Pandion (Genera #1)

Chapter 6

K agesawa sat back and watched Harumine Satoru, an adult man of twenty-five years, have what was supposedly his first beer. What a sheltered life that must have been.

After over a week, it no longer felt as unnerving to be linked again, but this link was definitely significantly stronger than most of the previous ones before it.

The last few that hadn’t outright failed from the start had been nearly unusable. This one was letting him know that Satoru was getting tipsy despite looking about the same on the outside. The apparent exhaustion masked it somewhat, but Kagesawa had no trouble sensing the relaxed fuzziness in the feedback.

“Do you want to take the bed tonight? I’ll stay on the sofa,” Kagesawa offered. Satoru deserved a proper night’s sleep after he’d done most of the work this week.

“What? Isn’t it too short for you?”

“I’ll manage. I’ve slept on it before.”

“Oh, okay.” Satoru emptied the can and burped.

After a while of them staring at nothing in silence, Kagesawa made an observation. He felt unusually drunk: both to an unusual extent and in an unusual manner. It was easy enough to trace the source to the link, but it made no sense that two beers could cause this—especially when they’d only had one each.

“Are you all right? Do you feel OK?” Kagesawa asked, a little worried that this would be an undesired effect for Satoru, who had probably avoided drinking for a specific reason.

“I’m fine. Can’t you tell?” Satoru slid down to a more comfortable position.

Kagesawa couldn’t discern anything negative coming from him, so it was perhaps safe to assume everything was fine. There had been some annoyance trickling through a little while back, but that had thankfully subsided. It was getting a bit easier to interpret Satoru through the link. The head bumping to his shoulder startled him, though.

Start the um…

Kagesawa waited. Satoru shook himself awake.

It was a little worrying that he was this tired, but at least he no longer seemed to be in a bad mood.

Red, red, red, blue, 256, blue, 280… These were all codes for different types of trash. I should sleep.

“Yes. Yes, you should.”

“It’s not the same.”

“What’s that?”

“This.” Satoru relayed a bit of it through the link. It was recognisable, but yes, it didn’t feel the same as how Kagesawa perceived being drunk. He couldn’t quite say what was different about it, though.

He’d had a few beers with his previous links, but none of that had ever trickled through. In fact, projecting anything other than the few occasional words hadn’t even occurred to them.

“That’s wild that you can do that.” Kagesawa admittedly rather enjoyed this new experience. “What else can you send over?” Besides intoxication and mood corrections, Satoru had probably relayed other things through the link this past week, but Kagesawa hadn’t been paying proper attention.

“Hmmm, well…” There was a heavy sigh and Kagesawa could feel shivers rushing across his back. It was followed by a relaxing sensation of warmth.

“Mmm, that’s nice.”

“Feedback loop.” Satoru dampened the link. A bit of a shame, but probably for the best. “Unless you want the feedback loop?” He leaned over, still dampening the link, but Kagesawa could tell he was aroused.

This was inconvenient and nerve-wracking, but also something Kagesawa had been secretly hoping for ever since the last time. However, the circumstances were far from ideal.

Firstly, he didn’t know Satoru that well. For all he knew, this could be a mistake that would come to bite him in the ass. Maybe he’d been lucky it hadn’t the first time?

Secondly, there was the added moral grey area of the ingested alcohol.

Thirdly, while he wasn’t aware of sex being prohibited, it was probably frowned upon in this setting, and perhaps not the best use of the hundreds of thousands of yen in tax-payer money the link had cost to establish.

And fourthly— what the hell was he doing waffling inside his head like this, when he should have been making a move before he lost the chance?!

He’d long since given up on aiming to be professional! If he could ignore the rest of it, a few beers and a crisp feedback loop sounded exactly like the kind of pastime he fancied on a Friday evening.

He turned to face Satoru, and since Satoru’s head was still resting on his shoulder, they slid quite naturally into a comfortable embrace. This was enough of a distraction for Satoru to either accidentally release the dampening or decide against it, and his arousal became more apparent.

“Let me make this clear: that was you initially,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kagesawa replied.

“I’m not attracted to men.”

“Really?” Amused by the contradictory words, Kagesawa brought to attention the erection that most certainly wasn’t his own. “What’s this then?”

“That’s the result of you feeding the loop.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You felt it, reacted to it, and I picked it up. I can tell . ”

“What does it matter who started it?”

“You need to know when you’re stirring shit with me because I can’t…” he swallowed, “that’s not right, ah, I can , I just don’t want to be held solely responsible for it.” He leaned closer. Kagesawa grinned.

“So you’d stop if you didn’t want to do it? That is to say, you would have stopped if that were the case?”

“I’m too tired to think. Do you want this or not?”

“Yes, of course, yes. Do that shit to me all day long. I love it!” Kagesawa chuckled and leaned closer. “Hell, it was probably me without realising it.”

“It’s definitely y—”

They were rudely interrupted by the doorbell. Kagesawa considered ignoring it, but he could tell by the familiar urgent abuse that the person behind the door was not going to give up.

Satoru looked like he was about to fall asleep anyway, so maybe this was for the best… Ah, damn it. He got up to go answer the door.

There was a selection of familiar faces at the door. Practically half of the residents of this building had turned up. The landlord was about to ring the doorbell again.

“Can I help you? Uh, oh…” Kagesawa knew what this was about, but the landlord had certainly outdone himself spreading the word.

“You got a new link, didn’t you?” at the forefront of the crowd, Takazaki hurried to confirm. Kagesawa had intentionally tried to lie low since the neighbours tended to make a fuss.

“Yes…”

None of them were empaths, so their perception of what that entailed was limited. The general consensus was that empaths were a mythical distant other, but, since Kagesawa was a bit of a loser, it made him unusually approachable. He was their gateway to what they viewed as a secretive club to simultaneously admire and resent for its exclusivity.

“He’s in there, right? Can we come in? We want to welcome him to the neighbourhood!” Takazaki declared. The rest of them were nodding in agreement.

The request was merely a formality. They’d brought drinks and snacks and turning them away, while not entirely impossible, would have required a gargantuan effort Kagesawa was unwilling to make. It was easier to let them do as they wished.

“For a bit, but you can’t stay all evening. He’s tired from work.” As a reminder of said fact, Kagesawa was painfully aware of the red, blue, 246 at the back of his mind. The throng of neighbours rushed in.

“Oh, it’s surprisingly clean here,” Noguchi-san, an elderly widow and everyone’s designated spare-grandma from down the hall, noted as she passed Kagesawa and entered the living room.

“What’s his name?” Katō-san from the apartment below asked.

The neighbours were quickly gathering in an informal semicircle in front of the sofa where Satoru was sitting, masterfully disguising his startled confusion in the face of this unexpected invasion.

“Um, Satoru-kun, these are the neighbours: Noguchi-san, the family Oyama, Sugawara-san—he’s the caretaker—Katō-san and her daughter, Nishimura, Takazaki from next door, Wada two doors down, the Arais: Shinichirō, Ayako, Kōta and Sumire from the ground floor, and you met the landlord Uchida-san just now. Did I miss anyone? No?” It was also a little impressive that they’d all squeezed in and were now waiting in such relative silence. “And this is Harumine Satoru, my coworker. He’s staying with me until he finds his own place.”

“Nice to meet you.” Satoru stood up and bowed hastily.

“Oh, he’s rather young! How old are you?”

“Where are you from?”

“Where did you study?”

“Has he treated you well?”

“What sort of work do you do?”

The questions followed one another before Satoru had a chance to answer them. With some of the confusion trickling through the link, Kagesawa felt an overwhelming urge to shield him from the interrogation.

“Give the poor boy some room to breathe!” Noguchi-san said with the authority of someone with years of experience of unruly and inconsiderate people and very little patience left to deal with the lot of them. “Have some pie.” She offered Satoru the whole pie she’d brought.

Satoru took it, didn’t know what to do with it and turned to stare at Kagesawa. Help. What do I do?

Kagesawa shrugged. “Plates, probably we need plates and something… dessert forks, maybe?” These did not come with the apartment, so there probably weren’t any.

“Yes, of course.” Noguchi-san turned to Katō-san behind her, and Katō-san provided her with dessert plates and little forks. This seemed the cue to start filling the coffee table with the other snacks and drinks they’d brought and to distribute them to the uninvited guests, who were making themselves very comfortable in Kagesawa’s modest-sized living room.

He had had this happen enough times before to be used to it and even appreciate the unconventional ease with which his neighbours were always willing to welcome new people into their midst, but the same could not be said about Satoru.

He was still holding the pie. Beginning to look somewhat distressed, he closed his eyes. Green, red, 27, 27, blue, red.

“You can sit back down,” Kagesawa told him gently. “I’ll take the pie.” He set it on the table to slice it with a knife that was ever so conveniently placed in his hand by Katō-san. Since Satoru was struggling to answer their questions, the neighbours were redirecting most of them to Kagesawa.

“Why didn’t you tell us? When did you link?” Nishimura had had the chance to chat with Kagesawa several times in the past week or so. He seemed especially disappointed that Kagesawa hadn’t mentioned anything.

“You know me. It’s hardly newsworthy at this point,” Kagesawa tried to smooth it over. He’d somehow managed to keep the last three under wraps and had hoped to do the same again in case it didn’t last. “What has it been, a little over a week?” He glanced at Satoru. Satoru nodded.

“He’s much younger than the previous ones. What happened to the last one, Hayasomething, no, was it matsu, machi…?” Nishimura asked.

“You’re probably thinking of Hashimoto, but there was one after him, Shimizu, I believe. He was the tall one with glasses.” Takazaki was disappointingly good at keeping track, but then again, he wasn’t actively trying to forget some of them.

“That was a link? Odd. Didn’t give off the same vibe. Can’t say I was fond of him. This one seems nice though.” Nishimura gave Satoru a friendly smile and stepped away to grab a slice of pie. It was still steaming as it was cut. Kagesawa had the feeling it had hit the oven the second he had ushered the landlord out of the apartment. They’d wasted no time.

“Hashimoto retired. Shimizu had his licence suspended.” Kagesawa hoped he wouldn’t have to recount any more of the details.

“Do you still keep in touch?” Nishimura offered Kagesawa a can of beer from a cooler he’d brought with him.

“Thanks. No. We weren’t that close. This reminds me: Takazaki, I got you the data I promised!” Kagesawa was glad to have a reason to change the subject. “It’s in the other room.” He’d had it lying around for a while now. He bounced to go get it, and Takazaki followed him to the bedroom.

Since the man was a bit of a tech geek, Kagesawa enjoyed sharing some of the tools of his trade with him. While this stuff was largely inaccessible to a layman, it was not strictly classified, so there was no reason not to satisfy Takazaki’s abundant curiosity. Hence, the detour led to a small host of other conversation points before the data card finally reached Takazaki’s hand.

By the time the two of them got back, the people in the living room were happily chatting away in small groups, eating, drinking and enjoying their impromptu house party. By a stroke of luck, Satoru was engaged in conversation with Katō-san who, out of the people present, was the most harmless and easy to chat with. Despite the poor timing, Satoru seemed to be dealing with all of this reasonably well.

“There you are. I was beginning to think you ran off.” Nishimura made space for Kagesawa and Takazaki beside him on the floor.

“I showed him the new P4 connector for my ‘Osprey’.”

The Osprey was an old-school extension for the wireless connector Kagesawa used to connect to the BCI—the brain–computer interface—mainly to access data, run rehabilitation programs, take on commissions and train occasionally. He liked the design of the older model because it was a more snug fit compared to the others he’d tried. He periodically refurbished it to keep up with the demands of the latest software.

Tech stuff was probably the only topic Nishimura wasn’t keen on, so he usually seemed to abandon his resentment of being left behind at the mentioning of anything technical.

The subject was promptly changed to something else, and some of the other neighbours joined the conversation. A few of them, including Noguchi-san and the landlord, excused themselves after about half an hour. When they left, they took their rubbish along with them and the temperature and noise were brought down to a more reasonable level. Katō-san opened one of the windows to let in some fresh air.

This was the best part about these spontaneous house parties: they were often abrupt and unannounced, but even without anyone taking the lead, everything took care of itself as if by magic. The neighbourhood wasn’t great, but the people in it, at least in this building, were a wonderful mix of returned expats, second-generation immigrants and weirdos with unconventional customs and habits. They could sometimes be pushy and butt into Kagesawa’s business, but they were also considerate and caring in their own ways.

“Did you ask Noguchi-san to make the cake?” Takazaki brought up the preparations for the birthday party with Nishimura.

“Not yet. I was hoping Katō-san would do it. How about it?”

“Really? What sort of a cake? If it’s not too complicated…” Katō-san then consulted her next-door neighbour, and the two of them started discussing what sizes and shapes of cake pans they had between them.

Red… uh… red, blue… um, uhh… f— five, 527… As soon as Kagesawa turned to look, Satoru fell over sideways on the sofa. Five… uh…

“Oh, sorry, excuse me.” Kagesawa hurried over.

“What happened?”

“Is he all right?”

As the neighbours turned their attention to the sofa, Kagesawa checked the link.

Ah shit, I’m sorry, he projected clumsily. He set his beer can on the coffee table next to the one he’d emptied when he’d been preoccupied chatting with his friends earlier.

“Yes, he’s fine. He’s just tired from work.” He scolded himself for being so careless.

Satoru was bravely trying to dampen the link but looked ready to pass out from the effort. Thankfully, although he’d been offered another beer, he’d barely touched it. Having that added to the mix could have been catastrophic. Kagesawa scooped him up from the sofa.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Do you need help?” Takazaki offered.

Five…

“ Actually, yes, can you grab him by the legs? He’s a bit heavy.”

...b-blue, red, uhh, five…

The two of them carried Satoru into the bedroom.

Once they’d lowered Satoru into bed, Kagesawa flumped down to sit next to him on the edge of it, disappointed in himself.

“Are you sure he’s OK? Does this happen often?” Takazaki seemed concerned.

“It’s fine, probably…”

“And you? How are you holding up?”

About the same age, Takazaki had known Kagesawa even before he’d become an empath. It was a shame Takazaki hadn’t become one since he probably would have made a great colleague, even if they couldn’t have partnered together. He was the only one Kagesawa had felt close enough to open up to about his past problems, although he did regret off-loading and causing worry.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle, but thanks for asking.”

“Five…” Satoru interrupted. Five… blue… “Blue.”

“What’s he doing?” Takazaki asked.

“Ah, that.” With a bit of an embarrassed chuckle, Kagesawa replied truthfully, “He’s drunk. And he’s sorting trash.”

“Um, why?”

“He’s very sensitive.”

At this, Takazaki raised his brow. “Oh, right, didn’t you say something about the previous old fart being difficult to work with because the link was so degraded? This one’s fresh out of the oven, so it’s the opposite issue?”

“Something like that.” Kagesawa rubbed his temples.

“Ah, I thought you were acting a little peculiarly today.” Takazaki’s observation made Kagesawa frown.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Frankly, yes. But I’ve known you for a long time. The others may not have noticed.”

“I need to lie down. He’s exhausted.” Kagesawa laid back and exhaled slowly. Satoru was at his limit with the dampening, so most of it was seeping through unobstructed.

“Should I ask everyone to leave?” Takazaki suggested.

“I don’t care if they’re here so long as no one wants me to do anything. It’d be a shame to ruin their evening.”

“I could take them over to my place next door.”

“Would you?” It wasn’t that much of a bother to have them stay, but Takazaki ushering them all out of the apartment seemed like a lovely idea.

“I’m sorry,” Satoru butted in and tried to sit up. “I tried to keep it together. I really thought—”

“It’s not your fault…” Kagesawa gave up on the rest of his sentence in favour of trying to dampen the link now that Satoru was too tired to manage it.

Harumine found himself able to sit up successfully. He glanced at Kagesawa, impressed. “You’ve improved!” he blurted out.

“Thanks, I guess.” When Kagesawa spoke, his concentration faltered. It made Harumine feel woozy for a moment, but thankfully that moment was brief.

“Takazaki-san was it?” Harumine turned to face Kagesawa’s friend.

“Yes?”

“It was nice to meet all of you, but as you heard, I’m completely wiped, and he’s not doing much better.” Harumine pointed his thumb at Kagesawa, who was currently laying face down on the bed. He was putting all of his effort into dampening the link, probably still sharing a good chunk of Harumine’s exhaustion because neither of them could suppress it properly in their current condition.

“I don’t know how long he’s going to last, and when he runs out of steam, we’ll probably both crash, and honestly, I don’t know what that’s going to look like,” Harumine warned Takazaki.

“How long can he…?” Takazaki’s brow furrowed.

“I have no idea. He’s pretty bad at what he’s doing.” Harumine tried to maintain a polite and unalarming tone but was forced to rush, not knowing how much time he had until Kagesawa folded. “If you could let everyone know we need to rest and guide them out of here, we’d greatly appreciate it.”

“Yes, of course. We did barge in uninvited. I’ll certainly let everyone know immediately!” Takazaki seemed to sense the urgency, gave Harumine a quick, apologetic bow and hurried out of the room.

“Thank you so much,” Harumine called after him.

He waited for the guests to make their way out of the apartment. When he heard the door close behind the last guest, he finally let himself fall back on the bed.

“Did you have to tell him I suck?” Kagesawa grumbled and rolled onto his side.

“Did I say that?” Harumine could feel more of the dizziness sneak back in.

“In so many words.” Kagesawa sighed. “I’m not trying to fake excellence, but I’d also rather not underline how much of a loser I am.”

“Yow’re not a losehr, but um, can you concentr-hate a while more, uh longer?”

Kagesawa made one more effort to dampen the link. Harumine used the moment of relative clarity to grab a blanket from the armrest of an armchair and to make himself comfortable on the bed.

“I honestly don’t know how you’ve been doing this for the past couple of hours… I’m not going to the sofa,” Kagesawa muttered.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Me neither.” Harumine was in no mood or state to care. “You can let go nowhh— Uhhh... This was worshe than I recalled.” Too tired to dampen it himself, the four something beers that Kagesawa had had hit Harumine with full force. “Why’re you so o-kay with—mmm, thish, uh?”

“It must have something to do with our link. It’s amplifying the effects. I used to drink a lot more than this, but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“Ish-there sumthin’ wrong wiff me?”

“Nah, but how are you still awake? I think I’m about to pass out.” In response to his brain seemingly nearing an imminent shutdown, Kagesawa yawned so hard that for a moment Harumine thought he’d dislocate his jaw.

“Fer the record, damphning is eashy to maintain up to a cert’n point, yoreh jus’ crap at it.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

“Nooooh,” Harumine tried to explain, but the handicap was too challenging. He made haphazard hand gestures, hoping that Kagesawa would catch his gist. It went right over his head, but the result was the same: he briefly dampened the link for Harumine to continue. “That’s not what I meant. I’ll teach you a more efficient technique later. There’s no reason why you should suck. You’ll pick it u-uhhh… an’ issbackh. Shhite…”

“Sorry. I’m at my limit.” Kagesawa untied his hair, threw the hair tie across the room somewhere and closed his eyes.

“I whant to sleep but ev’ry time I close mah eyeses I see a bunch a’ garbage.”

“Then you’ll have to accept it and watch some garbage until you fall asleep.”

“Blue, red, redhh… thassa sevensomethin two, red, moooorreeee reddd… green…” Harumine opened his eyes and for a moment, kept on hallucinating a flow of refuse crawling across the ceiling.

There was an uncharacteristically stark flash of annoyance transferred through the link, which startled Harumine to look.

“You’re such a pain in the butt. Just sleep!” Kagesawa cleared his throat.

“I din’t tell youdda drink so much!” Harumine snapped back.

“I had four beers, and it was already ages ago!”

“I don’ wanna fight wih’ you!”

“Me neither, so shut up and let me sleep!” Kagesawa turned his back to Harumine who bit his lip. He knew he needed to sleep, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to sabotage it intentionally.

“I feel sick.”

“If you need to puke, don’t puke on the bed. Let me sleep.”

“Not like t-hawt. Like-ah, uhm, like I’m not right… sumthin’s wrong, I should run a dianst— di— gnosht—ic program t’check…”

“You’re drunk and tired. You need to sleep. Shut up.” Kagesawa sounded like he was about to run out of patience, so Harumine shut up. He reasoned he was not in any immediate danger, but it felt incredibly lonely to have to cope with this alone.

Being drunk was inconvenient but not really a cause for concern. It was the persistent hallucination of rolling shit that kept triggering the uncontrollable sorting responses that worried him. Maybe it would pass with time and rest? He was too exhausted to do anything about it. All he could do was let go.

Green, brown, 476, red, red, 56, r-red… r-redh— r— fi— five… red… f-five… b20. Revert to initial settings. Code seven dash five, project ID: Pandion.