Author's Note: Takes place during the anime storyline, after Namie becomes Izaya's secretary but before the end of the series when Masaomi visits Saki in the hospital. This will be a relatively short story, about three chapters long. Trying to experiment with shorter stories since I have the uncanny ability to make my other ones stretch on for a seemingly endless period of time, and I wanted to be able to finish something. /rambling
Hope you enjoy.
chapter one ; she draws them in effortlessly before the kill
It is not exactly by choice or by habit that he chances by the hospital – an infrequent visit to Saki is all it is supposed to be. And he is in the middle of leaving, anyways. At least he is supposed to be. Maybe because of his morbid sense of curiosity and his hobby of observation, he decides to wander a little. Meandering through the halls of white-coated doctors and nurses, the smell of sterility is strangely sickening. He can understand the resentment many feel toward being in such a place. The faces might be smiling but there is no happiness.
And he is beginning to bore of this little visit of his, when he discovers the stairs leading up to the rooftop. It is a split-second decision that he never expects to bring any fruition to his efforts in finding something to entertain himself with. Yet as he reaches the top and steps out into the wind, he is satisfied to discover another person.
Although all he can see is her back, and she seems to be standing by the edge, grasping the rails with those trembling hands of hers. He has seen this sight a million times before, someone standing on the brink of deciding whether or not to jump. It excites him. And at first, all he does is wait in anticipation. Will she have the courage or will she falter?
Yet the longer he waits, the more he begins to understand that she is not making the decision at all. She just remains there in limbo, waiting for something – a sign, perhaps, to tell her what it is that she should do.
As is the very nature of Izaya Orihara, he strolls up behind her and offers some ill-intended advice, "If you're going to jump, it's better to just close your eyes and lean forward. Get it over with." Although it sounds cruel, he offers her a smile, as a polite buffer to those word.
The girl greets him with two stony-gray eyes. "Jumping?" she wonders out loud in a soprano voice. "Ah, you thought I was going to...? No, no – I was bird watching."
"Watching birds while standing on the railing? Balancing yourself precariously?" he prompts her for some honesty. Although, as Izaya reasons inwardly, some of the people in the hospital are not entirely there in the head. And this could be one of them.
"I wouldn't jump," she responds to him. Not in a terse way, but in a strangely dreamy, wistful sort of way. She is certainly an oddity. "Unless, maybe, there was someone to catch me. Then I wouldn't mind."
Definitely one of those with a few screws loose, but that does not mean he cannot enjoy himself. "And why wouldn't you jump?" He eyes her curiously, that voice of his taking on a cunning, persuasive undertone. It almost seems that, by asking the question, he is going to convince her to change her mind – to decide that she wants to jump, after all.
"There's no reason for me not to," she admits, "But I don't see any reason for me to do so, either."
"Being in this hospital isn't reason enough?" It is less of a question than a statement, because Izaya understands the minds of those cooped up like birds in a cage. They seek freedom, even if it means death. And he suspects that, though a little off her rocker, this girl is no different.
But she just smiles and shakes her head. "Nope,that's a terrible reason. Not that I am here by choice, but there is a good reason for me being here. Although I probably shouldn't be telling a stranger like this, I'm pretty sly."
He suspects otherwise. She seems too clumsy to have any manner of cunning. "Hm? What is likable about a hospital? The rules, the food, the check-ups, blood-drawing, iv-drips..." His voice trails off as he looks to her for any indication of faltering in her belief that hospitals have any merit beyond a practical one.
"Yeah, I don't like any of those." She sighs. "It probably isn't something that you would be able to understand... You're not a patient, are you? So are you here visiting someone then? Your mom? Your sister? Your girlfriend?"
"Hm? Why couldn't it be my brother? Or my father? Or my-"
"I... I really don't think you have a boyfriend...?"
"...my son."
Her face flushes in embarrassment. "U-uh... So you are visiting your child..."
Izaya smirks wryly. "I never said anything like that~ you were wrong on all accounts."
Confused as to what he means, the girl assumes, "So then if it's none of those, who are you visiting? A friend?" Her face twists into a quizzical expression as she peers over at him with some measure of apprehension, as though she is starting to think that he is the one with a few screws loose.
"Hm. That's not quite it either..."
"You're not here just to ogle the nurses in uniform, are you? Or maybe you have a thing for hospital gowns?"
Ignoring the question, as he deems it a stupid one to begin with, Izaya steps up to the railing and leans over to peer down at the people below. From so far above, they look like ants. "You're not really bird watching." He says it like he knows. And he probably does.
"No, maybe I'm not. People watching, I guess? They could be birds, seeing them from way up here." She sighs to herself as she looks down with him and outstretches one of her hands, extending her thumb and twisting it as though she is squishing something mid-air. "Don't they look a bit like little bugs? It makes you feel powerful. Like a god, right?"
As he had expected – although in a roundabout way, she is just as predictable as the others. "So you're watching people from above to feel a sense of power over them because you're physically at a higher height than they are? You think that by doing this, you're above them? That you are better than they are?"
"Hm. Is my thought process that complicated?" Even she does not seem to know. "I just came up here because I wanted some fresh air. It was suffocating in that room with all those people. When visiting hours are over, I'll go back down."
"Avoiding your doting family?"
It almost sounds like he is fishing for information about her to satiate his curiosity, but the girl seems to understand his game. And so, as though she wishes to be the one with the power, she strings him along without ever really answering for certain. "Or maybe I was here because I wanted to jump, after all?" She grins as she peers over at him, offering little more than a shrug. "Then again, maybe I came up here without knowing at all. Isn't that true human nature? To act in ways that are predictable with thought processes too complicated to decode?"
His brows lift as he leans toward her, his eyes studying hers. "Oh? Interesting." And it is not often, certainly not in such an abrupt situation like this, that he deems anything worthy of his attention. Yet there is something about her that he deems to be insightful.
"Well, enough with the philosophical banter – I should be getting back before they go searching for me. Not much longer until visiting hours are over, right? If I'm lucky, maybe they will have already cleared out by then."
And yet he still does not know why she seems to like the hospital, despite her aversion to the needles and every other unfortunate accompaniment to them. So, while she is eager to leave, Izaya is eager to know more. "Izaya Orihara," he says, finally introducing himself.
The girl slowly steps away from the railing, but pauses before she turns toward the door. Those gray eyes of hers stare him down, her brown hair billowing in the wind that sweeps across the rooftop. "That's your name, huh? I'll be sure to remember it." She smiles at him.
"And yours?" he prompts.
"I get bored here a lot. If you come to the hospital again, come back to the rooftop. If I'm here, I'll tell you my name."
It is an indirect way of her commanding him to visit again. And while he does not expect her to be sly, Izaya supposes that, perhaps, she is not as innocent and naïve as she comes across. Maybe she is a mischievous little thing after all. Judging by her appearance, she probably isn't much younger than he is. Barely out of high school, he assumes.
The door slams in the distance as she leaves from the rooftop. After casting a final glance down at the people bustling below, Izaya finally deems it time for him to leave. He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his fur-lined jacket and heads toward the door. And just maybe this won't be his last visit to the hospital this week.
Because, although he does not come here by choice or by habit, now there is something interesting enough to garner his attention and change that. Maybe in the future, he will be coming by choice, compelled by curiosity and boredom to discover the secrets of that girl, who remains as an enigma of mystery to him.
When he returns to his office, it is late in the day. Namie is taking a break from her secretarial duties to enjoy a steaming cup of coffee. And either it is extremely bitter, or she is bitter upon seeing him, because her face scrunches up in a look of disgust.
"Ah, what's that for, Namie-san~?" he questions her with a sly, lopsided smirk.
After she composes herself, she sets the mug down on the coffee table and glares at him. "You didn't remember that someone was coming earlier? You missed the appointment and I had to entertain your 'guest.' If I ever have to do that again..."
It is not often that anything ever skips his mind, but Izaya supposes that he was too enamored with the strange girl whose answers proved to be little more than a run-around game. Still, he is not about to offer Namie an apology. Instead, he plops himself down on the couch adjacent from where she is standing, and he smiles up at her. "That aside, Namie-san, what do you think of hospitals and their patients?"
She quirks a brow at him. Is this another trick question? "Why are you asking me something like that?" But it is pointless in questioning Izaya, who will just turn it right back around on her. So before he answers, she has already given up. "What is there to think about them? They exist to treat the sick and the injured, which are the patients."
"Ah, yes, but aren't patients strangely predictable?"
For a moment, she ponders this question and gives a slow nod. "I suppose, given that they usually all have something in common, they could be considered predictable. At least by your standards. But–"
"But there are exceptions? Is that what you were going to say, Namie-san?" And by predicting that, he seems to discredit the possibility that anyone is beyond his calculations. Yet even Izaya Orihara is aware that there are those out there worthy of his interest. People who do not allow themselves to be ruled by conventional human nature, who defy the norms and challenge him for a better understanding.
And while he has not quite classified the girl from earlier as one of these, the fact that she could possibly prove to be one of those aforementioned people is enough to leave him anticipating their next meeting. Yet time and coincidence are unpredictable things, and despite Izaya's intention to meet her again just a few days later, the rooftop proves to be devoid of any other people. And while it chagrins him to be forced to do so, he loiters for a while. When she does not show up, he goes wandering through the halls, but no matter where he goes, he sees not even so much as a glimpse of her.
Izaya Orihara is not the type of person to make ill-use of time, and so he only wastes one day aimlessly wandering. By the next day, he has preoccupied himself with his hobby – an arrangement with Celty for the delivery of a girl he has been communicating with through suicide chat rooms for some time. And while it is supposed to prove entertaining for him, it is largely disappointing because she proves as predictable as every other he has done this same routine with.
A couple days pass into a week, and given nothing better to do, he winds up visiting Saki again. It is short-lived as he confirms that Masaomi still has not found the courage to step into her room and see her. Izaya tires of the visit quickly and makes haste to leave. And it is as he is leaving that he swings by – unintentionally, perhaps – the staircase leading up to the rooftop. No one seems to be lingering near it and he hasn't the patience to wander up and loiter any longer. So he turns to leave.
"Orihara-kun," someone calls out from behind him.
He turns, recognizing that voice despite having only heard it once. "Oh ya?"
The girl with gray eyes waves at him as she approaches, still wearing the hospital gown that she was clad in the last time he saw her. A week seems not to have made a difference, neither in her complexion nor in her condition – since she is apparently still hospitalized. "So even though you have an odd name, I guess you gave me your real one, huh? Or you wouldn't have responded to it."
An odd question to ask. "You thought it was an alias," he surmises.
"Well, more like a pen name or maybe a user name online. Something like that?" She shakes her head, her long, flowing hair bouncing around her shoulders. Then the girl motions towards the stairs and takes the first step. "If you have time, come with me to the rooftop."
Although he knows well enough to see that he is being strung along by her, Izaya does not contest it. He follows after he because the desire to know is stronger than his pride or ego, which will ultimately swell, anyways, when he finds out the answers that he has been seeking.
It is cold again on the rooftop with the wind whipping about. The girl does not seem bothered by it. She heads straight for the railing, to peer down at the unsuspecting people below – patients and visitors alike. "Since you came, I owe you my name this time, don't I?"
"A real name," he clarifies with a grin, half-suspecting she will try to give him an alias – since she suspected that's what he had done.
"Ah, you caught me. Well, then, you can call me Megumi." Strangely, the name seems to fit her. "My surname, hm... How about Takano? I like the sound of that. Yeah... I want to be Megumi Takano." And even though he had intended for her real name, it doesn't seem like she is willing to offer it.
"Hm, don't want to give away your name?"
"Ah – Megumi is my real name. But what is the importance of a name, anyways? You could call me by the color of my hair and it wouldn't matter. Isn't it kind of weird how people put such value in something so insignificant?" She frowns to herself. "I'm like that, too."
"It's human nature." Although it interests him to see someone conscious of the hypocrisy of man.
A small sigh escapes her lips as she leans her chin down against the cold steel rail. "Down there are a lot of couples. I see them sometimes, when I go to the courtyard – not often, you know. But they walk hand-in-hand a lot."
He watches the expression on her face, wistful and lamenting. For as much as she tries to hide about herself, Izaya is gradually starting to understand what lies behind that facade she is giving him. "You feel envious watching them," he guesses easily, "You wish you could be one of them... Don't you?"
The fact that he is able to read her fairly easily startles Megumi as she jerks upright, frowning as she averts her eyes. "Envious? I don't know if that's the word. If I could be one of them, would I be happy? I don't know that, either."
"That's just an excuse."
"Yeah. It is." Megumi steps away from the railing and plops down on the ground. Her cheeks are flushed red from the cold and goosebumps seem to cover her arms as she tries furiously to rub the chill away from her skin.
Izaya is not the kind of gentleman to offer his coat so he ignores her actions. He is not unused to being around women who try to use such behavior to elicit sympathy, but he feels little sympathy for those who cannot be independent themselves. Nor is he so easily susceptible to such simple seduction. "So then, Megumi-chan," he calls her familiarly, "What is it that so bothers you? There is something that doesn't satisfy you about family clamoring around your bedside. That's why you escaped from them last time. But you feel resentful of the couples when you watch them together. You're lonely, aren't you?"
His incessant questions do not seem to bother her, even as he leans down toward her. The fur of his coat tickles against her cheek as he settles down beside her. Megumi shivers under the feel of it as she continues rubbing at her arms, creating some warmth as she huddles her knees against her chest.
"I do feel lonely," she tells Izaya honestly. "Is there a person in a hospital that doesn't feel lonely?"
"Then why not jump?" The same question he asked last time, when she told him that she had something worth keeping her here at the hospital. And he still itches to know what that is, because it is quite clearly not her family, no matter how loving they appear to be. He suppose that it could be for the purpose of treatment, because she is anxious to leave. Yet there is an underlying belief that he has that there is something more to it than that.
Megumi is sighing again. "The world wouldn't stop turning just because I jumped. People would keep on going like nothing happened, even if my family cried over it. Doing something like that wouldn't make anyone notice me."
"So you want to be noticed." He smirks – she has finally given him something to use, to lead him to an answer.
"More like... I don't want to be forgotten." Megumi outstretches her fingers, long and pale as they are, and reaches into the wind like she is trying to grasp something invisible. "What will the world remember about a girl who jumps to her death? I probably wouldn't even make it to the evening news. And if I did, it would be forgotten tomorrow morning anyways, when something more gruesome happens."
It is surprisingly a little more dull than Izaya had expected. He stares at her from the side, the expression of melancholy on her face. The worries she has are just like any other person who thinks about death. But no matter how much she concerns herself with it, it won't change the fact. True, no one will remember her in the end. She is just an ordinary human, someone who won't be able to make a lasting mark on history. No one will ever know that she lived. That is how it goes for most.
But then she says something that is a little out of the ordinary. "I wonder how I could die that would make him remember."
"Him?" Izaya repeats, finally beginning to understand what it is that keeps her from jumping – what keeps her at this hospital. "It isn't that you don't want to be forgotten by the world – but you want to be remembered by a particular person. A person that doesn't even notice you." It is an easy guess, judging from how she speaks about this mystery guy.
Although, to some degree, Izaya has to admit his own disappointment. Love? That is what ties her to the world? He supposes that it is one of the more unpredictable emotions that rule human nature, not governed by reason and therefore as dangerous as the brute Shizuo Heiwajima. But even that monster is ruled, to some degree, by that emotion. Love? Izaya does not entirely understand it. Perhaps he does not wish to.
"An anticlimactic answer for you?" Now she is the one reading him like a book. His disappointment shows visibly on his face, however. She grins at him. "For a person who has only accomplished bad things and led a life astray, it seems strange for them to fall into the same pattern as normal people. Does that make me normal?"
His curiosity is piqued again – and she has probably done it intentionally – at the mention of "bad things" and "life astray." But he does not answer her question, perhaps because, for once, he does not have an answer. What is normal by his definition? Probably the predictable people who lead their lives like a prewritten text, never deviating from the norm. They live by the book, always and forever.
But Megumi is not quite like that. She questions things just as he does. Yet, unlike him, she considers herself to be human experiencing the emotions of normal people. In that way he cannot quite relate. Perhaps Izaya Orihara is the true oddity.
"Could you give me any profound wisdom of yours, Orihara-kun?" She tilts her head at him, a gentle and warm smile on her lips. "I wouldn't mind some advice in regard to my unrequited love."
"One of the doctors?" he presumes, going off the basis that she strays away from her room frequently during visiting hours. This is the second occasion that he has noticed her wandering away from it, probably to avoid the suffocation brought by worrisome, doting relatives.
"Wow, you're perceptive," she commends him.
Izaya raises his brows questioningly as she leans toward him. She is shivering from the cold, and yet despite the quiet chattering of her teeth, she does not seem at all inclined to leave. He, perhaps, thinks to comment on it, but they are interrupted when the door to the rooftop opens.
The person that emerges is dressed in a white coat, and the moment he spots Megumi, he strides over to the two of them. "Megumi-san, you need to return to your room immediately. You are not dressed properly to be out in the cold. Your parents were looking for you-"
As Izaya notices out of the corner of his eye, her face nearly lights up at the sight of the man. He is, no doubt, her unrequited love. A six foot tall, dark-haired man with a deep voice that no doubt has the nurses in a tizzy as well. By a woman's definition, he is probably fairly handsome. But Izaya is not one to judge the attractiveness of others.
Megumi stands onto her trembling feet to meet the doctor as he approaches. "Sorry, sorry. It's my fault, I got caught up bird watching." There she goes again – lying about watching the birds. The first comment that ever stole Izaya's interest. "But it seems like they have all flown away. I can go inside now." Before they leave, she turns to give a slight inclination of the head toward Izaya. A silent goodbye, for neither knows if and when they will ever meet again.