2A/N: I'm back with another one-shot! I actually had to wipe the dust off this one. It's from quite a while ago, and I ended up digging it up after spending a week trying to write and coming up with a bunch of fails. I've just been way to busy. That's also the reason why I have not started another multichapter. I wrote a paragraph or two for three multichapters, but I haven't had the time, focus or motivation to continue them. My plan was to start one this month, like I did with Black Trigger last year, but I guess that isn't happening. I'm hoping to start one maybe next month, but I'll have to see how school goes. Anyway, sorry for any OOCness, typos, errors and overall crappy writing. I hope you guys enjoy this little snippet, and I'll do what I can to start a new multichapter.
The nostalgic feeling hit Jin like a wave. Memories of a game he used to play with his mother long ago, before the First Invasion, before Border, before he learned about the existence of Neighbors, came flooding back from the dusty corner of his mind that they had been hiding in. It had been a very simple game, one kids didn't seem to play anymore since it just wasn't entertaining enough. The game required only one object to be played, the object being a piece of string tied together at the ends.
Jin remembered when he played it for the first time, the feeling of the soft string hugging his skin as his mother looped it around his fingers. Jin had been very young the first time he played it, only four, so he didn't understand much. However, the way the strings intersected, aligned to be parallel, and went their own seperate ways, had been so intriguing, forming patterns so similar but entirely different where the string stretched across the gap between his hands.
After a few years, finally understanding how the game worked, Jin started manipulating the strings himself rather than just holding them. To start out, he used the patterns he had memorized from watching his mother, but soon he was trying new things. He pulled the strings around, making them cross and change shape before looping them around his mother's fingers and doing it again. Usually, he had no idea if his random choices would create anything, and he wondered if he'd end up with a beautiful design or a messy knot.
As Jin got older, playing the game became a rare occurance. After he began his Border work, training under Soichi Mogami, he didn't have many opportunities. Between school and Border, he had little free time, though he couldn't help but smile when he'd come home late at night to find his mother sitting in the living room with only a floor lamp on, holding a piece of string in her hands.
The last time Jin played the string game with his mother had been almost as average as any other time. Jin's mother had the string looped around her fingers as she sat on the floor, while Jin knelt in front of her and created patterns. He had been remaking old patterns, not feeling like making any new ones. However, his mother changed his mind.
"Yuichi, why don't you try a new pattern? The same ones may always work, but it won't always produce the best outcome," she told him. Jin had smiled and nodded before untangling the strings and starting with something new. His mother had a good point. Unfortunately, those wise words didn't come to mind when it counted. Jin had not realized what she was trying to tell him. He had not realized that she had been talking about Border and the Neighbors, not until the First Invasion was over and she was dead.
That game he used to play, the one he had stopped playing after his mother's death, was one that was very important. To be accurate, Jin had stopped playing that game with old strings and his mother after the First Invasion. Instead he played his own version, a version containing many people and just him at the same time. This new version was inside his head, a version he had been playing for years and years on his own.
The difference between the original game and this new version was that this new one was no game. Instead of criss-crossing and looping old string to create patterns, he was manipulating people to make certain decisions. He was overlapping, crossing and eliminating the threads of the future until it was set up to go the way he wanted it to.
Changing the future seemed to get tough sometimes, and Jin usually wanted to use the same methods over and over, stalling Person A so they wouldn't get hit by a car driven by Person B, or telling Person A to protect Person B from the Neighbors to avoid certain death. Those methods worked, but just like his mother told him years ago, "The same ones may always work, but it won't always produce the best outcome."
To those around him, Jin's manipulation of the future was his job, something he did to make sure things didn't go wrong, and to stop deaths from happening. To Jin, it was a game that wasn't a game. It was something he'd done since he was young, first with a piece of string and his mother, later with the future and the people he walked with and talked to. The whole world was part of his game, and the future was a string tangled in a series of intersections and loops between his hands. Neighbors, wars, the people of Japan; they were all part of the game he played in his head, the game that no one else could play.
Just like the game he played when he was little, it was Jin's own game of Cat's Cradle.