English 
Japanese 
Prologue
Julius stared at the mirror, and one man wearing two different faces looked back at him. It’d been like that for a long time, now. It used to be more than two; it used to be a dozen different faces would stare back. The faces had slowly whittled down, year after year, until now there were only two left. Julius would look in the mirror, no matter where in the world he found himself, and he’d try to decide which face looked more like him.
He hadn’t come to a conclusion, yet. But it felt like he was getting close.
There was a knock on the door.
“One minute,” Julius said. Whispered, really, because his attention didn’t shift from the faces in the mirror. Both men in the mirror looked more or less the same, but they couldn’t have been more different.
One of them had sad eyes. Expressive eyes. Etched in those eyes were a lot of things that had happened, a lot of things that those eyes had seen. The expression was worn, it was world-weary. An expression that had weathered plenty of storms and had come out the other side cracked and chipped for it all. He’d seen this face in people his whole life, the face of people who had lived a lot of life and found that life had lived them and they hadn’t lived life.
The other face smiled. It was a smile devoid of light, but not devoid of life. There was a glee there, but it was a glee that pulled in the light from around it like a void. The smile wasn’t charming, or natural. The expression it wore seemed like an animal wearing a human mask, and it didn’t, or couldn’t, quite hit the right buttons. But where the other face seemed chipped, seemed worn; this face seemed whole. More than anything, this face seemed indestructible. Like it could walk down every path every other face he’d ever worn had walked and come out the other side of it all looking exactly the same.
The knock on the door was more forceful this time. Both of Julius’s faces reacted to the knocking
The face with the sad eyes looked to the door like an animal looking to the door of its cage.
The face with the smile looked at the door, and its smile widened.
The door pounded, and Julius walked towards the door.
When he opened the door, the man outside look irritated. After he saw Julius’s face, the man looked surprised, then worried. When Julius grabbed the man, pulled him into the bathroom, and shut the door behind him, the man’s face looked scared.
When Julius pulled out his knife, he saw the man’s face shatter like so many others had before.
After Julius finished, he went to the sink and turned it on, washing his knife and washing his hands. He looked up at the mirror.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, only one face looked back at him.
And that face smiled.
Chapter One
For some reason, dying was different this time. I’d been shot in the head (on two different occasions), shot in the chest, shot in the leg and the head (lotta getting shot), stabbed in the throat, beaten to death with a pipe, beaten to death with bare hands, hung from the edge of a building, and drowned in a river. Those had all went pretty much the same. Dying (at least in my experience) was a quick process; a hell of a lot easier than falling asleep and waking up. At a certain point someone hits an off-switch and it’s a smash to black, followed by feeling like somebody had thrown me into a bucket of ice with me doing my best not to piss myself as I came back to life in that empty basement, butt naked. This time they’d dropped a building on me, and while I had to give them points for creativity, I didn’t really see why this time should be any different.
But it was.
I’m… here. Stuck in some kind of in-between place. For the first time in quite a while, I wonder if I’m actually going to die. Like, permanently: life membership card revoked, no take-backs, kindly make your way down the stairs, sir.
Something is wrong.
Oh? I hadn’t noticed.
I don’t need sass. Give me a minute and I’ll—
I was pulled sideways at light-speed. It felt like someone stuck a hook in my consciousness and pulled me to the side so fast that if I’d actually had a stomach right now I would’ve thrown up. I could feel the City, everything that I’d known the last few months, stayed exactly where it was while I was pulled away through a blackness that felt like a blanket covering whatever was actually out there. There was a distance between me and everybody in the City that I cared about: Max, Dame, Ginny and Tom, the Bagel Guy, George the Pigeon Man; and between me and the people I’d been doing my absolute damnedest to stop: namely Julius, but also Marion, the Bone Collector, and Patriarch.
Most of all, I could feel the tether between me and The Bleeding City being stretched to its limit. Whatever was happening to me was undoing whatever had happened to me to connect me to the City. To, as long as I was in the city, keep bringing me back from the dead to save it. I still had things to finish before this final fade to black.
I had wrongs to, if not right, at least make my peace with.
But if whatever was happening wasn’t fixed soon, that tether connecting me to The Bleeding City was going to snap. I would die. And if I died, The Bleeding City wasn’t going to be far behind. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to fix this; if I could just—
Whatever fishhook was pulling me by the soul stopped, and the immediate stillness was more disorienting than getting pulled away at light-speed in the first place. I dangled for a second, still blind to whatever was around me, until a click turned on a dim light behind me.
I looked around. I was sitting in a red chair, the cushion fraying and soft. There were wooden armrests on either side, a cup holder in each one. In every direction were more seats, all of them empty. The seats in front of me slowly sloped down, and the seats behind me rose until they met the wall. Back above those seats there was a rectangular hole in the wall. Through the hole, that dim light shone through.
The dim light was a projector. I turned to face the screen in the front. I was in a movie theater.
And on the screen was my life.
It was raining. It always seems like it’s raining when everything goes to shit, doesn’t it? It was raining and everything had gone to shit, and for the first time in my life, I looked at myself and saw my real reflection instead the funhouse mirror reflection of myself that I’d made up in my head.
I’d made a mistake. I’d made a truly horrific mistake, and it wasn’t something that I could take back and it wasn’t something that I could fix. It was the kind of thing that makes people look at you differently for the rest of your life. The kind of thing you can’t escape; instead it becomes part of you, and you have to live with it until you die with it.
I couldn’t face it. So I tried to run from it, instead.
I ended up in The Bleeding City. Which, y’know, probably isn’t exactly the place you want to end up? But I bought a ticket for the first bus out of town, and at the time, ‘Out’ had seemed good enough. Now that I was here, now that I’d stepped out of the bus and the sun was setting through the skyline of the most dangerous city on earth, I had to admit that it had a kind of morbid beauty to it. Like a gravestone.
And anyways, I figured that a place like this was probably where a guy like me belonged. That wasn’t a thought in the forefront of my mind, not at that point, but it was back there somewhere, whispering.
I was going to have to find some food. Because I hadn’t eaten since The Incident (which I had already begun constructing walls around in my mind, lest I slip back into it and end up staring into the void again). That had been (I looked at my phone) fifteen hours ago, now. I had been… empty, for a few hours after it had happened. Or maybe not empty, but full of something like TV static. Something vaguely buzzing and indefinable. And once that had gone away it’d been replaced with ice, a kind of panic that overrode every other impulse in my brain. That was around the time that I realized my father would probably never speak to me again, and that while I really, really wanted him to tell me that everything was all right, I knew it wasn’t all right and that any conversation with him was going to make everything worse. Because having a conversation with him where he didn’t say it was alright (which he wouldn’t, because it wasn’t) would make what happened feel so much more real. Would make it not just real for me, would not just solidify it into a personal Hell, but would fully realize it as a Hell that I’d made for plenty of people. A Hell that none of them could escape, either.
And I couldn’t talk to the person I wanted to talk to about it more than anybody else. “Because I’m dead,” my dead mom said, the same expression of shock and pain frozen on her face as the last time I’d seen her. At The Incident. (I laid another brick on the wall I was building. It wasn’t tall enough.)
I looked at the skyscrapers of The Bleeding City. I wondered if those walls would be enough, or if I’d need something taller than those, too.
The red chair was comfortable, but the fact that I was somewhere in between life and death quite literally watching my life play in front of my eyes and was getting comfortable wasn’t lost on me. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten any of this, had I? It’d be three goddamn months ago, and somewhere in the middle of the most formative moment of my twenty-three years of life.
Can you hear me? The City was quiet; not a whisper, more like hearing a voice through a wall.
You gonna get me the hell out of here?
I told you I’m working on it. Something’s wrong with the basement.
What’s wrong with the basement?
Something.
Great. Now who’s got sass?
For Christ’s sake, stop asking questions. Something grabbed you. I don’t know what it is. Tell me what you see.
I’m in a theatre watching a movie some asshole made about me.
…a theater.
I absolutely do not want to be here for the final act. So if you could hurry up and do whatever it is you need to do to get me the hell out of here, that’d be awesome.
…
What? What do you know that I should know?
Is there anyone in there with you?
I looked around, hackles raised. Every other seat in the darkened theater was empty. But whether it was my imagination or what, it did feel like there was someone (something) watching me.
No? Should there be?
Things are going to get worse.
This sucks. This sucks and I hate this.
I’m doing what I can. Don’t let–
The City fell silent, like a plug had been pulled.
I slid a little further down my chair and glanced around the empty theater one more time.
She followed me everywhere I went. I knew in the back of my head that I couldn’t lose her, but I wandered a convoluted path down random streets anyways.
I bought a sandwich and sat in the deli by the window. She stood outside the window, watching me eat. I sat on the sidewalk. She sat beside me, watching me. I rode the subway. She stood in the center of the train car. Watching me.
I stepped off the subway at no particular stop, for no particular reason. I could feel her walking right beside me, watching me. I started trying to lay another brick on the wall I was building and gave up midway through.
I climbed the stairs out of the subway station, my feet the only footsteps echoing through the tunnel. That was important, probably. Probably if no one else stopped at this stop at this time of night, I shouldn’t either. Then I considered how things could possibly get any worse. And whether I cared if they did.
Back outside on the street, it was dark. Which meant it had officially been one day since The Incident. (Red and blue lights bounced off the broken glass lying across the street, and it was the only light reflecting in her dead eyes watching me–) There were only a couple other people around. One homeless guy lay sleeping on the sidewalk by the subway entrance/exit, another someone wandered drunken around the corner. I’d ended up on the outskirt of the city, and on a rocky hill sloping up in front of me sat an Observatory.
I dropped my wallet on the ground beside the sleeping homeless guy, and walked towards the Observatory.
The screen started closing from the edges towards the center in a circle until the entire screen went black. It was quiet. Quiet enough that I could hear my own breathing, much louder than it should have been. I held my breath.
“I know who you are.
I wonder if you do, too?”
Something moved in front of me. From where the Voice came from. It was a clean Voice, a distinct Voice. A Voice that almost sounded like singing.
“You were shattered. And with those pieces, you began building something new.
Do you think you found all of the old pieces? Or is this new you less than the old you?”
Straight ahead, three rows down. Something, a dark shape, was speaking. It looked like it was facing me.
“Often we can’t tell who we are alone. We cannot give ourselves form in void. Sometimes it takes another for us to see our own shape.
I can show you. But to show you you, I must show you another, too.”
The dark shape rose up over the seat. Gracefully, not a wasted movement in it. Like a dancer. I could not see any features on its face, (there were no features anywhere, it was just black) but it never stopped looking at me. It slinked over the top of the seats towards me on its hands and feet, stopping a foot from my face. It had no warmth. It had no smell.
“Would you like to see?”
I didn’t answer. The truth was, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what I was going to see. And I was worried what would happen if I didn’t like what I saw.
I was worried what I would do if I didn’t like what I saw.
But I didn’t see any other choice. So I nodded.
I still couldn’t see its face. But, in the place where its cheeks would be, it stretched at either side. Like it was smiling.
It crawled backwards into its seat, like it was in reverse, in less than a second. Soundlessly. The projector clicked back on.
I knew what it was going to show me next.
It was called the Franklin and Frost Observatory (there was a poem written underneath the name on the sign, but it had worn away) and it was closed. The sign said it closed at midnight, which I guess meant that it was past midnight. I didn’t know how long I’d rode around on the subway, but it must have been awhile. It didn’t matter, really. It didn’t matter what time it was. Even if I wasn’t quite sure why I was here, I knew what I was here for. She stood beside me, looking at me while I looked at the sign.
There was a walkway around the Observatory, around the edge of the section of hill that ended in a cliff, and I walked that way. It was clear and cool outside. Only a few wisps of cloud above. The light pollution made the stars harder to see than they should be, but it was still nice. Looking up at the stars made it a little harder to tell that she was standing there. Looking at me.
Around the back of the Observatory, I leaned on the railing overlooking the cliff. Something about leaning forward on the railing made me feel different. Not better or worse, just different. Like I’d reached a conclusion, somehow, the end of the line in a train of thoughts that I wasn’t aware I was having. I looked away from the stars and looked down, instead. It wasn’t a huge cliff, but it wasn’t a particularly friendly looking cliff, either. Small juts of rock shot out here and there, and the slope back to even ground was harsh, a few dozen feet below. There was trash down there, wrappers and bottles and paper, mingled in with the grass and weeds and roots. I wondered how long it would take. To be there. The fall. A few seconds, probably. Would it feel longer than that, or would it feel shorter? Would she fall with me, looking at me the whole way?
“Don’t usually see anybody out here this late.”
I very nearly fell forward over the railing in surprise. I caught the railing with a hand, gripped it tight enough to stop me lurching forward, so tight something in my hand screamed. My heart hammered hard enough that I would be surprised if it wasn’t visible through my shirt, like a cartoon character falling in love.
An old man sat on a bench behind me, dressed in a trench coat and a hat. His cane leaned against the bench beside him. He smiled. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare ya. I’ve been sitting here the whole time, but it looked like you had something on your mind. Didn’t figure you saw me. Can’t blame ya. Not many people out here this late, like I said.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I’d been caught with my pants down, like this was an intimate moment. The Old Man looked me in the eyes long enough, carefully enough, that I was certain he knew what I’d been thinking.
After a moment, he moved his eyes from mine and to the stars.
“I’ve lived in this city my whole life. Always been kind of hard to see the stars from here, y’know? All the lights, all the smog. It’s gotten worse, but it was never really any good. But I’d grown up here, and I didn’t know any better. I’d look up at the stars when I was a kid and it felt like I could see the whole universe.
“I was a kid, when we sent the first man into space. Changed my life. It felt like we’d pulled off a magic trick, like we’d pulled off something God himself never thought we could do. I needed it. It was a rough time, and I needed a reason to look up instead of look around. I think everybody needs that, at some point or another. And if they don’t get it, they might stop looking up, y’know? Might stop looking up for good. That’s when people throw in the towel. When they can’t find a reason.”
I stood, listening. After a moment, I sat down on the bench next to the Old Man.
“I went away to University, long time ago now. Couldn’t stand it. Liked the school, liked what I was studying. But it wasn’t here. I’d look up at the stars at night, and see stars I’d never seen before. Felt like there were strangers in the sky. Made me feel like I was on a different planet. I moved back here that same week. Haven’t left since.”
I looked at the Old Man.
“Do you regret it?”
“Staying here? No. Not at all. This city’s my home. It’s had some rough times, but it’s my home. It holds my stars, and sometimes I still need them.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I wondered what it must be like, knowing where your stars were. The Old Man stared at the sky, and I stared at my hands.
“I can’t find a reason,” I said quietly.
“Sometimes there isn’t one. But that doesn’t mean a reason isn’t on its way,” the Old Man said. “You just have to get back up and be ready for it when it comes.”
I looked over at the Old Man staring at the stars. He looked lost in his thoughts, but he had a smile in there, somewhere.
Something loud happened. A lot of things happened at the same time, actually, and none of them seemed to register correctly. My ears started ringing, but I couldn’t remember what sound had started them ringing. The Old Man lurched forward, ducking down towards the ground headfirst. Something warm and wet splashed across the side of my face and into my eye. I followed the Old Man down towards the ground, falling more than ducking. I hit my head on the pavement, and after a second, the eye without the blood in it focused on the Old Man’s face and I saw that he was dead. There was a hole where his right eye had been, the eye closest to the ground. Around his head was a pool of blood leaking out of his eyehole like a bottle that had been tipped on its side, spilling over the ground.
Behind the dead Old Man, a foot stepped out from behind the bench. It wore a nice shoe, something dark and sleek; it was hard to tell exactly what color in the night. It looked expensive. There were pants above the shoe, whatever color they were the same color as the shoes. I followed the pants up to a white shirt and dark vest, someone tall enough to steal glances wherever they were. It was hard to tell exactly how tall they were from the ground. They looked down at me, wearing a smile that seemed predatory. The smile stopped just below the eyes, as if the eyes absorbed the expression entirely.
It wasn’t the smile of a madman. It was the smile of someone who was perfectly, pointedly aware of who they were and of what they were doing.
“Hello! My apologies for interrupting what seemed to be a touching discussion. I’m new to town, you see. Just got off the train! And I just had to see The Bleeding City from all the way up here.” He lifted the gun and fired a shot into my leg, just above my knee, almost lazily. Didn’t even look where he was shooting. I heard the gunshot this time, and the sound seemed to match the pain.
The Man turned towards the city, hands on his hips like he was surveying a piece of art. I tried breathing and found it only came in deep, grunting breaths.
“It’s strange. I’ve been everywhere, all around the world. I’ve been to cities that are bigger than this one. Cities that are more beautiful than this one. Cities where I was welcome, and cities where I wasn’t. In all of them, I learned something. In all of them, I became a little more myself. But here, this city… can you hear it? This city has music.”
I gave up trying to squeeze my leg to keep pressure on the wound and instead starting quietly trying to get to my feet. I couldn’t seem to bend my bad leg, but I got to my feet without it and let it drag behind me as I lunged at the Man facing the city.
He sidestepped me without turning around. My forehead smacked into the railing, splitting both of my eyebrows. I bounced off the railing and back to the ground.
“Shh shh shh. Listen. Listen to the city. Can you hear it?”
And by god, I could hear something. Not a melody, not exactly. But something slow. Mournful. Something beautiful.
It sounded like a soul.
The Man crouched down beside me, him looking at the city, me with my back on the railing, facing the dead Old Man on the ground. “My name is Julius. What’s yours?”
“Eat shit.” My voice came out softer than I expected. Blood was coming out of my leg faster than I thought possible.
“Hm. I want to thank you. For sharing this moment with me. I’ve looked around for a long time. To figure out who I needed to be, and to find the place where I could know my purpose.” Julius was quiet for a moment, listening to the music. “To think. I’d find them both on the same day. In the same place. And one of those moments I shared with you. So thank you.”
Julius turned from the city and looked me in the eyes. I felt the gun against the side of my head. I tried to look up at the stars, but the blood from my head was pouring into my eyes, and everything was turning black.
The last thing I remember is being mad. Mad that I wasn’t going to get the chance to get back up. Mad that I wouldn’t be here when my reason found me.
Mad that I wasn’t going to get the chance to find my stars.
Then the music faded, and everything was quiet and still.
