Was there love out in the desert?

A rewrite of MAMIYA, in a world where bonds materialize as visible strings.

Natsume was dead. And so, all the strings connecting him to this world were broken, just like that.

In this world, strings connected people. Bonds kept people together no matter how far apart they were, the lines between them visible yet intangible. The stronger and more reliant people are on these bonds, the thicker the line becomes– its color changing depending on the type of connection it represented.

Natsume had many bonds. Not like any of them were particularly strong, but the sheer amount of them breaking at once was no different than the forces of gravity collapsing around him. He was nobody by himself, and relied on the attractions of others to stay afloat.

So, when he had no strings, he became a puppeteer for others’. For the four that went to his funeral; the four that severed their strings for Mamiya.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

“Was there love out in the desert?

Could you dig through burning sands?

To let water spring above?

Knees on the searing dunes, eyes on the world so vast.

A sight breathtaking, a task overwhelming.

Yet today, I part the ground again.

Burrowing through burning sands.

Would I find love like this?

A single love that’s mine alone.”

Natsume was dead. And so, all the strings connecting him to this world were broken, just like that.

In this world, strings connected people. Bonds kept people together no matter how far apart they were, the lines between them visible yet intangible. The stronger and more reliant people are on these bonds, the thicker the line becomes– its color changing depending on the type of connection it represented.

Natsume had many bonds. Not like any of them were particularly strong, but the sheer amount of them breaking at once was no different than the forces of gravity collapsing around him. He was nobody by himself, and relied on the attractions of others to stay afloat.

So, when he had no strings, he became a puppeteer for others’. For the four that went to his funeral; the four that severed their strings for Mamiya.

To see something he so desperately needed be stolen by such heartless entities and promptly discarded– he needed to do something.

–

He follows the dark-skinned youth first.

Kikuchi Ryou doesn’t have many strings, and most he did have were pale and fading.

There was a green one connected to his childhood friend, Minato. The color was light, and comfortably blended in any background.

Another one, was a barely visible turquoise string. It didn’t seem to lead to anything, as if cut off at the midpoint. The string is suspended in midair, flowing like a dead snake in water looking for a way out. Occasionally, it would extend further than usual, as if looking for its destination.

Then, the one connecting him to his mother. The color, which should have been a warm, homely, brown became diluted to the point of being nothing but a thin shadow; only amplified in the dark.

The only one still vivid was the one to his sister, little Midori. It was firm, and purple, and regal. It bore the blue of responsibility and red of cruelty.

That same string extended past Midori, and split into the hands of two others. The string of responsibility didn’t go far. Mamiya stayed by him, and Ryou held to it like a lifeline. The string of cruelty, of violence, on the other hand…

It was weaved through others. Through Ryou’s mother, through delinquents looking for a fight, through mobsters looking for revenge. The more he followed, the more complex the web became.

So, Natsume let himself get stuck in the web, lest Ryou become part of it.

He allowed himself to be the sole source and recipient of Ryou’s violence, and plucked the string of responsibility in his own hands.

With the most important strings of Ryou in his hands, he wove a new future for him. A future where he kept his bonds, a future without Mamiya controlling them.

–

Then, he follows the black-haired student.

Toujou Minato was loved by the world. His strings were bright and numerous, a golden color in a usually dull world. Yet, they were all dull, the brilliance imitating a layer of cheap paint over rusty iron; It’s there, but insecure. Unclean and cloudy. Ready to break at any moment.

And Mamiya does nothing. He lets the river flow over the rusty iron, and simply watches as Minato desperately paints to restore its shine. He is just another dull golden string, an imitation wanting to be the true thing.

Natsume refuses to do the same. He takes the string between them–the dull golden that Minato is so used to– and scrubs it clean. The gold disappears, and the rust is exposed. He tries, and tries, and polishes the iron until nothing but the humble gray remained.

Until nothing but Minato’s true, vulnerable self remained.

“I am his soul-twin. I will be special to him.” He told Mamiya.

Because I’m Minato’s only true connection.

He would be the iron support Minato could cling to, the structure there for him when everything else collapses.

The river was still flowing, nourishing the yellow gerberas on Natsume’s grave.

–

Next, came the smoke-soaked silhouette.

Morichika Haruki had a single string, if one may call it that. It shot out, clung to whoever it landed on, and changed targets as it chose. It was so thin it should have been barely visible, yet cut through the air nonetheless; the color was a bright crimson red, the laser edge burning into his retinas as if urging him to look away.

“You will never love anyone ,” it reminds him, cursing him. His “love” is a fleeting light. One that Mamiya taught him to guide, to focus, until that laser allowed him to connect to anyone he wanted nonetheless, burning himself on the way. The laser shoots through him, masquerading connection. Until that laser lingers for too long, and he leaves before they hurt. Before they hurt and leave him first. The spotlight focuses between them as the fire burns hard and fast, almost cutting too close for comfort before the film runs out, and a new one starts again.

For a time after Natsume’s funeral, the film runs longer than usual. The laser fell through the transparent Natsume, and onto Mina. With the manufactured common thread of Natsume, Haruki tried to extend the runtime. Until he’s reminded how even that, too, can turn into nothing but a trick of the light. So he ends the film, again, flitting the laser on anyone that can reflect some warmth, so he can at least feel that he has the reins in his hands.

The curse remains as the sole common thread between these films– as well as the Treasure Island standing at the end of it.

But, somehow, the manufactured thread remains– the film never ended. He finds the Treasure Island for Mina, to show her a comfort from his curse; a comfort she had been as well.

But the Treasure Island wasn’t sacred. She knew of it too. At the end of his thread was nothing but a lie; The sole sanctuary a delusion.

The laser glowed a dangerous red, glowing until the Treasure Island burnt up, until the thread between them was reduced to ashes. It glowed until the laser itself disappears in the light, with Haruki in it.

Mamiya had turned the laser to face Haruki himself.

“You will spend your whole life unable to love anyone.”

So Natsume willingly stood in front of that light, refusing to budge from its path. Followed it as it moved, jumped between him and its intended target, let himself get burnt. Let the film end and start again as it wished ; One where the Treasure Island didn’t exist anymore, and Natsume was all that was left.

If the laser was all Haruki had, then Natsume just had to replace it himself.

The blood from his self-inflicted stab wound pooled between them, binding them together; Haruki couldn’t burn himself without burning Natsume too.

It’s your fault I’m like this. If you want me to stop hurting myself, then stop hurting yourself first.

–

And lastly, the tall, noble-looking student.

Suou Keito, strangely enough, doesn’t have any strings. Not visible ones, anyways.

Not towards other people, not towards the world.

He had no particular attachment to anything in the physical realm. Only ideas .

It would only make sense for his strings to be as invisible as his attachments were.

And so Natsume let himself embody the ideas Suou loved so much. He established a connection, not between Natsume and Suou, but rather between a vampire prince and the boy that refused to face reality.

And just like that relationship, their string… “existed”.

–

When the world ends, Natsume’s strings disappear, all over again.

With the world’s end, everybody was gone.

Everybody… except Mamiya Yumehisa.

…

In exchange for my story, Our Lord granted me the disposition to become even a king.

To fulfill my desire.

“My desire is—

To kill you again and again.”

“I will kill you again and again, MAMIYA.”

Mamiya, who had stolen all my connections from me.

–

Mamiya Yumehisa never had any connections. How could he, when he only existed within Suou Keito’s imagination? How could he, when he only existed when subjectively perceived? Only welcome as an《idea》. Now, with Suou Keito– along with the rest of the world– gone,

I’ve been waiting, alone, for 3,000 years.

Natsume– or rather, “Me” – was the only one left to perceive him.

“He wanted him to resent him

He wanted him to chase him

He wanted him… to need him”

The hawk would strike down the crows. The hawk would eat their eyes and brains. The hawk would throw their bodies into the river. The hawk would prove that there are only black crows.

(“Thus he did every day, it being his intent to destroy them all, [one after another]” )

And make the crows extinct.

–

I’d follow every string to its conclusion, killing the crow at the end. The strings, once pitch black, were now coated with a new sheen of red; the original color imperceptible.

I’ve been played.

Ever since Our Lord made《Me》 king, I had been the protagonist of the story. I had been the hawk, alone in the desert, doomed to the fate of killing the crows again, and again, and again, and again-

To the point of nearly killing the crow, the book I loved so dearly.

Where all my connections lay.

–

Mamiya Yumehisa appeared in front of me.

Strands of thread, all the strings that I had lost, in all their different colors and forms

diverged to a single point.

I…

Accept MAMIYA.

“The flames of judgment turned into a bridge between the two souls.”

The golden rope tying them together; The rainbow prism keeping them enclosed.