An Exploding Ally XLIII

The time was doing all right—if by "all right" you meant "firmly sinking with both engines aflame."

Hiroki sat rigid as rebar, holding his orange soda like it could defuse the bomb that was this conversation. Sayaka smiled sweetly across the table, her iced latte untouched, her face serene but watchful. The tension between them had become a third person—telling, uncomfortable, and very much there.

"Ah…" Sayaka said at last, her head cocked slightly to one side, "You're… quite strong." She let out a tiny, laughing sound. "Do you work out?"

Hiroki's gaze skittered about like a trapped mouse. Shit. She's speaking. Panic. Abort. ABORT.

He clicked the nonexistent comm piece. "Aniki, I require support. She's going verbal."

Four tables down, Shotaro dipped his newspaper an inch, chewing methodically on a fry. "Tatsumi," he muttered, hardly looking up, "what kind of guys is your friend into?"

Tatsumi licked whipped cream from her thumb. "Honest ones. Always tells me so."

Shotaro released a sigh. "Okay, Hiroki. Just be honest. Like, painfully honest. You've got this."

"Copy."

At the table, Hiroki swallowed. "Yeah, I do. I've been going to the gym now that school's out for summer."

Sayaka laughed. "Oh, I'm a fan of gym-holics. That's sexy." She drank some of her latte. "So, what did you do yesterday?"

Hiroki, thinking of the advice, answered with no hesitation:

"Masturbate."

Shotaro's voice erupted through the comms

"YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO BE THAT HONEST, YOU ACTUAL RETARD!!!"

Sayaka froze in mid-sip. Blinked once. Twice.

"Ah—ah, what happened in the gym yesterday?"

A moment of pure silence.

Four tables away—RRRIP.

Shotaro's newspaper was torn in two from the force of his forehead against his palm.

Tatsumi gagged on her waffle cone. "OH MY GOD, DID HE JUST—"

"YES," growled Shotaro. "He FUCKED UP."

Hiroki was back at the table, looking as if someone had unplugged his soul. Sayaka looked at him—not repulsed. Not angry. Just… confused. Deeply. Existentially.

"I—I did squat too," he stammered, voice shaking. "Deadlifts. Chest press. You know."

Sayaka nodded hesitantly. "That's a dedication. Leg day is serious."

"…Yeah," he mumbled. "Three sets of calves. Four for thighs."

Hiroki's fingers drummed his comm once more, desperation edging into his voice. "Aniki, help. What do I do now? I'm losing brain cells."

Shotaro spoon-fed Tatsumi without looking up, answering in a lazy mumble. "Pspsps. Tatsumi. New read, please."

Tatsumi scrolled on her phone, not even swallowing before speaking. "She likes nonchalant boys."

Shotaro narrowed his eyes. "What the fuck was that?"

"Boys who don't care," Tatsumi replied, licking her spoon like she'd betrayed the country.

Shotaro leaned into the mic. "Hiroki. New plan. Stop caring. Go dead inside. Be loose. Be… nice."

"Roger that, Aniki," Hiroki whispered, bobbing up and down as if he'd been conditioned.

Sayaka smiled and opened her phone, extending it to him. A photo of a Shiba Inu in a miniature straw hat filled the screen. "That's my dog, Mochi. Isn't he cute?"

Hiroki hardly looked at the photo. 

Then, with hesitant deliberation, he pushed her hand away as if it were a bad Craigslist bargain.

"I do NOT give a shit," he said to her, his mask of stone.

"About stupid. Fucking. Mutts."

And he lay back, arms crossed over his head, breathing as if he'd just signed the Treaty of World Peace.

Sayaka blinked slowly, as if her brain was buffering. Her voice dropped into something cold and quiet. "Excuse me?"

The table next to them froze mid-bite.

Somewhere across the street, even the Archangel Michael ceased fidgeting with his sword and blinked.

Four tables away, Shotaro's spoon slid from his grasp and plopped into his sundae with a pitiful little splat. His mouth dropped open in a round, soundless gasp. Next to him, Tatsumi wheezed so hard through her straw that it whistled.

Across the café, a waitress called out brightly, "Boiling hot, sizzling coffee?"

A man lifted his hand with a grin. "That's me—"

Before he could even blink, Shotaro stood up as if a spirit were departing a body. He strode over, eyes empty with disillusionment, grabbed the coffee from the man's hand, stuffed some yen into his hand like bribe money, and grunted, "Thanks."

And then—

Without wincing, he poured the whole cup of hot coffee on his own face.

The café exploded.

Steam roared from his flesh. A dreadful sizzling sound resonated. The man shrieked, "WHAT THE HELL—WHY DID YOU—?!"

Shotaro winced through the agony, utterly dead within. "Wow," he said, his voice deadpan.

"Being boiled alive certainly hurts less than listening to this crap,"

He hobbled back to his chair, face steam-covered, grasping the comm again.

"You didn't need to go THAT far, fool," he spat. "Try to show some interest, not a psychotic episode."

Returning to the table, Hiroki nodded.

And then immediately, to an extreme, overdid it.

"AWWWWWWWW!!" he screamed like a kindergarten teacher on ketamine. "SUCH A CUTE DOGGO!!" He grabbed Sayaka's phone. "LOOK AT THIS ROLLIE POLLIE BOY! WHO WANTS KISSIES? WHO WANTS A BELLY WELLY WUB?! I COULD EAT THIS GUY UP—AND I'M NOT EVEN CHINESE!"

Sayaka backed away like she'd just been assaulted by a hallucination.

Across the café, Shotaro leaned forward and softly placed his forehead against the table.

He didn't stir.

He didn't say anything.

He just sat there, his face reddened from coffee and his vitality drained.

"Perhaps.perhaps the best thing to do would be for me to utterly destroy the whole galaxy," Shotaro thought to himself in quiet contemplation.

.....

The rain at last had stopped, but the streets of Musashi no Yamato continued to sparkle with an unearthly glow, like the flesh of a half-living, half-breathing creature. All the neon signs glowed and reflected off the rain-kissed pavement, creating a dazzling effect that refracted and multiplied the lights—a city trapped in a beautiful illusion of its own colorful existence. Amidst the discordant symphony of sound from vending machines, the clinking of bike chains, and salarymen speaking softly into their phones, Fatiba Darvish instinctively wrapped her coat more closely around herself, finding warmth and solace in the packed energy.

This city is too tidy," she grumbled to herself.

"Mm," Amaya said slowly, her voice with a hint of skepticism. Her boots landed with determination and no hesitation in the puddles. "Clean's just an easy lie. It only means that the dirt has been scraped down and buried even further."

Fatiba's breath fogged. "You ever wonder if we're the only ones who can smell it?

Ikol, sitting atop a rusty streetlamp above, croaked with laughter. "Ah, the poets begin."

They moved fast. Purpose turned their walk into a hunt. The Labyrinth had flared here—Amaya had felt it in her spine like a piano wire snapping. Fatiba had seen it—just for a second—in the faces of men turning wolf, in the glass curling at the corners of windows, in the way the vending machine across the street had dispensed five cans of iced coffee with only one coin. That wasn't economy. That was fracture.

They turned onto an old street—one of those narrow, quiet ones that no GPS wanted to know. It was sloping downward, too steep, like an incomplete apology. Laundry was rigid on strings. No wind. The overhead power wires hummed with static that vibrated in Fatiba's teeth.

This is our time," Amaya declared authoritatively. "It all starts here.".

Why would you know it?" Fatiba inquired.

Amaya gestured—not in the direction of the others, but to her own shadow. It writhed in the dirt, unlike her. It throbbed.

Ikol dived down and shifted in mid-air—a flutter of wings coalescing into a lanky boy in a crow-feather coat, his hair frizzy as burnt wires, his eyes the hue of late nights and final warnings. "If the Labyrinth's near," he grumbled, sniffing, "then reality's going soft. You can warp it with mood. With memory.

Fatiba stepped back. "And if I don't want to bend something?"

"Then it'll bend you."

They entered oblivious. No flags. No gates. Just the instant when the city's noise fell—there was no quiet, just absence. Trains continued to run. Horns continued to blow. But the whole of it was muffled, as if someone had put cotton in their ears.

The color faded away gradually. Walls went gray. Street signs lost their labels. The language removed from shop signs. A cat in a window blinked and vanished between blinks.

Fatiba whirled. The street behind was gone. There was only hallway. Broken stone. A rusty gate that hadn't been there ten seconds ago. And above it, in something that faintly glowed gold:

"All truths, no matter what they are, are eventually lies you've buried too deep inside yourself."

What the hell." she gasped.

Amaya did not say a word. Her fists were clenched. She was already remembering things she had not remembered in years. Her uncle crying in the bath. Her mother's look when she learned that her father was dead. A schoolgirl's face she once shouted at because she wore a lighter-coloured lipstick. All the things that she had told herself she had buried deep within her were drumming. Ikol's voice changed now. Smooth. Older. "Do not lie here. Not even to yourselves. The Labyrinth isn't made of stone—it's made of the versions of you that could've been.".

"So what are we looking for here, then?" Fatiba asked, her chest constricting.

Amaya stared at her with such force, and in an instant, her voice became soft and gentle. "Whatever it is that is hurting this place. Whatever it is that is hurting you."

The walls moved. The hallway stretched. There was an altar to their left—glowing, half-glitched, constructed of weathered wood and tainted memory. Pictures pinned to it alternated between family snaps and crime scene shots. Fatiba had turned too late. She had seen her father. He had no eyes.

Not a bit," she exhaled quietly.

The corridor in front of me creaked. Noise seeped from nowhere. Shouts. Laughter. Footfalls that were too big. Too quick.

Then: a mirror.

At the middle of the corridor, standing at a wrong—angled position not to reflect but to refract.

Ikol stiffened. "Oh. We're at the eye."

Fatiba did not ask them what they meant. She was rather totally engrossed watching her own face twist and contract in a peculiar way.

In the mirror, her hijab was transformed into black smoke. Violence flashed in her eyes. Her hands held something—metal. Gun? Sword? Bomb?

"I am not this." she exclaimed aloud, trembling with terror.

No," replied the mirror, its voice ringing out clearly. It was unmistakably her voice.

But it is extremely probable that I am.

She moved back.

Amaya went forward rather.

The mirror held her eyes, too, as if with life. But it did not lie to her in the least. It revealed to her the face of her mother, unmistakably present. It revealed the welts she had never had the guts to acknowledge as her own. It revealed her lip trembling uncontrollably, and in that moment, it screamed the words she had sworn she never uttered. Then—

A child. With eyes. She's crying.

I'll never be that woman," Amaya said resolutely.

But you do, replied the mirror in a gentle yet firm voice.

Ikol leapt out and clamped onto her shoulder tightly but unrelentingly. "Don't fight the reflection," he told her sternly. "That's not how this whole process works."

Then how?" she wailed, her voice cracking.

"You walk through."

She did.

Glass broke—not outward, but inward. The mirror devoured itself in silence. A breathless, sucking implosion. And on the other side: the city once more.

But changed.

Flickering slightly. As if an image is being loaded.

Fatiba fell after that. Crossing, the feeling was like something of herself fell off. Not her coat. Not her scarf. But something within. A vision. A guilt. A future she no longer needed.

They remained entirely motionless, on the opposite side of the visible break.

Amaya let out a breath. "One layer down."

Ikol brushed his already thinning coat straight. "Still many more to go."

Fatiba gazed up at the sky. It had darkened now. Not with clouds. But with depth. As if the heavens had been stretched higher, and above what lay above was not sky—but questions.

She leaned closer and whispered softly, "What is this place, really? I'm so curious to know."

Amaya replied without looking around. "Hell's paradise."