Second Chances

Makoto lowers his gun.

In the end, what the Mystery Labyrinth comes down to is a moment of revelation. Yuma’s revelation. His own. He thinks Yuma must drop dead now, but he doesn’t. His eyes follow Makoto’s hand as Makoto lowers the gun, then lift again like he’s been startled by something. For a moment, they stare at each other. It’s unnerving. Is Yuma falling apart internally?

‘Why aren’t you dead?’ Makoto says.

‘Should I be?’ Yuma says. He sounds different; his voice is lower, calmer than it should be given the circumstances.

‘Yes!’ Makoto says. ‘You were meant to stay. You let me go and you were going to stay.’ No calm in his own voice. ‘You don’t remember.’

‘I do remember. Makoto. Will you take the mask off, now?’

‘You don’t remember,’ Makoto repeats.

‘When you say that … are you maybe talking about making a pact with the death god?’

Makoto nods.

‘So it worked. But I guess I must have ended the pact. Does that mean I didn’t need it anymore?’

Makoto can’t stand the steadfast eyes Yuma looks at him with.

‘We decided,’ Makoto says. ‘I’ll tell the people of Kanai Ward the truth and let them decide what to do.’ Saying it here, in the real world, Makoto wants to break down in laughter. He’s spent so long denying the possibility of ever sharing that knowledge, only to have this stubborn, idealistic shell of his original face it down and not turn away.

‘I’m glad,’ Yuma says. He takes a step forward, soft, like he’s afraid Makoto might spook. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long.’

‘Yuma –’

‘You don’t need to call me that anymore.’

‘You’re just going to let him go?’ The Yuma who chose to sacrifice himself. Who did sacrifice himself. The man who stands before him is someone else.

But someone who looks uncertain, now. ‘I don’t know. I did what I came to do. The rest is in your hands.’

It shouldn’t feel like giving up. It should be much, much harder, because Makoto is terrified of what he doesn’t know. The future.

‘Not in my hands,’ Makoto says. ‘In theirs.’

He takes off his mask.

---

Kurumi wakes up. ‘Yuma,’ she says, when he goes to her. ‘What happened?’

‘It was the sunlight,’ Yuma says. ‘When I switched off the rain machine, you were affected.’

Kurumi sits up, and she frowns at Yuma. ‘Why are you talking like that?’

‘Like what?’

But Kurumi is distracted, because she sees Makoto too. Her eyes widen and she gets her feet under her; Yuma lends her his arm as she stands up.

‘Hello, Kurumi,’ Makoto says. ‘I’ve given up. Yuma –’ the stress on the name is unavoidable ‘– knows everything now.’

Kurumi looks between the two of them. Such wide eyes she has.

‘He’s my homunculus,’ Yuma says quietly.

‘What do you mean?’ Kurumi says, and her eyes go back to Makoto. ‘Why yours?’

Clever girl.

‘I’ve remembered who I am,’ Yuma said. ‘Kurumi –’

Kurumi stops leaning on him and stands straighter.

‘I feel like I’ve tricked you,’ Yuma says, ‘and I should apologise. Kurumi, I’m not a trainee at all. I’m not even Yuma Kokohead. He’s someone else. I came here –’ He looks at Makoto now – ‘to investigate the mystery at the heart of Kanai Ward. And I found the answer.’ His voice cracks a little, there, and he sounds again like the boy in the Mystery Labyrinth, wanting to deny the truth.

Like Makoto, too.

Makoto steps forward. ‘I’m the homunculus of Number One of the WDO,’ he says, ‘and you –’ he speaks to Kurumi – ‘are the homunculus of Kurumi Wendy.’ He has to tell her because he has to tell everyone.

Perhaps he should have made her sit down first; she blinks rapidly, and sways on her feet.

‘The blood tests before the Blank Week,’ Yuma says. ‘They weren’t tests at all. They were samples. To try and produce homunculi here in Kanai Ward. They took samples from everyone.’

Yuma leads her through it. Through most of it. When he gets to the meat buns he falters, and Makoto has to take over. But that’s only right. It’s Makoto’s crime, after all.

Over and over and over again, Makoto has committed this crime. However beneficent his reasons. However much he tried to lessen the weight of it.

It’s Makoto’s crime, and he’s made Kurumi complicit. He’d made all the homunculi criminals.

But no – it was humans who made them that way in the first place.

Kurumi bears it.

---

But perhaps Yuma can’t bear to be the one who had revealed it to her, or he cannot bear that in the name of truth he too has lived a lie; he as much as Makoto has taken on a false identity.

‘I’m going to leave here,’ Yuma tells Makoto. ‘I haven’t told the others and I’d appreciate if you don’t say anything yet.’

It’s nighttime, and Yuma has come to his apartment. His coat is speckled with the rain; it slides from the hat he holds in his hands and onto Makoto’s floor.

‘I’ll keep your secret,’ Makoto says, and Yuma’s smile is bitter – is not the smile of that existence called ‘Yuma’ at all. ‘Do you know where you’ll go? Not back to the WDO.’

‘I already resigned from there,’ Yuma says, with a little laugh. ‘No, I’ll go somewhere else. Somewhere that still needs a detective.’ He draws a breath. ‘I want to help people. And, you know, I feel like I did a better job of that living as Yuma Kokohead than I did as the director. So I’m going to keep doing that.’

Makoto wants to disdain him but he can’t. He knows Yuma is sincere.

‘Alright,’ Makoto says. ‘I believe you can make a difference.’

Yuma’s smile then is a true one; to Makoto’s surprise, he leans forward and puts his arms around him, pulls him into a hug.

‘You know you’re wet,’ Makoto protests.

‘You don’t mind,’ Yuma says, his voice beneath Makoto’s ear, his arms tight.

Did Makoto ever imagine that he would meet his original, and be held by him? He’s sure that was never how he imagined things going.

But he blinks the moisture from his eyes, and he keeps his head against Yuma’s hair, and he holds him in turn.

‘Come back whenever you like,’ Makoto says. ‘There’s always a place for you.’ He’s surprised at himself for saying it. There’s a part of him that will be relieved when Yuma is gone, the part that knows he doesn’t deserve what Yuma has done for him. But the greater part knows that he only has this chance now because of what Yuma has done for him.

He really was prepared not to come back from the Mystery Labyrinth.

Yuma lets go and draws back, and he seems lighter. Probably from the rain he’s shed onto Makoto’s clothes. He’s looking forward to going, Makoto thinks, now that he’s done with Kanai Ward. A part of Makoto is envious and wants to go too.

But not now. Not yet. Kanai Ward needs him, after all.

But maybe one day it won’t need him so much. Maybe one day, Makoto Kagutsuchi can see the sun again.

‘I’m sure,’ Yuma says, ‘we’ll meet again.’

He leaves, and Makoto is alone. He makes himself a drink, and he goes to the window, to look out at the rain and the city he loves.

This time, he will do better by it.