[CITY 4 - STRUGGLE]

The COO Masaru Abe, looking slick and unbothered as usual, keeps his gaze on his paperwork.

Masaru’s already in the moment.

“Mister Fake,” Masaru starts with a smirk.

The other, better Masaru continues reading over the papers in his hands for a moment, and then sets them neatly on the table before standing up.

“Ah, the other one,” The Copy says with a smile as he glances over. “I would have thought you’d have given up by now,” he says as he leans against the conference table. “Just what is it that keeps you-”

“That’s enough out of you,” Masaru snips as he takes a step forward. “You’re not me.”

“I believe that has been established, fortunately,” The Copy says. “I’m the ‘you’ that should have been real.”

Masaru scoffs as he takes another step forward. The Copy simply waits cooly in his spot, as if this were some relaxed office touchpoint at the end of the day. “And like I said that’s bullshit! Why are you just killing me outright?!”

The Copy shrugs with a sly, disarming smile. “Well, I suppose to start you try to kill me every time you showed up here. Got to say it’s poor form for the ‘real’ me.”

The salaryman flinches at its words.

“That’s…”

“True, yes,” The Copy cuts off with. “Like most of your ill-lived life, you operate off of emotions, and there’s no room for that in The Big Leagues, kid.”

“No,” Masaru responds with a heaving breath, “you’re just completely delusional.”

“Not so delusional that I couldn’t make that merger work.”

Masaru cringes, his hands balling up into fists, his eyes already wide with mania.

What he hates the most about it all, is that The Copy is absolutely on-point.

Masaru didn’t just have a “critical assignment”, it was the job of the year, perhaps of the company’s entire lifetime.

The strings his father pulled to get him into the seat for that, an opportunity to show everyone that the blood ran deep and that the son was destined for the same respect as his dad.

…And he showed up late.

A dozen sharp men in sharp suits with sharp smiles shook his hand, exchanged business cards, but he knew when he arrived a full seven minutes late that the merger was going to fall through.

Nothing seemed to change. The atmosphere was polite and cordial, but inside, it was as if a bomb went off inside of him.

His movements weren’t as decisive, his smile dying out to a cool neutral.

His voice lost its tenor, its strength, and it felt harder to breathe during his briefs.

The entire thing lasted only two hours, but at the end of it he realized he was simply being tugged along for politeness’ sakes.

The other fishing companies had arrived to speak their parts in the deal, and they had receptive, considerate discussions throughout… but when he spoke, there were acknowledgements, appreciations rendered, but nothing more.

Masaru trembles in his shoes as The Copy finally leans up from his spot to stand at his full height.

“Or don’t you care about your father’s legacy? When will you admit that you were wro-”

“Shut up!” Masaru shouts, winning a raised brow from The Copy.

“Oh? Not even able to own up to it, hmm?”

“I… I know I screwed up! I know it!... But I just… that’s not the person I am!”

The Copy steps forward this time, and there’s no trepidation. He walks slowly, smoothly up to Masaru, and leans his mouth next to his ear.

“And that is why you aren’t cut out for this. Falling back on your failures because of ‘who you are’ is an excuse used by weak men. Men who cannot take responsibility for their failures.”

“You… but you’re horrible!” Masaru pushes out through gritted teeth.

“Am I? I regularly volunteer at the senior center. I donate every month to charity… and here.” The Copy leans back as he reaches into his blazer pocket. With a movement so smooth that Masaru assumes it’s an attack, The Copy flicks out his phone, displaying a supermodel splayed out along the hood of an aqua-colored sports car. It’s Valerie, beautiful, smiling, and as untouchable as The Copy.

“What… the hell do you think you’re proving, showing m-”

“She really thinks a lot of me, I guess. She certainly showed me how grateful she was the night I bought it for her,” The Copy interrupts with a smile.

And then, like a switch has been flipped, Masaru swings at The Copy.

This time, all he can hear is a sharp laugh before he feels a sharp jab into his neck, and then a delirious stroke of pain.

“Wh-” Masaru coughs out blood. He can’t even see what The Copy did, but he can see the red hand clutching something.

“I’m not like The Knight,” The Copy says. “I don’t represent something on the outside. I’m what you wish you could be,” The Copy adds.

He hears something behind him.

Masaru turns slowly to see Sato, peeking from the open door frame, with the sharp-eyed gaze of Valerie next to him.

Why… why did she hand her rifle to him? Masaru wonders as Valerie takes a deep breath and enters the room, just as he falls over.

The grayness, the drowning, it all comes fast.

“Hello,” Valerie says. “I just wanted to let you know I’ll be downstairs for a bit,” she adds before turning away to leave.

The Copy’s voice, already in-tone with the “better” Valerie, scoffs.

And that’s all Masaru can hear before he fades out once again.