That Which They Say is True
One-shot
Written by: Chochowilliams
Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation or the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Summary: Ayaka Usami is found brutally murdered in her home.
Warning: Incomplete, M/F, OCs, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery, Angst, Drama
Pairings: OMC/OFC
Inserts: Quote by Robert J. Ringer
A/N: This fic is incomplete and will remain as such on my part. My muse abandoned me halfway through and has yet to return. As a result, this story has been sitting on my thumbdrive as is for months. As it appears as if, this is never going to be the story I wanted it to be, I decided to upload it as is. This means that this story is completely OCs bar a dead Ayaka. If that is not your cup of tea, turn back now. You have been warned.
oOo
"People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true." - Robert J. Ringer
oOo
Haruka Minoda was deciding where to place her new armchair-which was actually an antique she'd had shipped over from Canada-when the buzzer sounded.
She crossed the living room to the foyer, her stockinged feet sinking into the plush carpet.
The security chain was pulled back, the deadbolt turned. Haruka opened the door to a young couple. The woman had an air of concern about her. Her male companion appeared almost nonchalant but Haruka could tell it was a well-crafted façade.
"Sorry to bother you so late, but the woman who lives across the hall-" The woman sidestepped and pointed to the door identical to Haruka's own directly across the hall. The door had the numerals 1147 in silver above a peephole. "Have you seen her?"
Haruka switched her gaze from the pleading eyes of the woman to the door of the indicated apartment.
In all honesty, Haruka hadn't given her neighbor much thought, but now that she did, Haruka could not remember the last time she had seen the girl. The two were not friends. They weren't even acquaintances. In fact, Haruka did not even know the girl's name, though they would greet one another with a polite, "Hi. How are you?" to each other in passing, but that was it.
"Actually no," Haruka said. "I usually see her at least once a day, hear her coming and going…" It was difficult not to. For a girl who was usually so quiet, she could be rather loud at times.
"You haven't seen her at all?"
Haruka shook her head. "Sorry. No."
The woman appeared devastated at Haruka's words.
"When was the last time you saw her?" The man spoke up for the first time.
Haruka had to really think about that. "…A week maybe?" That was what she could say with certainty. The last several days had been hectic as she was in the middle of remodeling her apartment. "It's been a few days at least."
The woman whimpered. Her eyes shone with unshed tears.
"Sorry," Haruka apologized. Her heart ached at the woman's distress.
"If you see her, can you tell her her sister is looking for her?" the man asked.
"Of course!"
"Thank you," the woman said with a bow, her voice thick with tears.
Haruka bowed back and watched the couple retreat down the hall to the elevator as she shut and locked her apartment door.
She felt bad that she couldn't be more helpful, but she honestly hasn't seen her neighbor in some time. Haruka was not worried though. The girl was a grown woman, always coming and going, sometimes gone for a day or two at a time, so there was probably nothing to worry about.
"Hopefully," Haruka added as she made her way back to the living room an her armchair. "Now…Where to put you…"
oOo
A Week Later
The silence of the corridor was shattered by the arrival of the elevator. There was a ding and the doors parted to reveal the young couple accompanied by a uniformed police officer and a man with a large ring of keys jangling from his belt.
"-two weeks and that is not like her, especially now that our mother is ill and I spoke with some of her neighbors a week ago and none of them have seen her-"
"Ayumi."
"But this isn't like her Shin!" Ayumi rounded on her boyfriend. "You know it's not! Ayaka missed dinner two Saturdays in a row! She hasn't missed dinner with the family once since she moved out. And she hadn't called Mother in weeks…"
"I know, but I'm sure she's just been busy. There's that promotion at work she just got plus the wedding…" Even though his soon-to-be-sister-in-law had yet to bring her fiancé home to meet the family. "You need to calm down okay? It'll be alright. You'll see."
Nodding, Ayumi took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. She did this several more times to forcibly calm herself down. Panicking and jumping to conclusions before they knew anything was doing them no good. Shinya was right. Her sister was fine. She had to be.
"Besides, I'm sure Officer Tamaki has seen this countless times before. Someone falls out of contact for a day or two, people freak out and report her missing only for her to show up a day or two later safe and sound and wondering what all the commotion is about."
Officer Tamaki turned to face the young woman who seemed to be struggling between relief and fear. "Look, Ms. Usami, I'm going to be honest here. Many of the missing person's cases I handled have ended with the missing person not really missing at all. She'd gone on a business trip or eloped or headed to Hokkaido with some girlfriends. I've dealt with a few where the supposedly missing person runaway voluntarily."
Ayumi nodded eagerly.
"But…"
Her heart dropped into her stomach.
"The rest haven't ended so happily. So be prepared, alright?"
Ayumi steeled herself. Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. She nodded and exchanged a forced smile with Shinya when he reached out to give her hand a squeeze.
Officer Tamaki nodded back and made his way down the lavish corridor to apartment 1147.
A quick cursory glance yielded nothing out of the ordinary. There were no tell-tell signs of forced entry, no scuffs or scratches on the lock.
"Ms. Usami," he called loudly as he banged on the door. "Ms. Ayaka Usami! This is the police! Please open the door!"
Silence met the request.
Ayumi exchanged a worried glance with Shinya. The hope Shinya helped give birth to started to wither.
Officer Tamaki banged harder on the door, raising his voice in the hope that Ayaka Usami was in a location within the apartment where she could not hear the door. Every place had one. For him, it was the kitchen. But like before, nothing stirred within the apartment.
Ayumi stifled a sob.
That there was no answer meant nothing. There were any number of reasons why nobody could seem to get hold of Ms. Usami. There was no reason or any proof to suspect foul play.
Officer Tamaki tried the door. That it was locked was a good sign. At least he would say that it was.
But it was better to be safe than sorry.
"Mr. Matsumoto," he called to the building manager.
Toshio Matsumoto stepped forward unclipping the key ring from his belt. Though one key appeared to look like its brethren and none were marked, Mr. Matsumoto seemed to know which key was which as he flipped through them. Grabbing one seemingly at random, the building manager slid the key into the lock. The tumblers shifting sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet of the hallway as he unlocked the apartment door. Matsumoto removed the key from the lock, opened the door and then stepped aside to allow Officer Tamaki access.
Ayumi and Shinya went to follow but were halted by a sharp gesture from Officer Tamaki. "Stay here," they were ordered as he slid his gun out of its holster.
"Oh God," Ayumi whimpered, her pulse racing, her eyes wide. She glanced at her fiancé then back at Officer Tamaki. "What is it? What's happening? Shin?"
Shinya held tightly onto his future bride and shook his head. "He's just doing his job, Ay. Don't worry. It doesn't mean anything." I hope, he added silently. Tightening his hold, Shinya prayed that this whole situation had been blown way out of proportion.
Meanwhile, Officer Tamaki wished more than anything that he could back up the young man's explanation. Unfortunately, this had become anything but a routine matter. What changed was the smell. It hit like a physical blow the moment he entered the apartment. The last time he was in the presence of this particular smell was when he was undergoing training. They had taken a field trip to the body farm. It may have been over a decade since, but this odor was something that stayed with you.
Room by room was swept and cleared, forcing Officer Tamaki deeper into the apartment. The further in he went, the stronger the smell of decay became, and the more his dread grew.
Ms. Ayaka Usami's condominium apartment did not seem like the home of a modern young woman with its simplistic and minimalist design. There was something eerie about walking through the sparsely furnished residence.
Finally Officer Tamaki found himself standing before the closed door of what-by process of elimination-had to be the bedroom. With his free hand, he grabbed the doorknob. For some reason, he expected it to be cold or hot, but it was neither. It was just a doorknob. Giving it a turn, Officer Tamaki pushed the door open.
The smell hit like a freight train.
Officer Tamaki staggered away from the doorway, gagging. He stumbled across the barren kitchen to the sink, his stomach aching as it heaved and rolled. He would never hear the end of it if he sicked up at a crime scene.
Because there was no doubt that was what this was.
Unsure whether the lingering nausea was due to the violent smell that permeated out of the bedroom, nerves at what he knew he would find or a combination of the two, Officer Tamaki gathered himself and entered the bedroom with a hand covering his nose and mouth.
The room was dark. Two windows on the left hand side wall were hidden behind curtains that glowed in the radiance of the setting sun.
He was forced to remove his hand from his face in order to grope the wall for the light-not that the makeshift mask did much in the way of blocking the smell anyway.
The sight that greeted him the instant the dark bedroom was flooded with light had Officer Tamaki racing back to the kitchen sink. Only this time, there was no containing the urge to hurl.
Spitting into the sink, Officer Tamaki shakily wiped his mouth with a handkerchief he kept on his person at all times before calling Dispatch to report the dead body-whether it was Ms. Ayaka Usami was for the ME to determine as there was no way a visual ID was going to be possible.
"Officer Tamaki? Hello? What's going on? Is Ayaka alright?"
The male voice startled Officer Tamaki. He strode out of the kitchen and across the hall to the living room. From there he could see straight into the foyer where Shinya stood with Ayumi Usami. "Mr. Okawa," he called with a calm steady voice, his hands raised, "I need you and Ms. Usami to remain out into the hall."
"My sister…" Ayumi stepped out from behind her fiancé, her dark eyes pleading with him.
Unfortunately what she wanted to hear was not the news Officer Tamaki had to give her. While he could not confirm whether the badly decomposed body in the bedroom was the young woman who had been incommunicado for two weeks, neither could he deny it, but chances of the remains belonging to someone other than Ayaka Usami were slim to none.
Despite the ten years he has been a police officer, never before had he been put in this position where he had to tell someone their loved one was deceased. That job was usually left up to the lead investigator and as he has never been offered the lead on any investigation, he was at a loss at how to present this turn of events.
"Ms. Usami…Ayumi…"
Despite his best efforts at presenting a blank mask, there must have been something on his face or in his voice for Ayumi Usami went white, stumbled as if the world had tilted and then with a strangled cry, she took off through the foyer into the dining room.
Cursing, and wishing the young man whom had come with Ayumi Usami would snap out of his stupor, Officer Tamaki cut through the living room to the dining room and made a grab for Ms. Usami, but the young woman was slippery as a fish and squirmed out of his grasp. With another curse, Officer Tamaki cut back through the living room and practically threw himself across the hall at the woman who, once again, attempted to fight out of his grasp, but he held firm.
His touch seemed to be the incentive needed for Ayumi Usami to scream like a banshee. She howled and raged and pleaded and shouted for a sister that might very well never answer her call again.
Long after Ayumi Usami had to be forcibly removed from the premises, and the crime scene technicians and homicide investigators had come and gone, the echo of the distraught cries of a devastated sister remained with Officer Tamaki. They remained with him long after he retired from the force.
…The End
A/N: If you are wondering what I would have written had my muse not up and abandoned me for Puerto Rico, this would have been a mostly OC story with Shuichi and Eiri making appearances at the end when the police investigating Ayaka's murder stopped by to question Eiri as evidence found at the scene pointed towards Eiri being this mysterious fiancé that she bragged about to her family, which-by the way-is not true; Ayaka is just bat shit crazy and who was stalking Eiri and believed that they were dating and were to get married. In the end, it would turn out that an old boyfriend of Ayaka's (who was even more psychotic than her) killed her. Eiri would have told the police that he received a call not too long ago from her asking for help (she was scared, believes someone is out to get her, etc.), but Eiri wrote her off because she has pulled this crap in the past.