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Surprisingly, Ranpo Edogawa didn’t experience much of a ‘first night’ of safety after the events of the play took place; he didn’t remember how he ended up in a shabby motel wrapped in blankets that had obviously been subjected to years of use and wear. However, he did remember the comfort of two arms wrapping around him as he sobbed into the soft fabric of the old man’s yakuta, face pressed into his chest as night continued to drone on--he didn’t understand the attachment, he had met the man that morning and already he felt comfortable enough to be reduced to tears in his arms.
It was confusing, it was scary, and he didn’t know how to dissect it.
Holding onto him for hours on end until tears stopped falling and his eyelashes grew sticky against his cheeks and refused to open anymore, plunging him into the depths of a sleep he couldn’t escape, an easy action to fall into after hours of emotional exhaustion. The comfort of another person he hasn’t felt in years--not since his mother tucked him into bed all those months ago and never did it again–that was finally encasing him after he spent so long drowning within the dangers of monsters he didn’t understand.
People who called him names and yet played into a stupidity he couldn’t seem to grasp.
Alone and afraid in a world not meant for people like him to be able to navigate, a place filled with obstacles and puzzles he didn’t have all the pieces to.
So, when that night finally came--when his own futon was set up and the doors to his own room were shut--it was no surprise that the comfort from that first ‘night’ didn’t hold up.
That was the night Ranpo didn’t sleep…we’ll, to be more precise, that was the first night Ranpo didn’t sleep.
He knew it was only a matter of time before he became too much for Fukuzawa to handle and he was tossed away just like every other job he had before--he wanted to believe Fukuzawa wasn’t like his previous jobs, the man seemed so sincere but…how long would that last. How long until he too gave up on being nice to the know-it-all who imposed himself on his doorstep and tossed him right back out on his ass? How long will this home last until it was inevitably ripped away from him.
Ranpo watched Fukuzawa day after day, working and getting chastised for the antics of ‘the kid he dragged with him’, being asked when he was going to impose manners onto him or just drop him all together--Ranpo wondered too but wouldn’t dream of asking. Instead, he continued to bounce around the older man and pretend he couldn’t hear anything, pretend, fake, placate the monsters--he still wasn’t sure it all wasn’t a lie, that the rug would be pulled out from under him at the last second and all of it would be fake.
As night rounded onto him, Ranpo twirled the, obviously, cheap wood between his fingers, watching at it spun and bent with each movement made towards each angle; letting it fall to the objects of motion Ranpo had been forced to learn as a child. Crickets chirped in the distance the longer he stared, burning eyes that had been awake far-too many hours watching them with a notion of aggravation. The speckling of stars became more apparent the longer green eyes spent staring into them, fogging over with a lack of sleep and inner turmoil he couldn’t quite describe due to the deprived nature of his brain.
Rubbing the pads of his fingers at the edges only seemed to exhaust him further, an anchor to earth as his ears continued to scream with the fuzz of a reality he couldn’t decipher.
"You're special," his memories echoed in a voice that wasn't his own, a rose that bloomed within his chest when all seemed lost, and the monsters were so close to catching him; when he was all alone, and no one seemed to care or want to help. He did. He cared even though he shouldn’t have, there was no reason for him to help or to take care of him up to this point; what's stopping Fukuzawa from throwing him away for good--all he does is cause trouble for the man. He said so himself: “I don’t do partnerships.”
"How did such an old man get so bad at lying through his teeth?" Ranpo mumbled into the plush space of his pillow, letting stray tears drip from the edges of his eyes as they slowly grew heavier; the weight of the past few weeks melting away as he finally submerged into the depths of memories that seemed more like dreams.
The glasses dropped to the floor as his first snore rang through the room.
Something was coming for them, it was coming and whatever it was it was going to ruin everything that was good, Ranpo just knew it in his gut. The comfort of his new futon tightly wrapped itself around him as he pressed himself into the corner of the room, hiding his face in the plush fabric in an attempt to stifle his sobs--if he was heard everything would be ruined, wherever he had now would be gone and dismantled no matter how badly he wanted it to work…it would be gone. No one would look for him, no one would care…Fukuzawa would wake up in the morning with nothing but a corpse to hide and clean up…he would get what he wanted.
A sudden thump on the divider sent him curling into a smaller ball against the wall, knees to his chest and arms wrapped around the base of his calves in an attempt to force himself into a smaller ball against himself. Another thump against the divider had tear-stained eyes forcing themself shut as it fell to the ground; Ranpo couldn’t breathe --he didn’t want to. Fukuzawa wouldn’t come to save him, he had no reason to after all, there was no reason for the man to care about anything but the cleaning-up of his corpse.
He screamed as the hands of the monster tightly gripped at him, shaking him against the wall until his ears felt like they were bleeding against his skull until he could feel nothing but blood dripping from busted eardrums. “Ranpo!” His mind seemed to scream at him, pushing him against layers of oxygen that seemed to bash his brain with each movement.
Rocking against him with no sense of direction until his eyes bolted open with a shocked gasp, a need for air no matter how small it seemed to be.
“Ranpo?” The man in front of him seemed to echo, frantic and scared as Ranpo slowly blinked himself away from the depths of his dream; chilled hands cupped at his newly malleable features as they were molded within his hands, turning his face every which way in search for some kind of coherence. “Ranpo, are you okay, you were screaming in your sleep?”
Ranpo pushed himself away from the man’s hands as incoherent blinks seemed to rock him back into reality. “I’m okay,” he mumbled. Fukuzawa’s fingers dragged through Ranpo’s hair as he attempted to act as an anchor for the boy, helping him calm down from the obvious frantic emotions swirling within the child sitting in front of him. “I’m fine, it's okay, don’t worry about me.”
“Ranpo,” he says, voice vibrating through the boy as they continued to shake with the nightmare. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Ranpo cried, “No I’m not.”