Something to Tell You, Part 1

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The dreams of Renjiro Yamanaka were far more fractured and harrowing than those of mere humans.

It was an interesting phenomena, though not one so interesting that he had ever spared a great deal of thought toward it. With two centuries of experience, there was bound to be some disparity between himself and others; that was without even broaching the sort of transmutation his mind and soul had endured over the course of his existence.

Usually it was like being bombarded with splinters of glass, thousands of them. Each time one hit, a bit of pain, and a snapshot or few seconds of video. It would be one thing if they were just impacting one at a time, but the process was not so orderly. Images superimposed on one another, clips meshed together in a disjointed fashion, rendering everything garbled and impossible to draw any meaning from.

For decades he had dreamed normally, but then it had started to slowly change, lending credence to the idea that his sum of experience or the evolution of his mind (or both) were responsible.

Every so often, though, there was an evening of lucidity. Rather than a mosaic in three dimensions, he actually found himself drawn into a dream-scape that was at least comprehensible.

By morning, he would wish for the unsettling alternative.

---

Like most dreams, it was just so subtly different from the reality that it drew upon that he wouldn't be able to tally all the differences until he awoke. He recognized the place, though. It was somehow more barren that it had been so many years ago, but in that dreamlike way, he knew immediately where he was.

He had spent more years in Tea Country than anywhere else but the Fire Country. The climate was difficult to beat, and the cultural touches were without peer. Renji knew full well that he would return there in time...

Or at least he would have, had he never met Nadako.

They had both been working in the same small theater. It was a collaborative sort of place where various artistically minded folk joined together to write, direct, stage, and act pieces. The pay was a pittance, but it was fulfilling, engaging, and exciting in a way that Renji had not yet experienced. He was still early into his existence, then, still sane enough to doubt that he could persist forever as no one at all.

In a fit of existential pique, he had written a piece that mirrored, to some degree, his own life. The main character was a man who had no choice but to mirror those around him, a man whose name was written in water, ever changing.

Nadako was chosen unanimously to play the role.

As such, they began spending more and more time together. At the time, Renjiro had been inhabiting the body of a young man he'd come across nearly by accident. He'd hit a patch of pursuit and needed to change his face, and the winds of fortune had carried him south to Tea.

Their rapport was immediate, and Renji believed he had for the first time found a mind as expansive as his own. He could respect Nadako without resorting to rationalization, unconditionally. Their collaboration was an immense success, one of the longest running original dramas that the troupe had ever launched.

It came as no surprise when the situation evolved. It happened organically, building itself on a stable foundation, not of lust or friendship, but of mutual consideration. There was no need to manipulate Nadako, no need to lie to him, flatter him, or trick him.

At least, in every respect but one.

As the months had passed, the young (relatively, anyway) body thief began to wonder if it might be worthwhile to give up his immortality for a chance at actualization. No one would ever find him or hunt him. He would fade from memory, assumed dead, when he was instead aging naturally alongside a partner who expected nothing of him but to be himself.

The problem lay in the fact that his “self” was a fabrication, at least in name and background. Just as he'd written Nadako's part in the play, he'd written himself a role in their relationship. The words, the actions, they might all have been Renjiro, but Nadako knew him as Koda.

They had scraped and saved to be able to afford what they called a “living workspace”, a studio apartment not far from the playhouse. It was normally cluttered, their various projects sentimentally sprawled from wall to wall.

It was there that Renjiro found himself in his dream, though it seemed a flat and lifeless place, even more empty and dust-ridden than it had been when they'd leased it.

He took careful steps across the wooden floor. There was an impending weight on the air, not oppressive but ominous, as if a storm cloud were about to unfurl across the ceiling. The studio had not been large, but as Renji moved for lack of anything better to do, it seemed almost unending, a plane with no boundaries somehow contained between four walls and a roof.

If anyone had been able to understand him, it was Nadako. He had stepped inside Renji in a way that had nothing to do with the ninjutsu of the Yamanaka clan. He had given a character that should have been viewed as a misbegotten anomaly truth and depth, and his performance had shared that truth with audiences night after night: nobody is who they think they are, who they seem to be.

Everything clicked at once, in the dream. He knew where he was meant to go. The day that he had told his companion the truth, he had found him in their tiny bathroom, installing a shelf, upon arriving home. The small corridor that led him there seemed to stretch, moving beneath his feet to keep him from his destination, but after seconds that might have been moments but felt like hours, he was there.

The door was ajar, just a few inches. Tentatively he brushed his fingers against it to open it enough to admit him. There was Nadako, his back to Renji, his body taut as he stretched to install the final screw in a shelf that would remain empty thereafter.

”Nadako.” It was a name that he hadn't spoken in ages, thought of as rarely as he could. It seemed to echo off the four cramped walls...

Or had it?

“Nadako” turned to face him. His features were utterly blank, devoid of even the faintest tinge of emotion. His eyes looked dead and glassy, and as Renji, spellbound, found himself repeating a phrase that had ruined two lives, one real, and one fictitious, Nadako did as well, in unison with him. His voice was just as barren as his painful to behold face.

”There's something I need to tell you.”

---

Renjiro awakened with a start. His hands flew up to press their heels into his temples in hopes of containing a headache that threatened to tear its way out of his skull. His fingers wound through his pillow-matted hair, tugging unconsciously as the dream rippled through his conscious mind.

Rocking gently on the mattress, he had no choice but to relive where the dream had ended.

[to be concluded]