Chapter Text
It starts, like everything in life, with a fated meeting.
Or well, maybe not fated. If he has been reading hints right, then the particular meeting was not meant to happen when, how, and why it did. Maybe it was meant to happen later, or earlier; maybe the circumstances were different, maybe it was just not meant to be, or it was meant to… just flow along, instead of forcing itself to be like it seemed to happen. Maybe, in truth, the meeting had just been an abomination of fate as much as he —as they had been since the beginning.
But that’s not here, nor there, and if said fated meeting triggered events and more meetings and chain reactions that lead to this exact moment, then he can honestly say he doesn’t regret it. No, his life had finally been going well, for the first time in so long, and he doesn’t regret that. He regrets today, or maybe he regrets that he didn’t solve the puzzle on time —not fast enough to save them, him, so many people—, but he can’t regret everything else.
All tragedies begin from amity. The greatest of them, from misplaced love, exalted feelings for or from those not deserved, from relationships born from lies upon lies upon lies. Yet most of them begin from just a simple meeting.
No one can predict a tragedy.
No one can predict the future, especially not them, abominations of fate as they are. And to an abomination such as himself, for someone who carries misfortune on his shoulders and under his feet, anyone who can meet him and walk away unscathed, stay unscathed, is made of silk and gold.
Meeting Myoujin Ryuzu had been chance. Just their paths crossing each other would not have been enough to break the steady course of his life so early —it had happened before, after all, bright spots in his life that marked the passage of time better than the monotone did. He remembers one, from his childhood, a bright nova shining in his eyes to the point of blindness. He knows another, his very own classmate, though he cannot say they are anything more than mere acquaintances. And then some more, yet Ryuzu and his caretaker had been, are… something else.
If Ryuzu had been, is, a shining star, then Myoujin Chrono was, is, the sun. A sun that now, at this very moment and in a burst of light, turns into a black hole that absorbs all shine, all hope, everything that was and could be to become a lightless ring in the sky.
For abominations meeting each other can only end in tragedy, after all.
Ibuki Kouji meets Myoujin Ryuzu thanks to a missing wallet and a missing caretaker. It is their first meeting. He is sixteen, almost seventeen, and between the belated paperwork for his transfer to Fukuhara and an urgent call from his aunt, he had left his wallet behind at the park where he often goes to study when the weather is good.
He had returned not much later, to find it in the possession of a strange child with far too old eyes and a plush tiger almost their own size. They are just sitting there, wallet atop a black jacket on their lap, looking at the children playing in the park with a wistful smile. There’s no adult watching them, which is just weird, and Kouji approaches them under the wary look of a knitting woman sitting nearby.
“Excuse me—,” he starts, quietly, trying not to startle the child who seems to be giving all their attention to the other children.
They have long hair. Long, black hair tied back with a green tie with a little purple charm in the shape of a gear. Their eyes are also purple, and their clothes are black and white with purple accents. The small, small and oddly familiar child sits like the world was to bow before them, looking at the children like they are subjects to be cherished from far away yet never touch, never meet: like the emperor behind a veil, like the Gods inside a shrine.
And then they look at him and speak, voice high and childish and strong, enunciating words in a way that does not fit any other six-or-seven years old Kouji has ever met. Too proper, respectful; yet, oddly quick, almost like he wanted to get all his words out in a single breath.
“Ibuki Kouji-san?” The child— the boy lifts Kouji’s wallet from his lap, waving it a little before holding it to him. “You forgot this. There was no address or number so nii-san was waiting for you, but he had to take a call, so he told me to wait for you here and not move or else you aren’t getting any icecream, Ryuzu, and I didn’t move, which means I get ice cream, right? I just had to wait for you, and here you are! So here, take it, take it—“
Kouji takes the wallet back before the boy can throw it, or himself, at him. He is left looking at the child (Ryuzu?) who seems to be vibrating in excitement, eyes wide and almost sparkling, seemingly too happy just from meeting him. A few awkward seconds pass, and then the boy is taking a deep breath, so Kouji speaks before he can go on another fast-paced speech.
“I— Yes.” He doesn’t even know what he is assenting to. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
The boy beams, a smile so bright and wide it hurts his face to look at it. “You’re welcome, Kouji-san!” And then he goes back to kicking his feet and looking at the children.
He should have left then; later, he doesn’t know why he chose to stay, aside from a vague sense of duty to watch over Ryuzu while his nii-san was away. Instead of following the logical course of action, he sits beside him (the wary woman squints at him and doesn’t look away) and looks around: surely, the guardian is somewhere close? Surely, he will come soon.
Ryuzu doesn’t wait for a prompt to start talking again.
“We just moved here, yesterday? I’m trying to meet new people like Aunt said I should, since I don’t go to school, but she isn’t here to help me along. You see, meeting people is hard! Fang says I should just go to them, but what if they don’t like me? What if I scare them away? That can happen, right? Fang always says I look like a baby but I know he does it because he is all terrifying and never gets scared of anything, since he’s a tiger, you know? You don’t know, do you? This is Fang, he says it’s nice to meet you!”
Kouji suddenly finds himself with an armful of plush fabric as Ryuzu shoves his toy into his face. It is big and soft with a slightly scary look in its eyes and smells of oil, wood and old metal; it has some chew marks that seem to belong to a toddler in its ear and the opposite paw. It is… cute, in a creepy way that his classmate seems to enjoy looking at, like something that could jump at you and you wouldn’t know if to be afraid or coo at it.
He shakes hands with its paw, leaning back to get a clear look of Ryuzu behind it.
“And I’m Ryuzu! I’m seven. Fang is a millennium old, he likes ice cream, just like me, and clocks, just like nii-san! He is really old but still acts like a baby— Oh, nii-san is Chrono, he likes dragons, the colour red and all kinds of cooking, you should meet him, maybe you will get along! Fang says Chrono is stuck up and doesn’t like meeting new people because of something or other, but he has always been nice to me and Aunt Tokoha, who is the greatest in the world, just like Shion, but he is kind of a nerd too, nii-san said so. Nice to meet you, Kouji-san, lets get along!”
His speech is a mess of tangents and Kouji feels if he doesn’t say anything, the boy would talk for hours and hours nonstop. So he does, if only so his ears won’t burst from so many words in so little time.
“Nice to meet you, Fang, Ryuzu-”
“Good! Take care of him for me!”
He gets interrupted by the plush tiger being shoved in his face and arms again, almost dropping it in surprise. Ryuzu runs up to the other children before Kouji can say no, that he has to go, and he gets pulled into the game with cheers and laughter.
Children will be children.
With a resigned sigh, Kouji sits Fang next to him and proceeds to watch over Ryuzu as he takes the leadership of the group of children. They are quickly led on a princess rescue before the great time dragon comes back, with a whole backstory and sandy magic. If not anything else, Ryuzu is a great storyteller and draws the ears and looks of all that surround him.
It is perhaps an hour later, when most children have been ‘gravely injured’ and taken home, that a hand appears at Kouji’s side and grabs at Fang. Not wanting to disappoint, he grabs the wrist and tries to throw its owner over his shoulder, but said owner is heavy. Unnaturally so. He immediately thinks of a generic huge, muscled man, remembering his aunt’s sumo recordings, and stands up awkwardly to face the man.
He is… small. Small and thin, built like someone who spends far too much time indoors and sitting at a desk, which, from the rather businessman get up, he assumes is true. The man has bright red hair, falling in waves near his shoulders, with a light red lock framing one side of his face and curling towards his chin. His green eyes are covered with a pair of square-framed glasses, and he has a small piercing in the shape of a gear in his visible ear.
All this Kouji takes in with a single glance before the discordance between what he sees and what he experienced takes hold.
There’s nothing on the man that could be heavy enough for Kouji to not be able to throw him to the ground; in fact, he looks like Kouji could pick him up and he wouldn’t weigh more than his bag.
The man looks at him over his glasses, eyebrows raised in surprise, then down at his still-captive wrist. After a weak, fruitless tug, he shakes his head and smiles.
“Ibuki Kouji, right? Nice to meet you, I’m Myoujin Chrono. Thanks for watching over Ryuzu and Fang for me.”
Kouji’s first thought at those words goes back to today’s morning news, or more particularly, to the man behind today’s morning news. Myoujin Chrono. VR technology research breakthrough, led by one Myoujin Ryuzu. Myoujin.
His second thought is something among the lines of oh no, he’s hot.
That first meeting, like maybe many first meetings in the past, wasn’t life-changing at all. He had met Ryuzu, watched over him for a while, and then been invited to ice cream by the odd pair of brothers as means of thanks. The both of them are oddly nice, to him, to everyone, and Kouji thinks that maybe, just maybe, someone needs to watch over them so no one can take advantage of them.
He won’t be the one to do it. He is far too busy, far too gloomy, an abomination that would only ruin their chances of a happy life now that they have moved. He should warn them that not everyone is as nice as them, shouldn’t have accepted the invitation to ice cream at all, but Kouji wants to be selfish just once, wants to allow himself to enjoy life just one time before he goes back to the world where no one talks to him, no one dares look his way. He wants to be allowed to be himself once more, if only for a little time.
So, he goes with them. He enjoys his ice cream, enjoys the small talk, enjoys Myoujin Chrono’s laughter and Myoujin Ryuzu’s happy exclamations. He lets himself be, for once in years and for the last time, and gets home late but pleased with himself.
He will never meet them again, after all.
He isn’t that lucky.
He will take the fleeting memory of a once-in-a-lifetime meeting and treasure it inside his heart.
Fated meetings are fated for a reason. Encounters meant to lead the world to a new path, or simply to lead others to their futures, are scripted and cannot be avoided. Even if the threads of fate they are on are twisted, oddly tied up earlier than they should, they will still try to continue their course as they should be, tangled with each other from then until the end.
No one can change that. No one should change that.
No one can tell, what meeting is meant to be or not.
He thought he would never meet them again.
Well, he was way wrong.
They really did move into the building next to his own, and whenever he walks by the small —really, really small— park on the way home from the station, he will see them. Ryuzu, happily commanding and terrorizing other children near his age under the watchful eyes of mothers and elder siblings, his creepy plush tiger always in hand. Chrono, sitting on a bench, one eye on his charge and another on a sleek tablet, typing away, or shuffling through piles of papers and folders, or on the phone. A constant. They are always there, except when the sun is too bright, like clockwork.
And, also like clockwork, Kouji will walk past and return Ryuzu’s happy wave and greeting (‘Kouji-san, hello!’), stop at the crossing just long enough to maybe hear Chrono’s voice scolding Ryuzu for one thing or another, and go home.
He will not allow himself another slip. He will not talk to them, will not try to wrap himself in their warmth and leech them dry.
Still, he can’t help but be oddly reassured by their presence. They are there most days, a constant in his ever-changing life, and it is… good. It makes him happy, to see them, even if he has only met them once, and just by chance.
Of course, he also can’t help but wonder what they do through the day. Ryuzu should be old enough for elementary school, though he did say he doesn't go to school, and Chrono seems to have a job; seeing them always there at the same time is… odd.
Still, it’s not his business.
It becomes his business the day he sees Ryuzu alone in his usual spot, way past the usual hour. Kouji had run late (he doesn’t like school), and he ran his way home hoping he wouldn’t be out by nightfall. He doesn’t need his family’s words tonight, not when he is so very tired, but he also stops when he sees the child still outside when the streetlights are beginning to turn on.
He looks around. There is no sight of red hair, or even the usual ladies and older siblings who have claimed this park as their own. There is no one, and why should there be? It is late, it is cold, and yet there Ryuzu is, talking with two other children older than him. His moral obligation is to approach, to at least watch all three until they go home, but his familial obligation is to get home soon unless he wants to be yelled at.
Morals end up winning, and he approaches the trio.
There is a playmat on the bench. It is Vanguard, and Kouji sighs. Of course they would get distracted by a game. It is just starting, too, and the girl takes the first turn.
Kouji watches.
It is a massacre. It can’t be defined as anything else.
Ryuzu’s deck is nothing out of usual, just a common Great Nature build he has seen in local tournaments, with some changes. It is standard. Expected. Against the Genesis Witch deck that the middle schooler was playing, it should have been even.
It isn’t even, but not because of anything amazing or world-breaking.
They play two games, both won by the smaller boy. The first is even, five-six, and seems like nothing out of the world. The second, though, ends at two-six in minutes, a double critical ending the game before it gets too far.
The middle schooler gathers her cards, laughing happily with her companion, and ruffles Ryuzu’s hair with a smile. She is a good loser, at least. The boy, very casually and with an even bigger smile, turns some of Ryuzu’s top deck cards around.
Heal. Perfect guard. Critical.
Kouji fears. He can hear his old classmates yelling, can hear their crying, their calls of cheater once, monster from then on. He can hear the dice rolling in his favour, always, and the card he needs coming to his hand, always.
For a second, behind all the bad memories, Kouji can hear the old whispers that were once a constant in life, the ones that promise him allegiances and neverending victories. Promises of a better life.
Our Vanguard—
Yet the children only laugh. Not like his old classmates, not like his old playmates. They just laugh.
“Ah, what luck,” the girl says, ruffling Ryuzu’s hair some more, ignoring his complaints. “If all your games are like that, of course you were eager.”
“Luck is also skill~” Ryuzu sings, putting away his deck. “Thanks for the game, nee-san!”
The two middle schoolers leave, waving, and Ryuzu cheerfully makes his tiger wave back. Like this, he looks cute. Too cute.
Not like the abomination Kouji felt when he was watching the game. Not like the looming monster raising its claw for the one lucky hit that would lead to victory.
“Kouji-san, do you play?” The boy looks up at him, acknowledging him for the first time, patting the bench next to him with his plush toy. Kouji joins him—there is still no redhead around.
“Vanguard?” Ryuzu nods. He looks happy, eyes almost glowing, and Kouji doesn’t have the heart to tell him his luck is dangerous, his game is too much, he will scare people away. “I used to. Rarely, now.”
“Ah, nii-san is the same.” Once again, Kouji wonders where the elder Myoujin is. He doesn’t know exactly where the brothers live, so he can’t bring Ryuzu home, but leaving him alone would be even worse. Waiting would be better for his conscience, even if he will get scolded when he gets home. “He is far too busy and Nome and Takuto keep calling him and keep him busier, so he has no time to play games with me and Fang? So unfair, I’m sure he plays against Nome all the time. Even today, we were going to play, and then he had to leave so quickly he forgot his keys? How is he getting in, if he forgot his keys? So I left, and I’m waiting here!”
“You… shouldn’t do that.” He looks at the boy, at the huge jacket he has on which is clearly not his, at the loafers on his sockless feet, and guesses Ryuzu ran out in his pyjamas. “You really shouldn’t, what if you get sick? Or lost? Or—“
But the boy only smiles, a gentle smile that is perfectly at peace with everything.
“I won’t.” He speaks with such certainty, it is scary, yet comforting in a way Kouji’s own dissociating-from-Earth episodes are not. “Fang won’t let any harm come to me.”
He sees the claw once more, laid gently atop the boy’s shoulder, a mere twitch away from wounding him forever. He sees it through the side of his eye and, almost trembling, decides to ignore it.
Ignore it, just like he ignores so many things. Ignore the dragons hovering behind his childhood friends’ backs, ignore the knights following his classmate everywhere he goes. Ignore the tiger currently guarding its ward like he is the most precious existence.
“Still, it is better if you stay home, especially this late.”
“Indeed, it is.”
Chrono’s voice comes from behind them, along with the ticking clock Kouji has associated with him since they first met. Steady, rhythmic, never missing a single second: a clock that is always on time, just like Chrono apparently is. Ryuzu practically flies into his arms while Kouji gathers his things, looking at them just in time to see a man disappear into a car.
Now, usually he wouldn’t think much of people getting into cars, but the long black hair that looks green under the streetlights, the white suit and those purple eyes that looked back at them —at him, they are familiar. Myoujin Ryuzu, the older one, the one who stands proudly in interviews while looking down at everyone around him.
Kouji has wondered about it, what the brothers’ relationship with the older man is. Myoujin is not a common name, after all. Chrono looks nothing like the man despite sharing his name, but Ryuzu is almost an exact copy, less condescending and far more cheerful than the man who only seems to smile for the press. He had thought that, maybe, the oldest Myoujin didn’t know about these two, writing an overdramatic script in his head about affairs and abandoned children, but…
“How was Nome? Nii-san, how were they?”
“They were fine, they always are.” Chrono, steady as always, looks slightly out of breath as he holds Ryuzu in his arms, looking for a way to carry Fang as his hands are busy with his brother. “You shouldn’t come out like this, what if you get sick? I can just get another key from our mighty landlord, but I can’t get another Ryuzu.”
“But I hate him.” Ryuzu pouts and finally decides to give Fang to Kouji for some reason. “Kouji-san is better! He can help us home.”
“You shouldn’t pull people into your plans without their consent, Ryuzu.”
“Ah, I don’t mind.”
He is already late either way.
The Myoujin apartment feels a lot like his aunt’s lazy attempts at decorating: it looks like someone took a magazine shot from a decor magazine and replicated it in real life. It certainly doesn’t match the impression Kouji has of the brothers, with lively and cheerful Ryuzu and his ever-watching Chrono of endless patience. It looks… unused and unlived, except for the hints of the brothers here and there: a laptop computer next to a large mug on the coffee table, a stack of card storage boxes on a shelf, an oddly designed plush of a dragon sitting on the floor guarding the door to what Kouji assumes is Ryuzu’s bedroom.
Asides from that, everything else feels like a blank slate, except for the part of the kitchen visible from where he stands. He sees a collection of expensive, chef-grade knives and an oddly shaped pan that he isn’t going to even try guessing what it is used for before he gets dragged into the sitting room by Ryuzu. He puts Fang down where the boy points him to, trying to ignore the ghostly presence of the giant tiger hovering between them.
“Kouji-san should join us for dinner~”
“Thanks for the invitation, but I really should get going—“
“At least let me give you something to bring home,” Chrono says before he practically runs into the kitchen. They can hear the sounds of someone putting things away in a hurry before Ryuzu decides to pull Kouji into another one of his oddities.
“Uluru is usually the one who checks the rooms for intruders, but she isn’t here today. Please check for us, Kouji-san!”
Kouji doesn’t know who ‘Uluru’ is and he isn’t going to ask, but he also doesn’t feel comfortable entering the rooms: they are, after all, almost strangers to one another. Ryuzu won’t accept a ‘no’ as an answer though, so there Kouji goes, checking for intruders.
Surprisingly enough, the room guarded by the dragon plushie turns out to be Chrono’s, not Ryuzu’s. It is a… very simple place, with a single bed, a desk and some shelves holding multiple gears and clocks —it seems ‘Chrono’ takes his name very seriously. There are even some dismantled ones on the desk, possibly being repaired, along with little, delicate figurines made of gears and cogs in different shapes. However, even though there are many clocks ticking away completely synchronized, the main one of the room seems to be the replica of an astronomical clock hanging on the wall opposite to the door.
The thing is amazing. It is made of thin metal gears and wood, and Kouji can’t begin to guess how it is held together. It seems to be fully functional too, but it would take days looking at it to confirm that and Kouji doesn’t have the time. He is supposed to be checking for intruders.
“Alright, where could they be hiding?” He whispers, as it is better to play along with children’s games at times, and Ryuzu is a very creative child. He points toward what seems to be the wardrobe, then under the bed, then goes back to hiding behind Kouji.
“They breath out of synch with the clocks, you will notice them right away,” Ryuzu whispers back as he pushes Kouji forwards. “Go, go.”
There is nothing under the bed. There is nothing inside the wardrobe either. Ryuzu sighs in relief before he drags Kouji out and through another door.
“They don’t bother me since they just creep on nii-san for stupid reasons, but just in case…”
Ryuzu’s room is… a disaster. Compared to Chrono’s uncanny cleanliness, the chaos in front of Kouji doesn’t make much sense. He is sure there must be an order, somehow, somewhen, understandable only by its master: there is a bed but only half of it is visible, a desk covered in books and cards, then there are towers of what seem to be scrap fabric and model figure parts. Still, despite the precarious balance of the towers of things, there is space for Kouji to move around.
This room is bigger than Chrono’s. Ryuzu has the master bedroom.
“Anywhere I should check?”
“By the window!”
Ryuzu has a balcony. It is filled with potted plants, some marked as ‘Chrono’s harvest’ and others as ‘experiment #’ followed by some or other code that Kouji isn’t going to bother with. A cat is trying to eat some of the plants and Kouji quickly shoos it away (apparently, the cat is an intruder), Ryuzu cheering him on.
“Is that all, then?”
“Yes! Thank you, Kouji-san. They won’t try to approach now that you are here!” Yeah, Kouji isn’t coming back anytime soon, so hopefully these ‘intruders’ don’t approach either way. He watches Ryuzu rummage through a box of deck boxes, pulling out something from it and handing it to Kouji. “Here, you can take this, it is my thanks!”
It is… a small, white card, almost translucent and shimmering silver under the room’s artificial light. The size and weight are right for a Vanguard card, but everything else is not: it feels like brittle glass yet it bends, wraps around his soul as if it belonged there since the very beginning. In the right light, he can see what seems to be a stylized Vanguard circle carved into it, but it doesn’t seem like it will tolerate anything being carved into it, as it is so thin.
Most importantly: it looks, feels priceless and precious. He tries to give it back to Ryuzu: “I can’t accept this.”
Yet all the boy with the ancient eyes does is smile, innocent and immensely cryptic, and claim:
“I can’t accept it back. It has always been yours.”
He goes home carrying a whole homemade lunch in a cutesy bento box for him to warm up once he gets home. His aunt is curious about it, and when they taste it they decide it is the best food they have had in ages, and they can’t even be mad about it.
“This… Myoujin Chrono of yours, is he single—“
“Oba-san!”
Fated meetings… are what they are. They are fated, impossible to avoid, and once they have happened they will inevitably lead into their fated path. ‘Destiny’ is a curious concept, as it can move itself forward and backwards and sideways as it pleases, triggering events before the time is right, before even the people are ready for it to be right.
Ibuki Kouji knows this better than most. He knows fate, knows fortune, knows that nothing in life comes free. He knows he will have to repay Myoujin Ryuzu for his gift, but he doesn’t know how, and maybe he doesn’t need to know just yet.
Still, it is a good, pleasant change to his life: the presence of the brothers feels like a soothing balm, there constantly yet not intrusive. Slow and steady, like Myoujin Chrono’s whole existence, like Ryuzu’s growing smiles, they grow to be dear to his heart, and they leave him wanting. What exactly he wants, he is not sure, but for now, he wants more of Chrono’s gentle yet persistent care, more of Ryuzu’s light falling on his life, more of living instead of simply surviving.
And this time, it seems like it can last, like he can keep this and bask in its warmth.
So of course it all comes crashing down in due time.