A Cacophony of Angels
Part III

 
The sun was slanting through the windows when I finally woke up the next morning. I blinked, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, then sat up in bed. Glanced at the clock on the bedside table.

It read 1:23.

At first I stared at it, wondering if I had somehow set the wrong time, then realized that from the way the sunlight was pouring through the window, that it was indeed 1:23 in the afternoon. I must have been more tired than I realized.

I guess time travel takes a great deal out of you.

Grimacing at the thought, I climbed out of bed, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror across the room before I could help myself. The pink hair and unfamiliar features that glanced back at me were foreign, almost hostile. I turned away, fingers automatically groping at the spot by the alarm clock for the pack of cigarettes I knew were there.

It suddenly hit me what I was doing, and I froze.

Why was I looking for cigarettes?

How did I know that the cigarettes were there?

There was no unfamiliar presence that I could sense trying to crowd my mind, no ghostly voices speaking to me that I could hear. A morning reflex of hide's? I thought back to my comment to Yoshiki last night after I had tripped and fallen over the carpet. It was as if there was someone else controlling my actions, another person in this body trying to wrest it from me.

Had hide just conveniently neglected to mention this to me last night? Had he left out the fact that not only had I been brought back in time and was now trapped in another man's body, but that very man's consciousness would slowly take over mine?

"I’m going crazy…" I muttered to myself, clenching my fingers and forcibly pulling my arm back to my side. The fingers twitched, as if eager to make another beeline for the cigarette case that I could see poking out from under an old guitar magazine and some CDs. "I'm seriously going crazy."

For a split second I considered going back to bed yet again, and gambling that this time when I woke up, I'd be safely back home in LA in my own bed. But I'd already tried that twice and it hadn't worked.

Like it or not, I was stuck. I had become a tool…a thing, just like I'd accused hide's ghost - spirit, whatever - last night. I was being used, and I had no choice in the matter.

Well, if I didn't have a choice, I damn well wasn't going to make this easy for anyone. Taking a deep breath, I turned around and headed for the bedroom door.

Yoshiki was gone. The apartment was silent. Obviously he'd checked in on me this morning, decided that I would be all right, and left. So much the better. I could now explore this apartment which I'd most likely be living in for the next couple of days. Days only, I told myself, though some part of my mind screamed that I could very well live out the rest of my life as Matsumoto Hideto and no one would even miss Kouki Hayashi.

Or since I was in Japan now, Hayashi Kouki. I'd never liked to give my name the Japanese way of last name first. Hayashi Kouki was my uncle's name. I wasn't my uncle.

The bathroom was tiny, barely wide enough for me to fit through to wash my face and comb my hair so that it looked presentable. I knew real estate was expensive in Japan, but someone as famous as hide should be able to afford a bathroom bigger than this! There was a door to my right, leading to the ofuro and the shower, I presumed. The toilet was through another open door to the left, and I made use of it, washing my hands and heading out to the kitchen.

The kitchen looked much dirtier in the sunlight than it had in the dark last night, and I noticed with some detachment that Yoshiki had put away the dishes before he had gone. My father, doing housework?

"He was like that back then," said the voice quietly from behind me, and I jumped, startled, but didn't turn around.

"Go away," I said.

hide laughed. "No way…this is my apartment, you know."

"What do you want?" I said.

He didn't answer and finally I gave in and turned around to see him looking thoughtfully at me. "The question is," he said after another moment, "Is what do you want?"

I rolled my eyes. "I don't have time for this."

"One week," hide said.

I stared at him. He sighed.

"Let's go sit down, Kouki."

I followed him numbly to the living room. One week? One week for what? He gestured to me to take a seat on an elegant black leather sofa, a stark contrast to the battered brown coffee table and old television set that slouched on the other side of the room. There was a half-empty beer can on top of the television.

"Now," hide said, folding his hands comfortably and resting his arms on his knees. "You ask me anything you want. And I'll answer it if I can."

I didn't miss the small "if I can" tag on the end of that, but it was better than nothing. "Fine," I said. "Did you bring me here?"

hide pursed his lips. "It's a bit more complicated than that…but I'll say yes. That's the simplest answer."

I sensed that was all I was going to get out of him for the moment. "Why?" I said, hoping he'd be a little more direct than he had been last night.

"To give you a glimpse of the past," hide said. "And…" he looked away for a second, as if ashamed. "And…to give me a second chance. I suppose."

"You're just using me!"

He held up one hand. "That's a little harsh. I'm merely…borrowing you. I'll return you in time, after I'm done."

I snorted. hide sighed.

"I'd meant…to bring you to a different time. I made a mistake." He twisted his mouth in a grimace. "I miscalculated…I wanted it to be 1998, not 1995. But this kind of thing…you can't do it more than once with the same person. And besides you, there's no one else. We'll have to work with what we have, I suppose."

I looked down at my feet, then the meaning of his words sank in and I jumped up, horrified. "1998? You were…were you planning to-!"

He shook his head violently. "No. Nothing like that. Once you're dead, you're dead…you can't change the death of someone's who already died. I'd just wanted to give you a look at the man your father had been while tying up some loose ends for myself. But…I guess it's better this way." He looked at me again, with the sadness that I remembered from last night, as if the world were ending. "This way, we both get to see him truly happy. Before everything."

"I don't understand."

"We've both got one week," hide said. "One week to set things right…or as right as they'll get, before you go back to your time and I go back to mine. I'm not allowed to keep you any longer than one week…as…bad things could happen."

"What bad things?" I said, before I sensed that I already knew something of what he was talking about. "You mean…the more I stay here, the more I'll lose myself?"

He didn't answer.

"This morning when I woke up, I wanted a cigarette. I knew exactly where they were. Things like that, you mean?"

I sensed his hesitation as he nodded.

"I'll…become you?"

"You would become hide," hide said softly. "And Hayashi Kouki would cease to exist. And that would be Very Bad."

"You're damn right it would be Very Bad!" I snapped. "Maybe you don't care what happens to me, but I do! If a week is the cutoff time set by-" by who? God? I didn't think hide was free to tell me that. "-whoever, doesn't that cut dangerously close?"

"It's a gamble," hide said. "But I call the shots."

"Damn you!" I cried, pushing myself off the couch and hurling myself at him. With a shock, I realized that I was slung over the chair where he was sitting…but my hands met empty air. I scrambled to my feet, stumbling backwards, staring at my hands as if they would give me answers.

"I told you," hide said, "I'm not a ghost, but that doesn't mean I'm not dead."

"Damn you," I whispered, and then I began to cry.

People will tell you that those of the male species don't cry, and it's true that they don't cry very often, but when they do, it's not a pretty sight. Crying girls get murmurs of sympathy, handkerchiefs, a comforting arm…but when men cry, people edge away, or mutter and point. It's bad for a man to cry. It's something you just don't do, and I wouldn't have if I had any ounce of self-control in my body, but I was too mentally exhausted to fight it.

To his credit, hide didn't make any snide remarks, nor did he try to put his arm around me and comfort me. Instead, he simply sat there quietly until I had finished. I could feel his eyes on me, strangely gentle, just like the ones in the photograph on Father's desk.

"Are you done?" he said finally, after I'd sniffled once or twice and generally tried to make it look like I hadn't just sat there and bawled my eyes out in front of him for five minutes. I didn't trust my voice, so I just nodded once, jerkily.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I really am. Not just for you…but for…me. If I hadn't…"

He didn't finish the sentence, but I knew what he wanted to say. If I hadn't died, your father would still be happy. If I hadn't died, maybe your life would have been better.

For a moment I wondered how my life would be if hide hadn't died. Maybe I would have had a real family. Maybe I would be living in Japan instead of LA. Maybe I would have had a different mother. Maybe I would never have been born at all.

That was not something I wanted to think about.

"Sorry never brought the dead back to life," I whispered.

"No," he agreed solemnly. "It never did."

We sat quietly together for a moment. A part of me wanted to hate him, to lash out at him for first ruining my father's life, and now trying to meddle in mine. But another part of me yearned to find out what exactly made this man tick, who exactly Matsumoto Hideto had been, wanted to experience firsthand the mind and the reality of this brilliant man who had once been the toast of Japan's popular culture, wanted to dig deeper into the soul of the man who had haunted my father's house and my life for seventeen years.

"What are you going to do?" I said.

"I am not going to do anything," he said, and I blinked.

"But I thought-"

"I'm dead. I can't do anything." He spread his arms. "Why else do you think I brought you here?"

I gaped at him. "I'm supposed to change the past for you?"

"Not change the past," hide corrected. "Set a few records straight."

"You're an idiot," I snapped. "If you think I'll just do whatever you tell me to do, you're wrong. I'm not letting myself sit around being manipulated by you, no matter what magical powers you have."

"I know I'm an idiot," hide said. "Which is why I need your help."

"If I refuse, then what?"

"Then I send you home, back to LA. You won't remember a thing."

The choice was obvious. If he'd send me home, then I was going home. I opened my mouth to tell him that no way was I going to take part in this stupid scheme when something stopped me. I watched him for a moment. He was looking away towards the window of the living room, the sunlight passing through his pink hair and highlighting it to an almost white-blond. In that instant, he looked as my father had looked, as I remembered him from when I had been a child.

"You're cruel," I said.

He swung his face around back to me. The nonchalant expression of earlier was gone, replaced by one of deep pain, of regret. "I'm not asking you to change anything about the past. I'm not asking you to perform any great earthshaking deeds. I just want…one week. Of remembering what it was like to be human. To be happy." His head came up and those intensely sad eyes stared into mine. "Please."

"I don't like you," I said, but the words came out with an effort. It was hard to be unforgiving in the face of a plea like that. "I've never liked you. You made my life difficult. And if what I'm doing won't change the past, what does it matter to me? It won't help me."

"You don't know that," hide whispered.

I stared at my hands, clenching them into fists, feeling my nails dig into my palms. The silence stretched.

"Fine," I said. I looked up at him. "Fine. One week. No more than that. I don't want to be stuck here in this body forever."

"You wouldn't even know, if that happened," hide said, but he sounded relieved. "You'd just continue living on as me."

I suppressed a shudder at that, then a thought struck me. "If I had refused…what would happen to you?"

He closed his eyes. "I would have relived my death," he said. "Over again."

This time, I couldn't stop the shudder in time.

"So you see," he said, opening his eyes, "you're doing me a very big favor."

I got up from the couch, feeling restless and a little weightless, as if I was suspended in the middle of a dream. "Well, what now? What's going on? What's this tour thing I'm - you're - supposed to be doing with the band?"

"It's the Dahlia tour," hide said, standing. "We released Dahlia…will release Dahlia…in 1996, but we did the tour before we put the album out. It's usually the other way around, but your father is an odd man."

I snorted.

"And before you forget to ask, I usually call Yoshiki 'Yo-chan'. It's a stupid name, but hey, we were young."

"I can't play guitar," I said, not wanting to admit that I had been wanting to ask him that.

I expected him to wave his hand, speak some magic words, and bless me with the ability to play guitar. Or maybe console me and tell me that he'd somehow changed Yoshiki's mind and that we wouldn't have practice this week. Instead, he shrugged.

"Tough luck."

"What?" I demanded. "How am I supposed to pretend to be you?"

"It's my body you're trying to control," hide said patiently. "You figure it out."

I remembered the eerie experience this morning with the cigarettes and pushed the thought away. So playing guitar was obviously not going to be a problem, if the hide subconsciousness that rested behind mine knew enough to take over when I picked up a guitar. My skin crawled at the thought of my fingers moving of their own will, without my mind controlling them. "All right, so now what?"

He smiled. "Now, I leave you."

"You-!" I began, but suddenly, he just wasn't there anymore. Vanished. Disappeared. I opened my mouth to curse him out.

The phone rang.

I cursed the phone instead, trying to find it, and finally realized it was ringing from the kitchen. Groaning, I took a deep breath and stumbled over to the counter, poising my hand over the phone and taking a deep calming breath before picking up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"You're finally awake," said a familiar voice.

"Yoshi-" I caught myself. "Yo-chan?"

There was a confused silence on the other end of the phone, then laughter. "All right, I guess maybe not so awake. I'm Toshi, dumb ass."

"Oh…hi Toshi," I mumbled, feeling slightly panicked. I didn't relish the thought of every other member of X Japan calling me before I had the chance to meet them again in person. This could get confusing.

He didn't seem to notice my slight hesitation. "Listen, was just calling to see if you were up for rehearsal today. You don't sound so good though…I'll tell Yoshiki we're taking another day off."

"Where's he?"

"He went to meet with some client for Extasy. Didn't he leave you a note?"

For the first time, I noticed the small piece of yellow sticky attached to the cabinet above the phone. "Oh…yeah. Didn't see it. I just woke up."

"Obviously." Toshi sounded amused. "All right, well, go back to sleep. I'll see you tomorrow, usual time, at the studio."

"See you," I said, but he'd already hung up. Was he always so abrupt?

What was the usual time for practice anyway? And where was the studio?

I stared into space, pondering for a moment, pondering how to get the information out of Yoshiki in a roundabout way so it wouldn't seem like anything was wrong. There was probably little chance of that, though. Our perfectionist leader was named that for a reason.

That hadn't been my thought.

I blinked and shook my head, wondering how long it would take for me to get used to this sense of being watched, being invaded. A chill went up my spine and I brushed the thought away. Probably less than a week, at any rate, which was fine. The sooner I was out of this and back home the better.

Do you really want to go home? Do you want to go back to America, under your father's thumb? Isn't it better to be someone known, someone recognized, someone appreciated?

Isn't it better to be hide?

The thought disturbed me and I shifted uncomfortably, turning to leave the kitchen when I caught sight of the yellow post-it out of the corner of my eye. Yoshiki's handwriting was neat and wasn't that much different looking from his precise English script that I was more familiar with, but it had been a while since I'd had to read Japanese. Luckily, most of it was in hiragana.

Had to meet someone for record deal. I'll be back around evening to check on you. Hope you slept well.

It was signed in hiragana, "Yo."

My lip twitched and I read the note over again, feeling a small, strange glow inside. I'd never had anyone express concern for me in such simple, yet concrete terms. My father wasn't one for affection, and my mother had died when I was too young to remember much of how she took care of me. I'd always prided myself on being independent…but it was nice, if a bit awkward feeling, to know that there was someone who cared about me enough to take time out of his day to check on me.

Further proof that my father had never really cared about me.

The pleasant glow dimmed, and I tore my eyes from the note, stepped back into the bedroom to change out of the clothes that I'd now been wearing for more than a day. I opened the closet with some trepidation, remembering the pictures of the outrageous outfits hide was famous for wearing on stage, fearing that maybe the closet would be full of those. But to my relief, hide's taste in everyday fashion seemed relatively normal: an array of sweatshirts, t-shirts, and jackets met my eyes. I changed into a comfortable dark gray t-shirt and jeans, padding barefoot around the room to get used to the feel of just walking. It was less awkward than it had been last night but still the feeling of strangeness remained.

Or maybe it was just the feeling of being weightless, traveling through a bizarre fantasy dreamscape in which I was watching myself, detached, perform for an invisible audience.

The feeling of restlessness itched down my shoulder blades and I paced around the room several more times before it registered in my brain that it wasn't just a nervous twitch.

I wanted a cigarette. Or, rather, hide's body wanted a cigarette.

Grumbling to myself, I picked up the pack and a lighter and slid open the door to the balcony just outside the bedroom. If I had to smoke, I'd smoke, but I'd be damned if I was going to let the smoke get inside my house. Even when Father smoked back home, he'd smoke outside. Unless he was under higher than normal stress, then in which case he'd lock himself in the den and go through almost a pack an hour, stabbing the bent cigarettes into the ashtray with an almost vengeful violence. We all kept away from him then, both the servants and I.

It wasn't fair, really. I knew so much about him, but I didn't know him.

Someone knocked on the door.

I considered standing here and hoping that they'd go away, but it was most likely Yoshiki and I didn't want to have to explain to him tomorrow why I had left him standing outside. Besides, he'd promised he would be back. And it really wasn't my choice if I was in the mood for visitors or not. I was on a mission for hide.

I could have laughed at that. A mission by force of coercion, of the most unlikely circumstances, and most likely what anyone else would have called a product of fantasy, or maybe an overactive imagination.

Taking the cigarette from my mouth, I considered grinding it under my shoe, but it was a waste of almost half a cigarette. I sighed and stuck it back in my mouth and went to answer the door. As I thought, it was Yoshiki.

"You look better," he said by way of greeting, stepping inside and shrugging out of his jacket. He looked professional and very smart in a blue silk shirt and black pants. I'd forgotten how young he looked, and I stood there and chewed on my cigarette and tried not to stare. He didn't seem to notice my discomfort. "Your brother's still in Okinawa, right? I can give you a ride to rehearsal tomorrow."

I hadn't even known I had a brother. I filed the information away for further notice. "Toshi told you I couldn't make it today?"

Yoshiki smiled wryly. "He said something about you still being asleep. Well, he said you were either asleep or hung over. You know how he is."

I nodded silently.

"Anyway," he said, "the meeting went all right. It was that annoying guy I told you about a couple days ago. I don't know if I'm going to go through with it. The music wasn't that great anyway, and I don't want to waste my money on a - hide, are you all right?"

I blinked at him and took another drag of my cigarette. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

He shook his head slowly. "I don't know…something just felt strange for a second." Shaking his head again, he reached for the coat he'd just deposited on the front table. "Come on. Let's go out."

I blinked. "Where are we going?"

"You haven't eaten all day, have you? Let's go to dinner and out for a drink or something."

"I-" I began, but he grinned.

"I don't plan to get you drunk, but it's been a while since we've done something like this. Just the two of us." He watched me. "Unless you'd rather not…"

The almost shy hope in his voice startled me. He sounded like a little boy showing a project to his father, wanting some recognition, a pat on the back, a kind word, someone to say that they were proud of him. It was as if my acceptance of his dinner invitation was a kind of rite of passage for him. As if, by rejecting it, I was rejecting all of him.

The thought confused me and I pushed it away.

"Just the two of us," I echoed, trying not to let my anxiety show. "Sounds like a plan."

 
back to part II | to part IV