... Ha ha ha ha ha...”
Yanagi had yet to notice something very important. He had just betrayed his own principles. He’d lost himself to rage, brutalized his opponent, and in doing so, strayed far from the realm of the rational. The one thing Yanagi despised above all else was the idea of being driven to acts of stupidity by pointless emotions, which was exactly what he’d just done. By defeating Hatsuhiko in that moment, he’d proved the very point that the man had tried to make to him: that people were, on a fundamental level, incapable of acting on a purely and consistently rational basis.
Yanagi was still too caught up in the joy of his victory to register that fact. It wouldn’t be long at all before it sank in, however. After all—that victorious joy would not last.
“Ha ha ha ha... Ha ha... Ha... Huh?”
Yanagi blinked, then let out a rather undignified grunt of confusion. It was gone. The octopus-like body of Habikino Hatsuhiko had vanished into thin air, leaving not so much as a trace behind. It was like it had turned into a puff of smoke and dispersed into nothingness.
“The other mes are made to vanish after they’ve sustained a certain amount of damage, if you were wondering,” said a thoroughly relaxed voice from directly behind Yanagi. He spun around in shock...only to be shocked all over again when he found that Hatsuhiko was walking toward him. He’d strolled in through the banquet hall’s doorway and was now advancing through the room with a casual, unconcerned air. Everything—from his voice, to his appearance, to his tone—was precisely identical to the man Yanagi had defeated a matter of seconds earlier.
“What...the hell?” Yanagi stammered. Was it a body double? A clone? A twin? All sorts of possibilities raced through his mind, but it wasn’t long before he reached what was overwhelmingly the most likely answer. “Is that your—”
“Yes, exactly. This is my power,” Hatsuhiko said as he came to a stop just a few steps away from Yanagi, who was still seated on the floor. He towered over Yanagi, his hands in his pockets and a look of imposing disdain in his eyes. He looked like a king staring down at a vile criminal he’d just decided to sentence to death. “There are a hundred and one of me. That’s the nature of my power, Hundred and One Wolfies.”
“That’s...a pretty cutesy name.”
“That would be because Haneko named it, not I. By which I mean Hamai Haneko, of course, the team member of mine whose power is currently making you suffer. She names all of our abilities.”
“So then...the other guy was a fake?”
“Correct. As am I, needless to say,” Hatsuhiko casually admitted. “Though considering that every me shares the same collective memory, it isn’t precisely accurate to call us fakes. Rest assured that you have indeed been speaking with the real and genuine Habikino Hatsuhiko this whole time.”
If every one of his duplicates shared their memories with one another in real time, then it stood to reason that every one of them—including the one with Yanagi in the banquet hall—was, indeed, the real Hatsuhiko. The exception, of course, being their bodies. No matter how many of them Yanagi defeated, the effort would be meaningless.
“So... I guess your real body’s watching all this from somewhere safe and far away?” said Yanagi.
“Precisely. Regrettably, I wasn’t blessed with the sort of potent and multipurpose power that you were given. I’ll take the liberty of cowering off in my little hidey-hole, ironing out my plans where you’ll never find me.”
“That’s a pretty off-putting power... Are you some sort of narcissist?” Yanagi spat. Hatsuhiko shot him a glare. “You don’t trust anyone except yourself, right? That’s why you ended up with a nasty power like that.”
“I really don’t think you have any right to level that criticism in particular,” said Hatsuhiko. “You have the ability to enlarge gaps...or, in other words, the ability to sever bonds. Perhaps deep down, you’ve always longed for the sort of bond you were never able to make? Are you jealous of people who can find deep, genuine connections with each other?”
“Talk all you like,” Yanagi said dismissively as he stood back up. “Cannon fodder’s cannon fodder, no matter how many of them there are. This is pointless.”
If their individual powers were ineffectual enough, not even a hundred foes would pose a serious threat to Yanagi. A feeble man with no abilities other than the power to make copies of himself stood absolutely no chance against Dead Space. However...
“Yes, you’re exactly right. This is utterly pointless—and by this, of course, I mean your power,” Hatsuhiko said with a grin of pure, unbridled confidence. “You’re strong. I’m weak. Even if I used my power to its full potential and sent all one hundred and one of me at you at once, you would decimate me effortlessly...and that’s exactly why I have no intention of fighting you. I’d much prefer to watch you suffer from a safe distance through my doubles.”
Yanagi took in a sharp breath.
“Come on, then! If you want to kill me, then feel free,” Hatsuhiko said, spreading his arms in a flippant show of his own defenselessness. “Go ahead and reuse that absurd ability you pulled out a second ago, or maybe try a new one, if you feel like it! Oh, I know—why not channel your rage to help you awaken to a whole new power? Not that it’ll make any difference, of course. I won’t feel a thing. Not even a tickle.”
Yanagi clenched his teeth so hard, he could feel them creak under the pressure. He would’ve liked nothing more than to kill the man before him that very instant, but he knew it would be meaningless. Hatsuhiko had made it clear that no matter how much he made a duplicate suffer, that pain wouldn’t make it back to the original.
“If you want to defeat me, then you’ll just have to figure out where I’m hiding. Search thoroughly enough, and I imagine you’ll track me down eventually! You’re clever, after all. I’m sure I’ve slipped up somewhere along the way, and it’s totally believable that you could pick up on my mistakes and track down my safe house. Of course...” A triumphant grin spread across Hatsuhiko’s face. “...that’s assuming you can think clearly at all, in your current state.”
That was the moment when Yanagi came to a single inescapable conclusion: he couldn’t beat Habikino Hatsuhiko. He felt that truth on a deep, profound level, and as the realization sank in, something within Yanagi snapped. A muddled mess of feelings—regret, horror, despair, shame, and on and on—welled up from the deepest reaches of his heart, only to be consumed by his sense of guilt as it grew to an unprecedented scale.
“Ahah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!”
“Agh?!” Yanagi grunted with pain.
“Ahah hah hah, god, how are we this big of a loser?! We couldn’t have lost harder here if we’d tried, and you know it! You’re even admitting it to yourself this time!”
“Ugh... Aaaaugh...”
Nega-Yanagi’s voice had been amplified to such an intense degree, it didn’t even compare to its previous volume. His scornful laughter wasn’t just ear-piercing anymore—Yanagi could feel it, physically. It was a physical and psychological indignity, and it brought jolts of pain shooting through his head. It almost felt like someone had reached into his brain and given it a vigorous stir—like his eyeballs were being plucked out of his skull with a spoon. His own guilt was destroying him.
Yanagi clasped his hands to his ears. He knew it was pointless, but he couldn’t stop himself. A waterfall of cold sweat poured down his body, and his vision grew unfocused. Violent waves of nausea crashed over him, again and again.
Meanwhile, the fake Hatsuhiko barely bothered to give Yanagi a sidelong glance as he strode over to the place where the first fake Hatsuhiko had died. “I’ll be taking this. My thanks, Yanagi,” he said as he picked up the five million yen he’d dropped before, flaunting it in Yanagi’s face. “I turned three million yen into five million yen, and I got to watch a pathetic brat bow down and humiliate himself in the process. I’d call this an excellent way of using my money, if I say so myself!”
Neither Hatsuhiko’s taunting nor his disgustingly satisfied smile registered to Yanagi at all. He didn’t have the time for it.
Dammit... Stop... Don’t think...
Yanagi did everything he could to rein in his mental state, but it wasn’t going well. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t suppress the sense of defeat that was growing within him, and his sense of guilt still loomed large, consuming all of his other emotions. It was like a black hole in his mind, feeding off his feelings and enlarging itself in perpetuity. Nega-Yanagi’s presence in Yanagi’s mind, it seemed, would soon overwhelm his own.
“Ahah hah hah hah hah! Come on, O master of mine, get a hold of yourself! You seriously call yourself me?! I don’t remember being this much of a wuss-ass loser!”
...
Finally, Yanagi lost the willpower to even respond in the form of thought. He was simply too weak, unable to escape the pair of voices that mercilessly ridiculed him.
“Ahah hah hah!”
“Ha ha ha!”
“Ahah hah hah hah hah hah!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“Ahah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Two voices, internal and external, flanked Yanagi’s mind and battered it into submission. Their laughter was as perfectly derisive as laughter could be, and Yanagi cowered from it, trembling with his eyes shut and his hands clasped over his ears. He was like a child hiding from an imaginary ghost, unable to do anything but utter a broken scream-like groan.
In the end, against all odds, Yanagi managed to flee the building. He had put everything he had into running away, crashing into walls and tumbling down stairs, registering nothing but what was directly in front of him.
It had started to rain by the time he got outside, but Yanagi didn’t have the presence of mind to bother with an umbrella. He just ran. His running form wasn’t pretty, by any means—in fact, it wasn’t even decent. It was a downright pathetic flight, but at the very least, he managed to get away...thanks entirely to the fact that Hatsuhiko hadn’t tried to stop him. He hadn’t blocked Yanagi’s path or even attempted to pursue him. He’d just watched Yanagi leave, smirking all the while, as if to make it clear that to him, Yanagi wasn’t even worth wasting time on.
Dammit... Dammit, dammit, god fucking dammit!
As the rain pounded down on Yanagi, he turned off the main street into an alleyway, hoping to avoid any prying eyes. An inferno of shame and humiliation blazed inside him, burning away at his sense of reason. He was more exhausted than he’d ever been, and all that was keeping him going was the burning rage he felt toward Habikino Hatsuhiko.
Screw this... To hell with him! He thinks he can do this to me...? He’ll pay... Oh, will he ever pay... Dammit, god dammit!
This was a first for Yanagi. He had never been this angry before in his life. He’d danced in the palm of his opponent’s hand, had his whole lifestyle denounced, had his face ground into the floor...and after all that, Hatsuhiko hadn’t even bothered to finish him off. It would have been astonishing if Yanagi hadn’t been furious. And yet...
“Ahah hah hah hah! You’ll make him pay? You? Are you serious...? Ahah hah hah hah hah hah!”
...Nega-Yanagi reacted to his rage with a burst of elated laughter.
“Come on, since when were you the sort of person who went around declaring death-grudges? Isn’t this exactly the sorta angry outburst you’d usually complain about as being irrational? I thought you didn’t give a crap about other people? What’re you doing, getting mad like some sort of normal person?”
...
“And anyway,” Nega-Yanagi continued, “you went on and on about how apologizing to Habikino Hatsuhiko was your most efficient way of solving your problem...but there was another, even more efficient method that you came up with ages ago, wasn’t there?”
...
“Ahah hah hah hah! Don’t even bother—I’m you, remember? You can’t lie to yourself! No secrets here!”
It was true. The apology was, of course, the most efficient means available to Yanagi, in a sense—that being that it was the most efficient means available to him as an individual. If he wanted to solve the problem on his own, then that had been his easiest option.
“You should’ve just asked your pals to help!” said Nega-Yanagi. That was it. That was the one more efficient method Yanagi had managed to think up. “You could’ve broken down in tears and been all ‘I’m sowwy, I screwed up, help me, pweeease!’ at them, and they would’ve helped, easy peasy! Seriously, do you even have any idea how powerful of a group you belong to?”
Shut...the hell up. As if I...could ever do that...
In Yanagi’s mind, his so-called friends were only worth keeping around for the sake of their utility. That’s precisely why he wouldn’t hesitate for so much as a second to agree to sell out or betray them, as he’d just demonstrated with Hatsuhiko. How could a person like him rely on his allies? How could he go to them, without any sort of plan or calculation, and ask them to just help him? It was impossible, plain and simple.
Wouldn’t that be pathetic...? After all this time, how could I bow down to them and ask for help?
“Why not? ’Cause your pride won’t let you?”
...
“Ahah hah hah! Yeah, I guess that would be how it goes, huh? That’s all there is to you, in the end. You’ll bow and grovel for all you’re worth if it’s to trick someone, but if you have to be sincere about it, you can’t even make the simplest request! Ahah hah hah hah! And think about it—isn’t that sort of pride one of those things that would usually piss you off more than anything?” Nega-Yanagi pointed out with a sneering chuckle. “Look at you. You’re not rational at all! When all’s said and done, you’re just a sad little brat who gets off on looking down on people!”
...
“I guess humans really can’t ever be purely rational after all, huh? Ahah hah hah hah! That skinny-ass rich guy was right, and you—your very existence—proves it better than anything else!”
A boy who had gone to greater lengths than anyone to live in a purely rational manner was now being consumed by the flames of rage. The one clear path out of his predicament—simply asking for help—was not an option, thanks entirely to the interference of a sense of pride he thought he’d discarded long ago. Part of Yanagi was tempted to just get it over with and die already...but his instinctual attachment to life and fear of death ate into him, preventing him from doing so. The emotions that he’d believed he’d abandoned were now dominating his world. Before he knew it, he’d become what he’d detested most: a living embodiment of waste.
“So, then—what’re you gonna do next, O master of mine?”
I’ll... I’ll find him, and—
“Who, Hatsuhiko? And do what? Beat him? Why? How? Wasn’t your whole goal supposed to be dealing with me, not him?”
U-Ugh... Sh-Shut up...
“Ahah hah hah hah, seriously?! Is your goal falling apart at the seams just as badly as your personality, big shot?”
U-Uggggh...
The insults and laughter endlessly echoing within Yanagi’s skull were wearing away at him, and his psyche was beginning to creak and scream under the pressure. The repeated psychological blows he’d taken and his intense sleep deprivation were overwhelming him. He was so thoroughly cornered that it wouldn’t have been a surprise if he’d broken down entirely at any moment, and his sense of guilt hounded him still, preventing him from dealing with the cause of his anguish. All he could do was wander aimlessly through the rainy alleyways without a purpose or even the mental capacity to find one—he’d come as far from his ideal, rational lifestyle as he possibly could have.
☆
Whether the events that followed were brought about by coincidence, by the will of some almighty god, or perhaps by the gravitational force of a fallen angel, none could say.
The boss of Hearts, Habikino Hatsuhiko, had attempted to recruit two young men: Toki Shuugo and Akutagawa Yanagi. One of those two was a warrior without a cause who had been driven to pick a fight out of pure irritation. As a result, he’d sustained terrible injuries for no real purpose and had accomplished nothing to show for it. The other looked down on everyone around him and tried to conduct his life in a purely rational manner, in the hopes that it would allow him to come out on top of any situation. As a result, he’d had the tables turned on him in every way imaginable and had found himself driven to the brink of total mental collapse.
The two young men were left battered and broken, aimlessly wandering the city streets as rain poured down upon them...until their drifting came to an end when they both ran into the same pair of people: their own organization’s second-in-command, Saitou Hitomi, and its newest member and the strongest Player among them, Tanaka Umeko. The two of them had finished stalking Kiryuu Hajime and were on their way home when they just happened to cross paths with Shuugo and Yanagi.
Perhaps it was destiny at work. Or perhaps it was something else entirely...
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