The Silence Of Metawin.

蜂鳥

Win wakes into a darkness where time and place are unknown states. Like the creep of daybreak into a room, sensations slowly register in his brain and he becomes aware of a cool, wet, gritty surface of the ground against his cheek. His face feels melted to the floor, embedded, as if he's fallen into tar and let it cool and solidify around him. A minute movement of his neck muscles to check if that's even possible, and then he sends out a weak body scan to his other parts. His ribcage feels tender and bruised, as if he's been dragged, and his limbs are like lead weights tied to his torso, holding him against the floor as if gravity has somehow been increased. Moving his fingertips, he feels more grit underneath them, under his forearms, damp and rough. The air is cool on his skin, without being cold, and a familiar coppery smell layers over one that he can't identify, something light, clear and freshly sweet that sits oddly against the blood and darkness.

Like a hard drive slowly rebooting, Win's brain slides through a series of screens, images, events. He remembers the room at the inn, Bright's face in profile as he turned to leave. The tonkatsu place. Luke ahead of him on the street, lit with magenta neon. He remembers his cigarette, tastes it on his tongue, and behind it a flat chemical tang that coats the back of his throat like paint. He tries his fingertips again, manages to slide them a few centimeters to the left and right, pressing the palms of his hands into the ground experimentally, before dragging them slowly inwards underneath his shoulders. He pushes down, and the effort seems insane, as if his back is loaded with cement blocks. Sweat breaks out on his neck and rolls down the sides as he pulls his knees in towards his body and pulls himself onto all fours, before pressing himself back onto his haunches. Breathing slow to combat the dizziness, he has to steady himself with both hands flat on the ground before he can raise his head.

He is in a basement. A faint shuttering blue light leeches in from somewhere, like a distant fluorescent tube going bad, and although his head feels like it's splitting wide open Win manages to turn it a little. The wall to his right has a single glazed panel, tinted, and the light is coming from there. It changes, darkening then lightening at random intervals until he recognizes the pattern: a TV screen or someone watching a movie. Straining his ears for a sound from the room it's in, he hears only the low hum of electrics somewhere above him, and a faint soft dripping from somewhere else in the darkness. The smell of fresh blood is coppery and pervasive, and as he touches his cheek, his cold, damp clothing, he realizes why. The floor is soaked with it.

He knows without turning what he Win see, and for a moment considers not looking, choosing not to add to the vast library of horror his mind has catalogued over the years, but in the end he turns anyway. Luke Ishikawa's body lies roughly three meters away across the rough dark floor, the startling whiteness of his exposed skin made all the more stark by the night-dark streaks of blood that criss-cross his face. His eyes are open, eyebrows raised in an expression that might be surprise or pain, although the latter seems more likely given that his chest has been split wide at the sternum. To Win's mind, the wound looks careless, as if whoever made it was less angry than simply bored with whatever Ishikawa had to say and, tilting his head to one side, he finds he can easily imagine the sentiment.

Time to shut up now detective man.

Too much to say.

And too smart for your own good.

Luke's gangly legs are thrown out behind him at odd angles, like a puppet whose strings have been unceremoniously cut, and Win find himself wondering if he had any family. A wife. Children. Parents who Win weep for him. This intelligent awkward young man who somehow connected the dots almost as quickly as they had. Win closes his eyes and faces front again, tries to take the deep slow breaths he knows he needs to re-oxygenate his muscles. Bright had known Mae Ozu's place of work too, the karaoke bar would probably be the first place he would go to find Win once he realized that he was gone, their logical next post of call. How long it would be before he returned to their room and came to that conclusion though, depended on how long he had judged Win was asking for when he requested time alone. And then, then of course there was the matter of him finding where he was now. Was this the basement of the building the karaoke bar had been in? Searching back through his stuttering, faulty memory, Win remembers it had been on the second floor of five storey building, with a small sashimi restaurant in the basement. If this room was under that one, there was no indication of it, no sound or associated smell that placed it anywhere near.