This, ladies and gentlemen, is a disclaimer.
Title inspired by the poem "If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda.
"The course of true love never did run smooth." -William Shakespeare (inspiration)
Part I
She's not going to say she's happy in her boring human life because lying just isn't her style.
--
Kazuma called her again today, requesting a lunch at some upscale restaurant in his new neighborhood where he probably hung out with all his new, upper class friends. She didn't call him back, she didn't know why he kept trying because she never did, and part of her hated herself for it.
She went to the grocery store and saw a young couple dancing in one of the aisles, her holding a box of teeth rotting cereal, him holding a bag of flour. It struck her then that she hadn't been in a relationship since before the "demon years" and she snorted bitterly, cursing her inability to just let it go.
Later, surrounded by her empty bottles of liquor and her spent cigarettes, it struck her that maybe she just didn't want to and she hadn't really realized it yet.
--
She ran into Keiko in a tiny side street market. It had been nine months since she had seen her last at the necessary outing that was Kazuma's twenty third birthday party.
"How are you?" the younger woman squealed, all sophistication forgotten and drawing the stares of multiple older women. On her back a baby version of Yusuke waved fat little arms and looked at her as if he felt her pain and wanted just as much as she to escape.
She mumbled out a lie about a business meeting after deflecting several needling questions about her personal life-lack thereof, really, but Keiko didn't need to know that. Her former best friend-no kidding herself with this one, when she had been in her twenties her best friend was a teenage girl-looked hurt but managed to hide the adolescent pout that threatened to take her lips. Little Yusuke saved her then, screeching about a "poo poo" and embarrassing his mother so badly that, flaming red, she sputtered out an apology and ducked into the nearest store.
Shizuru made a note to herself to give that kid a present, preferably someday soon so her monotone life didn't suck the reminder from her brain like it did every other emotion and thought.
Maybe that was overdramatizing things, but when she looked in the mirror that evening it certainly didn't feel that way.
--
She saw him on a sidewalk in Tokyo in June and threw herself into the nearest alleyway so she could properly spy on him. He looked beautiful, of course, he always had been, but there was an absence of life in his eyes that she recognized and it made her feel sick. His red hair was just as long as ever and, when he reached up to brush it aside she was sure he looked once, quickly, directly at her. Seconds later she was sure she had imagined it as Kurama had a brilliant life now and surely he didn't even remember the likes of poor, miserable, pathetic her.
He was on the front of the local newspaper three days later, labeled most famous hometown boy or some crap like that, with a black and white full body photo to match. It didn't suit him, Kurama was color, was life, and that photo made him feel dead in her mind. That didn't stop her from taping it on her fridge, along with the article about successful small businessmen. She wasn't even sure of what his career was, if she was being honest, and she didn't really read the story, merely skimmed it, zeroing in on his human name and obsessing over what it would look like if it was added to her own.
She didn't notice the article on the back of Kurama's front page spread, didn't see the news on the "Psychic Investigation", and most certainly did not become worried, especially not about herself.
--
In September she made the monumental mistake of answering her phone.
"Shizuru?!" her brother's voice was so loud it cracked in her receiver and she drew the plastic away from her ear grimacing, "Shizuru, where have you been?! Have you seen the news?!"
She really wanted to stop the call then and there, because she knew he had a degree in political science and she knew he thought she was ignorant and she really didn't need a reminder in the form of the daily fucking news. But she was tired so she simply told him "no" and waited for some explanation as to why he was so frantic, but he was talking to someone-Yukina, they're living together-and seemed to have momentarily forgotten he had her on the phone.
"Honey, I promise you everything will be okay, I'd die before I let anything happen to you. Just don't call Hiei; he'll try to kill everyone, okay?" Kazuma was practically cooing and she wondered how Yukina could stomach it. Then what he was saying hit her and it occurred to her that maybe she should turn on the news if Kazuma was swearing to protect Yukina with his life again.
But her brother was in her ear again, spewing some nonsense about "psychic exposure" and "raids" and "I'm just asking you to lay low, okay, sis?" She ignored him, in search of her remote on her hands and knees with the phone cradled between her shoulder and head. Her heart hadn't beaten this fast since Tokyo.
"…mixed reports are coming in of a captured psychic, though no one has been able to confirm," the clean cut, zombie like anchor woman was intoning, her eyes uninterested and her face the picture of womanly perfection and what the hell was going on?
She managed to get this out to Kazuma around the suffocating lump in her throat and he went off on a tirade about "Sensui was right" and "humans suck" and "intolerance" and "someone got busted bending a spoon or something, we don't know the details." The Reikai, he continued, was in a frenzy, damage control was all but failing, and Koenma had a full scale human crisis on his hands that no Tantei could handle. Humans managed to build a psychic detecting machine they called, so creatively, the Detector and they had set up special units with Trackers dedicated to the cause. "You should suppress at all times," yeah she had guessed that already, she wasn't a fucking child. And how had she missed all this anyways, had she been living under a rock?
She had been, but she wouldn't admit it, and at this point the only thing she could really do was stay there because that was safest.
Right?
--
Work required Tokyo and Tokyo meant the very real possibility of laying her hungry eyes on Kurama again.
The Crisis, as the Reikai had labeled it, wasn't exactly under control to say the least. Detector sweeps were beginning in every major city and the best she could do was suppress when she was caught in Osaka and, because she managed to stay in the crowd and under the radar-literally and figuratively-she escaped.
She both wanted to go to Tokyo-on the off chance of seeing Kurama-and wanted to wimp out, but she was afraid of making the wrong move with her boss and raising suspicions, so she agreed to go negotiate the stupid liquor deal with the stupid what's-its-name-bar in the downtown area. The trip was four hours so she got a hotel room in one of the quieter neighborhoods before going to get the papers signed, a feat she achieved in record time because she brilliantly left the top button of her blouse unbuttoned.
The walk to her hotel began devoid of human presence, something that bothered her in a city as populated and as popular as Tokyo. She wrote it off as the back roads she took and the Tuesday morning that is was because thinking it could be something else was just a little too real for her at the moment. She wandered along sidewalks lined with tiny, dark bookshops and restaurants and it never occurred to her to suppress or to look over her shoulder to see if she had attracted attention because this was Tokyo and there were millions of people there for Enma's sake. She didn't even notice the footsteps until they were on top of her and there was nowhere to run but into a solid brick wall.
The Detector was much less menacing than she thought it would be; the man was far more frightening with his black hair and his almost insanely triumphant brown eyes. He grinned wickedly at her as he took out the gun-she had heard of those, some sort of chemical imbalance neutralized psychic powers and of course the humans discovered it and created bullets that carried it-and she pressed her back against the wall and prayed for the first time since she was seven and her mother came home drunk and her father began to ignore them all.
"Well, well, well, a little girl psychic, how fun for me," he hissed and she realized his breath smelled like liquor and she wondered vaguely where all the bravery she had had seven years ago when she picked fights with demons and beat up monsters had gone and why she had let it leave.
It happened so fast she literally didn't understand it until, a minute later, she realized the Tracker's head was on the ground and his body was lying three feet away from it and bleeding profusely from the neck. She looked up, saw crimson, and started sobbing so hard she was sure she would vomit. Strong arms wrapped around her and they sank to the ground in unison, Kurama not saying a word, Shizuru babbling unintelligible apologies for putting him in that position, and the horrible silence that followed a murder blanketing everything else.
"Kurama, I-!"
He shook his head and pulled her to her feet, holding her steady when she swayed against the wall, "My apartment's not far," he murmured and she had never hated herself more than she did in that moment.
His hand was warm in hers as he lead her from the side street and into plain sight.
--
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