DISEMBOWLED BODY FOUND ON POLICE STATION DOORSTEP

Well, that was a cheery headline to welcome him back to Japan. Kagami skimmed the article, feeling a little nauseous as he read some of the gorier details, before finally he folded the newspaper and set it where he'd found it, on one of the chairs in the break room.

He hesitated, and then picked it up again. He knew he shouldn't read it – after all, he didn't need something like this weighing on his mind while he was working – but he found himself unable not to. Wasn't that natural? A murder in your neighbourhood, you'd want to know more about it… and besides, it was a quiet night, and with the lull in activity in the station, he was pretty bored.

…coroners say that the cause of death was natural, but were unable to provide an explanation for the damage to the body after death…

…flesh seemed to have been sheared away from the body by a sharp instrument…

... no leads as of yet. A spokesman says police are working as hard as possible to identify the killer, but lack substantial evidence…

…the victim has been identified and the family ordered no comment.

Well, that was pretty creepy. But what caught Kagami's eye was a sentence at the end of the article: Police say that the likelihood of this incident being related to the corpses found in similar states earlier this month is high.

"That's messed up," Kagami said.

He wasn't really aware he'd said it out loud until he heard someone else say, "You come back to Japan in the middle of all this? Poor timing."

"Chief!" Kagami said, almost dropping the newspaper. He hoped he hadn't looked too wrapped up in the article. "I was just… it's awful, really."

"It is," the man agreed. Kagami liked his boss – he could be strict, but the older man was generally easy going and good to be around. He didn't even seem to care that Kagami spoke to him with the kind of impolite language that most people found disrespectful. "They found a couple of people like that at the start of the month – it was big news, but I guess you wouldn't have heard of it, seeing as you were in America. The police got a bad rap for not handling it well, but maybe this time they won't drag ass so much. Maybe they'll actually catch the guy."

"It wasn't a murder, was it? They said it was natural causes…" Kagami pointed out, and as soon as he'd said it, he knew it was stupid. No matter whether it was a murder or not, there was someone running around carving up bodies and leaving them on the street for people to find. That was, as Kagami had so eloquently put it, pretty messed up.

"You should head home, Kagami," the chief said, and Kagami only shrugged. It was about time he was leaving, so he thanked his boss and left, just giving a wave to the calls of 'good work tonight!' he heard as he traipsed out of the building. Coming off of a nightshift and travelling home when it felt like half the world was still asleep was a strange experience, but it was nothing out of the ordinary by now. Working as a fire fighter, you got used to your sleep patterns getting disrupted.

Kagami stood at the front door of his apartment, raking through his pockets searching for his keys. He finally found them, but he dropped them when a voice behind him said, "Hello."

He spun on his heel, prepared to yell at whoever had snuck up on him like that – because really, who did that – but he took one look at the shorter man standing in front of him and anything he'd been about to say left his mind.

Kagami's head spun and for a second he saw not a person's face in front of him but a skull: exposed yellow bone and empty eye sockets, a scrap of skin and rotten flesh clinging to it here and there, teeth bared in a humourless grin. He blinked, and his vision cleared. Blue. Blue eyes, blue hair, white skin, but dark like a shadow. Not a corpse, but a perfectly ordinary man – maybe in his twenties, a little younger than Kagami.

"Hello?" He said again.

"Um… hi," Kagami choked out. He still hadn't gotten over his- what the hell was that? A hallucination? From before, but he cleared his throat and said, "Sorry, can I help you…?"

"Not particularly. Sorry for startling you," he said, and the apology made Kagami's face heat. Looking at the kid now, he didn't know what there was to be scared of. He'd just been awake for too long, that was all; awake for too long, and then he'd gone and filled his head with gorey ideas and given himself the heebie-jeebies. He was lost in his thoughts until he heard the other speak again, after a long pause that he was now aware he should have filled with some sort of conversation. "Anyway, I was on my way out to work, and I thought I should say hello. I'm your neighbour, in apartment 2B. Kuroko Tetsuya."

"Ah- Taiga," Kagami answered. "Kagami Taiga."

There was another awkward silence, after which Kuroko's thin lips curved into a smile as he said, "You know, at this point, you should say something like 'it's nice to meet you', Kagami-kun."

"Why should I be the one to say that?"

Kuroko only stared at him, which frustrated him, and he gave an annoyed sigh before the shorter man said, "Anyway, I only wanted to say welcome to the building. I only just moved to the area a few weeks ago myself, but if you need any help, feel free to come see me."

"Yeah, sure. Thanks," Kagami muttered, though he had no intentions of doing so. He picked his keys up from where they'd landed on the floor and then turned to say goodbye, but the other was gone. "…Creep."

He made his way in, ate breakfast, and then collapsed onto his bed. As he drifted off to sleep, he had a fleeting thought that the blue eyes that had stared back at him hadn't had any more life than the empty sockets he'd been looking into only seconds before, but he pushed it out of his mind and promptly fell asleep.

a/n: i hope you liked minna-chans! (*´・ｖ・) this chapter is short and a little stupid but all will become clear. thanks for reading!