NXYZ 001 Fic Exchange
Title: Ghostly Dealings
Written for: Grenouille-85
Special Message: Grenny-kun~ You have a really awesome brain to have thought of this kind of prompt. I was taken by it the moment I read it. XD Although it might not be exactly what you had in mind, I hope I did it and you justice. Oh, and please do excuse my very poor writing skills. =D
Pairings/Genres/Rating: Kaidoh/OC, Supernatural/Romance?, rated K+
Beta: CarnettRose
A/N: How long has it been since I've written an OC? And a PoT OC, at that? So for all of you out there that are going to smash me over the head with a hammer, sorry? I never said my writing was good, and my OCs are even worse. T__T Anyways, does anyone ever notice how I always write way too much?
Disclaimer: Let's be reasonable now, shall we?
Kaidoh hesitantly looked around the small shop; his shoulders hunched over in his usual viper pose even though he wasn't playing tennis. Far from it, actually. Taking another look at the black silk curtains and fabrics strewn everywhere in the shop, he wondered again what the hell he was doing there.
All of a sudden, he heard a slight rustling from his right. Nearly jumping towards the sound, he tried not to scream as something brushed against his leg. Was it going to eat him? Was it one of those weird parasites that ate through peoples legs and hatched babies in their stomachs? Still frozen in his place, he saw his life flash before his eyes when suddenly he heard a soft humming.
Was he hearing the heavenly choir welcoming him to the place of death? No, he was far too young to die this way. In fact, this sound actually seemed sort of familiar, as if it were like...
Was the parasite purring?
He looked down at last, releasing a huge breath of relief when he saw it was just some stray black kitty nuzzling his leg. He felt a little more than embarrassed as he reached down tenderly to pat it on its cute little head. The kitty purred again.
"A Customer!" The shrill, high-pitched voice shocked Kaidoh into shooting straight up into a stick again. The kitty pouted and meandered off, leaving Kaidoh a little disappointed. But soon he had something else nuzzling him.
"Oh, it's a customer!" The stout old lady cried in joy as she put her arms around him and gave him a big squeeze. Kaidoh tried not to push her off (because that would be disrespectful, and the last thing Kaidoh wanted to be was disrespectful), but it was tempting. As the little old lady in the white apron continued to marvel on how it was just so wonderful to have a customer, Kaidoh waited patiently for the little pause in which she would take a breath.
"Fssssssh." He fit in as she took a mighty breath. "Is uh, Hashino-san here?" he asked. Tensing up, he then relaxed as the old lady finally let go of him.
"Hashino-san?" she thought out loud while taking a few steps back. Kaidoh paled. She didn't even know her own employees? Or was it that he had come to the wrong store?
"Oh!" The old lady (who was actually probably just a little over forty) cried. "You mean Yuuri?" And before Kaidoh could shrug, she was off again, disappearing behind one of the many black curtains.
Kaidoh looked around for the kitty again, but all he saw were tons and tons of shelves with dozens of things dangling precariously off the edges. Directing his eyes down to the ground, he reminded himself for the thousandth time to never take advice from his senpai. Or anyone, for that matter, excluding his family.
"--and he's so cute, too!"
Kaidoh wasn't too surprised that he could still hear snippets of what the mad old lady was saying. It didn't stop him from looking away embarrassedly though, feeling half-annoyed yet half-happy. He hadn't changed much over the last few years other than growing a little taller, but he was now in his first year of college and some people were actually starting to pay a little attention to his looks. He still had that fierce gaze and crazy eyes, of course, but he had given up wearing his bandanna when he wasn't working out and he gave off an almost bad-boy 'dangerous' look that a couple of girls, well, enjoyed looking at.
The curtains rustled again and soon the old lady came back out with someone else behind her. Well, it could have been a someone, but it looked a little more like a something.
"Good morning." The thing turned out to be a shuffling mass of gray cloth that seemed to only go up to Kaidoh's chin. Over all of the person's body was draped an unimaginable amount of gray fabric. It was something that Kaidoh was definitely not used to. Two black eyes bore through the cloths and Kaidoh glared back at them, a reflexive response to any intense stares he might accumulate.
"...Morning." Muttering, he let out a low hiss and underneath five tons of gray cloth, something flinched.
"So!" The old lady's voice shocked the two, being at least two octaves higher than theirs. And Kaidoh took a second to wonder how he knew that her "So!" had an exclamation point at the end. She was just that sort of person, he supposed. "What did you call Yuuri-chan for?" she said, trying to cheer up the desolate atmosphere.
"Fssssssh." He wondered if there was still enough time to back out. He could still just turn around and walk back home at that very moment, without ever having to look back or ever need to enter that shop again. But then he thought of what was waiting for him back home, or what might be waiting for him, and he shook his head. "I need an... exorcism." he finally said.
The two black eyes (still the only human feature he had seen of this bundle yet) blinked. "Exorcism?" Her voice was lower and deeper than the normal girl's voice, but it still sounded clear and almost... smooth?
Embarrassed at having to talk about it, Kaidoh looked away and hissed lightly again. "Isn't that what I said?"
The eyes took on an annoyed glint. "Where did you hear about me?"
Kaidoh thought of a certain grinning upperclassman with a pair of unmistakable glasses. "A senpai of mine." he grunted.
"Hm." Said the lump.
There was silence for a while. And just as Kaidoh was about to leave and never come back, the girl-lump shuffled towards him.
"I'll do it." The hard black eyes caught his for a brief moment before she shuffled right past him and out the door.
"You better follow her." The old lady smiled up at him. "Or else she'll just go to the first house she feels that harbours a spirit and then you'll have a lot of explaining to do." She winked once and patted his back before disappearing again.
And that was when Kaidoh wondered if Inui-senpai was the real prankster of Seigaku.
"So this is where you live?" The gray bundle turned its gaze onto Kaidoh.
He nodded slightly with a small hiss. It wasn't much, but it was his home. His parents had bought the little two-storey house just for him when he graduated. It was tough keeping up the rent and not relying on them, but Kaidoh Kaoru was not by any means weak. He was proud of what he had accomplished, and he was even thinking that maybe one day when Hazue graduated, Kaidoh would have enough money to get an apartment and let his little brother feel the strain and responsibility of owning his own house.
"Why do you always do that?" Kaidoh almost didn't hear her amidst his dreams of little Hazue becoming a real man.
"What?" he asked, glaring down at her without meaning to.
The bundle took a step back. "You know, that snake thing." She was trying to avoid having to make the weird noise, Kaidoh could tell.
For some reason, Kaidoh didn't feel very comfortable with her getting all curious about him. He wasn't really that used to strangers, let alone gray piles of clothing, and those eyes were a little bit more intense than he would've liked. So he frowned and put up a front. "Why are you a lump of gray rags?" he shot back as he turned to unlock the front door. Swinging it open, he held it for her as she walked--no, rather shuffled through the doorway silently. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and slammed the door closed.
"Candles?" Kaidoh looked at them dryly. "I'm paying you money to light candles in my house?"
"These," the lump's eyes frowned at him, "are not candles. They are incense sticks, something commonly used to calm down the atmosphere and the spirit."
"Fsssssh. I don't want it to calm down. I want it to run away screaming and never come back." Kaidoh leaned against the wall as she ignored him, lighting incense sticks at different points in the room.
He watched as she moved around the living room with a sort of grace that came along with being layered down with lots of clothing. Her feet hardly made any noises as she moved, which made him wonder if she was also a ghost herself. He'd never know.
There were a lot of things he didn't know about her. They hadn't even called each other by their names yet, and she had already been in his house for half an hour. He didn't know why she wore what she did, why she did it, or even if that was what she wore every day. She was a total mystery to him, and he didn't mind it staying that way. All he knew was that she was a fine exorcist, her name was Hashino Yuuri, and she worked at the black magic store Edge of Darkness (all things that had been happily provided by Inui-senpai's data).
As she placed the last incense stick in an empty vase which he had taken out of his kitchen, she turned around and headed for the door. Kaidoh was there at least two steps ahead of her, blocking the exit with a firm scowl on his face. "Fssssssh. Where do you think you're going?"
She looked up at him snappily. "Home. The incense needs to rest for a while to cool down the tone of the house and if I'm lucky, you."
"So you're just leaving me here?" He snapped, glaring fiercely into her eyes, and she averted hers briefly. Feeling just the smallest bit satisfied, he crossed his arms over his chest.
"I'll come back tomorrow." She said it like it was her court date. "And you've only heard weird sort of whispering noises at night and rattling objects, right? It can't be that bad of a spirit." Had he'd been able to see it, she would have shrugged.
"Tomorrow?" Kaidoh's voice rose slightly, and he was almost positive that this lump of a person had to be related to that damn Momoshiro somehow. "But I can't sleep with all those whisperings going around me! Fssssssh, it's like they're planning to kill me or something."
"Call me if you need any help getting to sleep." She merely replied. And while Kaidoh spluttered and blushed, the little bastard of a lump slipped right past him and through the door.
"Hello?"
"Fsssssssh."
"Not asleep yet?"
"I can't."
"Normal people your age would have better things to do than call an exorcist at ten on a Friday night, you know. You could've gone to a party or a bar or something. Try staying at a friend's house, if you even have one. It's not like you're unable to leave or something."
"...But I am."
"What?"
"A little while after you left, I heard something break in my room. Turns out the window had shattered and now I have to sit next to it until the day after tomorrow when the people will come and fix it."
"So you can't sleep in both senses of the phrase."
"Fssssssh."
"Well, that's too bad. I'm in a club now with my friends and I'm having too good a time to have to bother with tucking you into bed."
"Yeah right. There's nothing but silence on your end of the line. I can hear you lying through your teeth all the way over here."
"Then maybe you should get your hearing checked. Good night."
The first thing he said when he opened the door the next day was, "Fsssssssh. You hung up on me."
She was dressed the exact same way again, gray rags and strips of clothing covering every inch of her body except for her eyes, which glared darkly at him. Ignoring him, she glided past and checked some of the incense candles.
"Oi." He held the still-open door and hissed. "Can you watch the window for me? I need to get some duct tape."
"You haven't slept at all last night, have you?" She stared at the circles under his eyes and he turned away. "But you don't have to, since I have some in my bag." She lifted up a small black duffel bag and shook it, rattling the contents inside.
"You carry duct tape around with you?" he asked dubiously but chose to close the door. As he walked to where she was digging around, he raised an eyebrow. "Fsssssh. It's surprising to see your bag isn't gray as well."
"Look." She stood up and fixed the most intense glare she'd put on him yet. "I don't like having to do this, and you definitely don't like this whole 'ghosts' thing. But this is my job, and I'm serving you, so the least you can do for me is show a little bit of respect and just try and be professional. It might not kill you, believe it or not. And if it did, it'd at least be less painful than me poking out your kidney with an incense stick." She threw the duct tape at him and it was only because of his body's natural reflexes that he was able to catch it.
Nodding dumbly, he moved to his room, careful to keep his mouth shut. Had this been a few years ago, he probably would've hissed at her and encouraged the fight to go and escalate into something that he would definitely regret. But if that damned Momoshiro had taught him anything, it was that losing your anger was just a waste of time on people like their kind. Hissing, he trudged up the stairs to temporarily fix the huge hole in his bedroom window.
As he tore off the last piece of tape, a small breeze floated in and brushed past his cheek. Freezing up, he carefully looked up, right, and left. Sticking the tape to the window, all sorts of weird thoughts started to cloud around his head. Looking right and left again, his eyes opened wide.
"What if it was the spirit?"
"Hm?" She looked up from where she was examining an incense stick at him, who had very carefully come down the stairs.
"You know." He flushed a little bit at having to reveal his worries. "What if it was the spirit that made my window break?"
She unhurriedly put the incense stick down, appearing to be in thought. "Are you sure? From what I heard from you, it seems to be just a small spirit that's trapped in here, not some troublemaker."
"Fsssssh." He let out a small breath of relief but his worries weren't all gone yet. "...I guess so."
She looked at him strangely. "Are you scared of this little ghost?"
Red attacked at his cheeks. "Fssssh, what are you talking about? I'm just worried about my uh, other windows." He looked away quickly and started moving towards the kitchen.
"You're scared." She said the last word with an emotion he'd never heard of from her. Was that laughter? Mockery?
He hissed and opened the refrigerator as she shuffled slowly to the kitchen as well. Busying himself with hiding behind the door, he fumbled with the jars and dishes before finally pulling out a bottle of water. He tried to avoid her gaze and calm down his emotions as she stopped a few metres away, her gray cloths still swaying from the movement.
"So that's why you needed me so urgently." Her voice had that emotion in it again. She couldn't be taunting him... could she? "You can't even sleep with it! I can't believe it." She shook her head slowly.
Slamming down the cap onto the bottle, he glared at her. His glare didn't quite hit its mark though, since it died about halfway to its target. He could tell from those small black eyes that she wasn't taunting him or even mocking him.
No, she was just... amused?
He flushed and slammed down the bottle, hissing. "It's... it's none of your business."
She gave a small little laugh and Kaidoh fought down the urge to laugh with her. It was something weird, laughing. Kaidoh Kaoru just didn't laugh. It was unimaginable.
"Well then, I guess I better get going at the barriers." She laughed once more before shuffling silently out of the kitchen, chuckling lightly to herself.
Was it such a big deal? Sure, he had a bit of an intimidating face, but everyone had their quirks right?
Kaidoh told himself that yes; he was perfectly normal and downed the rest of the water. Hissing lowly, he took a few deep breaths and skulked out.
"What are you doing now?" He asked with a raised eyebrow. He watched as she laid little pieces of wood around his furniture and in his living room. She made a small little circle roughly the size of half a single's court and went around the circle, sprinkling little bits of incense on the already smelly pieces of wood.
"Making a barrier for the séance." she replied after setting a small round candle in the middle of the circle.
"Séance?" Kaidoh moved cautiously towards the circle, making sure to look around in all directions for any traces of the spirit.
Taking a match and lighting the candle, she nodded. "All exorcists have different ways of going around with their business. Some use holy water, some use Ouija boards, and some even use salt purification. I prefer calming down the spirit and just talking with them." She blew out the match.
"You sure seem to be talking a lot today, that's for sure. Fsssssh, are you practising for the main event?" He lifted one of the corners of his mouth up slightly. She had given him the cold shoulder in the beginning, but she didn't seem like the talkative type, so he hadn't really known what to make of it.
She gave him a light glare. "Turn off the lights, will you?"
"Fssssssh." He flicked off the lights and closed the curtains as to give maximum darkness. His eyes searched for the candle in the dim room and he moved closer to it, sitting in front of it across from her.
Slowly, she removed the scarf around her head and a few stray locks of long hair escaped out of her bun. Whether her hair was black or dark brown he couldn't tell in the dimness, but he couldn't help but want to find out. Preferably by running his fingers through it--no, wait, what was he thinking about? Obviously, the dim lighting was making his head hurt.
He watched as she loosened the cloths around her mouth, his eyes widening with a low hiss of surprise as she uncovered her arms. Scars, big ones and little ones, ran across them criss-crossing each other and he turned away, his stomach queasy. The ugly mutilations covered almost every inch of her arms and surely had brought immense amounts of pain to her. Some of them looked fresh while others were worn out and looked almost as if they were years old. Was this why she covered herself? Wasn't this some kind of sickness? He was afraid to look into her eyes and he had to stop himself from reaching out and shaking some sense into her.
Are you stupid? he wanted to scream. You're sick! Go get some professional help! But his mouth dried up and he couldn't do anything but watch as she rolled up her sleeves and pulled out a few things from her bag.
She started to examine her arms, seemingly totally okay with the scarred mess that was supposed to be her limbs. Pressing one part of her right arm, she nodded before taking out a knife from her bag.
He didn't even have time to think before he shot out his arm and grabbed her hand that held the knife, stopping her movements completely. She winced at how hard he was holding her fist, but she tried to shake him off nevertheless.
"What are you doing?" he hissed angrily, breaking the silence. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Her eyes widened a little and he wondered how he had never seen the dullness behind those dark orbs.
Finally snatching her hand back, she cradled it, "I'm doing my job, that's what." She glared at him and opened and clenched her fist, getting the blood back into it. "I need to drop some blood in the candle to get this going."
"Are you joking?" He reached for her knife but she held it away from him. "What kind of sick business are you in? And what about those big scars, then?"
Her eyes looked ashamed for all of two seconds before she pulled back from him. "The bigger the spirit is, the more blood I need to start the contract." She rubbed one of the bigger scars unconsciously. "It's not something I can help."
Kaidoh's mind swirled. He didn't know whether to believe her or not. And what was this about contracts? It was all too much, the supernatural world. As he stared at her, he wondered how she survived this business. She couldn't be any bigger than him and she was already bearing these horrible scars that she'd have for the rest of her life. And what about her friends? Did they understand that she wasn't mentally ill, but just very loyal to her job? Did she even have friends?
With a jolt, Kaidoh realized that that girl would never be able to live a normal life. From the way she had to dress to her business, she had been forced into oddity. The thought made him feel the littlest bit sad for her.
"Don't do it." he said, surprised at how gentle his own voice sounded.
She let out a small choked, bitter laugh. "What are you talking about? The contract needs blood, and I'm used to it."
After a period of silence, Kaidoh hissed. He stretched out his arm over the candle to her, his eyes totally fixed onto hers. "Then take mine."
Her mouth dropped open and there was more silence.
"Fssssssh. Just do it already." Kaidoh frowned, squeezing his other hand in a ball to get ready for the pain.
Her face scrunched into a pained expression. "Don't pity me." she said, but her voice betrayed her, diving into a whisper on the last word.
"Hashino-san." Kaidoh shook his outstretched arm. "Hurry up."
With surprising delicacy, she broke his gaze and cleaned down his skin, swabbing it with alcohol to prevent infections. She lowered the knife and cut the smallest part of his skin and a shiver ran through his body. It wasn't of pain, although the wound did sting a little.
There just had been something so intimate about the situation that made him blush. Still, he watched her intently as she took some of the blood in a dropper and smoothed down a bandage onto his wound. As he took back his arm, she took the opportunity to swipe at the corner of her eye. He pretended not to notice. She then dropped the drop of blood onto the candle.
A strange smelling smoke began to trail out of the candle and she began to chant softly, her voice becoming stronger and clearer with each word she spoke until she motioned for them to hold hands around the candle and she closed her eyes on the last word, stretching it out. He watched as a wisp of her hair curled around her face before closing his eyes as well.
"Are you there, spirit?" She spoke in a strange lilt that made her sound as if she was speaking a different language. There was more silence before a soft, light humming filled the room.
"Spirit?" she called out gently.
"Yes?"
Kaidoh jumped as he heard the small, low voice. He couldn't tell where it had come from, but he didn't dare open his eyes.
"What is your name?" She gave his hand a light squeeze and Kaidoh relaxed a little, still tense.
"My name is Toma."
His deep voice seemed to not come from one direction but instead circle the both of them, making Kaidoh shiver.
"Good morning, Toma-san. I am Hashino, Hashino Yuuri. I come with no thoughts of harm, but just of a small plea. Would you mind finding another home? I'm afraid this one is already occupied. If you do not comply though, I will have to remove you with force." How did she stay so calm while talking to ghosts? Kaidoh couldn't help but respect the girl a little for what she had to do.
"...Well. I suppose I'll have to, then."
And with that, a huge breeze entered the room and the candle was blown out. Kaidoh opened his eyes immediately, his eyes searching in the darkness for any sighting of the spirit. He didn't realize he was shaking until there were hands on both sides of his face, holding him still.
"Stop moving, you're going to knock over the candle." she said. Kaidoh could only nod. The hands left his face and he was surprised to feel a little cold without their presence on his face. Soon enough, the lights were turned on again and he was sitting all by himself in front of the candle, blinking to get his eyes to readjust.
Yuuri had put all her gray cloths on already, surprisingly fast. She looked at him with worry.
"Are you okay? You look a little pale."
Kaidoh Kaoru doesn't faint. He didn't faint. He just felt a little tired.
One week later, a package arrived at the Edge of Darkness. It was a small brown parcel that stood out on the black countertop of the cashier. It was addressed to Hashino Yuuri with no return address.
Inside the box laid twenty rolls of gauze of all different sorts of sizes and shapes as well as disinfectant and bandaids. The only thing all these had in common was that they were all a very dull shade of gray. Underneath one of the biggest rolls of waterproof gauze was a little white envelope. It held a few thousand yen inside and on the back there was a very mean-looking snake, hissing while resting on a gray rock.