Reverse #2
“How is this possible? Was it the baby ghost?” I closed the small distance between them, grabbed them both, and cried into the warm skin of my brothers' necks. And for a moment I didn't think about the rewind, the baby, or whether any of it was real.
I just held them.
Aki's pulse knocked against my forearm.
Yuki's breath moved warm and even against my collar.
Two hearts I had witnessed go out were loud again under my hands, and I pressed my face between their shoulders and let myself believe it for the length of one long breath.
Please don’t let this be a dream.
Neither of them pulled away. Whatever they thought was wrong with me, they stood there and carried it, the way they carried everything, together.
Behind me, Kenji whispered, “Goryū, rest.”
His saying that name made me think of the baby girl and the impossibility of everything that had occurred tonight.
Kenji had gone into that forest and did some sacrifice with our Tiger and the Silent Ones.
My niece. . .she was sacrificed. . .and now she’s a ghost with tiger eyes and she can touch me and. . .change things. . .
I let go of the twins and looked around.
Where are you? Baby girl? Appear, please.
By now, Kenji was in the back of the plane stabbing Akiro and our father in the chests as if making sure they were truly dead.
Reo returned from the cockpit. “The pilot is taking us back. He’s scared shitless we’re going to kill him.”
I went to Reo. “And this isn’t a dream?”
“It isn’t." Reo looked at me like I'd asked him whether the sky was on the floor. “You must have taken a bruise to the head or—”
"You said it isn’t a dream." I wiped my face. "Dream Reo would tell me he wasn't a dream. That's exactly what the dream would do."
“No.” He stared at me. "Dream Reo would say something nonsensical or metaphorical."
"That suspiciously sounds like a Dream Reo answer."
"Fine. You want to know how to tell if you’re in a dream or not? Read something. Anything with words on it." Reo gestured to the placard bolted by the hatch. "Read it, look away, read it again. In a dream the letters scramble. They don't hold still."
Like a deranged man, I found the placard and did exactly as he’d instructed.
EMERGENCY EXIT—PULL RED HANDLE.
I looked at Reo. “The words are correct.”
Reo nodded. “Now look at your hands and count the fingers. Dream hands have six. Seven. They even melt or grow."
I spread my hands in the red light and counted them twice like a child. “Five. Five. Ten total."
"Devastating, I know. Ten whole fingers, and still not a dream."
I could tell I was losing the Roar’s patience. “But. . .this still could be a dream. Everything rewound.”
“Look at your fucking watch, Hiro.” Reo pointed at my wrist. "Clocks run backward in dreams, or they show numbers that can't exist. Look."
I leaned in and stared. “1:11. Do you see that?”
“Yes. Three ones together means new beginnings.”
“I feel like Dream Reo would say that—”
“I could punch you in your face. That might help. I surely would enjoy it right now.”
I frowned at him.
Rolling his eyes, Reo pulled out his phone and headed off to Kenji.
I turned back to the twins.
They’d been watching me the whole time.
“Hiro?” Aki leaned his head to the side.
“Are you okay?” Yuki finished.
And then I noticed the white lock of hair above Aki’s ear. One thin streak, bone-white against the black strands.
His hair is different.
And lower, at Aki’s throat, where the round had gone in earlier, and I had watched it back out—a dark brownish mark sat on the skin like a birthmark.
They’re changed but. . .don’t know it yet.
I turned to Yuki and found a brownish birthmark on him too, on the right side of his face, near his ear.
It’s like. . .they’re stamped at the exact place death touched them.
Also, there was a white streak of hair that ran further back on his head.
What else about them has changed?
The plane leaned in the opposite way and everyone found their balance except me. Whatever had been holding me up all this time finally ran out. My knees went, and I began to fall back.
Aki and Yuki rushed to me. Yuki caught me under one arm. Aki caught me under the other. They held me up.
I tried to lift my hand to my face. It went up halfway and fell back down. “I’m tired. . .all that going in reverse. . .to save your lives.”
“You’re a little. . .drunk too.” Aki blinked.
“And high, probably.” Yuki held my wrist. “When did you smoke?”
“I didn’t.” Tears spilled from my eyes. “I promise I’m not intoxicated. It’s all magic and the baby ghost.”
They exchanged odd glances.
They’re different. I can feel it. . .they’re not exactly the twins I grew up with, but. . .this is good enough.
There was still grief in my heart for the twins that had died because. . .something in my chest told me that they were the same, yet different. And. . .I didn’t know how to deal with that.
The cabin tilted as the plane began its descent.
The baby giggled again.
Oh. She’s here.
I turned, and she was near my ear this time. “You’re my niece.”
Aki grinned. “You have to roll us a joint with the same stuff you smoked.”
Yuki winked. “Please.”
“Okay. I got word that somehow Yoichi and Rin survived the fall, although they’re badly beat up.” Kenji put his phone back in his pocket and hurried over. “What’s going on with Hiro? Is he still out of it?”
The baby girl disappeared.
Dark exhaustion was already climbing into me and up the long bones of my legs. I knew I had maybe one sentence left before I passed out completely, so I decided to spend it on the truth.
I struggled to look up at my brother, but when I did. . .I spoke, "That was your baby that died on the island tonight. That was the little ghost."
The twins looked at me like I was crazy, but Kenji and Reo did not. They studied me and processed those words.
“What?” Horror covered Kenji's face. His eyes told me that he was going over all the details of tonight and coming to the realization that I could be right. Then, grief filled his gaze. Next, guilt and sorrow.
I had seen my brother take a hundred blows and never once show this much expression. I had watched him bury his mother and Jobon with a face carved out of stone. I had stood beside him through every horror our world could invent, and I had never, not once, seen the Dragon's face do what it did now.
The war drained out of him as well as every layer he had built over these years of being the most dangerous man in Japan peeled away, until what was left was just a man hearing words he could not survive and could not run from.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came.
And then a boy's voice came out of a king's body, small, broken, and in so much pain. "No. . .our baby? That can’t be. . ."
And then darkness swallowed me whole.