Author's Note: I'm not totally sure what I'm expecting by posting this fanfic here! There don't seem to be many World Ends with You fanfics here, and posting a fanfic of a fairly unknown fandom, with a single 9,000-word chapter, which is not a shipping fic, doesn't seem like it will become the most popular fic in the world. Still, I hope there are some World Ends with You fans out there who will stumble upon this someday! :)

This was originally posted on FanFiction.Net in 2014.

It was coming from his room, but when she saw the light and heard the noise, it hadstill never occurred to her that it couldbe him. Whenever he appeared, the only thing to signal his presence was the sound of the violin or sometimes piano, and besides that, it had been so long since she'd seen him that it was easy to forget he'd ever visited the house at all. Anyone she'd have talked to about it with would have said she'd been seeing things, that in her grief she'd been intentionally deluding herself into believing he was still there with her. When it had been years since the last time she'd opened the door to find him standing on the staircase, only to disappear the minute he caught her eye, it was easy to convince herself that she'd been seeing things, too.

So when she came in from where she'd been sitting on the porch - enjoying the air of the warm Tokyo night for one last time before they moved to Hokkaido - and heard the commotion upstairs, she drew the logical conclusion that it must be her husband in that room going through his things. Maybe he was trying to decide what was worth keeping and what needed to be disposed of before they left, or maybe he just wanted to sit on his bed and leaf through his books and breathe in his scent for a while. Either way, she thought her husband might not want to be alone; and if he did want to be alone, he would at least expect her to check on him, to remind him that she was available to perform the role of a comforting wife. So she went up the stairs and stood behind the door for a second, listening to the sifting of things in boxes, before she knocked lightly and gently said, "Dear?" as she slowly opened the creaking door.

It hadn't occurred to her that it could be her son sitting there on the bed with a pile of clothes strewn around him, looking up slowly to acknowledge her presence, meeting her eye with a displeased expression. "Hello, Mother," he said casually, as if it hadn't been decades since she'd heard his voice. "I hope I didn't wake you."

"Yoshiya," she whispered – she couldn't swallow enough air to speak any louder. And even if she could have, she got the sense that one word too loud, one step too close would startle him away like a wild animal. Send him away to wherever it was that he always disappeared to. She hadn't been so close since he was alive; before this, she only ever had time to watch him for a second or two before he would sense her presence, meet her gaze, and vanish a second later. He'd never spoken to her before.

"Why so impersonal?" he asked, no longer looking at her. He held an old shirt out in front of him and examined it. "You never called me that when I was alive. But then, I suppose it's to be expected. Death changes the nature of all relationships." He dropped the shirt in his lap and sighed, reaching for an old school uniform vest. "Now, doesn't this bring back memories?"

"Yo – Joshua?" What could she say, other than his name?

"Back to Joshua, now? You can call me Yoshiya if you want. It wasn't what I expected, but it has been a long time since we've seen each other. I have changed quite a bit." He smirked. "Of course, you don't seem to have changed much. You're expelling a bit more Imagination than usual, but I expect it'll burn out soon enough."

"Why are you... here?" she asked, finally gaining the courage to take a step towards him. He saw her but didn't react. She took another step.

"Oh, I heard through the grapevine you were moving," said Joshua. "I thought I'd come and see if I'd left anything here worth keeping. Pretty sure I've already stolen back most of the things I really like, but I might've missed something. I never could find the sheet music for that piano duet I wrote a while back – it was probably not nearly as good as I thought it was back then, but it would be nice to see it again. One of the first things I've ever composed."

He didn't look like he was about to vanish this time. Long ago, in the first few months after his death, he'd appeared only as wisps of his former self. For one minute, the part of him that liked to play the piano would flicker into existence; in another moment, she'd see him reflected in the mirror, buttoning up his shirt, only to turn around and find the room empty again. After a while there wasn't enough left of him to see, just a heaviness in the air, a static that grew sharper and angrier, an unsettling dizziness that affected everyone in the house while it was there. She'd never talked to her husband about that – he probably would have said it was in her imagination, like anyone would have – but she knew he felt it, too, from the irritability he always showed whenever he was around.

Eventually, she'd arranged for a priest to cleanse the place. He'd traveled from room to room, commanding the evil spirits to leave and return to hell in the name of Christ. The priest had sounded so powerful, so mystical, so angry that by the time she found the courage to grab him by the arm and beg him to stop she was in tears. It wasn't an evil spirit that was haunting them, she'd explained in between her sobs, it was her son, Joshua, an ordinary boy who'd played piano and gone to Christian school. He wasn't evil, she'd insisted, just scared and lonely and angry at them for not being able to save him from himself – so please, couldn't he just say a prayer to gently guide him to heaven, so he could find peace in his death? No, the priest had said solemnly; there was no way she could know for sure that it was really her son that had lingered behind – it was more likely the evil spirits that had plagued him when he was alive that had been released into the house when he died, and it was really too bad that she hadn't called him to exorcise the spirits before it had to come to this, but it was too late now. Her son wouldn't be able to go to heaven. Suicide was a sin.

He'd gone on to cleanse every room in the house, but the presence hadn't gone away immediately. If anything the negativity had gotten stronger, and she'd wondered if Joshua was angry with her for trying to get rid of him. But eventually she'd noticed that she was sensing the presence less and less frequently. Noticing this, she'd thought of something she'd read when she'd gone through his journals, the books he'd stuffed full of notes of things he "saw" when he was having his "incidents", and later the things he'd apparently been told by the eccentric older man who owned the coffee shop on CAT Street. The journal had said something about "erasure", a person disappearing and breaking down into bits of soul that lingered and clung loosely to itself before eventually being dispersed or formed into something else – a plant or a person or a painting. She'd begun to wonder, just a little bit, if that was what had happened to him. If there was a flower growing somewhere that had a piece of his soul in it, or if perhaps his spirit was just gone, dissipated into something unrecognizable just as his body had been burned into ash. She'd wondered if that was better or worse than hell.

But he looked whole now. The mattress sunk under his weight where he was sitting on it, and his hands clearly were solid of picking up the objects from his boxes of things and placing them wherever he wanted. He had thrown most of his old clothes to opposite corner of his bed; now he was thumbing through a box of old VHS tapes; movies he'd liked thrown in with a few recordings of his own concerts. They hadn't been watched in years; their VHS player had long since broken and been replaced with a Blu-ray system. So much of the world had changed in such a short time, and Joshua hadn't been around to witness it.

She took another step towards him. Joshua looked up at her as her shadow fell over him, looking almost surprised, as if he'd forgotten she was there. But he returned to his browsing without a word, acknowledging her presence, while sending the message that it was insignificant to him. He'd behaved the same way when he was alive.

"Is there... anything I can help you look for?" she found herself asking, because what else was she supposed to say? He was clearly too focused on what he was doing to have an interest in anything else she could've said.

He looked back up at her and to her confusion he chuckled slightly. "That's very kind of you to offer, dear Mother," he said in a voice that was more amused than grateful, "but I'm afraid you wouldn't have the slightest idea what I may or may not be interested in. I'd rather just sort through everything myself. But if you want to help, I would really appreciate it if you'd put all those clothes away for me. I still have a lot of searching to do, and I'd hate to let things get too messy in the meantime.

"...Of course, Joshua," she said, and moved to sit with him on the bed, near the corner where he'd been tossing all the clothes he'd examined and decided he hadn't wanted. She picked up a stiff pair of jeans and began to fold it with trembling hands, though she knew there was no real reason for her to do so. They'd be moving in just a couple days, and aside from a few small sentimental items to remember him by, they'd be donating most of his things to charity or throwing them away. What reason would they have to lug his old clothing with them? They wouldn't have anything to do with it but leave it in another closet, not seen or touched by anyone but whoever they hired to be their new maid when she came to dust. This was supposed to be a fresh start.

A fresh start. They wanted to get rid of all their memories of Joshua. Not to mention his ghost. Guiltily she stole a glance at the boy sitting on the other side of the bed and realized he knew. He knew that it was partially his memory that was driving them out of Shibuya; he knew that she'd tried to send him to heaven all those years ago. He was nonchalant about it, like he'd learned to be with everything, but he knew. Somewhere deep inside, down in the side of him he never showed to anyone, it must have hurt him. His own mother tried to send him away.

It hadn't even been the first time.

"Joshua," she found herself saying again – though she had no idea what conversation she wanted to start. There were so many things to tell him, to ask him, and yet none that felt safe. He was solid and whole and seemed to have no intention of leaving before he finished what he was doing, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that the slightest misstep would send him scurrying away, retreating to a world where she couldn't reach him. The same reason he probably killed himself in the first place, she thought.

"Yes, Mother?"

"When we go – you can't come with us, can you?"

"No," he said matter-of-factly. "I can't. I have responsibilities here in Shibuya. And I wouldn't go with you, even if I could. Whatever affection I ever had for you and Father has pretty much dried up by now, I'm afraid. You're not the only ones who've learned to move on."

That stung. But he was right. How could she object to her son saying he no longer felt any affection for her? She, his own mother, had done everything in her power to forget him.

Voice quivering, she asked him, "Is that why you stopped coming?"

"Hmmm?" Joshua asked, brushing dust off a cassette tape. "Oh, are you talking about when I used to come here to 'haunt' you? That was just... me being petty; it didn't really mean anything. I just wanted you to know how it felt to be the ones seeing the dead for once. I was hoping maybe you'd send yourself into therapy. Get yourself so drunk on medicine you couldn't think straight, only to keep on seeing the same things the medicine was supposed to get rid of." He giggled, a bit louder and higher-pitched than before. "It wasn't a very good plan, in hindsight. Showing myself to both of you. People tend to be less doubting of their sanity when there are other people seeing the same things. It would've worked better if I'd only showed myself to you, when you were alone. Then you'd eventually confide in Father about it, and he'd send you to therapy. ...Not that you deserve to be haunted any more than he did, or anything, but it wouldn't have worked on just him; he wouldn't have ever asked for help."

"Joshua," she said, firmly, with the same tone of voice she'd always used when he was talking about things that scared her. When he was a young child, it used to quiet him down when he spoke about the gods of death running around the city and the monsters that they created; later in life, when he started talking about wanting to change things, wishing he had the power to reshape Shibuya into something more fresh and exciting, her voice hardly fazed him at all. By the time he was a teenager, her scolding only amused him. It was as if he had discovered some dormant power, the power of not caring about anything or anyone, and he relished in the fact that his apathy could cause her so much pain. Here he was again, talking about intentionally playing with his parents' sanity, and giggling. And she remembered with a pang why they'd decided to send him away.

He gave her a knowing smirk – she couldn't do anything about what he'd said and he knew it. "What? I was only answering your question," he said. A moment later he added, "Don't you have anything to say besides my name over and over? I understand it must be surprising to see me, but there must be something else you've thought of that you wished you could tell or ask me, over the years.

She said nothing. She was more interested in what he would think was worth saying without being prompted.

"Guess not," he said, with a shrug. "What an underwhelming reunion this has been. I'm disappointed. Especially considering that this will probably be the last time I'll ever see you again."

"Are you... bound to this house?" she asked. She suddenly had the horrifying thought of her son being stuck there, watching them throw away all his things, watching another family move in and set up an office where his bedroom had been –maybe he'd haunt them, too, or maybe he'd just be alone. They could change their minds if they had to – the contracts hadn't been signed yet, so they could stay behind, if Joshua was going to be there. That would be better, even if he didn't show himself.

But Joshua only laughed in response. "If I was going to be 'bound' to whatever building I died in, I certainly would not have shot myself here. Don't be ridiculous, Mother."

"Joshua!" she said with that same warning note, though she knew it wouldn't do anything. He was flippant and smirking and with the words shot myself he had opened the floodgates to memories she'd been pushing out of her mind for years. He's wearing his favorite button-up shirt with a pair of black jeans, and his pockets are full of pins. He's gone out of his way to change out of his school uniform, which is folded neatly at the foot of his bed, as if he planned out precisely how he wanted his death scene to look. As if his nice clothing could do anything to alleviate the gruesomeness of his blood spilling out onto his pillow and the paleness of his skin, hands already cold, fingers curled together and empty. She pries them open, searching for a note, but there isn't one – not in his hands or his pockets or anywhere, just a pile of pillows under his head to catch the blood and a gun that had fallen onto the floor. Why would you do this? He must have known that would be the question she would ask over and over in the few minutes she had to say good-bye, before the cops got there. It was the same question grieving mothers asked in movies: Why? How? Why? But he hadn't bothered to leave any kind of explanation. Like they were already supposed to know.

"Bad memories?" Joshua asked, bringing her back to the present. He'd stopped examining cassettes in favor of watching her reaction to his words. "Sorry to bring up such an uncomfortable subject. I don't have much contact with the living, you see – I forget how squeamish you tend to get about fatal head injuries."

She said nothing in response and he shrugged, putting his box of tapes aside and reaching for another, this one full of books. "Well, you don't seem to have anything else to say," he said, as he retrieved an old photo album, "so let's get back on topic, shall we? No, I'm not bound here, and I haven't visited this house in a long time, but I always used to think I'd see you when you died. Your Imagination isn't all that strong – neither is Father's – but I could have always taken advantage of my position, if I'd wanted to. Kept you in existence, whether you earned it or not. Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn't have – but I could have, if there was anything I wanted to say to you. Now though – well, unless you come back for a visit, and suffer some terrible luck in the process, you won't die in my domain. You'll have to go through someone else's Game. You won't last half of it, and there's nothing I'll be able to do. I won't even know when it happens."

He was smiling strangely, his mouth stretched out as far as it could go and slightly open, revealing his teeth. But his eyes were blank, wide and empty, taking in things she couldn't see and couldn't even imagine –– absorbing, absorbing the sights of the city but reflecting nothing. His shoulders were hunched as his delicate hands went through the motions of flipping through the photo albums – pretending he cared about what was inside. He'd always been pretending something; pretending he was focused on homework, pretending to be polite, pretending he wasn't still seeing the things that they used to think were just products of an overactive imagination – but she saw the way his eyes darted around at Scramble Crossing, narrowing in on things that weren't there. She saw what he wrote in those notebooks he took everywhere – outlines of a cruel and terrifying "Game." But it didn't scare him. He spoke of his delusions with an air of fascination and longing. The constant smug smirk on his face, the artificially charming nature of the words he spoke to her and anyone who he didn't deem worthy of his time, used to give off the impression that he was just pretending to be human. And she remembered why she used to look at him and his mouth-only smile and think That's not what Joshua looks like when he's happy. That's not my son.

She looked at the being sitting in front of her now and had the same thought: That's not my son. That's the curse or the schizophrenia or whatever it was that made him see what he saw. That's not my son. And the priest had said essentially the same thing, hadn't he? The evil spirits that possessed Joshua were released into the house when he died. Joshua himself had already moved on.

"You're still talking about that Game thing," she lamented.

"Of course I am," Joshua said. His voice sounded irritated but his posture didn't change; he continued to browse through the photo album. "I told you from the start that I was going to rewrite Shibuya. Don't be angry at me just because you chose not to believe what I outright told you."

"I'm not angry with you, Joshua," she said. She wasn't angry. She wasn't even scared, anymore, like she had been – fear is the feeling of watching your child grow up and become a stranger – no, not a stranger; a monster – and no, he hadn't become a monster; he'd been replaced by one. He'd written in his journal that there were monsters that clung to people and fed off their souls, causing them pain even when they couldn't see why. She'd read it and sobbed because that was the only thing in his journals that she could have believed – that something, a literal evil spirit or a mental illness or something had been clinging to him, eating him from the inside out ever since he was a child. Fear was realizing that your kindergarten-aged son's nightmares were happening while he was awake, that the whimsical stories he made up weren't just a game of make-believe to him. Fear was watching him transform from happy to confused to scared, from sad to apathetic, lonely to misanthropic, and worst of all, from docile and cooperative and wanting to change to proud and fully accepting of what he had become. She noticed the change in the way he walked, the way he looked at other people, the things he took interest in – he was spending way too much time at that café and he was constantly writing in those cheap notebooks. She snuck into his room and read them, all the notes he took about the "Game" he witnessed – it was like he had been describing some sick, convoluted purgatory. Then there were the symptoms of paranoia - people who could read and control minds, and the whole city under the control of some unseen higher power. Fear was realizing that though he had learned better than to talk about it, he still saw things, he still believed in them, and even after all they'd tried, there was nothing they could do about it. Fear was realizing that the only way to get their Joshua back, the only way to save him, was to entrust him to someone who would know how.

But this wasn't fear. This was hearing him talk about a Game and wanting to think This isn't my son, this isn't really him but knowing that it was. Because he wasn't just talking about a Game, he was sitting with a piano-player's posture on the edge of his bed in his favorite button-up shirt looking through boxes of his old things for a piece of sheet music he'd hand-written when he was a child, and she knew the priest had been wrong. He hadn't already moved on; he was right here, and the evil thing in him hadn't been released when he died - it had been sealed to him. It was entwined around him still, and now she couldn't even hope that he could ever get better. She no longer had to be afraid that she would lose him; she already had. So she wasn't scared anymore. Now all she could feel was overwhelming guilt and grief.

"I'm not angry," she repeated. "I'm just sad."

"Sad about what?" asked Joshua, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice. He closed the photo album with a loud thwack and placed it onto the bed beside him. "I chose this path, and I'm perfectly satisfied with it. At the very least, I'm much happier here than I would have been if you'd had your way."

He was avoiding her gaze, but he was facing straight ahead with an expression she'd only seen him wear once before. She looked away, guilt bubbling up as she remembered. (She doesn't manage to stop the answering machine soon enough, and when the forced smile on his face gives way to brief bewilderment before the anger bubbles up, it's clear that none of what he'd heard could be explained away with a pacifying lie. "Oh, Joshua, you weren't supposed to find out this way," she says, but the panic and betrayal only sink in on him deeper.)

She swallows, afraid to ask her question, though deep inside she's known the answer for a while. "Is that why you decided to do it? You... didn't want to be sent away?" ("I'm not leaving Shibuya, Mother" he says, but he sounds weak, like he's trying to convince himself more than her. He shakes his head, clears his voice and repeats more confidently, "I'm not going.")

"No... not really," Joshua said. His posture had sunk; he was hunched over slightly and looking at his knees. "I would have done it anyway. I'd been planning on it for a long time. You just... hastened my decision." (She wants to reach out to comfort him but he's angry and it's terrifying. "It will only be for a short time," she assures him. "Listen, Joshua, your father and I made this decision because we love you, and there are people there who can help you in ways we can't. It'll only be until you get better, and we'll visit as often as we can." She wants to reach out and touch him but he never wants to be touched.)

"But... why? Why did you want to do it?" She wanted to reach out and touch him but she was afraid her hands would go right through him. His hands were balled into fists at his sides. ("No, Mother, you don't understand," he says, and he's grinning now, though his eyes still look panicked. "I told you, I'm not leaving Shibuya." She reaches out to touch him but he shoves her hand away and breaks out in a run towards the front door. She calls out to him, but doesn't force him to come back. He doesn't really have anywhere to run to, and she knows he'll realize it eventually.)

He shrugged. "Everything was boring. Boring and pointless. I wanted the power to mix things up a bit." (After he dies she goes to café on Cat St. that Joshua liked so much. At first she's full of suspicions – how had Joshua even gotten that gun? – but after a few minutes of talking to the barista she can't deny that he's grieving, too, and then all that's left to ask him is where she went wrong and what he did differently. "I told him my opinion sometimes, when he asked it," the man says, rubbing his neck, "but I think the reason he gravitated towards me was that I heard 'im out. A lotta the things in his head were real interestin'. And who was I to say it wasn't real? Reality can mean lotsa different things to different people, and clearly this Game stuff was pretty real to him." He smiles, a bit sympathetic, a bit reassuring. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not sayin' you shouldn't have tried to help him... but sometimes when people have problems, they just wanna be listened to. Not fixed. I'm sorry for your loss.")

She scooted closer to him. "Are you less bored now?"

He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "My job was fun for a while, but now it's the same routine as ever. At least I have a flexible schedule, and minimal dealings with stupid people. That wouldn't be the case in an office job... or a mental hospital."

She reached out to touch his shoulder and, finding it to be solid, squeezed it firmly. He turned and looked at her, surprised, and then looked back at his shoulder with a frown forming on his lips. But he didn't push her away.

She scooted just a little bit closer. "Do you still feel like everything is pointless?"

"Lots of things people do are pointless," he said, still not looking at her. "But... not everything. I suppose that... from an objective standpoint... I can see the value in some things in life that I used to think were below me."

But now it's too late, she realized; he'd thought life was pointless and now he saw it wasn't but his life was over nonetheless. He'd never grow up or have children or become a famous musician, he'd never even have a sleepover or go on a date. And now, long after he'd given up his chance to do those things, he saw the value in them. And he looked so apathetic about it, apathetic like he always was, but it was so unfair that she felt she could feel tears in her eyes and a sore lump in her throat and before she realized what she was doing she tightened her grip on his shoulder and yanked him towards her, locking her arms around him in a hug. For a split second, he seemed startled, and she felt something like a ripple in his flesh – like he was going to flicker out of existence again, retreat from the danger of being in close proximity to her. But she placed a hand lightly against the back of his head, a gesture that meant stay close, like she'd used when he was a child to get him not to run off if they were waiting for the light to turn in Scramble Crossing and he was getting antsy. He responded to the signal seemingly on instinct, solidifying again, and she squeezed him even tighter.

"Mother?" he asked, as she adjusted her seating position to pull him in closer. She could hear the impatient pout in his voice. "What are you doing?"

She didn't answer him. She knew she couldn't stop him from slipping away if he really wanted to go, but she drew him in closer, pressing her face against the top of his head. "Please don't go yet," she whispered. "Please, just stay here for a few minutes."

He sighed, and she was startled to notice that she felt his chest rise and sink when he did – breath, such an iconic symbol of life, seemed out of place in a ghost. "I suppose that's a fairly harmless request, and easy enough to grant," he said. "Sure. Why not?"

"Thank you," she whispered. He was breathing and he was warm and he felt so alive. She could even smell his hair, a scent that she didn't realize she had forgotten. It brought back memories of her son's early childhood, a time before he'd gotten so aloof, a time when he used to rely on her to protect him from whatever was in his head. ("There are monsters in my bedroom," he explains timidly, when she sees him downstairs in his footie pajamas with the bunny-hood and asks him what he's doing awake. "They'll make me have nightmares." He sulks, expecting her to turn on the lights, announce that all the monsters are gone, and order him to stay in bed – something her husband always did, in spite of Joshua's insistence that turning on the light doesn't make them go away. But now her husband is away on a business trip, and she doesn't see the point of making him stay in his room in when he's too scared to sleep, so she picks him up and carries him up the stairs and tucks him into bed next to her. "I'll protect you from the monsters," she coos, pulling back the hood on his pajamas to kiss him on the head, "the monsters can't get you here." "They can go through walls," says Joshua, blinking sleepily, "but they won't, probably. They don't want to come when I'm not sad.") He used to trust her, she realized, to be able to help him with whatever was happening to him. And she'd tried. She'd read every book, taken him to half the doctors in Tokyo, paid for any medications that had been recommended. But none of it had helped. She'd done everything she could, but she couldn't help. She'd failed him, and he grew more and more distant as he began to trust her less and less.

His body was tense and still, and the silence between them didn't feel comfortable and relaxed but rather... awkward. She felt guilty, thinking that – she should just be grateful that she had the opportunity to hold her little boy again. But it began to sink in on her that this was her last chance. He would tolerate the hug for a few minutes and then he'd finish his business and leave, never show himself again, and she would spend the next few days wondering where he was – and then they'd move, and he'd stay behind, and never haunt them again. This was her last chance to say what she'd wanted to say, ask the questions that had been plaguing her since the day she found him dead – and yet of all the many thoughts that were bombarding her head, none of them mattered. There was nothing she could say that could bring any peace to either of them.

"Is something wrong, Mother?" he asked.

She realized she'd been gripping him rather tightly. "N-no," she said, but she didn't loosen her clutch, afraid he'd take it as a cue to break away.

"You know, it would be nice to get more than one-word responses from you," said Joshua. "You're forcing me to do all the talking here. It's not easy to carry on a conversation with someone who won't talk back."

"I-I'm sorry." How was she supposed to talk? The whole encounter was surreal and she could barely even think.

"Don't just apologize. Say something interesting," he said, and she realized from the hint of stress in his voice, slight and muffled under louder notes of irritation, that he was on edge, too. He wasn't used to this kind of closeness, hadn't been used to it even when he was alive, because they'd never really been close. Not since he was a little boy. Because he hadn't trusted her, because she'd hadn't been able to save him, because his problems – whatever they were – his problems wouldn't go away, because... because they were a part of him. Because they'd always been there.

"Sometimes, when people have problems, they just wanna be listened to. Not fixed." And with the words of the eccentric barista came into her mind a torrent of memories, scenes she'd boxed away and piled in the closet of her mind, dusty and untouched but intact. Joshua is nine, slipping his sweaty palm out of her hand, trying to break free from her as she tries to drag him to his first appointment with as little of a show as possible. "Joshua, come on!" she snaps, the frustration she'd been trying to smooth over escaping through her voice. "Why are you making this harder than it has to be?"

"I don't want to go in there!" Joshua says, finally managing to break free of her grasp. As he wipes his hand on his shirt, he adds in a serious voice, "Mother, there's Noise everywhere."

She grabs him by the collar of his cotton shirt, and like a cat carrying her kittens by the scruff of the neck, walks him to the specialist's office building. "This has to be done," she says, gruffer than she usually is, because she's had enough and she's exhausted and she can't back out now that they're finally on their way to the end of all this. "I'm sorry it scares you, but this is to help you. You have to try to get better, Joshua. Please. You can't stay this way. We can't keep living this way anymore."

He is quiet. His violet eyes look confused, maybe a little bit affronted, and she knows that in her frustration she's said too much, broken the unwritten rule that you never, ever let a child see it when you burn out. But he's not struggling to get away anymore, and with a stab of guilt she thinks maybe it had to be said. Maybe he had to see the toll he'd taken on her, in order to see why it was so necessary for him to go along with all this. At the very least, she thinks as they walk through the glass doors into a lobby that smells of fresh paint and baby formula, she's gotten him to his appointment. Everything will get better soon. Now she just has to listen to the doctor and wait for everything to fall into place.

She'd been so wrong. Not just in thinking the doctor would be able to solve all their problems, or thinking it had been okay to say those things to a nine-year-old, but about everything. More and more stored memories cycled through her head: taking him to a birthday party for a classmate at the Sunshine Burger near the station; she stayed to help supervise, only to get caught up chatting with the other parents and not realize until another parent pointed it out that Joshua had left the play area to stand by himself with his face pressed against the window, staring out at the area around the statue of Hachiko with a solemn, concentrating look.

She remembered watching him take his medicine every morning; the first time he'd downed it nonchalantly, but for weeks after that he complained that it made his head fuzzy. She remembered the gradual relief she felt as Joshua's protests and tantrums eventually mellowed into stubborn complaints and, finally, resigned compliance. And after a while he began to adjust to the medicine and perk back up a bit , just like the doctor said he would – at least that's what she'd thought, until a few months later when she caught him spitting the pills into the sink.

Fast forward a few more years, past many more attempts to find a therapist or a medicine that would be right for Joshua, and there came a day when she realized she didn't really know him anymore. The day wasn't any different from any other day, there was no grand falling out or shocking discovery that led to that revelation, and maybe that's why she was so startled by it. She'd been shopping at the department store and had noticed Joshua walking towards Molco after school. She'd offered him a ride home, but he'd refused. "I'm going to the coffee shop," he'd said when she pulled up to the curb next to him, his voice competing with the wind and the sounds of traffic, "I'm meeting a friend there." And she'd been surprised, because she knew he spent most of his afternoons away from home, but he hadn't said anything about having friends, let alone friends who did things like drinking coffee – like adults. And that was when she realized that Joshua hadn't said much to her about anything that was important to him, not in a very long time.

"Why should I have? You never listened," Joshua said, at the exact instant those words played in her own head. She jolted, and Joshua took the opportunity to wriggle loose from her grasp.

"Did you just... read my mind?" she asked.

"You weren't saying anything interesting," said Joshua unapologetically. "I thought I'd try my luck with your thoughts. I was disappointed, of course, but it was worth a shot." He giggled slightly, breaking eye contact. "If you had listened to me back then, maybe you would have remembered that I could scan you. I'm fairly certain I would've mentioned scanning before."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what, not listening?" He wasn't even looking at her and still there was something cutting in his smile. "For making me waste days of my life in compliance training? Forcing me to live my life like it was some kind of scripted film, say the right thing to the right person, mold your image into the exact kind of person everyone else is, and if you do it right you get rewarded by not being force-fed mind-altering substances?" He paused, then looked her in the eye, musing over her reaction before he continued. "I suppose I can forgive you for that. It did make my time in the plane of the living rather boring and miserable, but that ended up being so short it didn't really matter."

"I'm sorry!" she repeated, louder. Sobbing now. Her hands crashed into the mattress in front of her, holding her up as her body fell forward in either a bow or an expression of anguish – she wasn't sure which. Joshua's eyes widened at the sudden movement, and she took some comfort in that brief flicker of genuine emotion, assurance that somewhere behind his otherworldly, all-knowing exterior there was still a Joshua to be reached. "I did everything wrong and I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

"I – told you I forgive you," Joshua said, sounding somewhat put off by her emotional outburst. He scooted back, putting a few inches of distance between them. "What more do you want?"

"Another chance," she said. "Please. Stay here and be part of our family again. I'll listen this time. I promise."

He was silent for a moment before responding with a gentle chuckle. "Don't be silly, Mother. I can't bring myself back to life. I certainly wouldn't want a repeat of what happened the last time I left my post for too long. Besides, just think of what the neighbors would say."

"Come with us," she pleaded. "In Hokkaido, there won't be anyone who knows you're dead. We can say you're our grandson."

"How many times do I have to tell you I'm not leaving Shibuya?" he said, sounding irritated. "I couldn't, even if I wanted to."

"Then we can stay here!" she said. "Please! We can go see your father right now, we can cancel the move! We can all stay together, just like old times! It doesn't have to be all the time, Joshua. We can – we can all watch movies together or something, or you can play piano for us. Or you can just come over to talk sometimes, tell us about everything you see and everything that happens in your Game and we'll listen. I promise, I'll listen this time!" Tears were falling and her nose was dripping, little drops falling all over the mattress. She hadn't remembered what it felt like to cry this hard; she barely had any voice left. "Please, Joshua," she whispered, lifting her head to look him in the eye.

He smiled at her, placed a hand gently on her shoulder, and said, "No."

It was the answer she should've expected. That was the way life worked, after all. Whether or not you learn your lesson, no matter how hard you reflect on what you could've done better – people didn't just get to start over. There was no such thing as a clean slate, not really, not even after years had passed. This whole discussion had proven that.

She looked at him pleadingly, shaking as her body forced out some strained hiccup-sobs. He kept smiling distantly, patted her shoulder lightly. "Goodness gracious," he said, sounding, for some reason, amused. "Look how worked up you are. I think you should get some sleep, Mother. You'll feel better in the morning."

"No!" she protested, because that meant he was going to leave. He couldn't leave. Not so abruptly after coming back. If he left now, she'd never get what she needed to end her grief – not a second chance to make things right, nor the feeling of closure that the new house in a new city was supposed to provide – knowing that he was still lingering on earth in some kind of a solid, conscious state would prevent her from ever putting him out of her mind, no matter how far away she was. "Please, don't leave yet!"

He shook his head. "I can't stay forever, Mother. And frankly, I have no interest in extending this little visit. This has not been one of our more pleasant conversations, now, has it?"

"That doesn't matter to me," she said weakly, rubbing tears out of her eyes. "I just want to talk to you. ...I do love you, Joshua."

"How sweet," said Joshua. He was still holding her shoulder. "It would be a lot more meaningful coming from someone who has some idea of who and what I am, but I appreciate the sentiment, I suppose." He giggled. "Unfortunately, I really can't stick around much longer. So, before it's time to bring this charming little reunion to an end – is there anything else you feel the need to say to me? If it's brief, I suppose I can at least hear you out."

Of course she still had things to say – she had a whole lifetime's worth of words unsaid, questions unasked. But those questions were scattered throughout the depths of her mind, little thoughts that had popped into her head every now-and-then and wilted away, and she suddenly felt exhausted at the prospect of trying to revive them.

But something he had said was replaying over and over again in her head: "This hasn't been one of our more pleasant conversations," he had said, and she was disappointed but also glad, because at least he acknowledged that things hadn't always been like this. At least there were a few years, way at the beginning, when things had been pleasant. And maybe, somehow, Joshua could take some comfort from those memories, too. Maybe someday, she could look back on a memory they had together, and get the impression that somewhere, in some realm, Joshua was thinking about the same thing.

So she asked, "Were you ever... happy here?"

For a moment, he didn't say anything – he looked to the side, seemingly considering her question. "I suppose it wasn't all bad. I have some good memories of this house," he said.

"What memories?" she whispered, finding it strangely hard to move her lips. In fact, her eyelids were starting to droop, and her neck was beginning to feel very heavy...

Joshua smiled strangely. "Looks like I'll have to get back to you on that."

...And she hadn't noticed, but there had been a warm, lulling sensation slowly winding its way through her veins, originating from her shoulder where Joshua was touching her. Her eyes fluttered open and she gasped when it donned on her what was happening – somehow, he was making her fall asleep. Instinctively, she tried to pull away, but Joshua tightened his grip, giggling. "Don't worry. I won't hurt you. I had to find some way to get out of here without you raising a big racket about it.... Oh, I know it's awful to have your body chemistry artificially altered against your wishes, but hey, look at it this way. This is my revenge. We can be even after this."

Her muscles gave out and he caught her other shoulder, preventing her from falling. "Good night," he whispered, as he began to clear out a pile of clothes that had been on the bed where her head had nearly fallen.

But she wasn't asleep yet. "That... means you'll come back, right?" she whispered, head hanging.

"...What gave you that idea?" he asked absently. He was still holding onto her shoulders, lowering her.

"You said you'd get back to me on it," she said. "So you have to come back... we can talk. It doesn't have to be just once. We can stay. You can visit. Please."

She was lying down now, but he hadn't let go of her yet. She felt darkness creeping through her light of vision, so dark she couldn't even see any of the residual light patterns that usually lingered under her eyelids. She was aware, on some level, that the only reason she was still awake was that Joshua was somehow keeping her that way, a pillar of light that she could perceive with her mind, if not her eyes.

"Oh, Mother," he said, with a voice that sounded like he was reading from a script. "Don't be silly. Don't you understand? I don't want to come back. I don't belong to this world anymore." He let go of her and the light was gone; it was like she was falling. "I never really did in the first place," was the last thing she heard.

.o0o0o0o.

It was bright and hot, and her husband was calling her name. Groggy and dehydrated, she couldn't quite anchor herself in reality. She fought off the distant voice of her husband and the nagging feeling that something upsetting had happened, even if she couldn't quite remember what, and tried to stay asleep – but then her husband was shaking her gently and calling her name even louder, loud enough to convince her to open her eyes, and when she did she realized that this was not her room, and all at once she remembered what she was feeling miserable about.

"Joshua!" she cried out, sitting up abruptly as she remembered what had happened. Her husband was there, looking at her with some concern, a hand hovering an inch from her back as if to steady her, but Joshua was nowhere to be seen. And the room was... empty. Not just empty of Joshua, but empty of all the boxes and piles of things that had been scattered around the previous night. The closet door was shut.

(Was that... a dream?)

She sunk a little bit, placed a hand on her forehead. She had a headache. You'll feel better in the morning, Joshua had said, and maybe he was right. She didn't feel the same crushing, panicky mixture of grief and guilt she'd felt last night. Now the grief had settled to a dull ache, leaving her mostly confused, exhausted, and numb. She couldn't decide if that was better or not.

Her husband placed a tentative hand on her back, and she finally gathered enough of her wits to look at him. "I didn't mean to wake you," he said apologetically. "I didn't know you were in here. But when I found you, you looked like you were having a nightmare, so..."

(Would that count as a nightmare or a dream?)

"Yes," she said, "I... came in here to start sorting through things, and I ended up falling asleep. I didn't mean to sleep for so long... thank you for waking me up."

"Of course," he said pleasantly. Awkwardly.

"What time is it? Should I make breakfast?" she asked. She didn't want to make breakfast. But what could she do, other than pretend everything was normal?

"Ah... tell you what. Why don't I go and pick something up from the convenience store?" he suggested. He was trying to get away; that was what it boiled down to. He had good intentions, though; he was assuming she wanted to be alone, because that was what he always wanted, when he was grieving. He wasn't always very good at sympathizing with her.

"I would appreciate that," she said. What else could she do? She could say she wanted to talk, but it would just make her husband uncomfortable, and she wouldn't be able to say what she was really thinking about, anyway. She could tell him everything, all the guilt she was feeling and the confusion over everything Joshua had said and the memories she'd relived the night before, but the most comfort she would get would be a sympathetic kiss and an assurance that it was just a dream. Even if she didn't mention seeing him, if she'd just told him she'd been thinking about things and wondering what they should have done differently, she'd just be told not to worry about it. That the past was gone, Joshua was in a better place now, and he wouldn't want her to be sad. Empty reassurances from someone who hadn't seen what she'd seen, and wouldn't believe it if she told him.

(Just like turning on the lights and saying the monsters are gone, when you've never been able to see the monsters in the first place.)

And suddenly she understood, not just knew on a surface level but empathized and felt it just as strongly as if part of her vision had been ripped away from her and submerged in Joshua's soul, why he'd left. Why he refused to come back. Because no one understood. Because no one could. Because the things he'd seen, real or not, had not just distracted him from the world around him but had shaped his entire perception of life into something no one else shared. And so he lied, and pretended, and behaved in ways that didn't make others uncomfortable and didn't land him more time in therapy – but that meant he was alone with the things he saw. Now she had a small taste of that, and as she bit her tongue to keep herself from crying again, she wondered if he'd known. If he'd calculated their encounter just to give her a taste of her own medicine, his own form of revenge. Or maybe he just wanted to punish her for trying to forget him, by reminding her in detail she what he looked and sounded and smelled like. Preventing her from obtaining whatever closure the act of getting rid of all his old things and moving away was supposed to provide.

(Do you really think he'd be that petty?)

"Are you all right?" her husband asked, and she realized she was shaking, and tears were dripping from her eyes. She nodded, but she was sniffling like a little girl, and her husband continued to hover over her, looking bewildered. She waved him away, and he hesitated, but after a moment he sat next to her on the bed and cupped a hand over hers.

"It's okay to think about him, you know," he said. "Just because we're leaving this house doesn't mean we're leaving him behind. He's in our hearts, wherever we go."

She nodded, and he pried open her fingers to slip his hand into hers. "What's this?" he asked. She looked at him and saw that from her hand he had retrieved a small, crumpled piece of printer paper. She hadn't even realized she'd been holding anything.

"I don't think I've seen this photo before," he said, studying it. She sat up and peered over his shoulder.

It was a photo of her and Joshua, from back when he was a child, four or five. They were in her room and though it was bright inside, the darkened windows revealed that it was nighttime. She was sitting up in bed and Joshua was curled up beside her, his head on her lap. The hood of his bunny pajamas was pulled down, and she was stroking his hair. The boy's large, sleepy violet eyes gazed in the direction of the camera, and a shy smile peaked out from behind a fold in his mother's nightgown.

She studied image for a moment, browsing through her mind for a memory to connect it to. She thought of the night she'd let Joshua sleep in her bed and promised him she'd keep the monsters away, but it would be impossible for there to have been a picture of that. No one else would have been there to take it.

Then again, a lot of things had just happened that were supposed to have been impossible.

"It's a sweet picture," said her husband. "He looks happy."

And she realized that was her answer. I'll have to get back to you on that, Joshua had said, but he hadn't intended to ever speak to her again. So he'd left her the picture. Her husband gave it back to her and silently she stared at the image and the creases that had already found their way onto the paper, touched with gratitude for the answer that was weighed down by the finality behind it.

Giving her hand a final squeeze, her husband stood up and left the room, promising to return with breakfast. They had a long day ahead of them; yesterday had been his last day at his company's Tokyo branch, and the movers would be coming over later in the evening. She put the photograph aside and swung her legs over the side of the mattress, but she couldn't quite convince herself to stand up. Alone with her thoughts, she looked around the room, reflecting on the events of the previous night. The memory had already taken on a surreal quality, and measured up against the tidy, sunlit room, it seemed like it had happened a long time ago. Maybe in a few years, it would be distant enough that she could convince herself it was a dream.

And in the end, it didn't really matter if it had been, did it? It was just as fleeting as a dream; just a flicker of contact that reopened old wounds and didn't solve anything. The encounter had produced no satisfying answers, no good memories, no thread and needle to repair their ruined relationship and no chance of ever seeing him again. Nothing but a reminder of what she'd done wrong.

(What a self-centered way to think.)

...It was rather selfish, she admitted to herself, as she finally stood to leave. After all, there was no such thing as a blank slate or a second chance. But there could be little things, apologies, moments of empathy that could make things a little bit better than they were before. Maybe those things had meant something to Joshua. She placed a hand into her nightgown pocket, touching the photograph to make sure it was still there. That photograph had meant something. That he didn't want her to forget him, or that he wouldn't forget her. That he accepted her apology. That what she'd said had given him some kind of closure, something he needed just as much as she did. Maybe that was enough to make it worthwhile.

"I'm glad," she said to herself quietly. "I'm glad I could see you one last time." The door creaked as she shut it softly behind her.

(Good-bye.)