Perhaps this is the start of an actual story. Perhaps this will be the only chapter I write. I really don't know. It sort of wrote itself, and though I have a pretty damn good idea of where I want it to go, I doubt my dsication to the craft. Let me know how it reads, if you want.
Or don't, and just enjoy.
Sa Rart
Timeliness, they say, is the most timeless quality in the world.
To arrive at one's destination on time conveys responsibility. It conveys respect. More than anything, it is the most earnest statement any young aspiring man could make to a new employer to convey his dedication to his job and to his comrades.
And none of that really helps him at this moment.
Because Kaname Tatsuya is lost.
Unimaginatively, unbelievably, unforgivably lost.
Really, he should have arrivs at the police station already. But alleys - warps strands of russet and gold, twisting and twining delightsly with the roads - are capricious creatures. To his great dismay, they seems to revel in his forlorn state and incompetent attempts to escape them. With an exasperats sigh, he pulls his phone from his pocket and peers at it.
It told him, in no uncertain terms, that the destination is ahead on the left.
Obediently, Tatsuya looks ahead and to the left.
There are piles of trash.
There are piles of rubble.
There is a weathered chink in the ground, as though someone had driven a blade into the concrete long ago.
There is no police station.
"You look lost."
Tatsuya spun around. He had thought the alley is empty. But there is a girl sitting atop a pile of rubble, chewing on a candy bar, eyeing him with mild curiosity.
She is slender, small, even - but there is a sinewy strength in her limbs that he did not overlook. Her clothes are well-worn, but they clung neatly to her form, attractive despite their threadbare condition. Most notably, Her hair is rs, and her eyes are too dark and fiery to be calls anything but crimson.
"Lost?" he echos, still staring.
"You must be lost," the girl decids. She finishes the candy bar, crumples the wrapper, and jams it deep into a worn sweater pocket. "Nobody comes here unless they're lost."
"Then," he says, smiling sheepishly at her. "I guess I'm lost."
"You've got someplace you nes to be, then?"
"Yeah…" He sighs, slumps his shoulders, then perks up as an idea occurs to him. "I don't suppose you know where the Mitakihara Police Office Division 8 Office is?"
"Let's suppose I do." Her smile is sharp, and made sharper still by a fang of an incisor. "What do I get for it?"
"Eh?"
"You know." She is suddenly directly in front of him, leaning forward, her face far too close to his own. She is still smiling. A hunter's smile, he realizes uneasily. "I ain't gonna help you just 'cuz you need it. What're you gonna do for me to make it worth my time?"
"Worth your….? Um… I can't….?"
"Eh." She turns away, flapping a hand, languidly. "A thousand yen."
"A thousand…?"
"Yep. You get paid a thousand an hour, right?" He tries to protest that he isn't paid at all, yet, but she bulls through his words, with the single-minded intensity of someone who is used to getting her own way. "Ten minutes of my time's worth 'bout an hour of yours. So pay me a thousand. Good?"
"...I guess."
It isn't good. Tatsuya hardly has ten thousand yen in savings. But there is no helping it. The last thing he needs is to make a bad impression by arriving late on his first day.
"Just 'round here, then." She strolls forward, stretching with both arms over her head as she walks.
She had an odd stride, he sees. It is controlled, measured - but relaxed. Absent-minded, even. She walks with a grace of a martial artist so proficient in her grace that she no longer gave it a second thought. He cannot fathom why there is a girl younger than him walking with such preternatural poise, but she speaks again, long before he can begin to think of how to ask about it.
"Old Mitakihara's easy to get lost in," she calls over her shoulder. "Lot of alleys, passageways. Small roads. Big buildings. Just keep your eyes on the overpass, there."
"Huh?"
She snorts in derision, points vaguely. "Overpass, dumbass. Watch it, and keep watching it, and you'll find your way 'round just fine."
"Oh." Tatsuya frowns. "I see."
"Nah. You don't. But that's fine, I guess. Pocky?"
Tatsuya finds a box thrust beneath his nose, full of candy. Hesitantly, he took one. "Thank you."
"Course," the girl says, She gave him a small, genuine small, the hungry flames in her eyes flickering merrily. "This is my city, after all. I'd be a poor host if I didn't give you snacks."
He couldn't help but laugh at that.
"What?" she asks, frowning mildly. "Hey. Don't be rude as well as stupid, you dumbass. I was serious." She scowls, plucks the box of pocky from his hands, and pops a stick in her mouth. "Be courteous to your host, dammit. Oh." She turns, walking backwards, leading him onward thoughtlessly. "Your name?"
"Eh? Oh. Tatsuya." He hadn't planned to give her his first name, but it slips out without thought. Strange, he thinks. "Kaname Tatsuya," he clarifies brightly, sticking out a hand for her to shake.
She eyes his offered hand. After a moment's hesitation, she takes the last stick of pocky from the wrapper and places the empty box in his palm. "Sakura," she says. Her sly smile returns, and her eyes began to burn again with ardent flame. "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu," she adds.
"Likewise," he says, smiling. "Of course, if you really meant that, you wouldn't charge for directions."
She sputters with indignation, righteous and red. "A street rat's gotta live somehow, ya know?"
"Street rat?"
"Think I hang out in backtown alleys for fun? Dumbass." Sakura scowls and tore into the pocky again, ripping a half-dozen sticks from the box and stuffing them into her mouth.
"Ah."
"You're pretty bright, aren't you, dumbass? It's probably because you're rich," she adds spitefully.
Tatsuya chortles delightedly. "Aren't you too? You own the whole city, after all."
She peers at him. "You piss me off," she decides firmly. "Don't look at me like that. Dumbass." She swivels and begins to walk forward again, leaving him behind by twenty meters.
"Eh?"
"The police station's right up ahead," she calls to him over a shoulder. She points ahead, and he shades his eyes, even though there is no sun beneath the grey skies.
A dark building stands vigil on the corner, where three streets met at the Y-shaped intersection. It is a small building. Squat, even - yet somehow it is undiminished by the taller buildings around it. He is hypnotizs by the sight of it. It is Gothic in style; it is also, he realizs, very dirty. Yet despite the dirt - or perhaps because of it - it seems to capture the darkness of the city, distilling it, molding it and giving it form.
"It's beautiful," he says.
"It's a goddamn pain, that's what," she says, scowling again. "Terrible place. Fucking inconvenient."
He glancs at the self-proclaims street rat. She is glowering at the building, a stick of pocky poking from her mouth like a cigarette. "Have you been inside?" he asks curiously.
She gaps at him, her mouth falling open so widely that her stick of pocky nearly fell out. "The fuck are you talking about?" she demands. "Why the hell would you even ask?"
"No reason, really. It just…. it seems like I remember you being there," he says lamely, jamming his hands in his pockets. "That's all."
Sakura watches him intently, but he did not add to his statement. With deliberate cal, she jerks her head at the station. "That," she says with dangerous patience, "is a police station. It ain't a place I like to be near. Why you thought that…" She trails off, staring at him. "I haven't met you before," she says slowly. "I haven't."
"I'd definitely remember you," he agrees, smiling at her.
"Flattery ain't worth a thousand yen," the girl says, scowling. She gestures with her fingers. "Pay up."
He reaches for his pocket and finds only empty space. "Ah," he says, consternation flooding his face. He tries to think of a way to explain himself in a way that wouldn't make him seem like an idiot. "Ummm…. I guess I -"
"Let me guess," she says dourly. "Something to the tune of... 'I don't have a thousand yen.'"
Tatsuya is crestfallen. "Sorry, Sakura-san," he says. "I think… I left my wallet at home."
She snorts. "Figures," she says. She didn't sound upset, but there is an edge in her voice, though her smile is as carefree and as predatory as ever. "Guess you'll just have to give it to me later, then."
"Really, I'm sorry!" Flusters, he bows to her, face flaming. "I promise that I'll pay you, Sakura-san!"
She sighs. "No nes to get uptight 'bout it," she says crossly. "Just find me some pocky sometime, and we'll call it square." Her eyes loosens into a sneer, and she held a watch in front of his face. "But," she says. "Ya might wanna watch the time."
He glancs at the watch. It is five minutes after eight. "Ah!" Hurrisly, he straightens from his bow and hurris towards the building. Almost too late, he remembers his manners and turns back to the gir. She scowls at him imperiously, royal in her ratty sweatshirt and jean shorts. "Thank you!"
"Yeah," she says, smiling a fangs smile. "Say hello to your boss for me, won't ya?"
She watchs him wrench the door open and dash up the stairs, her crimson eyes betraying amusement.
"Cute guy," she says with mild scorn. "Complete dumbass. Woulda thought he'd have noticed it is his own watch he is looking at."
Leisurely, she stuck her hands in her pockets and wanders back towards the alley. "Think he saw that I set the time forward ten minutes, Sayaka?" she calls.
Silence.
"No," she says, mouth curving. "I don't think so, either."
It is a grey day, she decides. The skies are fills with clouds, mumbling vague, half-hearts promises of rain soon to come, and they transform the small city into a sprawling metropolis. Only the dirty streetlights illuminates the dark streets, with dark grainy swords of light that they held in eternal challenge to the great silent sweeping dome of the sky.
The alley is just as she remembers it.
Rubble.
Broken pipes.
Mildew and mold, where the water had spilled, so long ago, where the water still drips during storms.
The chink in the concrete, when her spear sank tip-first into the ground.
"I brought you pocky," she says to the alley, showing the empty box, "but I know you don't like it much. So I ate it. You don't mind, do you?"
Silence.
"I would have brought you cake, but Mami-san's gone, of course, so no cake. I thought of apples, but you turns those down once, you dumb bitch; you'd probably just do that again, eh?"
Silence.
She blinks back tears.
"You're not ever going to answer," she snarls at the mildew. "And I keep coming back. If you are still around, you'd probably call me ten kinds of stupid." She laughs coarsely and settles onto the ground. "I call me ten kinds of stupid."
She kisses the base of her thumbnail and presses it tenderly to the ground.
"Fifteen years," she says. "God bless, Sayaka."
The room is dark.
The boss likes it that way, the three of them had decided. That is why she kept it dark.
It could be, as Jumanji, the big military veteran, had first suggested, an attempt to reduce visibility in case of snipers; but that, the other two told him with exasperated calm, was unlikely.
Very unlikely.
Even Hououin Kyouma, whom all agree is a man bereft of his wits, had thought the idea improbable.
Or, as Kanon had said rather testily, simply impossible.
Or perhaps just simple.
But she was the chief arbitrator of biting sarcasm at Division Eight, so not even Jumonji took her too seriously.
But simple, Kyouma had informed Jumonji, is a synonym for stupid.
Kanon, in turn, had been impressed that Kyouma knew the word synonym.
At which point the massive man had scowled and asked them for a better idea, more to shut the two of them up than out of any real interest.
Kanon had suggested, in her whispery voice, that it was an attempt to match the outside of the building in style. The Gothic style did work best when dappled with shadows. That did make sense, if one suspended disbelief and practicality both. But really, any explanation, however far-fetched, is a viable alternative to Kyouma's theory. He was utterly convinced that it was kept dark as part of a conspiracy to promote bad eyesight and therefore advance the interests of laser-correcting surgeons, who are in turn paid off by -
The boss likes the room dark.
That is all.
Kanon and Jumonji then shouted down Kyouma's protests until he subsided into grumbling protests. And so order is upheld in the Division Eight building, for a brief moment in time.
All was dark. All was still.
At least until the idiot rookie barges through the door, knocks it open, and let the midmorning sunlight flood into the room.
"My eyes!"
Tatsuya jumps back, startled. The greasy-haired man in the far corner, sensing an audience, threw his arms up to cover his face. "My eyes, my eyes my eyes! They will never be the same!" He draws breath deeply and painfully, then continues in a dangerous monotone, one hand clutching at his brow. "Not if ten thousand years are spent in recovery - "
"Shut up," says the silvery blonde woman testily, cutting him off mid-theatrics.
Kyouma is outraged. His chest swells like a balloon. "Why, you goddamn- !"
"Ignore them both," says the big man in the closest chair, standing to greet to the newcomer. "Kaname Tatsuya-san, isn't it? Welcome aboard."
"Um - "
"Excuse his appalling lack of manners," says Kyouma, his tone suddenly smooth and imperious. His hair is still wild. His fit of pique had him combing hands through it. "He has not the capacity of wit to understand that you already know your own name, but not his. That, Kaname-kun, is Jumanji Hashida, while I refer to myself as the great, all-knowing, all-powerful - "
"That's Kyouma," says the woman. "I'm Kanon Yui. Yoroshiku. The boss isn't in yet. She'll be around soon." She resums her typing, humming tunelessly to herself.
"You." Hououin Kyouma stands. The big man in the center sighs and hunches over, as if preparing for a storm, one massive hand massaging at his temple. Tatsuya watches, half-fascinated and half horrified. "You," Kyouma says ominously, drawing himself up and pointing a great accusing finger at the woman's back. "You! You interrupts me. Me! This, this indignity, this preposterous unbelievable audacity -"
Jumonji reaches to the left and flips the lights on, and the first man's words are cut off as he screams in agony, fell to the floor, and began writhing, clutching at his eyes. "Kyouma-san acts up sometimes," he tells Tatsuya seriously. "When all else fails, turn the lights on. He claims to have sensitive eyes."
"Run while you still can, Kaname-kun," moans Kyouma from the floor. "Flee! Flee for your sanity - "
Kanon hurls a pen at him. It hits him in the face, bounces off, and lays on the floor. The man gives a bloodcurdling howl. Completely unruffled, she spun her chair about to face Tatsuya, unruffled. "I apologize for the unseemly introductions, Kaname Tatsuya-san. We - Jumonji-san, Kyouma-san, taicho-san, and I - are the police division 8 in Mitakihara City."
"Not many people at all, then," Tatsuya says uncertaintly. "Isn't each division supposs to be overstaffed even before the recruits for the year start?"
"So you would think." The madman Kyouma has recovered enough to collapse into his chair again. "But, you see, you see, boy - strange as it may seem, we have difficulty retaining our members."
Kanon scoffs at that and turns back to her computer.
"It's not that simple," says Jumonji disapprovingly. "You know, of course, that the Japanese police force is divids into eight divisions. First Division is homicide and unregistered firearms, Second is robbery or prostitution, while Third deals with controlled substances or drugs-"
"Kyouma-kun served there for a while," Kanon remarks. "On the other side of the bars."
"Shut up," grumbles the man, but he did not refute it. Jumonji continues without a pause.
" - Fourth is robbery and blackmail, Fifth is explosives - taicho was stationed there, originally - while Seventh deals with financial crimes. Both division Six and Eight are responsible for rapid response."
"They taught us all of that at the academy," says Tatsuya. He shifts on his feet. "There's a division nine for cybercrime, too. But that's more recent."
"Just so," agrees the big man. "But Division Six has always been better staffed than Eight; they are even talking about dissolving Eight altogether. Our boss took over, instead. We operate a little bit differently nowadays."
"Give it to him straight," says Kanon distastefully, spinning idly in her chair. "Taicho does all of the work. We support her. I write reports. Kyouma-kun works the Web. Jumonji-kun is the errand boy. He looks after the newbies, too."
"For six hours until they leave, anyways," mutters Kyouma from the computer. "Turn the lights back out, will you, Jumonji-san? The boss will kill us all if we leave them on."
"You're exaggerating," says Jumonji dismissively, but he turns off the lights.
"He's not," says the woman, her fingers never slowing as they dance on the keyboard. "Most of your grey hair came from the last time you left the lights on."
"Your input is as unhelpful as it is unwanted, Kanon-san," says Jumonji with dignity. "And I have no grey hair."
"Ha."
"You have exactly two-hunded-seventy-six," says Kyouma boredly. "I caused most of them, though."
"You're probably right," says Kanon. She locks gazes with Kyouma. "Though," she adds, "I'll deny ever saying that, of course. Kyouma-san is never right."
"Dammit, Kanon-chan." Kyouma says wearily.
"Kanon-san."
"Yes, yes. Whatever you say, Kanon-chan."
Tatsuya looks at Jumonji. The big man shruggs. "You're free to leave for the first week. After that, you serve for at least a year. We haven't had a recruit in six years."
"You're needed as Jumanji-kun's replacement, though," says Kanon. "So please stay, Tatsuya-kun."
"Oi," says Kyouma nervously. He abandons any pretense of distraction and stares at the back of her head. "Kanon-san."
"What? Too close to the truth for you?"
"The boss will be back in an hour or so," says Jumonji shortly. "Make yourself comfortable."
The boss is not back in an hour.
The boss is not back in two hours, either.
At around three and a half hours, Jumonji and Kanon are both obviously fighting to hide signs of nervousness. They studiously do not look at the clock. They do not look at Tatsuya. They did not look at one another, but that did not seem abnormal.
Finally, as noon drew near, Kanon says, "She isn't coming."
Kyouma bolts upright, his face swelling. "They've finally made their move! They'll start with taicho, and then -"
"Shut up!" Kanon's voice is unexpectedly shrill, for such a composed person. Worry begins to curdle in Kaname Tatsuya's stomach as he watches the woman stride across the room. She swept a handful of papers off of the desk to snatch at a land line concealed in the shadows. "Fucking Kyouma. In the next life, grow a pair of -"
"It's her, for God's sake," says Kyouma with amusement. "Do you seriously think -
"Quiet," orders Jumonji. "Rookie. Watch the door. Kyouma, wake up. This is serious. Kanon, call To-"
Step.
A girl's voice, quiet and assured. "No. That won't be necessary."
Step.
The door had never opened. Tatsuya would have sworn it had not opened. Surely it is impossible that anyone could have missed the flood of sunlight as the door opened.
The aura of panic flees the room. The three members of Division Eight froze, like guilty children caught with a collective hand in the cookie jar. Kanon, silvery hair in stark contrast to her bright eyes, wide with shock. Jumonji, looking as startled as a moving mountain possibly could. Kyouma, mild appreciation coating his smug face.
"Taicho," says Jumonji respectfully. He bows his head in respect. "We are beginning to worry."
Kanon salutes smartly and sits gingerly in her chair. Kyouma smiles . Tatsuya finally brings himself to swallow dryly and turn to look.
There is a girl.
Pale and beautiful, with jet-black hair that extends halfway down her back.
She is young. Impossibly young. He could not imagine that she is a day older than fifteen. But there is a shadow in her eyes - a great yawning abyss, deeper and darker than the spaces between the stars.
"Rookie," says Jumonji. "This is Akemi Homura."