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Benny woke up beneath a bus stop and knew something was very wrong.
It wasn't the torrential rain hammering down from above, causing rivers of water to fall from the shelter's flimsy roof. It wasn't the biting chill of the midnight air in the middle of winter. Nor was it the fact that a ten year old boy was sleeping alone, outside, in those aforementioned conditions.
Shivering from the cold, Benny sat himself upright. He felt sick to the stomach. Well, perhaps 'sick' was misleading; the word implied a disease that can be treated and cured. The boy intimately knew that there was no way to fix what had happened a few hours prior.
Pain wracked his body. Benny was fairly sure he was still bleeding in places better left unsaid. He remembered now: he was running away from home. The mere thought of that wretched place – those wretched people – only intensified the disgust he felt in his every bone. No. He won't go back. He would sooner die than go back.
But if he wasn't going back, that meant going forwards. Forwards into the outside world, laid bare to the elements with little hope for those few comforts he once held dear. No more treats. No more toys. He had to survive.
Let's say he did. Say that through some miracle, the starving, traumatised, broken boy named Benny clawed his way through life and carried on. What then? What laid at the end of the tunnel? The more he lingered on that question, the clearer his fate became in his eyes. Benny would live his entire life bearing invisible scars that would never heal. The disgust settled in his bones wouldn't go away; rather, it would pool up, fester, coagulate at the bottom of his heart and seep through his every fibre like poison. Is that what he wanted?
If there was a silver lining, it couldn't be seen in the dark.
Benny held his knees close to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut. In truth, he wanted to go back to sleep. He didn't want to think about anything. He didn't want to go back. He didn't want to live. A thick, putrid fog loomed in his mind, but there was one thought at the centre of it all.
I don't want to remember.
His heart felt sour. His lungs felt heavy. Benny buried his head in his knees and heaved a dry sob, his tears having long since ran out. He just wanted to forget. He wanted to stuff this rancid memory into the deepest recesses of his mind and never touch it again. For that matter, he didn't want to remember anything about that house. There was nothing for him there – nothing more than a morass of dusty neglected memories better left untouched.
The boy wished to wipe the slate clean. Start over. Benny closed his eyes when he heard the click of a basement door.
When Benny next opened his eyes, he felt two things. The first was an inexplicable sense of relief, like he released a breath he'd been holding for hours.
The second thing he felt was confusion at his sudden lack of parents.
Two people came for him in the otherwise uneventful night. Strangers, a dishevelled man and woman who wore faces marked with tears, approached the boy like he was the most fragile thing in the world. Benny took one look at them, at their broken expressions and bloodshot eyes, and ran.
Benny did not stop running until morning came, and with it, exhaustion. His feet were aching, his legs alight with burning pain. Only when he collapsed by the sidewalk did he have a few precious seconds to ponder. First and foremost in his mind: why did he run? Strangers were dangerous, he was told as much by the few adults in his life, but that failed to explain the way his body reflexively twisted with fear and disgust. Even thinking on their faces was enough to fill his heart with a sickeningly familiar nausea. The only other people who made him feel that way were-
The boy started.
Benny didn't know who his parents were. That fact held true for as far back as he could remember. But as his thoughts dwelled on the space where that memory ought to be, he saw in the corner of his mind's eye a note, hastily written in his own mental handwriting. Forget them , it seemed to say. Benny looked back at his then overblown reaction and realised two things.
One: Benny had parents who he deemed better forgotten.
Two: Somehow, Benny's memory of said parents were gone.
As those two thoughts crystallised into facts, relief set in. The fog of confusion dissolved, leaving in his mind the sight of a blank room, newly cleaned. In clear view too were the stairs leading down to the basement, and the ladder leading up to the attic.
This place was his and his alone. It was his sanctuary, untouched by the mundane miseries of life. The living room was plain, but would be furnished by new memories day by day. Any item that felt uncomfortable to keep could be thrown in the basement, just like last night.
With his thoughts set straight, Benny dragged himself back to the seen world, where he was confronted with the more practical issue of finding a caretaker.
The orphanage was… adequate. The food could definitely be much worse, the atmosphere was friendly enough, the rooms were heated and the blankets were warm. On paper, there would be no better place to spend his childhood.
The people complicated things.
Not the caretakers, mind – they were as patient and calm as could be expected of them – but the children. They had a penchant for mischief and chaos, they cried all too often, and they were by all accounts unpleasant to be around. The little tolerance he held for them was frayed in a matter of days – and, indeed, the feeling seemed to be mutual. The other children grew to dislike the strange boy who never talked and always glared.
Not all was lost, though. One slow and heavy afternoon, when Benny was hoping to be anywhere other than this room full of imps that stole his food and flung around insults, he remembered that he could forget.
So he did. Benny scoffed down his porridge a touch too quickly to be inconspicuous, stood up, walked out the door, and closed his eyes. A few uncounted seconds later, he felt just a little more at peace with the sudden gap in his memory.
Thus, this song and dance repeated. Countless memories visited his mind, day by day. Most were given a short, critical appraisal before being consigned to the depths of the basement. Only a scant few pieces, sufficiently spotless and harmless, were allowed a place in his sanctuary. Benny took great lengths, after all, to purge the living room of his past's entrails, so it was his duty now to keep it clean. Keep everything tidy. Keep everything sane.
This routine met a hitch when a black-haired boy entered his life.
Benny had seen him before, but here in the courtyard was the first time they had spoken, more out of boredom than anything else. The boy was wiry, a little shorter and a little thinner, his voice polite and his mannerisms placid. Benny was not alone in his want for solitude, he learned. Slowly, surely, the pair spoke more, at first about mundanities – food, friends, hobbies, favourite toys. Soon though, as the conversations grew in frequency over the weeks and as Benny and the boy's tones grew more animated, the topics shifted. Where did they want to go after the orphanage? How many stars are there? What happens when we die?
The boy, Benny found, had a striking penchant for making life interesting. There wasn't a single dull second that passed in his presence. Well, the same could be said for the other children, but where they were infuriating, he was enrapturing. For the first time, Benny enjoyed the company of another person. Craved it, even. The boy swiftly took centre stage in his mind. Benny had heard the word 'friend' thrown around by the children before, but didn't know until now what it truly meant.
It was three weeks later when Benny learned that up precipitated down.
The boy was leaving. A family was found for him, so bags were packed and goodbyes were had. Benny didn't think much of it at the time; sure, they'd meet less often, but they'd keep in touch. The boy even agreed, said not to worry, said they'd meet and talk again. Not a week later, he received the news that the boy's family was leaving the country.
It wasn't until he lost this company forever that he realised just how lonely he was. One less person attended dinner every day, taking the seat to his left. One less precious friend was there with whom to idle away the hours in contented silence. In the end, the boy did naught but leave a boy-shaped hole in Benny's life, and the wheel of time carved it into a boy-shaped scar. The fresh pain of loss would grow dull, but he knew well it would not leave. It would never leave.
Which was why, one evening in the courtyard, Benny closed his eyes. The boy that once graced his mind did not deserve to rot with the undesired in the basement, so it was relegated to the attic, locked away so that none may besmirch the memory.
Benny was at peace. The grief was gone, never having existed in the first place. He figured the inexplicable twinges of guilt and emptiness left in his chest were a small price to pay.
The sky was spotless. There were no clouds, so there were no silver linings.
Four months had passed since Benny's last day at the orphanage, by his estimation. Judging by the tally mark on his notebook's cover, the family he was being taken to now was his ninth.
By virtue of the four-month-long gap in his memory, he could reason enough. Something went wrong with the previous eight. That his past self, weighed as he was with the burden of memory, didn't record anything about those eight families in the notebook told him clearly that they were better forgotten.
If anything, the last four months taught Benny that most things in life were better forgotten. No matter where he walked, chaos reared its ugly, omnipresent head. No matter how many times he shut his eyes to the world, the misery of life would be there when he opened them, staring him in the face. Even the few precious moments approximating joy morphed into sobering reminders of what was and could've been, for joy was unlike misery in that it did not last forever.
Thus, the boy named Benny stared out the car window with hollow eyes and a blank face. He wasn't even sure where he was, or where he was being taken; for all he knew he was on the other side of the world from that orphanage. He stared at the raindrops, snaking down the glass in haphazard, unpredictable patterns. In what should've been a moment of reflection, he did not ponder anything, for the boy who spent his life shutting his eyes to the past found he could no longer see anything to ponder. This was how he lived: a blank slate of a person who moved forward only because the river of time carried him so. The living room became an empty box.
'We're here, Benny.' The driver's words brought Benny out of his lull. This black-haired woman was his mother now, he understood. He inspected this person: braided hair not unlike ink in its complexion, pale skin almost stark white, modest and rather unassuming in stature and expression. Those few attributes floated in his mind for a scant few seconds before he shook his head. There's probably going to be a problem with this one too. Why commit it to memory?
Meanwhile, his body went through the motions, stepping out of the car and onto the wet sidewalk. It was still raining, and he did not care. His legs carried him towards the house (his house now, he had to remind himself): a modern looking thing, porcelain white and ink black in equal measure, all sharp edges and perpendicular angles. For the second time, Benny questioned why his mind lent this unremarkable detail such scrutiny.
The woman, his mother, didn't speak. Not until Benny was standing before the front door – which, it should be mentioned, lacked a handle.
'Truth be told Benny, I don't live here much. My son prefers to be alone in his work.'
So he has a brother. Great. Benny idly wondered how many insufferable siblings were locked in the basement.
'And to further tell you the truth, I didn't take you in because I desired a second son. I took you in because he desperately needs someone to be with.'
For a moment, Benny seriously considered closing his eyes right then and there and walking in the opposite direction of this house.
The tone of the mother's next words, however, gave him pause. There was a fragile sincerity to her words, pity and sorrow and hopefulness all mixing together and spilling from her mouth.
'All this isolation isn't healthy for him, even if he insists that he's too busy for friends. If nothing else, I ask that you make his life a little less lonely. It doesn't have to be much; just the presence of another person would be enough to improve his mood. And do try to tolerate his… eccentricities. He's a caring person under that placid exterior, I promise.'
Standing before the door, Benny went through his options. If he was expected to pull this person out of his isolation, he was neither capable nor willing. But the more he thought it through, the more apparent it became that running away wouldn't solve anything either. One tally mark would be added to his notebook, and Benny will continue to drift. To run here would be to swim against the current. It scarcely mattered anyway; in a few days or weeks, he'll go back to drifting no matter what he does. Might as well pick the path of least resistance.
Benny told himself that, but his heart knew otherwise.
There was a hauntingly familiar sourness in his heart that he tried his damndest not to acknowledge. Something in the mother's tone, the sharpness of the house before him, the inklike texture of the hair: they all managed to tug on heartstrings long forgotten. Benny didn't know why, but he felt in this house the glimmerings of an idea he thought he discarded long ago: hope.
And so Benny gave a wordless nod to the mother while rapping his fist on the monolithic black door. Perhaps he was wrong about this, perhaps not, but still he held onto that ever so fragile shard of hope and drew it close.
Hope for what? He didn't know. And as he just now started to realise how empty the last four months were, he didn't care.
It took four days for Tsubakura Enraku to speak to his newfound sibling.
It happened on one slow and heavy afternoon, when the two of them found themselves eating dinner at the same time, seemingly out of sheer coincidence. They settled down to eat and quickly finished their porridge. A silence filled the air that was neither unnerving nor comfortable; rather, it could simply be described as the absence of sound.
Tsubakura, seated to his left, broke that silence with a question.
'Where are you from?'
Benny blinked. He grew accustomed to the black-haired boy's reservedness – comfortable, even – so hearing words pour from his mouth managed to startle him much more than it should've.
'... An orphanage,' Benny managed to answer. After spending so long without uttering a single sound, the mere act of pushing words up his throat felt foreign.
'Which one?' Tsubakura's voice may have been listless, but there was something to be said about how quickly he answered, as if he anticipated that reply.
Benny exhaled. 'I don't remember.'
It was the truth.
He glanced sidelong at Tsubakura, catching the latter's brow knit in contemplation before he closed his eyes with a simple 'I see.' Internally, Benny breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that this one didn't press the subject further.
A few more idle seconds passed. The birds outside were chirping.
'You're a very idle person, Benny.'
A nod.
'You don't feel unsatisfied at all? Like you could be doing something more interesting?'
A pause, then a shake of the head.
For the first time, Benny saw a grin touch Tsubakura's face. It was more of a smirk than a smile, but it was something.
'If it's monotony you're after, then I've got a job for you.' Tsubakura stood up and walked towards a corridor. Benny followed, for there wasn't much else to do.
'I need an extra pair of hands for my next experiment. That's all.'
Experiment? That would certainly explain why Tsubakura was holed up so frequently in his room. Benny's days were already starting to grow numb anyhow, so he gave a shrug and continued to follow him. If nothing else, it was something to pass the time.
Benny entered after Tsubakura into a stark white room. The spotless counters were neatly lined with beakers, tubes, and machines whose function he could only guess. Tsubakura wasted no time, fishing for one of the many sheafs of paper splayed out across the table and inspecting it.
'5 grams of sodium thiopental.' Tsubakura said that to seemingly no-one as he continued to mill about the lab, flipping switches and making space on the counters, before he stopped and turned to Benny. 'Ah, I meant that you should fetch me 5 grams of sodium thiopental. You can read, right?'
Benny stared for a second, then gave a nod. It was a fair question, he supposed.
'You'll find it in the top right cupboard. Use the digital scales there to measure it out, to three significant figures if you can.' Tsubakura didn't even bother turning around as he continued gathering reagents and preparing the counter.
Sure enough, there it was: a fine white powder in a labelled glass vial. Benny wasn't sure what a 'significant figure' was, but he took the scale and measured it out as closely as he could manage. He walked over to the black-haired boy, powder sitting precariously atop a spatula, and waited. By now, Tsubakura was already occupied by a bubbling solution over the flame of a bunsen.
Tsubakura glanced at Benny, and his eyebrow raised at seeing the spatula. 'You carried the thiopental all the way from that cupboard? You could've dropped it, you know.' After no response came from the brown-haired boy, he sighed and continued. 'Dump it into the solution.'
Benny did so. A hiss sounded from the beaker as the powder dissolved almost instantly.
'Good. Now, 10 grams of magnesium oxide and 5 millilitres of potassium dichromate. That latter one's a liquid, so use a measuring cylinder.' Tsubakura motioned with his head towards a half-open drawer. 'And bring the reactants here before measuring them out. Don't want any spills here.'
The sky outside the window turned from vivid orange to a cool navy blue as the hours faded away. Periodically, Tsubakura would call for a reagent and an amount, and Benny would fetch it for him. Perhaps this kind of monotony was exactly what he needed. With nothing but the bubbling of solutions and the hiss of bunsens to accompany them, the young scientist and his newfound assistant worked away into the night. A quiet contentment filled the room.
At one point in the night, when Tsubakura was especially occupied with some fragile-looking glass apparatus, Benny spared a glance at his face and caught him smiling. Not a smirk from before, but a genuine, silent smile.
As heartstrings tugged inside his chest, Benny couldn't help but smile too.
Eight months had passed. A lot changed.
For one, Benny talked a lot more.
'Have you considered lowering the voltage? These electronics are fragile.' Benny, now in a plain white lab coat, glanced at Tsubakura while he soldered a wire into place.
'Nothing to worry about. They just look fragile.' Tsubakura's answer was lax and confident as usual while he plugged in a power supply and flicked a multitude of switches. 'This stuff's rated for 150 volts, and on the slim chance it blows, we can ask for a refund.'
'I wouldn't mind getting those one thousand dollars back if it does break.'
Benny also learned much more about Tsubakura in their time together. He learned of the latter's prodigious genius in all things scientific, so much so that he gained the attention of many a wealthy client seeking to have their ideas realised and tested. This, of course, meant the young scientist was kept busy around the clock, so perhaps there was a kernel of truth to the notion of being 'too busy for friends'. The pay was good, at the very least, and Tsubakura seemed satisfied enough.
Which led to another aspect of him that Benny found fascinating: he was always satisfied. The boy harboured no doubts, no second thoughts about anything he did. He always moved forward with a quiet, invulnerable pride, assured of his inevitable success. Benny, lost as he was for as long as he could remember, felt two parts admiration to one part jealousy whenever he looked at the prodigy.
'Or we could ask Kuroji.' Tsubakura flicked one final switch and the circuit before them hummed to life. 'God knows where she gets her money or how much blood it's soaked in, but I'm sure we could fetch a grand or two from her – if we can convince her that we need it more.'
Benny also had the liberty of meeting Tsubakura's friends. The term was used loosely, since he didn't maintain very frequent contact with most of them in recent times, but for one reason or another Tsubakura made an effort to reach out and socialise ever since Benny became his assistant.
They were amicable enough, most of them. The three Shitodo siblings seemed like a ruckus at first – indeed, each was more chaotic than the last – but Aoji and Hooaka were just teenagers wanting to have some fun, at the end of the day. Kuroji didn't fit that description in the slightest, but she was an exception to all but a few rules, so it came as no surprise.
Clause, meanwhile, took the definition of 'friend' and stretched it to its absolute limit. They were a nuisance, plain and simple, yet everyone seemed to barely tolerate their presence instead of cutting ties. Perhaps their personality was so dense it created its own gravitational field. Perhaps it was just nice to have someone around who could be the butt of the joke, and seemingly okay with it.
One person complicated things: the silver-haired boy named Yabusame Houlen.
He seemed harmless enough. Yabusame proved to be so bizarrely airheaded that Benny thought he could float away into the sky at any moment. To think there was enough space in his brain to hold animosity of any kind was out of the question. In the scant few moments when they were alone, however, he felt the silver-haired boy staring holes into him. Benny was not an easily shaken person, but he was still unnerved at the sight of those eyes, which seemed like they could see every wrinkle, facet and corner of his mind. Not once did Benny feel he could hide anything away while Yabusame was around, and he couldn't help but ponder on those mountains of discarded memories.
He would've done away with that memory too, had he not discovered the last thing of note.
One afternoon, while Benny was catching some fresh air, he spotted something in some dark alleyway that he would definitely rather forget, so he did exactly that. Several long minutes and one splitting headache later, the memory was gone.
It wasn't meant to take this long, nor be this painful.
As the months ticked by, Benny found it harder and harder to erase his own memories. Pushing one out of his mind now required more concentration than ever. On paper, this made sense. Benny always knew he wasn't erasing memories so much as moving them, and he knew there was only so much space in his mind. How he managed to fill it to the brim so quickly, he knew not.
That wasn't why Benny was worried. When the night was quiet and he laid alone in his bed, he was sometimes jolted awake by a sudden pressure in his head. Where the migraines from memory erasure threatened to tear his mind asunder, this pressure felt like the opposite: like something was trying to compress it and crush it to a single point. When these episodes were especially severe, Benny swore he could feel thoughts in his mind that were… foreign. Half-formed, incoherent things composed only of base emotions like joy and misery, but thoughts nonetheless. Thoughts that weren't his.
How long had he been using this ability such that it already reached a breaking point? How unfathomably massive did those swathes of unwanted engrammatic matter have to be to press in on the walls of his mind? What was even happening with those memories? Were they fading? Festering?
Was Benny really alone in his sanctuary of mind?
'Benny? Hello?'
Tsubakura's hand waving in front of his face brought him back from his stupor. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts as best he could.
'I was lost in thought. Let's continue.'
At any rate, there was no use being concerned about far-flung possibilities now. Besides, there really was no need to forget much in recent times, as Benny found himself taking each day in stride. Day in and day out, he went to work assisting the scientist in contented silence. Tsubakura, once the subject of Benny's greatest apprehensions, turned out to be a rare constant in a chaotic, ever-changing world. When the reclusive boy did talk, Benny found himself seeing it as a welcome change of pace rather than a troublesome distraction to his solace.
There was a comfort in Tsubakura's words as he mused about their future plans, or the number of stars in the observable universe, or the prevailing theories about the afterlife.
Some things never change. Some things never should.
The Geiger counter crackled.
Benny voiced his concern as he stared at a silvery pellet of uranium held in his tweezers. 'Are you sure we'll be alright?'
He heard Tsubakura smirk. 'It's been nearly a week since I've inoculated your body to radiation. Relax.'
'Right.' Benny knew he was worrying over nothing. Tsubakura's extensive modifications he made to both of their bodies saw to it that they wouldn't be harmed, even soaked as they are in radiation. Still, staring at that many pellets of acutely radioactive material in front of him without wearing so much as a lab coat was unnerving, even for him. The sound of the Geiger counter, its clicks turning to distorted screeches whenever a pellet was brought close, certainly didn't help.
Benny glanced sidelong at Tsubakura. Predictably, he didn't show an ounce of concern. He wagered the scientist's mind was too occupied by the myriad of machines dominating the lab, each more bulky and more complex than the last. That thought was entertained for a few moments before Benny cleared with a shake of his head. This was the first time Tsubakura could afford time to pursue his own passion projects, rather than following the whims of clients. Of course he wouldn't be worried.
He still questioned why creating a miniature nuclear warhead was at the forefront of his goals. Tsubakura wasn't exactly known for complying to safety standards, he supposed.
Nor did he particularly care whose hands this most-definitely-illegal weapon landed in. 'It's the journey, not the destination,' he had mused to Benny when he broached the topic. 'Think of it as an intellectual challenge, or a particularly tantalising maths problem.' It wasn't until Benny saw the uncanny glimmer in Tsubakura's eyes that he realised what he meant.
Up until now, Tsubakura was content, but listless. The happiness he experienced was sterile and unchanging. It was too neat, too orderly, and Benny wagered the young scientist had gotten a little sick of it. He needed reinvigoration. Tsubakura pursued this project precisely because of the mountains of risk involved, not in spite of it. It presented the perfect opportunity for him to step outside the gilded cage in which he was confined for so long.
Benny himself wanted nothing more than a gilded cage to protect him from that very chaos, but Tsubakura was his friend and technically his superior, so he was carried along by the currents of social obligation and workplace hierarchy to make like his job title and assist the scientist in his wishes.
So that he did. They had begun early in the morning, when the sun was but a sliver of light peeking from the horizon. Tsubakura laid over the table scores and scores of schematics, instructions detailed to exacting specification, and timetables highlighting the timing of steps down to the millisecond. If all went according to schedule, the project could be finished and the lab cleared before the day was over. Benny had raised an eyebrow – he was under the impression that Tsubakura would adopt his usual laissez-faire attitude towards planning. He was serious about this.
Morning turned to midday. The weather outside was still and cloudless as the two worked away. Checklists were filled, casings were welded together. The crackling of the Geiger counter became a constant companion to their work. Midday turned to evening as the centrifuge spun up and became a blur, its electronic whine growing to a piercing volume. In the few moments where Benny stole a glance at Tsubakura, he found the latter practically flying across the room, never letting an idle moment slip by. For the first time, he felt exude from the scientist a sense of… 'excitement' wasn't quite accurate, but in the moment he found no better word to describe it. Despite himself, seeing the placid boy well and truly lost in his joy managed to tug the corners of his mouth a touch upwards.
Evening turned to night. The warm light of the sun was replaced with the cold, hissing luminance of electronic lamps. There wasn't much to do now. The components were made, the uranium sufficiently enriched. The only step left was the deceptively simple task of slotting them together: not easy, by any stretch of the imagination, but straightforward. A choir of birdsong from outside joined the Geiger counter in the ever-present ambience filling the lab.
Tsubakura finally collapsed into his chair. Before him, lying upright on the table, was a squat metallic cylinder, unassuming and plain at first blush. Printing the warnings and labels could wait until tomorrow morning.
'It is done.' Benny, still standing upright with his hands clasped behind him, looked down at the boy.
'It is done.' Tsubakura parroted his words, his voice thin and well-worn, yet carrying an almost exuberant tone of sheer satisfaction and finality. Everything went according to schedule; they even managed to get the heavier machinery hauled away into the basement before the day was out.
A question simmered at the back of Benny's mind – and, as was increasingly common for the once-silent boy, he pushed it to his mouth and voiced it aloud.
'Are you happy?'
Benny didn't know much of happiness, but he knew it was dangerously intoxicating. In its incandescent glory, it blinded its bearers to reason and worldly matters. It made people drunk. Nowhere was this made more apparent than in Tsubakura's answer to that question.
His answer was instant, his smile wide. For the first time, his dark eyes shined.
'Yes.'
The Geiger counter crackled.
The next day consisted chiefly of meetings. Many clients met with the scientist, looking to buy the curious device; predictably, it soon turned into an impromptu auction involving sums of money that would make Kuroji blush. Benny didn't say a single word, but he still saw a spring in Tsubakura's step and a glimmer in his eyes.
In the waning hours of the day, while the two were alone and preparing to send the completed project to the auction's winner, a knock sounded across the house.
Tsubakura's eyes widened. A few breathless seconds passed for the boy.
'Can you take care of this? Someone's at the door and I feel I should answer it myself. Five minutes, maximum.'
Upon Benny's nod, Tsubakura left without another word. They both understood there was one person and one person only who visited this place of their own volition.
Benny couldn't quite hear what Tsubakura and his mother were talking about, and he didn't care all too much. All he knew was that by the end, there was a rustle of clothes as someone was pulled into an embrace, and a murmur of 'love you too' from the scientist.
Tsubakura really was in high spirits, if he was willing to let that slip.
Just like that, the day ended. The bomb was shipped off and the two retired for the night.
For reasons indeterminable, in the quiet night, Benny could swear he heard crackles and screeches from a Geiger counter he most definitely unplugged, clawing at his mind as if to taunt him.
The stark white lights buzzed incessantly. The heart beat monitor held a single, stagnant tone.
Mother was dead.
Benny had a feeling her time was short when he got the news of her suddenly collapsing and being rushed to the hospital. He knew her time was short when the diagnosis came back as 'acute radiation sickness'.
By the time Benny and Tsubakura rushed to the hospital, she had enough time only to stretch her painful grimace into a thin smile and deliver her final, withering words.
'Take care of your brother for me.'
Benny didn't know how to feel. It felt like the corpse in front of him was his mother in name only; he could count the times they met on one hand. He owed her a great deal for bringing him to the still and peaceful life he knew until now, but the truth was that he held no affection.
Tsubakura was a different story. He played the part of the aloof genius well, but if those three words uttered that night meant anything, he was not immune to affection; neither, then, was he immune to the pain of having that affection severed. For better or for worse, Tsubakura loved his mother. Currently, it was looking to be for the worse.
It didn't matter if it wasn't his fault. It didn't matter if it was, objectively, nothing more than a simple oversight. Tsubakura would blame himself, he would weep until his eyes ran dry, he would shout and yell in anguish until his throat was raw with pain – and Benny could not blame him, for the emotion of love did naught but leave a love-shaped hole. Yet he still held onto the strand of hope that, somehow, Tsubakura would be alright. That he would approach this incident with his usual blasé attitude, that he would pay his respects to the corpse and move on, that he would take from this only the importance of radioactive decontamination, that he would be alright–
It was not so.
'I think I'm in shock.'
Tsubakura's voice was paper-thin. His complexion almost matched the white sheets that now smothered his mother's corpse. His every muscle was held taught, ready to snap. It felt as if merely touching him would cause him to shatter.
'I can see her corpse. I can hear how still she is. I know she's dead. But I can't comprehend what that means.' He stared holes into his palms. 'What I've done.'
Benny spoke before thinking. 'It's not your fault.'
Because it wasn't. It was an honest mistake. Whatever twisted, self-flagellating logic surely running through his mind right now was wrong, and worse, painful. This isn't what he needed right now.
Tsubakura's eyes lifted, staring through Benny's face.
Benny repeated himself. 'It's not your fault–'
'It is my fault.' His tone was incredulous, disbelieving. 'I chose to do this. I chose to lose myself to my whims and open Pandora's box. Or is it still not my fault that I forgot the most critical of safety measures because it didn't happen to concern me?'
'Tsubakura–'
'Make no mistake.' Tsubakura's fragile voice was pressed flat. 'I murdered my mother. I took a single taste of joy and I let myself drown in it.' His gaze fell upon the corpse, expression still unreadable. 'Enjoy myself for one day, and this is how I'm rewarded.'
To his credit, he was still there. He was still sane, hanging by a thread.
'Benny. I'm not sure how long I'll stay lucid, so I won't repeat this.' Gently, he placed his hands on Benny's shoulders and gave him a solemn stare. 'Don't forget this.'
He knew. Of course he knew.
'There's a pragmatic reason. You'll have to experience this sooner or later, and shoving this memory under the floorboards won't do you any good.' A wry smile crawled onto Tsubakura's face – a sliver of his usual cavalier attitude peeking through the cracks. 'Might as well get some experience now while you can,' he bitterly chuckled.
Benny stared and said nothing. Seeing Tsubakura's dark humour return to him did little to ease his worry – not when he knew full well it was being used as a mask.
The air hung still. Tsubakura relented – and sighed.
'I've noticed your migraines. I've seen how you toss and turn in your sleep, as if you were possessed. I don't know how long you've used this ability to forget for, but I do know it's reached a breaking point.'
So that was why.
Tsubakura was on the verge of shattering, barely able to keep himself together, and he was the one concerned about Benny?
This felt wrong.
'Tsubakura.' Benny was unable to stop his worry from bubbling into his words. 'I'll be alright. You should worry about yourself–'
'Please.' The hands on his shoulders squeezed tight. The word was unsteady, almost a whisper, as if saying it any louder would cause him to shatter. 'I don't want to lose you too.'
Benny fell silent. How was he supposed to respond to that?
The door swung open. Their time was up. The doctors gave a single nod of farewell, smothered Mother's corpse under the sheets, and wheeled it outside. Before he knew it, the two were ushered out of the hospital and into the car they arrived in. Not for the first time, Benny cursed his memory when he managed to recognise it.
Mother's car, having once drove Benny into this placid life, now turned around and took him away into the darkened future.
In the twenty-two minutes it took to be driven back home, Tsubakura uttered not a single word. Nor did he utter a word when he stepped out of the car and dragged himself to the door.
Although this house had always been occupied by them only, it now felt a little too large and a little too empty.
Only when the door behind them was latched closed and locked did Tsubakura speak.
'Can you take care of yourself?'
Again with his inane priorities. Benny stymied the urge to repeat that question to the one who asked it.
'…Yes.'
'Good.' Without warning, Tsubakura jerked upright and breathlessly made for the laboratory door. 'Do not come in, for both our sakes–'
'Wait!'
Tsubakura paused.
Benny didn't mean for his voice to come out so loud, nor sound so desperate. He composed himself as best he could and breathed. 'At least tell me what you're going to do.'
Dead leaves rustled outside. The birds were gone.
'Benny,' he finally managed to press out of his mouth. 'Thank you.'
Benny's breath hitched in his throat. '…What for?'
'For… everything. Being my assistant. Being my friend. Even now, when the cost is… insurmountable, you continue to worry about me. You continue to care about me. I half expected you to cut your losses and run, as you have so many times before, but you're still here.'
Tsubakura's shoulders trembled as he went to wipe a tear: a sight Benny never thought he'd see.
'I cherish you, Benny. I won't deny that anymore. And I know you wish to stay by my side until this blows over. But I need to do this by myself. What sort of scientist would I be if I couldn't bear the brunt of my own mistakes? If I had to let myself be saved by some knight in shining armour?'
Silence filled the room.
'…24 hours.' Tsubakura's voice was thin. '24 hours, and I'll try to fix this myself. If I come out, we can continue like nothing happened. If not… my will is in a sealed envelope under my bed.'
'You won't die,' Benny whispered. A promise built on nothing but blind hope, but a promise both of them needed.
Tsubakura gave a quiet sigh. 'I won't die.'
The door swung shut.
Benny gathered himself. He understood Tsubakura's point – he needed to prove to himself that he could stand on his own two legs. He was lucid, and laced under his quiet words were a sliver of his characteristic self-assurance. Benny drowned the last of his worries beneath his heart. He would be fine. Tsubakura would be fine. He would emerge tomorrow unscathed, just like he always handled any challenge thrown at him.
Everything was going to be alright.
It took one hour for those worries to resurface.
Would Tsubakura be fine?
To tell the truth, he didn't know. He had no experience on fragile matters like these – none he remembered, at least.
But this wasn't about knowing. This was about trust. Did Benny trust Tsubakura?
Before this moment, the answer was an unequivocal 'yes.' They worked together on practically everything for as long as he could remember, side by side. He trusted Tsubakura whenever he called for reagents that at first blush seemed nonsensical for the experiment, knowing that it would make perfect sense in the end. He trusted Tsubakura whenever he concocted some reckless plan, knowing the genius would find a way to make it work, as he always had. He trusted Tsubakura when he unveiled his schematics for the warhead.
Now? For the first time, Benny was left to think alone – and the more he thought about Tsubakura's plan, the less he liked it.
Who's to say all of his problems would be neatly wrapped up in the span of 24 hours? Why did he insist on dealing with this alone? It now became clear that he was acting reckless, without a lick of confidence to back it up. This plan was a stopgap – made in haste, delivered in false, reassuring tones; almost like an excuse to be left alone.
'Take care of your brother for me.'
Before he knew it, Benny's legs made for the locked door, his heartstrings held taught by conviction. Forget Tsubakura's pride as a scientist – what kind of assistant would Benny be if he didn't at least make an effort to assist him? What kind of friend would he be if he sat twiddling his thumbs while Tsubakura suffered?
'I half expected you to cut your losses and run, but you're still here.'
Benny was at the door now. He rested a hand on the handle, waiting for the last strands of hesitation to burn away from his mind. Tsubakura needed help right now, whether he realised it or not. He was in no state to piece himself together by his lonesome.
Thoughts pooled in his head: formless things for which no words could be attached. If Benny was in any other mind, he would turn back, shocked and scared about why those foreign voices made themselves heard now of all times.
He elected instead to ignore it. There he was, being selfish again. There was a more important task at hand.
Benny opened the door.
He smelled it before he saw it, staining the countertop.
Blood.
His heartstrings snapped.
This was a bad idea.
The lab was in disarray. Beakers were shattered. Scalpels and knives were strewn all over the ground. Littering the counters were the schematics for the warhead, torn apart and scattered in a frenzy. The blood… he couldn't look away. It speckled the counters, it caked the blades of many of the scalpels lying on the ground, it pooled and gathered at the base of a chair.
Only now did he see the black-haired boy, curled up in that chair with his knees to his face, trembling. Tsubakura's hair was dishevelled and damp, like ink on wet paper. Lining his forearms were a series of cuts, stained with blood all over. His eyes were bloodshot and his eyelids were swollen and red. He knew all too well that the only reason Tsubakura wasn't crying was because he ran out of tears to shed.
Benny couldn't breathe. His heart was gone, dropped into an abyss. His mind, meanwhile, seared with pain as a turbulent well of raw emotion pulled him every which way. He was heartbroken. He was scared. He was worried. He was incredulous. He was lost. He was every other emotion at once, all clashing and mixed together into a sea in which he was drowning.
Now Benny was the one hanging by a thread, and the frayed end of his logic and rationality finally made itself heard.
Tsubakura locked himself away to keep Benny safe. He knew of his ability, of his tendency to break and turn away from the slightest of painful memories. He knew that Benny would only cut himself on the shards of his shattered life in trying to sweep them up. And here he stood, suffocating under his own mind, proving Tsubakura right.
This was beyond him, in every sense of the word.
It seemed Tsubakura finally took notice of his assistant, but Benny couldn't bear to look at the pain etched in his eyes. He needed to get out of here. His heart was ripped open, his mind was split with pain. He knew only one way to fix this.
Benny closed his eyes.
The pain in his head increased tenfold. He felt pressure start to build just behind his eyes. He ignored it.
Slowly, surely, the edges of the memory started to dissolve. He felt his head grow lighter and lighter. He heard Tsubakura calling out to him, his voice hoarse and scarred, but the words didn't properly enter his mind.
The pressure sharpened into a spike, pressing into his brain. A blistering sensation erupted in his mind, threatening to tear it apart. He ignored it.
Much of the memory was burnt away. All that was left was that sight of Tsubakura, curled and trembling and bleeding in his chair. Benny took in a breath and held it, his eyes squeezing tighter shut. His mind's eye focused, stared, bore into that image of Tsubakura, ready to erase it as it has so many times before, when–
Everything happened at once.
His mind shattered. Something burst in his brain as he felt a liquid sensation wash over and blossom from the centre of his mind. The walls of his living room, his sanctuary, caved in from above and below. Benny opened his eyes in shock, but it was too late. His vision grew narrow, obstructed by numb patches of nothingness. He felt his body jerk and spasm against his command.
And through it all, he heard the voices. They reverberated in his broken mind, cutting through the ringing in his ears. One laughed in joy and unhinged happiness. The other screamed in pain and burning hatred. They whispered, they wailed, rushing into his mind and clashing as he felt his body strung along in sudden, erratic movements.
It was too much. It was far, far too much. Second by second, he felt shards of his mind swept away by howling, unceasing winds. Benny no longer had the capacity to even hazard a guess as to what was going on.
All he knew, and all he thought in his final moments of cognizance, was that he wished nothing more than to close his eyes and forget this pandemonium.
Benny woke up beneath a bus stop and knew something was very wrong.
He was not alone. Two voices, two minds, settled and rested in his skull. His every movement, thus, was constrained. His vision was narrow, as if staring through a crack in a wall. Even the mere act of thinking pushed against the walls of his mind.
The voices gave themselves names. Ardey. Cine Hamal. They were here to stay.
His body sat upright. The voices were awake, and almost immediately, they clashed. They argued. He listened. Something about a man named Tsubakura, about a woman with ink-black hair on her deathbed, about some hastily-made nuclear warhead. Cine Hamal wanted to see this Tsubakura in pain and anguish again. Ardey just wanted him dead. Nonsensical thoughts about memories for which he had no recollection.
Benny didn't care. Couldn't care. Did not want to care.
He got the sense that he cared once before, that he opened his eyes and bared himself to the world. He got the sense that it was a mistake he would never repeat again.
Within his corner of the mind, his sanctuary, he had but one thought. One mantra to live by.
In knowing nothing, life is most delightful.
Benny woke up beneath a bus stop, and went back to sleep.