The other side of Reincarnation

A note on when this happened: this isn’t where the story left off.

　This was a few weeks earlier――the last full evening the three of us had together, before everything that came after it.

　I’m telling it now, out of order, because I think you should know them properly before I tell you how I lost them.

　I think I owe them that much.

　Even if I can’t undo what comes next by telling it this way.

　It started, as these things sometimes do, with a question none of us had planned on asking.

　We were a few days past the second campfire――the one that shouldn’t have existed, the one that told us someone patient was still out there somewhere behind us.

　The fear hadn’t fully settled yet into the quiet dread it would become.

　That night, it did something else instead.

　It made all three of us a little more honest than we’d been in years.

”I want to know,” Fenrik said, apropos of nothing, staring into the fire. ”Both of you. Properly. Not the pieces we’ve been trading for six years. All of it. Feels like――feels like if something’s actually coming, I don’t want to have spent this long beside people I only half know.”

　Doran was quiet for a long moment.

　Then, slower than I expected, he nodded.

”Alright,” he said. ”Alright. You go first, though. Since you asked.”

Fenrik’s turn

　”My mother was human,” Fenrik said.

　I felt something shift in the air the moment he said it――the first time either of us had heard that detail, in six years.

”My father was beastkin. Village tolerated him well enough, on his own. Didn’t tolerate what came out of the two of them together.”

Mixed blood.

Just like me, in a way.

Different shape, same shape underneath.

”They made it clear, early, that I wasn’t really welcome to exist,” he continued, voice steady in the specific way that meant he’d told himself this story enough times to control it.

”My mother took the worst of it. People find it easier to punish the parent than the child, sometimes――safer target, less guilt attached.”

　His gaze stayed fixed on the flames.

”She got sick, eventually. Wasn’t a sickness that should’ve killed her. Would’ve had actual care, actual medicine, if the village hadn’t decided she didn’t deserve either.”

　He said the next part flatly.

　Deliberately flat.

　The way you say something you’ve had to make peace with just to keep functioning.

”She died when I was twelve. My father left not long after――grief, mostly, I think, though I never got a real explanation before he did.”

”I left myself a few years after that. Wasn’t anything left there worth staying for.”

Twelve.

Just a kid.

Same age range I was when the mountain happened, near enough.

”I’m sorry,” I said, because it was the only thing that felt true enough to say.

”Don’t be. Wasn’t your doing.”

　He managed a small, real smile.

”Feels lighter, actually. Telling it. Didn’t expect that.”

Doran’s turn

　Doran took longer to start than Fenrik had.

　He turned his cup over in his hands several times before he finally spoke.

”I was a soldier,” he said. ”Long time ago, now. Captain, eventually, of a unit that did border work between two kingdoms who never much liked sharing a map.”

　He paused.

”Good unit. Good men. People I’d have died for, and thought, for a long time, that I would.”

There it is.

The scar.

The door-watching.

All of it, finally getting a shape.

”We got betrayed,” he continued, voice flattening the way Fenrik’s had.

”Someone on the inside sold our position――where we’d be, when, how many. Enemy hit us in the night, same as tonight’s fear, if I’m honest about why that particular shape of danger sits so heavy with me.”

”Most of the unit didn’t survive it.”

”I did.”

　His fingers tightened slightly around the cup.

”Ran, when running was the only option left that wasn’t dying alongside them for nothing.”

　He touched the scar at his jaw, absently, like he’d forgotten it was there until his own story reminded him.

”Took this getting out. Carried worse than this out with me too, just not the kind you can see.”

　He was quiet for a moment.

”Spent a long while after that believing I should’ve stayed.”

”Died with them, instead of surviving to carry what surviving actually costs.”

That’s what he meant, on the road.

”I’ve run before. I know what it costs.”

He wasn’t talking about strategy.

He was talking about the worst decision of his life.

”The mountain range,” I said quietly, putting the last piece together. ”That’s where it happened.”

　He nodded once.

”Don’t go back that way, if I can help it. Don’t imagine I ever will.”

Kai’s turn

　I’d known, hearing both of them, that it was going to be my turn next.

　Some part of me had been quietly dreading it for years――not because I didn’t trust them, not anymore, but because saying it all out loud made it real in a way that keeping it folded up small inside me never quite had to be.

”My name wasn’t always Kai,” I said.

　Simple start.

　Easiest place to begin.

　I told them everything, then.

　Haruto Kobayashi.

　An apartment in Tokyo I barely left.

　A secret trading account I’d built alone, quietly, over years, worth more than anyone in my old life knew about.

　A friend named Kenji who called me up out of nowhere for a double date I never should have said yes to.

　A girl named Hana I never really connected with.

　And a walk home that ended with a car and a voice saying I had the angle perfectly calculated like it was something to be proud of.

”He killed me for the money,” I said. ”Somebody I’d known for years. Somebody I never once thought to question, right up until the moment it mattered most that I had.”

　Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

”That’s why you don’t trust easy,” Doran said finally.

　Not a question.

”That’s exactly why,” I said.

”Learned it the hardest way there is. Learned it again, a little, when two dragons decided I deserved to die for a reason I still don’t fully understand.”

”Learned it a third time, quieter, every time someone’s looked at me lately with eyes that know too much.”

And I’m telling you both this now because whatever’s coming, I don’t want to face it having held anything back.

You’ve given me that much honesty tonight.

You deserve it back, in full.

　We sat with all of it a long while after that――three people who’d finally handed each other the whole shape of themselves, instead of the careful pieces we’d been trading for years.

”For what it’s worth,” Fenrik said eventually, ”I’m glad I know. All of it. Doesn’t change anything about how I feel about either of you. Just――glad I know.”

”Same,” Doran said, quiet, certain.

Me too.

Whatever happens now, at least it happens with all three of us finally seen properly by each other.

That has to count for something.

　I fell asleep that night lighter than I had in years.

　The weight of everything I’d been carrying alone finally shared.

　Finally understood by two people who’d chosen, freely, to carry it alongside me.

　I didn’t know yet how little time we actually had left to build anything further out of that honesty.

　I’m glad, even now, that we had that night at all.