The Flow

Shingo awoke, groggy from the night before. He has slept on a mat in the living room while Takamasa slept on the couch. Ichiro had slept on the floor after claiming that he was more used to sleeping on the ground, but after looking around for a moment, Ichiro was nowhere in sight. Shingo sat up and tried listening for movement in case he was in the bathroom or somewhere else in the apartment, but it was silent. The young man climbed to his feet quietly so as not to wake Takamasa, and began to explore the apartment. After having checked the two bedrooms and bathroom, Shingo was sure, Ichiro wasn't inside the apartment anymore.

Worried at the implications, he left the forth floor apartment and stood on the balcony, looking out over the parking lot. From there he could hear some grunting from below. Leaning over the balcony and looking down, he could see Ichiro standing on the sidewalk next to the building. After watching him for a moment, Shingo decided to go down and see what he was doing. Looking at the elevator and staircase, Shingo sighed and trudged down the four flights of stairs. On the ground level, Shingo poked his head around the corner to try and spy on Ichiro for a bit.

"What is he doing?" Shingo thought to himself. "Is he exercising? He just got stabbed. He's going to hurt himself."

After deciding to just go and see, Shingo calmly walked up and just said, "Hey Ichiro."

Putting his hammer back on the ground, Ichiro responded, "Oh hi Shingo. I hope I didn't wake you."

"What are you doing?" The puzzled boy asked.

"I'm just getting in my morning exercise." Ichiro patted the handle of the giant hammer.

Shingo pointed, "And, what's that?"

"This is my weapon." Ichiro replied. "Did you not see it when you came in last night?"

Shrugging, Shingo remarked, "I guess I wasn't paying attention to it. Aren't you supposed to be taking it easy after being stabbed?"

"Well, I'm not getting any younger and I know my limits." Ichiro emphasized. "I've been stabbed before so I mostly know how to handle it."

"Wait," Shingo interrupted. "Why do you need a weapon?

"Why not?" Ichiro puzzled. "Inori helped me get this made. She was worried at first because people aren't allowed to just have weapons but it's not a sword or bow or something like that so it was fine."

Shingo nodded his head a few times and then wandered over and tried to pick up the massive blunt weapon. It didn't budge. He pulled on it harder. It didn't budge.

"So, it's so heavy that you can't even pick it up?" Shingo puzzled.

"No, I can pick it up." Ichiro answered. "That's what I'm working on now with my exercise. It's a bit harder since I got stabbed, but it's possible."

"No way." Shingo was in disbelief.

"Yea," Ichiro uttered before he stood behind it and, with decent struggle, lifted the hammer a few inches off the ground, and then sat it back down.

"HOW?" Shingo exclaimed in even more disbelief. "Do you still have some sort of powers from your world?"

"What? No." Ichiro disputed. "I've just been going to the gym and exercising twice every day."

"That still doesn't explain how you became so strong in such a short amount of time!" Shingo marveled at Ichiro's strength.

Ichiro, after considering for a moment, explained, "So, something I've learned from the other members is that even though nobody has power in this world, although I didn't have any real power like you all have described, we still have the knowledge of our experiences. All I did was try to take that knowledge and apply it to my life just like you did."

"Like I did?" Shingo was confused at how he was applying what he knew to this world.

"Well, you said you spent most of your time in your world underground." Ichiro stated.

"Yea, years and years underground." Shingo confirmed.

"And now you work on underground tunnels in this world." Ichiro noted.

Shingo considered the connections Ichiro had made and then replied, "I see what you mean."

"Takamasa had to organize thousands of people so he could orderly do what he had to do with the least effort and problems." Ichiro continued. "Now, Takamasa runs a company in which he organized dozens of people to do something similar. Yuki led an army in order to protect as many people as she should and now she leads the support group. I'm sure everyone has transferred whatever knowledge and skills they gained in their worlds to this one."

"I'd never thought about that deep before." Shingo mumbled as he considered Asuka's world and the computer programming knowledge she brought back with her.

"For me, this hammer is a way for me to connect back to my world." Ichiro expressed with a pang of nostalgia. "My old teacher Lenora helped me get my first hammer and she taught me how to be a strong person. I don't just mean physically strong, but mentally and societally strong. She taught me that there are things worth protecting and that I should be strong enough to protect those things. Before I got this hammer made, I could feel those things slipping away and Inori helped me get this hammer and my connection to myself and my world."

"I can definitely tell you and Inori got to spend a lot of time together." Shingo chuckled lightly to himself.

"Maybe we should get some breakfast and talk it over some more." Ichiro suggested.

"Sure!" Shingo agreed. "We should wake up Takamasa. He has to go to work in a few hours so we should walk with him."

"Would you like me to?" Ichiro asked.

"Of course we would." Shingo was shocked at the question.

"It's just that I've never spent time with you or Asuka or Takamasa or Konomi because I've never been invited." Ichiro explained. "Don't get me wrong, I like all of you. I just didn't want to intrude or for you to feel obligated to spend time with me in case you didn't want to."

"Oh," Shingo regretted. "Sorry about that. I can't speak for everyone else, but I think I'm just antisocial. In my mind, we're really good friends even though we really only see each other at meetings."

"Well, that's good to know." Ichiro stated, relieved.

The pair walked back up the stairs and across the balcony back to Ichiro's door. As they entered the apartment they could hear Takamasa snoring.

"I feel like he could sleep through anything." Ichiro noticed.

"Yea," Shingo agreed.

"I noticed that you don't sleep so soundly." Ichiro continued.

"I don't really like sleeping." Shingo began to explain. "I just..."

Ichiro interrupted, "It's your dreams right? When I was in my world I never really dreamed. I would sleep perfectly fine, but I wouldn't dream. Now that I'm in this world, I can only dream about my old world. Since I've been back I missed my old world furiously, but my dreams show me a different story."

"Some of the worst parts flow into my dreams." Shingo confirmed.

"Do you ever hear something and it sets you on edge or get a feeling someone is following you or watching you?" Ichiro asked, unsure if he should even mention it.

Shingo, realized immediately what Ichiro was talking about and gave his friend a look of affirmation.

"Inori said that we were all broken from our time in the other worlds." Ichiro explained. "She said that we had to find a way to defend ourselves and, much like the knowledge we brought back, we brought back our traumas."

"I didn't spend a lot of time with Inori," Shingo contributed. "From everything I've learned about her over the last week, I can't help but think we lost one of the best of us. She understood a lot more than a lot of us. Did you know that she came up with most of the theories about us?"

"Like what?" Ichiro asked.

Takamasa, groggily chimed in with, "She named us the survivors and the black eyed ones statues."

"You're awake." Shingo realized.

Takamasa sat up on the couch and said, "I've been awake for a minute or so. I guess I woke up around the dream part. But, Ichiro, she also came up with the idea that our spirit was taken away and brought back."

"Basically everything that the people who accept our kind agree on, she came up with." Shingo added.

"It might sound selfish," Takamasa began to admit," and I hope you don't think less of me for it, but I had this massive weight on me because of what I did in my world. I brought war and death to that place and it was all genuinely my fault. Losing Inori and it not being my fault feels kind of okay."

The three went quiet and the mood shifted, but Takamasa tried to save it.

"Don't get me wrong," He continued. "It feels horrible that we lost her. I think I just started feeling like everything bad in the world was my fault and this alleviated some of that."

Shingo could feel outrage and disgust rolling over him until Ichiro said, "I know what you mean, or at least my dreams do. I didn't mention it when I was talking about my story, but a lot of people died by my hand in my world. Eventually, I tried to get away from society. I stopped making friends or associating with people. Being in this world, I didn't plan on or really even want to be part of the group at the beginning."

Having heard what Ichiro added, Shingo contributed, "Life is hard and confusing. I don't think I should judge how you feel because I don't know everything that you've experienced."