[LOBBY FINAL]

He wakes up to the perfect white fan.

Sitting up, he notices a note on the door, scratched out in some hasty handwriting. He rushes over to it, his sharp brown shoes clicking over the tile as he snaps up the note to read.

Right next door.

-Lieutenant Colonel Kurogane, Kenji (retired)

The salaryman’s eyes widen.

Three five eight… three five eight! How could I have forgotten… for all this time!? he thinks as the tremors begin.

Swinging out and around to room 358, he takes a deep, preparatory breath, and turns the handle…

Pushing open the door to the room, he looks inside.

…

There he is.

The sight of seeing his father sitting up on the hospital bed, a pale phantasm of the already frail-looking man, causes something deeper than Masaru's [RES] stat to jump up to a peak it's never felt before.

He's just sitting there, staring out the window as if waiting for someone to arrive.

Masaru, despite the spiritual nature of his body in this accursed place, can still shed tears of pure spirit, and they’re already welling up in his eyes.

The magnitude of the man, the authority, the fear that Masaru felt whenever he looked at him is gone. All he can see is a pale, almost see-through skeleton of a man peering hopefully out a window through his glasses, always tilted just a slight millimeter to counterclockwise.

It takes him a moment to work up the words, but his father speaks first.

"I knew I'd find you here," his father says. "I wasn't sure when." A slight smile crosses his face, barely changing the open-mouthed expression of his son, experiencing a true, slow awe. "But you're so much like me that I realize it wouldn't be too long."

He turns his head to look at Masaru. "After all, you did still come by to visit, didn't you?" he asks, now looking at his boy, who's shaking in his perfectly shined shoes.

"I-" Masaru gulps down his emotions as he once again fails to come up with something meaningful to say. “I’m sorry I didn’t come by sooner. I just didn’t… I didn’t actually know.”

His father only smiles and nods. "It's okay. It’s natural not to think of things like that when you’re so busy… Please take a seat," he says, motioning a frail, emaciated hand towards the visitor's chair next to the bed. Masaru does as he's told and sits down with wide, glassy eyes.

"You've been here for all this time?" Masaru asks.

His father nods. "I have, and I've battled quite a few times to try and escape." He lifts his left arm up around his body to show Masaru the tattoos. A whopping 17 marks litter his wrist up to his elbow. All of them but one have been emptied out. Masaru stares on in disbelief.

"You had-" he takes a moment to count them. "You won against that thing 16 times. What was the last one?" he asks. "Why can't you-" He closes his eyes shortly. "Why do you only have one res left? Why are you about to give up? You can't. We're going to get out together."

"No, son," his father says. "You are going to get out."

"That is the role of a parent. There are some sins one commits in life, whether it's their fault or not, but it is not something to be passed on to the next generation. There are some challenges that are simply too great for a person to overcome if it's what their soul has built on for the last fifty years." Masaru, now a far cry from the jaded, cool, irritated man he was, cannot suppress the quiver in his face.

"Father. Please. Please let me do right by you. We can go home together."

"It is not for me to decide," he says. "Or perhaps it is and I cannot. This is a great test, but there are some challenges that must be dealt with alone. And I will have to discuss it with the Buddha."

"I'm not here to survive any longer," he says. "I've only held on as long as I have to wait for you." Masaru attempts to speak, but once again, he's choked up on the hurricane of emotions tossing his soul to the wind. His father looks back to the window for a moment and continues.

"I was raised in a nation very different from the one that exists now. I was raised a certain way because my father believed it would lead me to success. And in a way it did. But what he did not teach me was how to feel for my own son when he looked up at me with those innocent brown eyes. I was so invested in what I did that I wasn't there for you at the moments that seemed to matter most to you."

"Many of them were so important no one could deny. And I was too wrapped up in what I believed I was supposed to be." He pauses a moment, his aged eyes squinting. "I believe that at the time, if I treated you like I had been treated, then you could become a man." His expression becomes grim, wrinkles curling into more wrinkles as a negative emotion arrives at last. "I did not know what I was doing to you. You wanted to play video games and listen to music and hang out with your friends. I kept trying to put you into extracurriculars that didn't interest you. I believed you would simply become strong and deal with it as I had done."

He gives himself a long pause as Masaru slowly turns his head down to the floor. "What I realized is that I was not strong. I was scared. I was scared of my father and the society I lived in. I was not willing to disappoint him."

"I loved him so much. You loved me too in your own way," his father says before pausing again to look down at his own lap. "You tried to tell me about all the things you were interested in. You loved fish, so I thought you'd be a natural for taking on a position in the company and that you'd simply adjust. And now you spend your days administrating and managing the catching of fish rather than the study of them."

"It's okay, father. You were doing your best. You meant well."

"I was the careless one," Masaru says. "It was me that-"

His father's raised hand silences him. "No, Masaru," his father rejects. "I did not understand what you wanted to be."

"And I see now that souls are as different as flavors in a dish, banquets among countries," he sighs, "among worlds."

"You are very different from me, Masaru. And yet we're very alike. That is not anything to be sad of. It is not a tragedy. The only tragedy was that I could not see the world through your eyes."

"I don't care about any of that. Father, please, please, let's try again."

"I am not willing to return to my final challenge, Masaru. I will discuss it with the Buddha. As I have said, the time has come instead for you to realize your true greatness."

"You care so much about people, Masaru, and the time has come to get as many out as you can. Be the example to them and spring forth like the brave boy I've always known you to be. Brave enough even-" His father looks over to his son, and his son looks up. They look each other in the eyes a moment, an intense connection causing tears in both of them.

"I stole most of your adulthood with my dream of what you were supposed to be. And now you can bring the memory of myself along with you."

"I don't care what I do," Masaru says, "as long as I'm with you."

"I don't care what I am as long as I'm with you."

Masaru's father gets a slow, wide smile, the kind of look he'd have before berating his son for all those years. "I think we both know that isn't quite true. A man, if he is to be called a man, departs from his father and his father's ways. But he carries with him the father's memory, his dreams, his hope for the future." His father reaches out and Masaru takes his hand. They pass through each other.

And while Masaru sobs, his father laughs. "For us both, Masaru. Live for us both. Live a life that's true to yourself. I realized I had killed the light in you when you took the job. When the merger failed."

"Father," Masaru interrupts, his hands trembling.

"No. I failed, Masaru," his father says. "I failed you. I could have supported you more."

"I could have helped you believe in yourself. I could have helped you understand that it's not such a big deal. Business is business, but this is the business of the soul. And there's no delaying something as important as that. But look at you in this shape," his father observes. "It seems like you've already given up."

"What?" Masaru asks. "No. Of course not. I'm gonna get you out."

"No," his father says. "But you'll get those others out." He looks over. "Be the example. Promise me that. People can't fight these battles alone. It's true that to destroy one's shadow is a personal experience, but that overlooks the encouragement, the support, and the time that you spend with other people to understand what they're going through… Some call it fate and simply let things that destroy them rule their lives. Others lose their heart and cannot reach out to other people until it's too late…”

Masaru’s gentle sobs provide a fitting backdrop to his father’s fading words.

“Others are so completely broken that they cannot even understand what is wrong with them. You need to be an example to all of those people, Masaru. You may have lost me in the flesh, but you've gained me in spirit."

His smile grows as his [RES] finally tips down to zero. "Seems like you're here to see my ascendance."

Masaru closes his eyes quickly and opens them again just as his father turns to the door.

"They won't be coming here," Masaru's father says. "I'm already where I need to be," he adds as his body begins flaking into the air like gentle, curling feathers.

"Father… no. I’m not ready to lose you. Please. You have to believe," Masaru shouts, grasping for his father's hands as he grasped for them on the day he was drowning. His father offers them back, but they can't touch, at least until Masaru, thinking fast, remembers something important that he's learned.

He wraps his hand around the bedsheet and uses it as a medium to create pressure around his father's hand. His dad flinches in surprise, and his hand squeezes back for what feels like the first time in his life. "You always were such a clever boy," his father says with a wide smile as his body fades into pure light.

"It's like grasping a ray of sunlight now. Be the person you wanted me to be, Masaru," he adds. Pulling up with his weakening grip to bring the bedsheet between their shoulders, he leans forward and embraces his son for the first time in eighteen years. "I'm proud of you," he says, his voice fading like the sun over a misting horizon.

Masaru, closing his eyes to feel his father for one last time, savors the sensation as the sheet slowly falls limp over his body and onto the floor. Hidden under the bedsheet, Masaru sees something dark but shining. Wiping back his tears, he pulls back the sheet to reveal a graceful, well-appointed katana. Nothing flashy, no centerpiece item on a top executive's table. It is historic, traditional, and proud of what it is: a weapon of focused design for one glorious, certain movement that sprouts like the leaves of a tree into an infinity of techniques.

"Take it along," Masaru says breathlessly. He reaches for it, but stops himself. Is he ready to know? Staring at the weapon, humbly waiting in its sheath, the spark returns to his eyes, and he touches it.

The moment he touches it, he falls to his knees. The shame that courses through him is unlike anything he's ever experienced. The pain of a life lived around one's favorite person and yet at a cold distance. Profound is a good word for the emotion. Masaru's not sure he's felt any emotion other than bitterness this deeply.

Because all at once, he's reminded of a thousand more transgressions his father took against him in their relationship. All of the times he could have been more present. All the times he could have lent a hand. All the times he simply could have held him when things were difficult. And yet with every memory, there's no smug satisfaction of a father that knows best. There's the continuous pain of a life in retrospect, a sorrow that leaves no doubt that his father regretted what he'd done, or at least the way in which he had done it. The tears stream from his face as his hands flinch with the final memory of feeling his father.

It just now occurs to him how long it's been since they had embraced and how much he had disliked it. They had one lifetime together and, ultimately, it feels to Masaru that they wasted it. Conversations between them were always marked with that subtle expectation of things a man should want. Not drawing. Not video games. Not movies. Not even friends. The chief memory of all is of a man sitting on a bench next to a lake, eyeing a few pieces of paperwork as he hears splashing and coughing in the local pond.

He can see a hand placed on the table as if to push himself to his feet, but then he sees a nearby swimmer running over to help the person in need. He rests back down and continues his paperwork, keeping a close watch on the person struggling: Masaru, only six years old.

Avoiding the knife-like glare of Mrs. Masaru, he turns his head back down to his paperwork. The feeling of rejection from everything cuts deep into him. If only they could understand, he feels. Masaru wishes in the core of his heart of hearts that he could tell his father that he forgives him. Now departed by death, the distance feels almost infinite.

And Masaru wipes the tears across his face in grief as he attempts to calm his breathing. He wraps his arms around himself, rolled up into a ball, even now feeling the subconscious sting of his father's voice telling him to get up and stop crying over nothing. But the regret, the immensity of regret he feels having connected to his father's psyche, tells him that the father he thought he knew and the father in reality were two very different men.

It appears as though he had never truly known the man, and that is what hurts most of all. No chance to reach that summit of manhood and sit with his father in a coffee shop, chuckling over the things of childhood. His spirit reaches out, and while he does not meet the hand of his father, he does feel the handle of the katana, its honed edge waiting for him. Masaru forces his eyes open to look it over. Picking it up and holding it requires perfect control of his emotions, but it feels like his father is there with him when he holds the scabbard.

Pushing the tsuba up to reveal the blade, he sees his own reflection. The man who he is becoming. He blinks at the image of himself for a moment before the spark in his eyes lights into a fire… and then from a fire into something even greater, like a sunrise.

Who is Abe Masaru? Really? Who was he before he was stabbed in that alleyway by that unknown form? Who is he now? The thought rifles through his mind until he gets to the next step.

Who will Abe Masaru become? With his experiences, with his pains, with his struggles, who will he choose to be? He withdraws the blade back into its sheath, pushes it into his briefcase, and looks up to the hospital door.

It's time to find out.

He opens the door to 358 with a gaze like tempered steel. The mannequin medical staff has already left. Perhaps they knew that their work was done, so they left him be with his father. In the hallway, Masaru closes the door behind him, leaving a vacant, perfectly clean room – like the fresh blossom of a flower, rather than a place someone had lived. Now it’s just another hotel room of the soul waiting for its next victim. Masaru saw himself going out that way, put out by the cold breeze of a soul's dark night.

He grips the katana like a lever to open up a new dimension of life. He understands now that some people cannot get past what's happened to them. But with all he has, he will fulfill his father's purpose. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and just feels.

[RES] 85/100.

His eyes open, peering straight for the elevator doors. He descends and goes out to the lobby of the cursed hospital, his prison, but also his crucible for greatness. Empty of all human souls but Masaru's, the mannequins all bow down in appreciation for his visit, with the doctor leading the front.

At its example, all of the nurses bow with it in a perfect, uniformed arch as Masaru passes through them. Masaru is not sure what the emotion he's feeling is. Why does he feel so grateful? It's not necessarily Stockholm Syndrome. It's something else. It's the kind of appreciation you might feel for a particularly strict and ambitious fitness coach. Someone who's pushed you to extremes you've never known, and thanks to that torture, you're all the better for it.

Without a word, he steps past them up to the black doors and opens the way to the unknowable starlight of the beyond: His final challenge.

He looks back at them as he feels his soul one last time before the final battle.

[RES] 91/100

He nods.

The doctor nods back. The mannequin is incapable of casting a gaze, but Masaru understands a knowing look when he sees one. He turns back for the doors and goes into the dark. It's 8:17 PM.

…And all of a sudden, the minute hand moves forward.