Chapter 4

CHAPTER 2 THE 2nd DAY LIGHT, A KEYHOLE, AND A GIANT KEY… Sora, the boy in the dreams, held that key. It belonged to Sora… And…that’s right, it was called the… “Key…blade?” Roxas awoke from the dream and sat straight up, staring at his hands. He remembered the sensation of holding that enormous key. Yesterday, he fought the strange creature with it—the Keyblade. Was there some connection between the dreams and real life? The key and Sora’s weapon in his dreams were the same. I don’t get it… Scratching his head, Roxas stepped out of bed and got dressed, then ran outside. To the usual spot, of course. What he’d seen yesterday…it was like all the dreams he’d been having lately. The stolen pictures, that strange creature, and then the Keyblade. Roxas picked up a stick on the sidewalk and swung it like a sword. “What was that about?” he mumbled. Of course, the stick wasn’t going to suddenly change into the Keyblade. But then why had his toy sword transformed yesterday? He sighed and tossed the stick away. It spun through the air and hit a wall—or it should have. But instead it struck a man in a black cloak. “Oops!” A deep hood kept the man’s face in shadow, and Roxas couldn’t tell how angry he was. “Sorry about that,” Roxas said, waving apologetically, but the man turned and walked away without a word. Roxas had never seen anyone like that around town. But…did he know him from somewhere? He shook his head at the strange idea. Why would he look at someone he’d never seen before and think they’d met? “Huh. Weird…” Roxas shrugged and hurried on his way to meet his friends. Everyone else was sitting where they always did in their hangout, eating sea-salt ice cream bars. “Morning,” Roxas said, the late arrival. Hayner handed him one wordlessly. “Thanks.” He sat on a wooden crate to enjoy it. The ice cream bar, with its unusual salty-sweet flavor, was a specialty of Twilight Town, and not one of the four could resist it. “Do you guys think we’ll always be together like this?” Pence said out of nowhere. “I sure hope so,” Olette replied, as if she’d been wondering the same. “Huh?” Hayner was mystified. “Where’d that come from?” “Oh, um, you know… Just thinking out loud.” Pence bit into his ice cream bar. “Well, we probably can’t be together forever,” Hayner said. “But isn’t that just part of growing up? What’s important isn’t how much we see one another. It’s how often we think about one another. Right?” Roxas looked up at that. Pence and Olette were also staring at Hayner. Silence settled over them for a few moments. Then Pence laughed. “You get that off a fortune cookie?” Olette laughed, too. “Hey! That’s it, no more ice cream!” Hayner sprang up, scowling, and glared at everyone else in turn. When he saw that Roxas wasn’t laughing at all, his scowl deepened. “Man, what’s with all the doom and gloom, you guys?” “Maybe it’s because of that thief yesterday…” Olette looked glumly at the floor. “Nah—you know what it is? It’s ’cos we don’t want summer vacation to be over! That’s all!” Hayner gestured angrily. True, they only had a week of summer vacation left. “So, how about this! We all go to the beach!” “The beach?” Roxas repeated. The beach—it made him think of the dreams. “We haven’t been to the beach once all summer!” Hayner went on. “Blue seas! Blue skies! Let’s just get on the train and go!” As usual, Hayner stood like he was delivering a speech. Convinced, Roxas and the others stood up but then hung their heads as something occurred to them. “No? Aw, c’mon!” Noticing their expressions, Hayner looked upset, too. “Well…we’re all almost broke, so…,” Olette explained in a tiny voice. Summer vacation was almost over, and they’d mostly used up whatever pocket money they had. That was true for all of them, including Hayner. “Leave that to me!” he declared, undaunted. “Time to hit Market Street!” With that, Hayner left their hangout at a run. “So he says, but…” Pence worried, looking back at Roxas. “Let’s just follow him,” Roxas said. Pence and Olette nodded and then dashed outside to catch up. The three raced through the back streets as if playing tag, and then they saw Hayner paused on the slope leading up to Market Street. He was looking at the poster advertising the Struggle. “Just two days to go.” The Struggle was a sort of tournament in Twilight Town, in which the contestants battled with a special weapon made for the event. The preliminary rounds were already over. Hayner and Roxas had made it to the semifinals. So had Seifer. “You and I have to make the finals!” Hayner told Roxas. “And then, no matter who wins, the four of us can split the prize.” “Good call,” Roxas said. They shook on it. “Promise!” “It’s a promise.” Hayner grinned and hopped back from the handshake to face the others. “Okay! Let’s get down to business. One ticket to the beach is nine hundred munny.” He took on a math teacher’s voice. “So how much for four of us?” “Three thousand six hundred munny,” Olette replied immediately. “And three hundred each to spend there. What’s that add up to?” This time, Pence answered. “One thousand two hundred munny. So with the train fare, that makes…four thousand and eight hundred munny.” “To spend on what?” Roxas wondered. “Fried noodles, obviously,” Hayner crowed. “What else do you get at the beach?” “There’s always watermelon.” Hayner’s mouth twisted in a pout at Roxas’s objection. “Too pricey. Watermelons’re, like, two thousand munny apiece.” “…Oh.” Now that Roxas had no more objections, Hayner grinned. “So, we need four thousand and eight hundred munny altogether. How much do we have now?” “I’ve got eight hundred,” Pence said. “Six hundred and fifty,” Olette added, sounding apologetic. “Only one hundred and fifty,” Roxas said. “Sorry.” “That’s one thousand and six hundred munny! We just need another three thousand two hundred!” Hayner announced. “Let’s find ourselves some odd jobs and earn some dough. We have till the train leaves to earn eight hundred munny each!” After giving them the assignment, he took off toward the tram common. “Um…” Olette cocked her head. “Didn’t he say, ‘Leave it to me’?” Pence shrugged, smiling helplessly. “Well, whatever. Let’s get to work so we can go!” Roxas told them. They headed for the plaza, where there was a bulletin board that was usually full of Help Wanted ads. DiZ typed at the keyboard in front of the big computer screen in the dark room. He approached and spoke behind DiZ’s shoulder. “You called me?” “Your reckless actions will get us in trouble,” DiZ said without turning around. “You went there, didn’t you?” “…Yes.” So DiZ already knew that he had gone off on his own to see the boy. Roxas—the boy necessary to Sora’s awakening. At this point, to him, Roxas was nothing more and nothing less. “He must seem like a different person, no? And all it took was a bit of meddling with his memories—” “Did you have an assignment for me?” he said, cutting off DiZ. “Yes… We’ve encountered a bit of a problem.” Finally DiZ turned to face him. “I need you to go there again. And make certain your paths do cross…” Roxas did a few odd jobs, and before too long, he’d earned a solid thousand munny. He headed up to the station. “Hey, Roxas!” Hayner, Pence, and Olette had finished up their odd jobs, too—they were already there in front of the station. “What’d you come up with, Roxas?” asked Olette. “Just this.” He handed her the cash he’d made and raised his eyebrows, rather pleased with himself. “Wow! Nice work, everyone! So, added to what we started with, now we have…” She pulled out a pretty embroidered orange pouch. “Ta-daa! Five thousand munny!” She let Roxas hold the purse. It was heavy, stuffed with change. “All right, time to get tickets!” Pence ran ahead with Olette into the station. Usually Hayner would be the one taking the lead—but he was standing still. “…We can’t be together forever,” Hayner murmured. “So we’ve gotta make the time we do have something to remember.” Roxas was surprised. “Huh?” “Gotcha!” As if he was embarrassed by what he’d said, Hayner gave Roxas a friendly punch in the gut and ran after Olette and Pence. “…Hayner!” Flustered, Roxas started to chase his friend, but his legs gave way beneath him. “Huh?” This again. Fighting back that same weird feeling he’d had yesterday, Roxas tensed his legs to keep from falling—when someone grabbed his arm and pulled him. He yelped in surprise and looked up. It was the same man in the black cloak he’d seen this morning, helping him to his feet. “Ah…sorry. Thank you…,” Roxas said, somehow managing not to fall over again. The man leaned over and whispered close to his ear, “Can you feel Sora?” “…Wha—?” Just as Roxas started to ask, the bells of Twilight Town rang. “Roxaaas!” Hayner poked his head out from the station doors and called to him. “Coming!” he replied, and turned to the man again. But no one was there. He was just standing right here… “Come on, Roxas!” Hayner shouted, and Roxas ran across the plaza. What was that guy saying? What about Sora? “Hurry up!” Roxas charged into the station to find Hayner leaning over the ticket window. Olette was already waiting on the platform. “Four students!” Hayner blurted at the vendor. “Roxas, the cash!” Pence said, hopping from foot to foot behind Hayner. “Got it!” Roxas ran to join them and reached into his pocket. But the purse Olette had entrusted to him wasn’t there. “Wha—? It’s gone!” “Huh?!” Hayner turned away from the ticket window. “He took it!” Roxas headed back out of the station. “Where are you going?” Noticing that something was wrong, Olette came back down the stairs from the platform. “You saw me fall just now, right? That’s when it got stolen,” Roxas said in a rush. “I bet that guy took it!” Confused, Hayner tilted his head. “What guy?” “He can’t have gotten too far…” Roxas was about to take off and look for the man outside the station, but Hayner grabbed his shoulder. “What’re you talking about? There wasn’t any guy,” he told Roxas squarely. “Huh? But…” Roxas trailed off as the station bell rang, announcing a departure. “The train’s leaving,” Olette said mournfully. “Oh… But really—there was someone! He took—” “It doesn’t matter, Roxas…” Hayner let out a deep sigh. Why did I say that to him…? He hid his face even deeper under his hood as he headed back to the mansion, his mind wandering. “Can you feel Sora?” There was no need to give Roxas that much information. In fact, telling him was a bad idea. And yet, in that moment, when he touched Roxas, he couldn’t stop himself from asking the question. He wanted to know whether Roxas really could feel Sora. Now that he had calmed down a little, the sentiment seemed strange to him. When would Sora wake up? He was getting frustrated with himself, unable to do anything but watch Sora sleep in that capsule. And he felt like he ought to have more memories of the time he’d spent with Sora. Maybe that was why he wanted to know—could Roxas feel Sora? The purse full of munny was in his cloak pocket. They couldn’t let the kids go to the beach. They shouldn’t even leave the town. That was why he had stolen their munny. They had reasons for intervening. Although situations that required their direct intervention weren’t supposed to happen in the first place. Would Sora really wake up? All year long, he had been feeling as powerless as he had back then—back when he could only watch Kairi’s helpless sleeping body. He had never wanted to feel that way again, so he had ended up fighting a reckless battle…and chosen to become this. To become this form. Am I doing the right thing…? He didn’t know. But for now, he had to believe that he was. He went through the mansion’s gate and opened the front door. “Welcome back.” It was Naminé, waiting just inside for him. “What are you doing here?” he asked, pushing back his hood. Naminé smiled sadly. “Because…I found out that you went to see Roxas.” “…Yeah.” That was all he said before heading quickly up the stairs. “It’s all right,” she told him softly as he walked away. “I can feel Sora.” He didn’t reply. The setting sun was dazzling. From atop the clock tower above the station, Roxas and his friends could see the entire town. They watched the sunset, each holding a sea-salt ice cream bar. “It’s melting.” Olette looked anxiously at Roxas and his ice cream bar, which was starting to drip. “Oh—sorry…” Roxas couldn’t understand how he’d managed to just lose all that munny. He was so sure he’d seen that man—but no one else had. “Hey, forget it already!” Hayner snapped. “It doesn’t make any sense, though.” Pence sighed. Exactly—it makes no sense. “It is strange,” Olette murmured. “You said it,” Hayner agreed. Even though Roxas told them that a man they couldn’t see had stolen their munny, not one of his friends suspected him of lying. But that only made him feel worse. They should have been at the beach eating noodles right now. “‘Can you feel Sora…?’” he mumbled aloud without meaning to. “Huh?” Hayner squinted at him in confusion, then stood up, having finished his ice cream bar. “Well, we can just try again tomorrow.” “Yeah. Summer vacation still isn’t over!” Pence said, trying to encourage him. “For today, we should probably go home, though.” Olette got up, too. “Yeah…,” Roxas said, but he couldn’t get himself to smile. “See you!” Hayner and Pence began the climb back down. Olette turned back as she left to follow them. “Don’t worry about it, okay?” Roxas nodded and got to his feet. The sun was sinking beneath the horizon. It should have been just another usual sunset, but something seemed different to him. Why? Is something about to change…? “C’mon, Roxas!” Pence called from below. “Yeah, coming!” Roxas turned away from the sunset and jumped down the stairs. The last rays of the sun were warm on his back. —Restoration at 28%— “Naminé… Hurry,” DiZ muttered, staring at the monitor. The number on the screen had risen only slightly, without much in the way of visible change. Still, compared to the past year, it was fair to call this a significant development. DiZ became aware that the door was open behind him and swiveled his chair around. “So you’ve returned.” “Is it really that hard to make a beach?” he asked, clutching the orange purse. “We’d only give the enemy another entry point.” He shrugged and fidgeted with the pouch, tossing and catching it in his palm. “…What should we do with this?” “We could always get some sea-salt ice cream.” DiZ laughed under his breath and turned to the computer again. “You should not bring objects from that town into the real world. Delete it.” He appeared to ignore DiZ, continuing to play with the purse.