#i like to think in other ‘verses he hung up on Ritsuka instead | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

havetheavengersdoneanythingwrong · 3 years

Text

An Interlude — The Unknown Expanse

A fearful baker lost his calendar yesterday, and a month passed—

And ever since that year went by, the coward has lost sight of everything but the false safety of ‘home.’

That decade passed without word, without sound, as the baker faded away from the world —

—until, that second later, a message from ‘someone.’

—

I lost my calendar yesterday.

Last April.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. Seconds, maybe, or hours. It could be days.

A light shines underneath the door, for a moment, and flickers off. It illuminates hardwood floor — its texture worn down over months of use, light barely showcasing whatever cracks remained after all that pacing, just before vanishing as quick as it came.

It could’ve been anyone — my parents, perhaps, or someone else entirely — but it felt the same.

It all felt the same. A grip surrounding my neck, that forced the breath out of me, its spare hand rearranging my stomach to tie itself into hundreds of knots.

Dread, wasn’t it? That was its name. That horribly, sputtering feeling, that bit into your heart and ground its teeth relentlessly until all you could think of was passing out to halt the pain.

Darkness surrounded my vision — the tunnel vision that built up, certainly, and the darkness of the place I called ‘home.’

In the shimmer of my light, someone could easily see a target of burglary — someone to steal from — through a window that wasn’t boarded up from the inside just yet.

Compared to that, the endless darkness surrounding me was preferential, if not optimal. The fear of possible insects, of beings that scuttled in the night, was nothing compared to it.

‘Aah, wouldn’t it be nice, if...’

Even in my mind, I cut myself off thinking of a better idea.

Slipping in and out of consciousness endlessly — in this darkness, time was impossible to understand. ‘Sleep’ and ‘awake’ melded into one whole, two lovers apart by circumstances now waltzing together in the haze. Only ever seeing daylight in the times I ate, it was all too easy to mistake reality for fiction, and fiction for reality.

‘...It’s better like this, isn’t it?’

Aah, for all I knew, it was reality that this was all there was — that thieves and criminals existed only in my head, and that the world outside was only an illusion made to hurt me.

Was that reality?

Was that truly reality?

...Or had my eyes closed again?

—

I was 14.

14, 13, 10, 15–

The first incident is impossible to recall in the soup of ‘happenings.’

Twenty dollars — a little dollar bill I held close to my chest, moving slowly through the Toronto streets that lay just outside my home.

The bakery, ‘Roland’s Pastries,’ lay just a stone’s toss away — a half hour walk from our home. My father’s business, one he pridefully named off his last name, and the focus of the pastime we enjoyed more than anything else.

More than even the base jumping my father enjoyed, or the parkour stunts my mother taught to a generation of gymnasts —

Was a simple pastry, made delicately and kindly, warm to the touch, to sweeten even the sourest of days.

To call it my dream to run that bakery one day would be putting it lightly. I could still remember the shimmering gaze I always directed at its structure, the way my parents joined their staff to produce the best quality they could manage. I could still remember the first loaf of bread I helped make — even though it rose poorly, and didn’t taste the best, the gleaming smiles of my family stayed with me.

Yes — today was the day I was going to buy my own baking materials. Twenty dollars wasn’t much, but I wanted to contribute something to the next loaf of cinnamon bread we made.

A man brushed past me, however.

They wore a dark green rain jacket, and a grey shirt. Black jeans, too — they were impossible to miss.

Their face was a blur — a mismatched cloud of skin-shaped vapour in my mind, only a single bloodshot eye remaining in my mind.

It stared daggers into my skull, but I hadn’t noticed.

I was going to get some cinnamon. Maybe flour.

I was going to help. I was going to make cinnamon loaf.

I was going to

I was

I couldn’t make the

The hand reached out , and the gaze of the ‘person’ said it all -

Their hand remained in their pocket, but the outline of a <hand/dagger/gun>

Their hand reached to mine, and their <hand/dagger/breath>

The weight was gone in a moment, but the front door opened, and it

—

Aah,

So that was fictional.

Certainly, it were my dreams — separated from reality only by the fact that ‘nothing’ lay instead of ‘something’ before my eyes.

Darkness — the roots of unknown, of fear — felt comforting, compared to that.

The light outside my door was turned off. Shuffling could still be heard, though — and a gentle knock at my door.

“...It’ll be your birthday soon, son. If you want to celebrate... Just let me know, alright?”

...A calm, older male voice. My father.

Aah, how it was so pleasant to hear — how someone existed who could be that kind.

It must’ve been May, then —

...

“...I’ll think about it... Thank you, pops. Really.”

“Of course. Just... Let me know what you want, okay?”

...

Aah, how it almost felt like those older times —

—

...16.

I can still remember the first muzzle I stared down.

I was working the cashier booth at our bakery. Handling money, the works.

“Just smile and do whatever the customer says,” said my father. “If they cause any trouble, just call me and I’ll be here.”

He’d pat me on the back and send me on my way, with a list of basic instructions. Just the way I liked it — after all, words in general were in one ear and out the other when it came to me. Didn’t stop my mother from trying to speak a novel to me, but I could always rely on my pops to write down some of what to do.

Of course, those days usually went well — kind customers, kids with the cutest goshdarn smiles, and admittedly a fair few free cinnamon buns given to people who needed a pick-me-up.

I remember, one day —

“He’s been too slow lately. You need to punish him a bit, or he’s just going to stagnate like this.”

“He’s doing just fine for his age. He’s taking a load off our shoulders, handling customers, so I think he’s doing well.”

“You need to teach him a better work ethic.”

“He’s doing fine enough as is.”

I did have my slow days — where, suddenly, counting dollars didn’t mesh with my mind. Where in a matter of moments, I lost my desire to keep working, and I was fighting my mind to keep moving.

And this, of course, was one such day — the line was small, albeit, but I couldn’t deny I was a bit slow on the draw.

I remember counting out around forty dollars — around four of which were due in change.

Just enough time for—

...

...I was handed a note with the change. I open it, not thinking much of it-

“Empty the register, and say nothing, and nobody will get hurt.”

A teenager at the register of a bakery. The perfect target for a silent robbery.

Nobody was behind me — nobody could see his actions. Least of all the empty line behind this man, holding no witnesses in sight.

My family, arguing in the back, had no idea of what lay beyond that thin wall.

Just me — and the muzzle of a pistol.

It wasn’t possible to forget what the inside of a gun looked like.

A dark, empty void — reflecting what it could do to me, in an instant, if my hands now stopped.

The blur of repressed memory brought the scene into a haze —

—But hours after its completion, as that ‘me’ lay in horror, sobbing, I couldn’t help but listen —

“He’s misplaced most of our earnings for today! I told you that you had to discipline him better!”

—Aah,

They hadn’t known, had they?

—

Something — to nothing.

Faint, hazy memories dissolved like a tablet into water, as I felt something on my face.

I couldn’t see it, nor understand it in full — it were there, however, placed as if to irritate me specifically.

...I’d awoken in a cold sweat. Perhaps from the chilled air surrounding me, and the weak blanket I forgot to sleep under, I found my legs quivering when I tried to stand in the darkness — groping and feeling the air around me, stumbling into my bathroom to take a sip of water from the tap.

Even this darkness, this state of mind as if I hit the supercritical point of reality and dreams, felt comforting —

—Even the horrible memories of what once was could be dismissed as dreams, even the fear that came from living like this, and the fear of abandoning everything.

Here, reality was what you made of it — what you chose.

Lapping at the lukewarm tap water, barely reaching it, unable to see it save for the small reflections in the surface of the water itself, I heard a buzz on a nearby device.

My phone — charging there, waiting for something that would never come, began to vibrate.

“...What..?”

Unlocking my smartphone, I was met with a familiar image as my home screen —

—a young ‘me,’ eyes shining with delight, holding a loaf of cinnamon bread with utter care while grinning in pride.

“The only one who could take that was...”

...My phone began to ring.

A phone number I didn’t know — only one number off from mine, I realized. Out of curiosity, or perhaps loneliness, I placed my finger on the ‘accept’ button.

“Hey! I don’t know who you are, but we’re textdoor neighbours! Thought I’d say hello.”

...

“...Who are you..?”

“Uh, Ritsuka. Ritsuka Fujimaru. If it helps, I was the person who bingeplayed tekken and ate curdled yoghurt for superchats.”

“...”

...Had that much changed? How long had it been..?

“...Tell me more.”

—Somehow, it felt wrong to continue.

As if, by saying those three words, I was changing something that should have never been changed.

And yet — as my finger hovered over the button to hang up, the words fell out of my mouth instead.

Within the fear that lay in revealing who I was to a stranger —

—somehow, I felt as if this person was worth meeting.

Somehow, I felt as if something would change if I said something.

Something better would happen —

—surely, better than this.

#fgo #mastersona #gudasona #cadenceloreposting #l o r e #cadangst #like a reverse where are they now #where the fuck was he before??#now ye know #i like to think in other ‘verses he hung up on Ritsuka instead

2 notes · View notes