Chapter Text

Puzzles

Chapter 1. Stupid Takemichi

Stupid. He was so SO stupid. In Takemichi’s defense, it was his first time leap with Mikey as a trigger, so his brain wasn’t on guard against taking Mikey’s hand. It was simpler when Naoto was a trigger because Naoto was a kid, and aside from that firework disaster hand-holding incident it was fairly easy to control when he goes back to the future. But Mikey was going to leave and Takemichi’s brain short-circuited for a moment and now he’s… somewhere. Takemichi looked around. He was in a room with no windows, dark blue walls, a queen-size bed, a table and a chair. A calendar and a clock were hanging on the wall facing the bed, lying on which Takemichi found himself in this version of a future. The door looks heavier than a normal bedroom door. And it was made of metal, so not a bedroom door for sure.

Takemichi looked down at himself, he was dressed in a simple white t-shirt and black trekking pants. There were no bruises or wounds on him, thankfully. He only got out from a hospital a few weeks ago, he wasn’t keen on once again suffering through this whole ordeal of one wrong move and you’re in pain. Not that that was something new to him, but it still was nice to be physically okay, one can never get tired of that.

He looked around the room once again, taking in its simplistic design with minimal necessities, lack of TV or even a goddamn radio, and that heavy scary-looking door. And the realization slowly crept up to him.

He was a hostage. Or a prisoner? Or maybe he was in a psych ward? No, the bed was too good to be placed in a psych ward. Lack of a mirror or anything that could potentially be used as a weapon could be used to justify being a psycho or a prisoner all the same.

“Well, that’s just fantastic! Good one, Takemichi,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes to the point of colorful spots dancing behind his eyelids.

How exactly was he supposed to go back to Mikey if he was held prisoner? But, well, he didn’t even try to open the door. Maybe he was panicking in vain? Maybe this version of himself just liked sleeping in this type of simplistic basement rooms? A weird choice, surely, but there was still hope that he just went crazy somewhere down the line. No, then that would mean he was in a psych ward, and it probably wasn’t easier to get out of a psych ward than to escape a potential hostage situation. At least he wasn’t handcuffed to the bed, that was a sliver of hope.

Takemichi got up and went to check the door, no point in running his mind if the answer was a few steps away. And the door was locked. Of course, it was fucking locked. He sighed and not at all gently placed his forehead on the cool metal surface of the door. He hated finding himself working at the DVD shop every time he time leaped but now he really would’ve preferred getting yelled at by his manager rather than all this. He tried a handle a few more times just to express his irritation and then punched the door with his leg for a good measure. Stupid decision, the door was way sturdier than his shoeless feet.

Takemichi cursed under his breath and decided that at least the room was big enough for him to wander around a bit. He chose to check the table first seeing as there was even something on it, he could at least try to look for something useful. Not that he expected to find a key there but as he got closer he saw a stack of books and even mangas laying around. That could be a clue at least to where he was and what his life here was like.

He flipped through the first manga he randomly grabbed and quickly realized that it was something he himself would never buy. The art style made his eyes hurt and the main tropes were the ones he always avoided. Looking through the other mangas he felt like they were all randomly bought: no pattern in genres or character designs and almost all of them were something he would never read. He felt like they were all grabbed from a bestseller section. Not that he was a manga snob, but the ones he preferred usually did not end up as the most popular ones. At least there was an issue of Shonen Jump, but he read all of those mangas so long ago that these new chapters would probably make no sense to him.

The books were even worse, even their titles brought metaphorical tears to his eyes. Once again, not that he was some quality literature enjoyer but for god’s sake ‘The Butterfly Effect: How your life matters’? Even fucking ‘Crime and Punishment’? No, he hasn’t read that monstrosity of a book, but thanks to having a unique opportunity to relive his middle and high school years, he remembered some things about it from his foreign literature class. He flipped through the pages dejectedly, stopping at a random one to look through it briefly.

“He will suffer if he is sorry for his victim...The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.” Yeah, thanks, not going there now. Was it like some ironic joke of the universe that he stopped at that page among hundreds of others? Not funny, not funny at all. He should’ve gone for the butterfly effect one, at least it looked more life-affirming rather than depressing. He closed the book with a loud thud and left the table for the sake of studying the clock and the calendar a few steps away.

The clock kindly informed him that it was 7:23 PM. Nothing exceptional about the clock, just a big round white plate with hands ticking away. The calendar, on the other hand, was a bit more interesting. It also was a simple wall calendar with a Tokyo panorama pictured at the top, probably bought at random at some press booth. What was interesting was the dates on the calendar which were almost all crossed out with a black marker. The black X marks stopped right at the day he time leaped, but the previous almost three weeks were all crossed out. He flipped this month’s page up and found three more X marks on the three last days of the previous month. Oh well, looks like he was held prisoner here for three fucking weeks already.

Takemichi quickly went back to the table trying to locate the marker used to cross out dates but, obviously, he would have seen it before if it was there. Not surprising seeing as pens and pencils could be used as weapons and he was probably not in a situation that allowed this freedom of action.

Takemichi needed a plan. He had to get out of here and find Mikey and time leap again. He literally did nothing in the past except land himself in a hospital and caused Draken's… He closed his eyes tightly and breathed in and out a few times. At least he saved Senju. And he promised that he will help Mikey, not that he needed to promise that again to do it, but now he owed it not only to himself and Mikey, but to Draken too. Takemichi opened his eyes with a newfound determination. He just needed to come up with a plan and get out of here. Easy as that. He did a lot of unbelievable shit before, what was some escape from the basement in comparison?

And so, Takemichi looked around again to collect as much information as possible about his current little setback. First, there was only one locked door, no bathroom or that little toilet he saw in prison cells in the movies. He also smelled quite fresh and he didn’t have three weeks’ worth of stubble on his chin. Which meant that his captor must have been the one to lead him to use a toilet and a shower and even allowed him to use a razor. Second, there was no food in the room, no snacks or water either. He felt a bit hungry but clearly not starved. So that meant that his food must have also been delivered to him. Third, there was nothing else in the room to help him. Which meant that any further answers he could get only after his captor came to give him food or bring him to the toilet. He really was not keen on thinking about the fact that his past self had to use the bathroom by a schedule, that was a scary life. Maybe that was why there was no water here, he thought humorlessly as he made his way back to the bed.

Okay, fourth, the bed was ridiculously nice. His teenage bed was a singe with not much room to move around and his adult bed in his shitty apartment was just as shitty as the apartment itself. And that meant that he probably was not treated that badly, all things considered. Even if mangas were shitty and books were awful, at least there was something left for him to entertain himself with.

Takemichi made himself comfortable, sprawling all over the bed and staring at the simple white ceiling. He really didn’t want to think right now, there were too many things he had to think about. But without knowing who his captor was, he was just going to make himself worry and spiral into anxiety. As if that ever helped him to deal with anything. So, no, thinking was not an option. Thankfully, the ceiling was painted a long time ago and there was a good amount of cracks in the paint for him to count.

Takemichi waited. The cracks ended and the clock quietly ticked away. Tick tock. Tick tock. Maybe that was his torture? Like some fucked up experiment to give him a false sense of security and then observe how it slowly came onto him that he was mentally tortured and not physically? Bad mangas and that goddamn annoyingly loud clock. He could see himself going crazy with just these two factors involved.

Thankfully, his misery came to an end as at 8:17 PM he heard the sound of a key unlocking the heavy door. He knew it was 8:17 PM sharp because he spent the last ten minutes following each movement of the clock’s hands like a hawk. He carefully turned his head to the door to finally get that last piece of information needed to start coming up with an escape plan.

A man with shoulder-length black hair pushed the door open. Takemichi couldn’t see his face clearly, but the moment he saw him something weird happened with his insides. He studied the man carefully. There was a paper bag in his hands, probably with food, just as Takemichi thought. He was dressed in black from head to toe, a simple long-sleeved henley shirt and pants. Takemichi once again felt that weird insides-twisting sensation as he realized that the man’s physique was a bit familiar.

“Time to eat, Takemitchy~”

No. Nonononono. No.

Takemichi’s brain shirt-circuited for the second time this day. Mikey seems to be good at stopping his brain, Takemichi humorlessly thought.

Calm down. Breathe. In and out.

“Still ignoring me, eh? Well, it’s not like you’re the Takemitchy I want to talk to. Ironic, dontcha think?” Mikey turned his head a bit so long locks of raven black hair no longer blocked the view of his face. Takemichi’s attempts at controlling his breathing were rendered futile just like that.

Mikey looked… good. Takemichi never saw a future Mikey that looked this good. He had dark circles under his eyes but they were a far cry from the ones he saw on a white-haired Mikey that shot him thrice. He didn’t look painfully skinny, his physique close to the one Takemichi was used to seeing in the past, that was why it was a bit familiar. But Mikey was no longer a 15-year-old teenager, he was now a grown man. With how skinny and sickly all of the previous future Mikeys were Takemichi never stopped to think about the fact that Mikey was twenty-seven and not fifteen in the future. But now he could not look away from this 27-year-old Mikey with long black hair and mature but still oh so gorgeous face and… empty eyes. The same empty eyes he always saw on every future Mikey. That realization was like a bucket of cold water with huge ice cubes that suddenly was dropped on Takemichi after the warmest bath. Mikey looked better, but he certainly didn’t feel that much better.

“You’re staring. Like what you see, Takemitchy?♡” Mikey grinned at him, but the eyes stayed the same black emptiness as before.

Takemichi quickly looked down, an unconscious reaction to being called out on staring. But then he registered fully what Mikey said to him before, about him not being the Takemichi he wanted to talk to, so Takemichi commended himself on that decision to hide his face. He was stupid in terms of grabbing hands he shouldn’t but he was not that stupid, okay? None of his interactions with future Mikeys ended with both of them alive, so he wasn’t keen on trying out third-time-a-charm theory right about now with no preparation. All of this time leaping shit did make him smart like that.

He felt that tingle at the back of his neck that told him he was probably getting stared at in return. God, he hoped the past him didn’t act drastically different when Mikey came with food and that his behavior now didn’t give away completely the fact that he was the Takemichi Mikey wanted to talk to. After a minute or so of him trying desperately to school his nerves, he heard the sound of a marker being uncapped.

“Forgot to bring the marker in the morning. Kinda had a feeling I wouldn’t need it today,” Mikey said absentmindedly as the characteristic screeching sound of a marker writing on a glossy paper reached Takemichi’s ears.

So it was Mikey who crossed out all that days on the calendar. It was kind of… nice of him? Takemichi could see how being stuck in a room with no windows would mess with the person’s perception of time. The clock was also apparently placed here not as a torture device, but Takemichi would still argue otherwise.

“There are vitamins and shit in a ziplock. Koko said that apparently, you can’t just lock someone in a room with no windows for three weeks and not fuck up their health in a process,” Mikey said in a very normal-conversation-like tone, like he was talking about the weather and not kidnapping someone and holding them in a basement. “He still cares about you in a weird way, y’know? Gotta commend Black Dragons and their loyalty,” Mikey added with a snort as if there was a joke there only he could understand.

Koko? If Koko was with Mikey that meant Bonten existed in this future as well? Reasonable, seeing how Takemichi hasn’t actually changed the past that much before he stupidly triggered the time leap. But maybe he did manage to change enough, taking Mikey feeding him vitamins instead of bullets as an indication.

“Nice chatting with ya as always. It shouldn’t be long now. Bye-bye, Takemitchy,” and just like that, Mikey left.

After staying on the bed in the same position for an hour or so, Takemichi finally collected his thoughts enough to be able to move. He walked to the table with the paper bag carefully placed on a space not littered with books and mangas. A sandwich, a bottle of water, a ziplock filled with colorful pills, and even a dorayaki greeted him from inside of the bag.