Pandion (Genera #1)

Chapter 27

H arumine sat on the floor, back against the wall, trying to gather himself. He wouldn’t have stopped had he not heard footsteps. He’d pushed Kagesawa off and shushed him into silence until the chime announced the lift’s arrival, and whoever had been there entered the lift and was thus out of earshot.

Kagesawa stood up and fixed what he was wearing. Then he helped Harumine up.

“I think we should talk.” He handed Harumine his tie. Harumine re-tied it.

“Yes, I think we should.”

“This can’t go on. You asked if it’s already too late. I don’t know. It might be. If it is, you should do what you think is best. I trust you.” With the link unfettered, he seemed his usual self. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the smoking. I figured you had a hard enough time putting up with me with the coffee and the beer and all this extra bullshit.”

“How did you manage to keep it from me?” That part of it bothered Harumine the most.

“I wondered about that myself, but it’s probably for the same reason it felt so easy to quit.” He picked his jacket off the floor and dusted it off. “What’s there to pick up if it’s not bothering me? I’ve been too busy to think about it.”

That didn’t sound like a credible explanation, but it was better than nothing.

It didn’t rule out the possibility that Kagesawa was being controlled without his knowledge, though. He’d expected Yajima to have severed the link when he’d left, but what if he hadn’t? What if there was still some way he was accessing it and influencing Kagesawa? The DEFD might make him more vulnerable than most, and to top it off, he had two organisms developing in his head, unrestrained.

“It’s getting late, and while I wouldn’t mind continuing what we were doing, I don’t know what’s going to be a step too far, or when we’ll be interrupted again. Do you still need some reassurance? Or can I resume dampening for now?” He didn’t look or feel vulnerable or like he was being controlled. All of that seemed like paranoia now that the link was not dampened.

“Yes, sure.” It was a bit embarrassing. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I have a theory.” Kagesawa leaned on the handrail again, tapping his fingers against the metal as per his usual habit.

“Do share.” Harumine considered himself fairly self-aware, so he didn’t expect further insight if he hadn’t figured it out himself. But maybe he’d missed something.

“I was thinking about it when I was sorting through some of the data you sent over from the EA. There were a few cross-references to a stack I was working on a couple of months back when I was trying to figure out how to filter out noise and automatically dampen using my port filter.” This reminded Kagesawa to dampen the link. “Where was I? Right, so they’d noticed a host of adverse effects from long-term or frequent dampening in some individuals. They don’t know why, but it’s theorised it has more to do with the health of the organism and outside factors such as conditioning than the person’s initial temperament. This makes it difficult to screen for. Since most people don’t have a need to dampen the link a lot—they describe it as background noise that’s easy to tune out—it rarely causes any problems. However,” Kagesawa looked apologetic again, “I’m afraid this one’s on me.”

“What do you mean? What did you do?”

“It’s not what I did, but what I should have done. They told me to get re-evaluated after what happened, and I did go to the first appointment…”

“Aren’t those mandatory, though? The doctor has to sign you off as fit before you can get a new link.”

“Yeah, you’d think that. Anyway, I was not in a good headspace, and I’m barely functional when I am, so I skipped the rest, even though I knew I shouldn’t. That stuff’s there for a reason. I think this must have rubbed off on you from me. The silence… The dampening gives me major anxiety. It’s less of an issue now that you taught me to do it properly, and when it’s me doing it, but…” He stopped tapping and grabbed a tight hold of the handrail. “That shit fucks me right up.”

Harumine hadn’t realised it was that bad. Yet another thing he’d somehow missed. He wasn’t entirely convinced this was what had caused his own freak-out, but it was possible he could have picked up on the mood at some point.

Then again, he hadn’t figured out what had bothered Kagesawa all day today even when it had been constantly weighing on his mind. What were the chances of him picking it up when he wasn’t even aware of it? Unless being subtly exposed to it unawares for a long period of time made that big of a difference…

“It’s a trust issue, isn’t it?” Kagesawa summarised. “It is for me at least. When the link is there, the longer it’s there, the more used to it I become. I can check how you’re feeling, and I don’t have to wonder or worry about it. And sure, I can’t know what other people not linked to me are feeling or thinking, but I don’t have to trust them the same way. They can’t hurt me the same way you might, and I’m attached to you 24/7. When you stop to think about it, that’s a really scary, unhealthy place to be.”

Harumine had never considered being linked to someone a threat to his health and safety. He knew there were certain risks and his ethics classes had brushed on some of the relevant topics. There were rules in place and a reporting system for reporting inappropriate behaviour as you would any other crime toward your person.

The key difference was probably that Harumine had never had to use that reporting system. Now that he thought about it, he did feel a little less secure about being linked than he had when they’d first met, and it had nothing to do with him fearing for his safety with Kagesawa.

Even if it turned out that Kagesawa had lied to him about something huge and betrayed his trust, he was fairly confident he was capable of handling it. So where was this weird, vague sense of dread coming from?

The link was silent. It should have been a neutral experience, yet if he paid attention to it for too long, he felt like he might have a panic attack.

“Oh, f— You might be right. Why’s it this scary? You wouldn’t do anything to me, right?”

“Well…” Kagesawa seemed to be debating with himself about it. “Not in the sense you’re referring to.”

“I don’t want to know where your mind leapt to just now.”

“Right, sure, well, remember when you asked me about Shimizu? You wanted to know what he did.”

Harumine nodded.

“I couldn’t put it into words back then and to tell you the truth, it’s still not easy, but since it’s relevant…” Kagesawa took a deep breath. “Imagine someone prying your deepest, darkest secrets and worst memories and regurgitating them back to you when you least expect it. Be linked to someone who you know will ruthlessly exploit every weakness you have. Then have him kill the link day in and day out to leave you festering in that silence, to suddenly throw something through when you least expect it. There’s nothing you can do about it because they will deny everything and say you’ve lost your mind. And I don’t know, I’ll never know, maybe I am insane. But I haven’t had anything like that happen with you until the morning routine—” Kagesawa’s voice cracked and he swallowed. “Hell, maybe I caused Shimizu to lose his licence when he was actually telling the truth.” It wasn’t much more than a whisper. He turned to look at Harumine. “I don’t know how to fix that. I can’t tell if he actually did something or if it was just me. I also couldn’t do anything about it even if I wanted to because Takazaki was the one to report it in. It’s all under his name due to some technicality.” He sounded like he knew this from experience. Had he tried to retract the report?

“Anyway, whether it happened or not, the silence freaks me out. It’s done that ever since Seimei… and whatever happened in between has only made it worse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? I’m the one that should apologise. And I didn’t tell you this to milk for sympathy. It’s more so you know you have everything you need to crush me if you ever need to.”

Harumine felt chills. He’d felt that trust when he’d had his hands on Kagesawa’s throat only moments ago, but hearing him reiterate it in this way made Harumine’s heart beat faster. It was like the man was offering his soul to Harumine to do as he pleased. How was this not an indirect but blatant love confession? Was he reading this all wrong? It had sounded like one. Was it OK to take it as such?

Wait, what? What was he even thinking? Did he really want to have that sort of relationship with Kagesawa? And to think he’d only just thought of himself as self-aware! He’d been aiming at this for quite a while now, and vehemently at that, and yet he’d not stopped once to consider what he was doing.

“What? Do you need something more? What else do you need? I think I’ve told you everything.” Kagesawa paused to think it over. “Oh, right, there is one more thing.”

“Oh?” Harumine wasn’t after anything more, but since he was offering…

“I suppose you’ve pieced it together, but I did have a one-sided infatuation with Seimei. He humoured me, and we gave it a try, but that was the extent of it. He remained my closest, dearest friend until the very end. As for how he died, I—” He took a deep breath. “I was not entirely blameless.”

Harumine didn’t know how to respond to that. Asking for the details seemed justified, but the matter seemed too painful to be intentional. Even if Kagesawa had been involved, it had to have been an accident.

None of this was a love confession. The notion was ridiculous. It was a response to the trauma that Kagesawa didn’t want to relive.

“I don’t necessarily need to know,” Harumine said.

“Yes, you do. If you ever feel like you’re driven into a corner, and the choice is between me and you, I don’t need another sacrifice in my name. I need you to promise me you’ll take care of yourself first.” He grabbed Harumine by the hand and leaned in closer. “Promise me.”

“I…” Harumine hesitated. He didn’t want to promise something like that. He wasn’t sure whether, if it came down to it, he’d value Kagesawa’s life over his own, but the thought of actively making the choice to save himself and let Kagesawa die… He never wanted to be in that position in the first place. “Fuck.”

Hadn’t he already forced Kagesawa to stop dampening, even at the risk of it causing him irreparable harm? For what? Because he was suspicious? He could have waited a while and gathered more evidence before drawing his conclusions! The repercussions weren’t apparent yet, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. “How do you feel? Anything unusual? We weren’t supposed to use the link at all. What time is it? Is it too late to have it assessed again.” If the organism had passed some threshold due to this… “I’m such an idiot.”

“That goes for the both of us. Honestly.” Kagesawa snorted. “I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to resist. If I hadn’t been reminded of Seimei, I’d probably still be hoping for a little more—”

“You’re hopeless.”

“Well, we were interrupted!”

“I distinctly recall having to lend you my pack of tissues to clean that up, so don’t try to act like you were left hanging.”

“An interruption is an interruption. I was invested in a second round.”

“Yeah, about that. Don’t you have any refractory period at all?”

“What’s that?”

“You can’t be serious.” Harumine shook his head.

“Am I supposed to? Is it a problem? No one’s brought it up before.”

“No, no… this explains a lot.” It wasn’t bad with the link but a little inconvenient without it. “I’m going to send Hase-sensei a message in case he’s still up or wakes up early so we can have you checked up as soon as possible.”

He was glad to have had the foresight to ask for the professor’s private mail address in case of an emergency. He pulled out his port extension and palm reader, popped in the extension and connected to the reader. Even with the hassle of using the extension, this was a quicker way to send a message than typing it.

“If he doesn’t respond in a couple of minutes, we should go back to the dorm and get some sleep.” Harumine slipped the reader back into his pocket.

“The view from up here really is rather beautiful.” Kagesawa turned back to it. “Was there something else you wanted to know?”

“No, not really.” They stood in comfortable silence for a while until Harumine casually broke it, thinking out loud. “I didn’t know you liked asphyxiation.”

“Oh, that. I get bored easily, so I tend to amuse myself with things I might want to try. It seemed like an interesting concept. Sometimes, I get fixated on things like that. Like… how would you feel about ****ing some *** *** onto my ******** or maybe even **** my ****?”

“You’re a masochist.”

“I guess. I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“You’re only listing things you want me to do to you.”

“Oh, that’s because I didn’t think you’d let me do them to you.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I figured I’d enjoy it either way—what with the link and all—and then after trying it, it was better than expected.”

“Excuse me?” That wasn’t really his preference? But he’d seemed so willing and enthusiastic about it! “Hold up, I’m getting a message.” It was Hase-sensei. He was still up and working late, analysing data at the lab. Great. It’d be easier to get some sleep after a quick check for peace of mind.