A/N: I wrote this ages ago so thought I'd post it—might as well. It starts off where Ketsu ended, and I hadn't read Sunset etc when I wrote it initially (I'm mainly anime-based), so it's more of a futurefic with slight alterations. Excuse me if you find bits and pieces of AUness.
Prologue
She could still remember it as if it'd happened just days before. And this was when they were all in their early twenties, with a life of endless possibilities—no future, no past, always laughing, never afraid.
The first time, it was subtle, barely noticeable. She was already in the office sorting out papers into flimsy cardboard files when her boss arrived, later than usual. When she brushed past him a soft wash of nicotine played at her nostrils.
"You stink, Orihara. Both figuratively and literally."
"I had to drink with a client, unfortunately. Those yakuzamen smoke like chimneys."
At that time she believed him and thought nothing more of it, but when she smelt it the second time she wasn't fooled. No less than a month later, when he reached for the rolodex on her table, she caught a glimpse of fingerprints blooming livid on his wrist, heavy and raw like a handcuff, and that alone was enough of a giveaway because she knew of only one man capable of imprinting them on the knowledge broker's skin. His clothes and hair reeked of nicotine. She said nothing. Some things were better left unquestioned.
The third time chained it all together; hit her hard across the face. It was a hot summer's day, the air con was broken, the office was melting and her desk seared to the touch. For a second she thought it was a tattoo and was scared he had settled to side with the yakuza, but as her eyes focused in the summer heat she could make out the visible teeth marks and mottled bruises weaving patchworks along the crook of his neck, peeping at her, taunting and deliberate, each time he flapped his shirt to cool his sweaty chest. It took no longer than seconds for Namie to realise that he was doing it on purpose to shock her and see how she'd react—but anger took over confusion before she could bite her tongue.
"Orihara, cut it out."
"What are you talking about?" He sank back deeper into his chair, eyelids hooded over a noncommittal gaze. Face and hands floated against a backdrop of dark embrace, hair and clothes blending into his black office chair.
"You're sick. It's sick. What you're doing."
"What is it that I'm doing that's making Namie-san puke? Have I missed something?"
For Christ's sake, you're fucking your enemy. When she couldn't bring herself to say it aloud and faltered, she knew she'd lost this one, because he had already disengaged himself and begun babbling Russian on his phone.
They never spoke of it again.
*.*.*
Namie Yagiri clenched her hands tight around the Honda steering wheel, stuck in a traffic jam on the Metropolitan Expressway. She listened to the sounds of J-pop rustling through the stereo, a song she'd heard millions of times before and knew the words off to by heart—Seiji's favourite.
"Don't you have anything else in the car? I can assure you I've listened to this enough to be able to sing it off by heart." A head of raven hair buried itself in the glove compartment. "No Louis Armstrong? Or Bartok's concerto? 4th movement preferably."
"I'm driving. I choose the music. Get off if you don't like it."
"Tsk tsk. Temper temper, Namie-san."
She knew Izaya Orihara preferred public transport by a mile—naturally, as it more than fulfilled his pleasures of observing humans. He rarely went anywhere by car (car drives were both too personal and boring for him), but this time he'd had no other choice since trains were down due to an "accident"—in Japan it almost always insinuated a jump-in suicide. Namie secretly wondered if her boss had been behind all this, carrying out one of his freaky schemes again, talking someone into offing themselves. She shook the thought from her head. Some things were better left unanswered.
"I hear Ikebukuro's changed a fair bit," Namie speculated, rather to herself to ease the unsettling silence stretched out between him and her, between them and the city. The car gained momentum as she drove onto the highway and entered Toshima City, screeching past the road sign dangling from the footbridge overhead.
"I'm not surprised. It's been three years."
Three years since he'd last fought with Heiwajima, three years since his eyes had faded to a dull brown.
"Three long years…"
*.*.*
When she'd found him in hospital she was sure he was dead. Never had she seen a face so pale that veins ran like maps underneath the skin, limbs wrapped up in so many layers of gauze they stuck by his sides like cotton buds mottled with blood. He looked a ghost. But even as he was being wheeled off to the emergency room she thought she saw him wink past the oxygen mask—a weak, flutter of the eyelid, but a mischievous wink all the same.
"What an idiot."
She got to know him more than she should've, perhaps. In the following months after the incident, she dropped by twice a week to check up on how her post-operative employer was doing—any sign of potential demise and she'd be job-hunting at full throttle. The space around Izaya's bed was the emptiest in the ward, lacking flowers and get well gifts, devoid of human contact, devoid of love. Not one soul came to visit him (not even Heiwajima to finish him off, much to her surprise), and even Namie herself only paid visits on the grounds that she'd get paid in return, for her acts of kindness were affixed entirely to Seiji's entitlement. But what disturbed her more was the fact that he did not seem to care as he stared at the ceiling, looking for patterns in its cracks to kill time. The head nurse would always give her a stern look, telling her that if Mr. Orihara did not start rehab soon, his ability to walk would be gone for good; she did the best she could to convince him, but she knew he was wounded worst in the heart, not the legs.
"Here's your daily dosage." She rattled an ocean of pills in her palm, the other hand on her hips. "Anything you want me to bring next time I pop in? Films, music, books—"
"Ah, Namie-san, you think I have arms to hold books with? I hired you because I thought you knew better." He rolled his eyes up to the headboard. A wound breeding gruesome on the edge of his lips painted a tired, impish grin on his disinterested face. "Oh, and when you leave, keep the curtains open, please."
*.*.*
She knew three years was the longest he'd keep still before he went stirring up trouble again. Hadn't his eyes been telling her all this time? The way the spark in his eyes had retreated into pupils that were gaping voids of prolonged boredom. Inertia could not kill a man, but it could kill Izaya Orihara. Ikebukuro was his fix, and the man that stood at its heart his vice.
"I still don't get why you're venturing back into this place." Namie shook her head yet again. "It's not for you." It nearly got you killed, for God's sake… He nearly got you killed.
"All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy," Izaya drawled sarcastically, fiddling with the ring on his finger. "Boredom kills, Namie." She glimpsed his reflection in the wing mirror grinning at her.
"We're getting there soon, another three kilos." Squinting, she read the road sign waning behind the haze of taillights awakening in twilight.
"I highly doubt it. You know, I reckon it'd be faster if I walked from here." His silver ring rapped against the windowsill as he drummed his fingers in time to the music. She gave him a hard sidelong look.
"We are on a highway. The exit's not till another kilo or so."
"Yes. So?"
"Stay put."
"You were telling me to get off five minutes ago, next thing you know you're telling me to keep still. Clearly you've got problems."
"You'd be mad if you—hey! What do you think you're doing? Orihara!"
The last thing she caught was the scarlet glimmer of mischief in his eyes—a premonition of raw violence and ragged pleasure. He melted into the sunset, his silhouette shrinking on the horizon as he blended in with the crows perched on the powerlines dangling between pylons; indistinguishable, undefined, out of reach.
The vow of silence was broken.
Thanks for reading. Reviews, one-liners, suggestions, requests, criticism—they are all welcome.