Yatoni sighed heavily as he stared out across the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the crimson light of the setting sun bleeding into the sea. Red sky at night, sailor's delight, his father's voice said in his head, we're gonna have nice clear skies and lots of stars.
Fuck sailors and fuck stars and sunsets and the fucking Pacific Ocean too. They could all go fuck themselves as far as Yatoni cared. He took the rubber band from his wrist and twisted it around his fingers absently. This summer he was finally gonna travel, drive all the way across Japan and back again, and he was two days in, and his engine had broken down outside a middle-of-nowhere fishing town that he hadn't intended to stop in for anything more than maybe gas.
Yatoni sighed again and ran a hand through his dark hair. It was getting greasy. He'd have to find a place to bathe himself soon. He would have sighed a third time, but he stopped himself, deciding that he had already sighed as much as the situation warranted, and once one is done sighing, one looks for a solution.
He looked away from the sunset and back into the open hood of his car. It had the body of an old Nissan Skyline from decades before that he and his father had fished out of a junkyard, but he'd replaced pretty much the whole engine and a lot of the interior about six years before when his dad was teaching him how to work in the family's auto shop. He'd been really excited when his dad finally let him do something other than retrieving parts, since he'd always loved cars.
It honestly should have crapped out on him a long time ago, considering it was built by a twelve year old, but somehow it had managed to hold together pretty well so far, with only the occasional problem. Now it had stopped smoking, thankfully, but unfortunately, it didn't look like he'd be able to fix the damage with duct tape. It figured he'd have his worst car troubles at the most inconvenient time, in the most inconvenient place.
From what he could tell, he needed a new cylinder head to replace one that appeared to have about half of it broken off completely. It had probably been cracked already and shook loose when he hit a pothole or something. He should probably double-check the coolant system too if the sweet smell he'd caught on the smoke was anything to go by.
Evidently he had put a little too much trust in his car running the way he wanted it to without actually checking under the hood before he left because the broken cylinder head and the coolant leak couldn't both have happened just in the last two days, unless Yatoni's luck was exceptionally bad, which, well, it generally was.
In any case, he had practically built this car from the ground up, and he could always fix her. He just needed to find the right parts. The real problem was he didn't know if he'd have money for the parts, or where he could even find them in a middle-of-nowhere fishing town like this. It would seem he had one more sigh left in him after all as he grabbed the bag out of his passenger seat that had his most important stuff in it, locked his car, closed the hood, and hiked down the road into town.
Once there, he searched for a mechanic or scrapyard or something that might have what he was looking for, and was surprised when not only did he find one almost right away, but it actually appeared to be pretty busy. The little auto shop was called Chen's Garage, and it was indeed just one garage with a room attached to the side for transactions, but Chen's also had its own tow truck parked nearby with the name of the mechanic painted on the door, and there were six cars waiting to be worked on ranging from an old lemon to what looked to be a brand new Porsche.
A small, balding man in greasy coveralls was standing on a step-ladder, peering under the hood of a large pick-up truck parked in the lot. He was muttering to himself in Chinese as he tightened a bolt. Yatoni didn't really understand Chinese except for a few curse words he'd learned in middle school, but he didn't really need to know more than that because curse words made up most of what the man was saying.
"Excuse me." The older man whipped around in alarm and threw his wrench at Yatoni in one swift, fluid movement, and it would have hit the boy in the chest had he not been able to catch it. He silently thanked Nagisa-sensei for all that assassination training which had honed his reflexes so well.
"Nice catch!" He heard a female voice call from behind him. He turned to see a teenaged girl, his age or maybe a bit younger, sitting barefoot and cross-legged in the driver's seat of the purple tow truck next to the garage with the door hanging open. "Let me guess, your car broke down on the cliffside and you need a tow and a fix."
"Ay-yah! Another one?" The older man scowled and climbed off his step-ladder to snatch the wrench back from Yatoni. "Always so busy because of that damn cursed road. We don't have time for you today!"
"I can fix it myself, I just need a new cylinder head, model V6 internal combustion engine, and maybe something for my coolant system; I might just stick duct tape over the leak if it's not too big."
"You know how to fix cars?"
"Yeah."
"Can you fix this?" He pointed to the Porsche, eyes alight with curiosity.
"Pop the hood?" Yatoni requested, taking off his old, brown, leather jacket and walking over to the vehicle, and the man complied. The Porsche was one of their latest models, full of new innovations. The engine was minimalist electric, with an extendable solar panel which could be removed or transported along with the car in a slot on the underside of the hood for emergency charging.
You could tell just by looking at it that it was really advanced, but an engine was still an engine. He fiddled with the wires, the coolant system, the fuses, then he flicked his wrists a few times and turned to the man.
"Yeah, I can fix it," he said. "You got a soldering iron and some copper wire?"
"Yes, what's wrong with it?"
"One of the fuses has a faulty connection which stressed the engine until the onboard computer shut it down for maintenance so the entire thing wouldn't have to be replaced." They were both silent for a moment while the man frowned severely.
"I'll never understand this newfangled technology," he grumbled. "Since when do computers control cars?"
"Computers have controlled cars for over a decade," Yatoni said, not realizing that it was a rhetorical question. "So, about that cylinder head?"
"Have to special-order it for you, should be a day or two. Give it to you free if you work for me until it comes, plus I'll have Lei-Ling tow your car for no extra charge."
Yatoni looked at the little man, completely deadpan, weighing his options. If the part was going to take time to come, he'd need something to fill that time. Fixing cars was something he was good at, and he enjoyed it, everything from the purr of engines to the smell of motor oil. It wasn't traveling, but then, neither was blowing the rest of his trip money on a hotel room to mope in. It was something to do. He'd still have to find a place to stay, but it was a pretty good deal. "And you are?"
"Han Chen, I own this place. We have a deal or not?"
"Know of any place I can stay while I work here?"
— Warning: Tarantula Ahead —
"Dude! Check out this massive spider I found!" Misono said enthusiastically as soon as Ushiwara answered his front door. He pushed his way into the house and set the cardboard shoebox he was carrying onto the nearest table. He lifted the lid slightly and slid it just a few centimeters so Ushiwara could see without letting the creature escape. "He bit me and now I feel like a dead roach, but seriously, how cool is he? Isn't he just the most metal son of a bitch you ever saw?"
"I can't tell . . . you know what, I think I have an empty terrarium under my bed, let me grab it." Ushiwara stepped away, and returned a few moments later with a clear plastic box the about the size of a cinderblock. "Can you get it in here, then we can get a proper look."
"Totally." Misono popped the lid off the terrarium, tipped the contents of the shoebox into it, then snapped the lid shut quickly and slid the lock closed. "So I know you're awesome at gardening and insects and stuff, which is why I came to you. I thought you'd be interested, but also I'm losing feeling in my legs and it hurts to breathe so I thought maybe you would know what kind of spider this is and how to counteract the poison."
"Venom," Ushiwara corrected, trying to get a good look a the creature, which appeared to be trying to escape, though thankfully it couldn't get the lid open with its hairy, spindly legs. He blew his dust-brown bangs out of his line of vision, but they fell back into place in front of his eyes a moment later.
"What?" Misono crouched down next to his friend with a soft grunt of pain, admiring his gnarly new pet.
"If you bite it and you die then it's poisonous, but it bit you, so it's venomous." Misono quickly snapped his attention away from the creature and to his friend, eyes wide with alarm.
"Am I gonna die?"
"Probably not. Tarantula bites can't usually kill you . . ." Ushiwara hesitated for a moment, examining the distinctive rhombus patterns on the creature's legs and the pitch black shade of its underbelly with a niggling sense of recognition, before adding, "although . . . that looks like the Aviculariinae Inaequale. I literally just read an article about it like a day ago, let me see if I can find it."
Misono sighed and plopped down on the sofa with another pained grunt while Ushiwara pulled out his phone, concerned expression unwavering, and looked though his search history to find the article he'd been reading. "Got it. 'The Aviculariinae Inaequale tarantula'—that's redundant—'went missing from a research facility in the city two days ago, where it was on loan from the Jefferson Institute University in the US.' Blah blah blah . . .
"'It was discovered last year in Peru by a pair of American scientists, Jayda Went and Liam Jackson, who named it Freaky Franny. It's the first known tarantula to have venom which can do more than cause significant discomfort to a human. Franny's bite causes a person to be instantaneously unable to move because of the pain, and blackout from agony within an hour. Analyses confirm that her venom could be lethal, but no known deaths have been attributed to this arachnid so far.' Shit dude, how are you still walking around?"
"What do you mean? It says this thing hasn't killed anybody yet."
"It also says it knocks you out within an hour and renders you unable to move," Ushiwara pointed out, mortified by his friend's flippant attitude toward the situation. "Misono, you're a monster."
"You flatter me," Misono said flatly, not feeling particularly flattered.
"I'm serious, man, your endurance is inhuman."
"Are you done calling me a freak of nature yet, because I've been in, like, major pain for the last hour and a half, and I seriously need a Tylenol."
"An hour and a half‽" Ushiwara nearly shouted. "Screw Tylenol, you need to go to the lab that thing came from immediately so they can administer the anti-venom so you don't die."
"No, they'll make me give her back, and I want to keep her," Misono refused. "If I give her back they'll just run experiments and stuff. If I have to say goodbye, I'd rather let her be free, out in the wild."
"You can't release her into the wild, she'd be part of an invasive species. Japan doesn't really have tarantulas in nature, so we can't say for sure what affect she would have on the environment if we let her loose. Plus what happens if she bites someone else, and they don't have your endurance?"
"So I'll just keep her and take care of her myself," Misono reasoned, his night blue eyes not leaving the creature, which had stopped frantically trying to escape and moved on to pacing the enclosure, sagging low on it's eight legs like it was waiting for the opportunity to leap. "I can keep the cage, right?"
"No." He was trying to be patient with Misono, he really was, but Ushiwara wasn't sure how to explain to him that, no matter how punk it would be, Misono just could not keep the only deadly tarantula in human captivity world-wide as a pet. "I get that it matches your aesthetic or whatever, but you cannot keep it. That thing is not only clearly aggressive, it's deadly venomous, has already escaped captivity once, and on top of that it's the only captive specimen of a whole new species that scientists have been able to study, and I won't let you roadblock scientific breakthroughs because you want a pet that can and will kill you in your sleep."
"But—"
"No buts!" Ushiwara cut him off before calling to his dad, who was in his office, thoroughly cleaning out his e-mail inbox for the first time in months. "Dad, I've gotta take the car! It's an emergency, probably be a couple of hours! I'll text you if it's longer!"
"OK!" his dad called back while he grabbed the keys, yanked Misono off the couch, and then snatched the terrarium before Misono could take it and run, not that he would get far with Inaequale venom in his system. "Wait, what kind of emergency‽"
"I'll tell you when I get back, but right now I gotta go!" Ushiwara responded, then to Misono said, "Car. Now."
"Alright, alright." Misono climbed into the passenger seat of Mr. Ushiwara's sedan while his friend buckled the terrarium into the backseat and checked the locks before climbing in behind the wheel and putting the address of the research facility into Google Maps. A minute later they began the twenty-three minute drive to keep Misono from being the first casualty of Freaky Franny's venom.
— End Warning —
Yatoni stared out at his sixth sunset since being stranded in this little town, and it was no less beautiful or bittersweet than the first. He was just finishing up his last car of the day, an old Ford that's transmission bummed out. He still didn't have the parts to fix his own car.
"Beautiful sunset, isn't it?" Lei-Ling, Mr. Chen's daughter and tow truck driver, said, trying to make conversation with him once again, as she had been just about every twenty minutes since he climbed into her tow truck—which she'd insisted was not purple, but lilac—to tow his car down the cliffside to the garage. When Yatoni didn't respond, nor even look up at her, she continued. "The sky is so red, but the clouds already have some lilac in them, for the oncoming twilight."
Yatoni still did not respond. To the casual observer, it might look as though he was ignoring the girl, perhaps that he was annoyed by her and waiting for her to get the hint and leave him alone, but the truth was just the opposite. Over the past few days, he had learned many things from Lei-Ling, and about her.
She was exactly eight months and eight days his junior, which she seemed to believe was good luck; she was half Chinese, on her father's side, and half Japanese, on her mother's side, and knew a lot about both cultures and histories; she loved her family, but wanted to move away as soon as she was old enough, to a big city, to see how the other half lives; she loved singing, was a soprano, and had taught herself how to sing using YouTube and videos of Chinese operas that her father liked to play.
Yatoni had also learned that if he simply kept quiet, Lei-Ling would always fill the silence with whatever tidbit came to the front of her brilliantly fascinating mind.
"You know, in Chinese folklore, it says that the gods live in a grand palace in the clouds," she told him, leaning on the side of a minivan parked close by. "But the Tianlong, the celestial dragon, he has to guard the palace to make sure the gods don't fall out of the sky.
"Isn't it funny to think the people who made the universe could just misstep and fall right down to earth by accident?" She laughed, a loud, strangely rhythmic laugh which sounded like heaven to Yatoni's ears, like music.
"Is that almost a smile on the face of the stoic and mysterious Mr. Yatoni?" she gasped sarcastically, and he finally looked away from his work to see Lei-Ling with his own leather jacket practically swallowing her petite frame. He had taken it off when he started working as he always did so it wouldn't get ruined by grease or oil, and apparently she had stolen it from the shotgun seat of his still out-of-commission car while he wasn't paying attention.
"That's my jacket," he said.
"Ah. He speaks! And I had you pegged as the strong, silent type."
"Why are you wearing my jacket?" She merely shrugged at him, and he sighed in resignation. Despite the fact that it was several sizes too large, or perhaps because of that, she did look pretty cute in it. The worn, dark brown complemented her purple—her lilac skinny jeans. Her hair was lilac too, or rather it was black with lilac highlights. "Is lilac your favorite color?" he asked her.
"Yeah, actually. You know, I'm surprised more people don't guess that," she mused. "Up until a couple months ago, my friend Hikari would have sworn up and down that my favorite color was green, so I had to set her straight. I don't know why she thought that. She said I had a 'nemophilist aura.' I had to look that up, it means like, forest or nature lover or something like that, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it."
Yatoni nodded silently. It was pretty obvious to him that she liked the color lilac, but she did also give off a bit of a flower-child vibe.
"Hikari uses a lot of obscure words like that. She writes emo poetry by candlelight in her dusty, spooky attic. I wish I was joking." She hopped up to sit on the hood of the minivan and slid off twice before she finally managed to stay. "The worst part is, it's actually really good poetry. It's got rich imagery and you feel things really viscerally when you read it; it's soul-crushing."
"Are you done yet?" Mr. Chen asked as he approached. Yatoni said nothing as he quickly double checked his work, then, when he was sure, he answered.
"Yes, sir." He wiped his hands on a grease-rag he had hanging over his shoulder, then asked. "Have my parts come yet?"
"Afraid not." Mr. Chen's eye-contact didn't waver, but his hands were fidgeting, and he shifted his weight to the left. He was lying. Yatoni had memorized a long list of behavioral quirks and tells a few years back, and he had already identified which ones were Mr. Chen's. He had noted them when he over over-quoted prices to customers, which happened a lot since he was the only mechanic around and so didn't have any competition.
"When did they get here?" Yatoni asked.
"They haven't come yet." Mr. Chen's eyelids twitched, but he didn't blink. He knew he was caught, but didn't want to admit it.
"They have. How long have you had them?"
"I don't have them." Mr. Chen shifted his weight slightly to the right, then to the left again.
"I know you're lying to me. You promised me the parts in exchange for labor. I've held up my end, now I'd like to fix my car and be on my way."
"Dad, you made a deal," Lei-Ling said. "Lying or backing out would be dishonorable."
Mr. Chen sighed. "I'll bring the parts to your car, but it's getting dark so maybe you should wait until—"
"I'll be gone before sunrise," Yatoni said, cutting him off. He wasn't angry . . . well he was a little angry, but could you blame him? He'd been working there five days, which was five days longer than he'd planned to stop anywhere along his trip, let alone in a podunk town like this. He'd work by the light of his phone if that's what it came down to. Mr. Chen nodded, then left to retrieve the box of parts he'd been withholding so he could take advantage of Yatoni's free labor.
"I'm sorry about my dad," Lei-Ling said, once the man was gone. "I know he can be a greedy bastard sometimes, but he just wants to have something to pass on to me when I have my own family. You can't blame a man for wanting to provide for his children, right?"
"I'd like my jacket back now."
"Right . . ." she let it slip from her narrow shoulders and handed it to him, then he returned it to its place on the front passenger seat of his car. "I can hold the light for you while you work," she offered, and was met with a side-eyed glance and a muttered acceptance.
A few moments later her father returned with a cardboard box containing a compatible cylinder head and a brand new high temperature hose, along with a few other parts Mr. Chen had noticed that could use replacing.
Yatoni accepted the box with nod, and set to work on his car in the waning, late evening light. It wasn't two minutes before Lei-Ling had a nice, bright light on the engine, at just the right angle to minimize shadows that might get in the way, following his actions smoothly.
It took nearly six hours to finish, but they weren't unpleasant hours. Lei-ling filled the silence with stories and fun-facts and wonderings about the world. She asked Yatoni about himself, but he din't talk much, and she didn't force him. When it started to get too cold, she stole his jacket again.
He came to the realization that he liked Lei-Ling. He wasn't 100% sure why he liked her; he generally wasn't a fan of people who were too talkative, or people who stole his things without asking, but he liked her all the same. He thought he would probably even miss her when he left, but that wouldn't stop him from going.
When Yatoni finally closed the hood of his car at just past 4 in the morning, Lei-ling surprised him by asking if she could come along.
"You can't come with me." He didn't want to hurt her feelings, or make her think she wasn't wanted, but he also knew that there was no way her father would be okay with it, and that he didn't plan on passing through this town on his way back home, or even near it.
"Oh." She frowned. He couldn't see it well because her flashlight was now pointed at the ground and the crumbly, re-forming moon was just a thin crescent in the sky, but he saw it nonetheless. "Could I at least get your phone number?" she asked hopefully.
He smiled. She couldn't see it very well, for the same reasons he could barely see her frown, but she saw it, and she grinned brightly, and she handed him her phone to input his number. When he handed it back she shot off a quick text to make sure it was the right number, and so he could make a contact for her as well.
"I'll text you," she said. "I'd say 'I'll call you,' but I can't imagine you love of phone calls, so I'll text you."
"I look forward to it," he said honestly. "Now why don't you get some sleep."
He climbed into the driver's seat, buckled his seatbelt, and started the car. The headlights sprung to life, almost blindingly bright for a moment until their eyes adjusted, and the engine purred like an old cat enjoying a good massage. Finally, he pulled out onto the rode and drove away to hopefully finish his road trip without any further problems.
Lei-Ling stood there in the parking lot, waving him off until his break lights disappeared into the distance. She knew she would see him again. She was still wearing his leather jacket.
— Warning: Tarantula Ahead —
[It's not as graphically described in this part though, just mentioned]
Ushiwara didn't think to expect very high security when he headed down the long driveway of Hachirosuto Laboratories, so he wasn't entirely sure what to do when he had to stop at a large chainlink gate guarded by four armed men. One of the men held out his hand, signaling Ushiwara to stay in the car while he approached, gripping his gun firmly, ready to use it without warning if the need arose.
"Turn around and go home, kid," the guard said. Misono leaned over the center column to address the man in Ushiwara's stead, since he knew his friend had social anxiety around strangers and wouldn't be able to handle any sort of confrontation.
"Listen Mr . . ." He searched the man's heavy-duty tactical wear for a name tag, and found an embroidered patch. He almost couldn't make it out from his distance, but managed to read it. "Yasu . . . niku. We found your spider, and I'm die." Making coherent sentences was becoming rapidly more difficult as the venom worked its way through his body. He had been in pain before, but it was affecting him more and more as time passed.
"Riiigght . . . move along, boys. You can't be here."
Misono huffed in exasperation. "What I mean to say is call the science 'cause Freaky Franny want me died."
"I tried to be nice, but if you don't leave now I'll have to use force, and trust me none of us want that."
"Sir. Spider. Important. Call Silentists or die."
"Are you threatening me?" Yasuniku asked, leveling his gun at the boy, aiming it right between his wide eyes.
"He's not threatening you, sir," Ushiwara interrupted, trying not to panic and freeze up, but wavering dangerously close to freak-out territory. "Um. What he's trying to tell you is that . . . we uh . . . or he, really . . . found the Aviculariinae Inaequale that escaped your facility, and it's . . . it's in the back seat . . . It bit my friend here, and he needs the uh . . . anti-venom or . . . or he could die . . . so . . ." Ushiwara cleared his throat and tried to say the next sentence with conviction. "Please call up to the facility and get one of the researchers down here to verify our story; my friend's life is on the line."
Yasuniku narrowed his eyes at the nervous boy, then glanced at the back seat and was startled to see a very large tarantula in a clear plastic cage. He called to one of the other guards, not taking his eyes off Ushiwara.
"Nikutai! Call up to the facility and tell them we've got two teen boys at the gate with no passes, asking for entry. Something about an escaped tarantula and a life or death situation." One of the other guards nodded, stepped into the booth by the gate and picked up a phone.
A few moments later, the guard leaned out of the booth and said, in a distinctly female voice that Ushiwara hadn't been expecting, "They want to know if it's the a-vic-you-lair-a in-a-quail, or something like that."
"Well kid?" Yakuniku prompted.
"The Aviculariinae Inaequale, yes," Ushiwara confirmed, trying not to sigh at the guard's horribly butchered pronunciation. "And it bit Misono two hours ago, so it's kind of urgent."
"The kid says that's the one!" Nikutai ducked back into the booth, then after a few more moments she hung up the phone and walked up to the car.
"Dr. Ichiyoi is coming down to verify that they actually have the specimen," Nikutai reported. "She's also bringing visitor passes in case the situation really is as urgent as this one says it is." She gestured to Ushiwara, still sitting behind the wheel of his father's car, a bundle of tightly knotted nerves hidden under sun tanned skin, a threadbare t-shirt, and khaki cargo shorts.
Yasuniku and the other three guards continued to watch the boys like hawks until a tall, willowy woman in a white lab coat and a spring green dress strolled up to the gate about three minutes later.
"I heard you found Franny," the woman said as she neared the car. "May I see?"
"She's in the back seat," Ushiwara forced out, pressing the button to unlock the doors. The woman opened up the back and pulled out the terrarium, examining the creature within, which had started frantically throwing itself against the walls and roof of the box in its continued attempts to free itself.
"It really is her!" she remarked, holding the terrarium up to get the best angle. "I'm Dr. Ichiyoi." She turned to look at the boys. "And you are?"
"I'm Chikara Ushiwara, and this is Kyo Misono. He was bitten, and he needs the cure."
"Oh, of course!" Dr. Ichiyoi took one hand off the terrarium and reached into her pocket, pulling out two lanyards with visitor IDs on them. "You'll have to get out of the car if that's alright. Oh, but I suppose your friend will need carrying if he has the venom in his system."
"No!" Misono argued, opening his door jerkily. "I don't. Help. Walk." He stood up, pulling himself out of the car, and swayed dangerously on his feet as he slammed the door shut, but remained standing upright unaided.
"Very well then . . ." she said hesitantly, giving the boys their visitor passes. "Yasuniku, will you walk us back to the facility?"
"Yes ma'am," the guard agreed.
Misono stumbled and wobbled all the way to the facility, refusing help and still miraculously not falling over even once.
"So how did you manage to recapture her?" the doctor asked once they were safely within the halls of the facility under the watchful gaze of dozens of security cameras and harsh fluorescent lights.
"I wasn't there, you'll have to ask Misono-kun." Misono ran into a wall. "Once he's got his wits about him again . . ."
"I'm amazed he can even stand under is own volition after a bite from Franny." The doctor lifted the cage in her hand slightly.
"Yeah, he's always been . . . let's say: incredibly resilient."
"Not 'monster'?" Misono snarked, then promptly bumped into the wall again, and Ushiwara would have rolled his eyes if he wasn't so concerned.
"And how long ago was he bitten?" Ichiyoi asked.
"About two hours ago."
"You're sure he was bitten by this tarantula?" The doc raised her eyebrows. "He should have blacked out from the pain quite some time ago."
"Yup!" Misono said, then, indignantly, "Nooo."
"Incredible. I was bitten by Franny during one of the experiments, I don't think I would have lasted ten minutes if we hadn't had the anti-venom on hand." Ichiyoi's voice sounded like she was far away, and it wavered like the ripples of a bad memory. "That was the most painful experience of my life, it was . . . unimaginable. To suffer that for two hours and still be able to walk, as well as comprehend speech . . . it shouldn't be possible."
"That's what I told him, but he got all offended."
"'Monster,'" Misono reminded him.
"I guess I did call him a monster, but I was saying exactly the same thing, just with different wording."
"Word matters," Misono said, huffing in exasperation once again, at his inability to form complete sentences.
His brain and his mouth just wouldn't work together properly through the pain, and it was getting on his nerves. Also walking was hard when you could barely feel your legs, and what you could feel was like hundreds of pins and needles stabbing into your flesh repeatedly. And all of that on top of the fact that just breathing was a challenge with the searing pain in his chest and lungs.
It was just not his day.
He thought it was gonna be a good day, when he woke up at eleven a.m. and had pizza for breakfast. Then he went for his morning run in the afternoon and worked up a good sweat, and he found this awesome spider, and he even managed to catch it.
Then he got all its prickly hairs in his hands, and they were itchy and irritating, and then it bit him and then everything hurt, so he decided to try and take a nap, sleep it off, and when that didn't work, he took a painkiller and watched a comedy anime on Netflix to no avail. Everything went downhill after he caught that stupid spider.
He could hear Ushiwara and Dr. Ichiyoi talking about some of the stuff they did at this facility. Ushiwara asked about the doors they passed. One where they were testing a new type of brain scanner, another called the Lenetta Project that was super duper classified, something about rats and levitation, boring nerd stuff.
"How did you know that this was our tarantula?" the doc asked.
"I had just read an article about it online, and I remembered it because you don't discover a new species every day, and I thought it was cool."
"Nerd," Misono input.
Ushiwara was definitely a nerd, but that was okay. The world needed people who could identify brand new species of spiders after seeing a picture one time, just as much as it needed people who could survive deadly spider bites for two hours. Probably more so, if Misono was being honest, but since he was the latter and not the former he liked to think they were equally important.
Also, Ushiwara was having a real conversation with this woman without stammering or going all quiet, or looking like he was about to cry, and Misono was proud of him for that. Ushiwara got more comfortable when he was in his element, and creepy-crawlies were definitely his element.
"Alright, here we are," Dr. Ichiyoi announced, stopping at a door that looked exactly like the others, the only difference being the plaque on it reading: Inaequale Experiments. The doc swiped her ID card across the keypad and typed a bunch of numbers and then the light on the keypad flashed green and she opened the door.
"Yasuniku, you can hang out in the hall if you really want, but you might as well head back to your post and I'll call when these two need to be escorted back. We're gonna be a while." Yasuniku nodded and left.
"A why?" Misono tried to ask, but it didn't come out right. Luckily, Ushiwara understood what he meant and came to his rescue.
"How long is this gonna take?" he asked.
"Well, normally it takes about twelve minutes to fully take affect and we keep people under observation for a full hour to make sure it works right and that they don't have any negative reactions to the anti-venom, but it's never been administered more than 68 minutes after the bite occurred," the doc explained. "And in this case the affected is himself, quite remarkable. I'd like to run some tests, take a blood sample before and after anti-venom is administered, and keep him overnight for observation, if that's possible."
Misono only really got about a third of what she said, and tried to process it while she led him to a bed table thing and made him sit on it. He'd heard a bunch of numbers that didn't mean anything to him; the word 'tests,' which he hated in any context; and 'overnight,' which sounded a lot like 'sleepover,' which he did like. 'Sleepover' implied late mornings, light-hearted hazing, and copious amounts of junk food.
"If you think you should keep him overnight, then I trust your judgment, but . . ." Ushiwara trailed off, unsure of what conditions he even had the authority to put in place here.
"I'll talk to him once the anti-venom kicks in," she said. "Speaking of . . ." she pressed a button on the wall which looked like a doorbell, and a moment later, a woman wearing white scrubs entered, sporting a large canvas bag. "This is Nurse Yama, she'll be administering the anti-venom, she's done this several times, so there's no need to worry."
"Helloooo Nurse," Misono slurred. He tried to bounce his eyebrows suggestively, but his face was on fire, so he wasn't sure he even had eyebrows to bounce at her anymore. She was pretty, good body, smooth skin, and her hair looked so silky, even pulled back like it was. He wanted to touch it. "OUCH!"
She stabbed him. He was surprised he could even feel the pain of being stabbed what with the overwhelming agony of being alive, but he felt it. She stabbed him!
Pretty or not you can't just go around stabbing people after they're already having a shitty day, that's not nice. At least you should make sure they're having a good day before the stabbing so its not like kicking a dead hose or however the saying goes.
Then she stabbed him again!
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the pain started to recede a little. More importantly, Misono's mind started to clear up and he could both think and form coherent sentences, which was a relief. He registered belatedly that the first stabbing was a blood draw, and the second was the anti-venom.
"Feeling any better, dude?" Ushiwara asked him timidly.
"Oh hella!" Misono declared. "Listen to me, talking in full sentences."
"I don't think 'oh hella' counts as a full sentence," Ushiwara ribbed, relief spreading across his fence face.
"Shut it man, you weren't the one who almost died," Misono leaned back on his hands and it hurt like a bitch but he wasn't about to move. "Shit, this counts as a near-death experience, doesn't it? It does, right?" He looked to the doc for an answer.
"I suppose. If everything hadn't fallen into place, you could very well have died, but as of now, Miss Franny's body count holds steadily at zero."
"Sweet. I've officially had a near-death experience." It was both terrifying and exhilarating, realizing just how close he had come to a slow and painful death, and he really just wanted to focus on the exhilarating part right now, but he did understand what the doc was saying about everything falling into place.
If it had been anyone else that got bitten, they wouldn't have been able to even move enough to get help. If he hadn't gone to Ushiwara, he wouldn't have known the danger. If Ushiwara hadn't known what to do, they wouldn't have come to the lab. If the emergency hadn't overridden Ushiwara's social anxiety, they couldn't have gotten a call inside. If Dr. Ichiyoi hadn't come to investigate, they might not have gotten inside.
If he had been anyone else, or if he had been just a little bit more stupid, or less social, or if Ushiwara was worse under pressure, or if Dr. Ichiyoi hadn't been in the lab, it wouldn't have been a near-death experience. It would have just been a death experience.
"Guess I can cross that off the bucket list." Misono grinned goofily, really happy to be alive, even if everything hurt.
"Almost dying is on your list of things you want to do before you die?" Ushiwara laughed, and Misono laughed along with him for a moment before the pain made him stop and grimace. "Does it still hurt?"
"Not as much, but yeah."
"Where does it hurt?" the doc asked.
"Uh . . . chest mostly. Hurts to breath and laugh and move my shoulders. Everything is still kind of tender, too, and I still can't really feel my arms or legs more than, like, a vague pins and needles feeling, but it's definitely not as bad as it was."
"You can't feel your arms or legs? How did you manage to walk all the way over here on your own power if you couldn't feel your legs?"
"One foot in front of the other, I guess." He shrugged.
"You're talking to a guy who walked to the emergency room on a broken leg two years ago," Ushiwara scoffed disapprovingly. "And last summer he ran two marathons on the same day and placed top ten in both of them. He has no regard for his physical wellbeing as far as I'm aware."
"In that case, I definitely want to keep you for observation overnight," she told Misono, putting on a serious doctor face. "Is there anyone I should call?"
"Uhh . . . I could call my mom and leave her a voicemail, since I doubt she'll answer. My parents basically give me complete independence since they feel like they've had to deal with me long enough, so it shouldn't be a problem. They trust me to make my own decisions and if that means staying overnight in a strange and low-key spooky lab place, then it is what it is."
"Can I give you my number and you'll call me when you're ready to release him tomorrow?" Ushiwara asked. "I don't think he should be walking home, and I doubt his parents will be able to pick him up, they're usually pretty busy."
"Sure," the doc agreed with a smile, then reached into the pocket of her lab coat and handed him a card. "Here's my business card, you can go ahead and call me or email me with any questions, and if you notice strange behavior after I release him, or if he mentions continued pain or anything, please let me know."
"Oh, great, thanks," Ushiwara pocketed the card gratefully. "I don't have a business card because I'm seventeen, but I can write down my number for you or put it directly into your phone, whatever works."
After they exchanged numbers, Dr. Ichiyoi called a guard to escort Ushiwara out so remaining tests could be done without distraction and the boys said their goodbyes.
—
The following day, late in the morning, Ushiwara got a call from Hachirosuto Laboratories saying he could come pick up Misono. When he got there, both Misono and Dr. Ichiyoi were waiting for him by the gate. The doctor reminded him to contact her if anything came up, even if it wasn't related to the tarantula. Then the boys started their drive home.
"You totally scored that scientist lady's number," Misono said. "She's pretty good-looking, and she shares your nerdy-ness. I'd call that a win."
"She's like twice my age! The number sharing was for scientific purposes only." Ushiwara rolled his eyes.
"Uh-huh, riiigght." Ushiwara chuckled, but if he hadn't know it was a joke, he would have been very uncomfortable.
"Alright, so what were the results of your tests?" Ushiwara asked finally.
"I failed all of them."
"What?"
"I'm kidding!" Misono amended quickly. "Sorry dude, kinda forgot this was like, a serious situation and junk. It was kinda just a boring night followed by a more boring but less physically painful morning."
"So you're not in pain anymore?"
"Nope! My butt's kinda sore from sitting around all day—they wouldn't let me do any 'strenuous physical activity'—but other than that, I'm all good."
"And what about the blood tests?"
"Well when they ran the first one, they found a disproportionately greater concentration of the venom than they found in previous samples. They weren't sure if that was because it was in my system so long, because according to their math, the concentration still shouldn't have been quite that high. The other theory is that it spread faster and more potently in an attempt to combat my natural durability." Misono recited, trying to recall the wording that the scientists had used. He was pretty sure that was at least close.
"So, what I'm saying is I'm basically a superhero. And the second blood test was just normal. They said I had a higher white blood cell count than normal, which they thought was because my body produced them in higher concentration to try and combat the venom.
"Then they accessed my private medical records. I don't know how they did that, but they did, and they found out that according to previous blood tests I have a naturally elevated white blood cell count. Not to the level that it was when they did their spider bite tests, and not enough that it causes any problems in my body, but enough to be worth noting.
"I don't remember it very well, but apparently they noticed when I was little and thought it might be because of an infection or virus or something but never found anything wrong with me, so they had to accept that I was just weird. The doc said it might be a contributing factor to me being so resilient, but not the whole reason."
She also said she wanted him to come back for more tests in a month, but he wasn't sure if he was going to. Maybe he would to visit Freaky Franny. Even though she had bitten him, she was still super cool.
"So you're healthy then?" Ushiwara said slowly, trying to translate Misono's tangent into usable data. "All your tests came up good and you're totally in the clear?"
"Yup," Misono declared, popping the 'P.' "Let's celebrate with milkshakes. You're buying."
"I'm taking you home and you're going to get some sleep," Ushiwara said, rolling his eyes. "I am not buying you a milkshake."
"Come on, man!" Misono complained, slouching down in his seat to mope. "Can't a guy get a milkshake for his near-death experience? I'll buy it myself if you just drive through someplace."
"Home. Sleep."
"But I haven't even gone on my run yet today."
Ushiwara sighed heavily. "How about this, We'll stop for milkshakes if you promise not to go on a run today. You need to minimize your physical activity after what you went through."
"Will you pay for the milkshakes we stop for?" Misono sat up straight and smiled slyly.
"Yes. Fine. I'll buy the milkshakes."
"Then I promise."
[When did the chapters get to be so gorram loooooong‽ They're only supposed to be 1400–3000 words. This takes twice as long to write and thrice as long to edit so I hope you appreciated it. I changed a couple minor things in the Yatoni parts, but I don't expect you to notice. The previous chapter has also been edited finally, shout out to the fool critic! You know who you are.
There was a deleted scene at the end of this chapter where Misono teases Ushiwara for acting like a worried boyfriend and Ushiwara expresses his absolute horror at the idea of dating Misono, a bastard with no sense of self-preservation. I left it out because it was 2 a.m. and the chapter was already over 7500 words and didn't need to be longer, but I thought you guys would appreciate the knowledge of what might have been. Love y'all.
<3 Raaor!]