Psync by Zile Elliven

Chapter Forty

Eli

This was, hands down, the best Thanksgiving holiday he’d ever had. He’d spent three hours exploring Osaka Castle with Haruka. He would have spent every yen he possessed at the tourist stands surrounding the base of the castle if Haruka hadn’t used his superior size and reach to strong-arm his way into paying first.

Eli had managed to slip away to buy two massive, baked sweet potatoes with his own money. He’d been too shy to speak to the vendor, though. Even though he knew exactly what to say, all he’d managed was a shy little meep while hepointed to the size he wanted and held out two fingers.

Next time, Eli. You’ll do better next time.

He was back in Haruka’s suite surrounded by all of his loot, sorting through it and categorizing by each person he’d bought something for.

“Is any of this actually for you?” Haruka asked.

“Ummm . . .” Eli sorted through the pile until he found the little golden maneki-neko magnet he’d bought. “I got this for our fridge. You don’t have any magnets on it, and that’s a crime in my country. I’d hate for you to get fined.”

“I appreciate it,” Haruka said solemnly.

Eli tilted his head to the side as he took in his boyfriend’s lack of expression, trying to decide if Haruka had realized he was joking. The man was a mystery sometimes.

Haruka’s phone buzzed, and he took it out of his pocket. “It’s my aunt. I need to meet with her for a few minutes.” He walked over to the mirror, took his hair out of its usual ponytail, and combed it into place.

“Do you want me to come?” Eli watched as Haruka took a blazer out of the coat closet. In less than a minute, he’d transformed from a spoiled college student to a respectable adult. A team of stylists wouldn’t be able to help Eli achieve that effect in a hundred years. When he got dressed up, he always somehow came across as a preteen on his way to church.

“It’s okay, I won’t take long.”

“While you’re gone, I might try to do some more research. You know, on the whole mind reading thing.” Eli tried not to look like he was holding his breath. Haruka didn’t seem to care much about why they were connected the way they were and occasionally got moody when Eli brought it up.

Haruka straightened the cuffs on his jacket. “That’s one of the reasons I brought you here.”

“Really?”

“There’s somewhere I think you’ll enjoy. If you insist on researching it, you might find something helpful there.”

“You mean like talking to a Shinto priest about it? Is there a local legend about mind reading?”

“No, dork.” Haruka flicked Eli in the forehead. “But there’s a well-stocked library several floors down that might have something.”

Eli pouted until Haruka kissed his forehead.

He immediately ruined the gesture by saying, “You watch way too much anime, you know.”

“You watch almost as much as I do.”

“That’s how I know you watch too much.” Haruka kissed him again, only on the mouth this time. “Come on, I’ll show you to the library before I meet my aunt.”

“Do you have time? I don’t want to piss off Chiba-san. She’s kinda scary.”

Haruka snorted. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll deal with her. You focus on having fun.”

Haruka dropped him off at the library, giving him a knowing look as Eli’s brain short-circuited over the three-story nerd wet dream he’d been presented with.

“You might want to start over there.” Haruka pointed to a corner of the room next to a thirty-foot arched window.

Eli didn’t even notice him leave.

✽✽✽

“Why am I not surprised to find you like this?” Haruka’s voice pulled Eli out of one of the books he had in his lap. “You look like a book troll.”

“Huh?” Eli put a finger on the page to hold his place and looked around.

He was wedged against the side of a bookcase and had several stacks of books surrounding him. Some of them were nearly as tall as he was and wobbled dangerously.

Haruka took the top off the tallest pile and started a new one, adding the top of the next tallest tower to it before he sat down in front of Eli. “You know this room has tables. Big ones.”

“Yeah yeah, sure,” Eli agreed absently before shoving a book in Haruka’s face titled European Fairytales. “Look at this.”

At first Eli had zero luck, mostly because he was so excited he couldn’t focus, and partly because most of the books weren’t in English. And the ones in languages he could read were a bit too advanced for him to be able to understand them fully. Then he found a small, leather-bound book tucked away so high, only a bona fide shelf-climber like Eli would ever think to look.

Eli chuckled as he thought about what Haruka’s face would have looked like if he’d seen him dangling twenty feet off the ground while straining to snag the edge of the tiny book stuffed on top of a row of dusty old tomes.

“It would look like this.” Haruka’s eyes burned into his, and Eli realized their knees were touching. “There are ladders in here, you didn’t have to risk yourself for a book.”

“They’re too heavy to move every time I need to find something.” Eli moved his knees away from Haruka’s. “See, this is why I need to research our bond.”

“I see no problem with it.”

“That’s because you don’t have to worry about me wandering around inside your head all the time.”

“You seemed to like it fine yesterday,” Haruka said, a small pout forming on his lips.

“Shut up. You know exactly how I feel about that—you don’t need to go fishing for compliments.”

Haruka preened. “Then I don’t see what the problem is.”

“It feels like you’re closer to me than I am to you. I know you think you’re protecting me from something scary inside of you, but did you ever consider that I might like it? If it’s a part of you, then it’s just more Haruka and I love Haruka—even the annoying bits. Why wouldn’t I want to know everything about my favorite person?”

For a second, Haruka’s cool as ice expression faltered, and Eli caught a glimpse of something vulnerable and childlike before his face closed up. “Hn.”

Rather than push, it was better to let Haruka process what Eli said. Otherwise, they’d fight, and Eli wouldn’t be able to show him the super cool story he’d just found.

Eli crawled into Haruka’s lap so they could look at the battered book together. “I don’t know why it caught my attention—maybe because it was so hard to get to.” When Haruka grumbled unhappily, Eli hurried on. “But when I flipped through it, I found a story about a group of traveling merchants. They were insanely lucky—apparently they had the favor of some god. Anyway, they spent generations enjoying the god’s patronage until he asked them for one of their daughters.”

When Eli had reached this part of the story the first time, the hair on his arms stood on end. Kind of like it was now.

Eli shivered and continued.

“The merchant family loved their god, but they loved their daughter even more, so they politely turned him down. Unfortunately, this god turned out to be a dick and cursed the whole family.” Eli pointed to an illustration of a beam of light striking a group of cowering people. “He tore each person in half and scattered the parts to the four corners of the earth, saying none of them would ever be happy until they found their other half.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“Apparently the god decided to be an even bigger dick to her. He cursed her to be drawn to herself in each life, only to be torn apart, lifetime after lifetime.”

Haruka said nothing, but his fingers dug into Eli’s sides.

“I know, creepy, right? Anyway, the reason why this stuck with me is because it says when a shattered soul gets close to their other half, they can hear each other. Sounds familiar, no?”

It was actually starting to feel a little too familiar for Eli’s taste. It wasn’t just his arms now, the hair on the back of his neck was standing up, too. Maybe calling it a super cool story was a stretch.

Haruka took the book out of Eli’s hands and read it while Eli rubbed his arms. When he put the book down, Eli asked, “What do you think?”

“I think that god has too much time on his hands.” Haruka poked Eli’s cheek. “And so do you. Let’s go eat.”

Eli scooted off Haruka’s lap, feeling a little disappointed, until he noticed a faint line of goosebumps going from Haruka’s neck to his hairline.

✽✽✽

After they ate, Eli called his family while Haruka went to yet another family meeting. Once again, he offered to go, and once again he was rebuffed. As much as he loved being in Japan, he was starting to look forward to going home—he had a feeling being a trophy boyfriend was going to get old really quick.

It was well past midnight before he gave up and went to bed alone. His eyes were heavy when his head hit the pillow, but before he fell asleep, a thought hit him. Haruka still hadn’t told him what happened to cause Eli’s blackout.

His mind naturally shied away from events like that, so Eli wasn’t in a hurry to ask about it. Was Haruka being sensitive to that? Or did he have another reason?

Sleep hit him before he had a chance to think any more.

Darkness.

Everywhere Eli turned, all he saw was a never-ending sea of nothing.

And behind the nothing came terrible, mocking laughter. “It doesn’t matter where you go, I’ll always find you.”

“Get fucked, creep!” Eli shouted at the laughter, trying to sound anything other than the terrified ten-year-old he felt like.

He wanted to throw something at the voice, but he had nothing. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. He was alone, always, always alone.

“You won’t have to be alone, pretty, if you choose me. It will be easy. Don’t you want life to be easy?”

Eli shivered. If he could go the rest of his life without being called pretty it would be too soon.

He curled into himself and tried to block out the laughter, but it came at him from all sides, attacking every weakness and chipping away at Eli’s mind, trying to reach his core.

Howling wind joined the laughter, tearing at Eli’s clothes. He curled in even tighter. He would hold on. Being alone forever sounded better than giving in to this freak.

Even if he felt so cold he might shatter.

The bleak thought was like a knife to his soul, and laughter chased after it ready to exploit any weakness.

Eli shook as he fought to hold himself together.

Just one more minute.

Just one more second.

Just one more breath.

Warmth bloomed against Eli’s back, driving back the cold and forcing the laughter to retreat back behind the nothing.

Eli gasped as heat rushed back into him, lending him enough strength to sit up. He found Haruka kneeling over him anxiously.

Through lips still numb from the biting wind, Eli said, “I don’t think it’s over yet.”

Haruka nodded and continued to act as a shield for Eli, staring into the darkness, waiting for whatever lay behind it to make its move.

Eli pressed against Haruka, trying to ground himself. He wasn’t alone, not anymore. How could he have forgotten?

“Only for now, my love.” The voice from the darkness said mockingly. “Until you give me what I want, you’ll never be whole.”

A sharp pain lanced through his core, and Eli screamed. He tried to cling to Haruka, but his hands passed through him. Before his eyes, Haruka’s form grew indistinct and began to fade away. Eli tried to meet his lover’s eyes, but they were focused on something behind him. Whatever he’d seen, made Haruka look positively murderous.

When the last traces of Haruka were gone, the darkness descended, surrounding Eli and filling him with hundreds of memories—all of them of Haruka. None of them were happy.

Every memory revolved around the two of them, but it didn’t show their lives together, or how they met. It only showed how they parted.

Memory after memory rolled through Eli, and he got to experience each one as though it were happening to him now. At first, it had been stupid misunderstandings that had driven them apart—all orchestrated by the vengeful, jealous god. But as time went on, their memories of each other started to awaken, and the god had to resort to more violent tactics.

And somehow, it was always Eli who was stolen, murdered, or brutalized, usually right in front of Haruka. As the nightmare slideshow of events began to come to an end, Eli recognized a pattern.

More often than not, Eli was driven to kill himself.

The god must have finally found a formula that suited him. Time after time, life after life, Eli was the one who’d torn them apart.

The last thing Eli remembered thinking before succumbing to oblivion was, so it wasn’t just me. Something really is out to get me.