A/N:I hope you enjoyed the first thing I got up. . This has been eating at me for sometime now and I had to get it up here. I do hope you enjoy chap. 1!
-Dark-
Ghost
Chapter One
It was raining outside. The pitter patter of raindrops fell no more than a foot from me. Water splashing in the koi pond, the fish swam gracefully, unaffected by the rain.
It has been a month since I last spoken to him. The unusual warm weather in the early winter season made me wonder when the snow would return.
Fresh white snow, cold on contact but beautiful to look at. A lovely sight but a calm and silent killer...
That's right...Winter was his season.
Despite the lack of snow, it still was cold but even with two heavily woven kimonos on...I still felt cold. But even if I was indoors...I would still be cold.
Everyone had noticed my so called 'funk' and they all made their own contributions to help lighten my mood. One girl, Kiku, keeps getting flowers at the nearby florist and putting them in my office. Another left me chocolate, clearly unaware I don't like chocolate. The cook often shapes my food like animals or odd shapes for me. Recently, I also had come to be ill, a fever and such. My stomach, unable to hold real food, I've been eating nothing but hot dogs and rice. My hot dogs soon became Octopus dogs and little crabs and such and my rice would have waving messages of love and care in soy sauce.
It all annoys me. It feels as if I am being mocked for these moments of weakness...
I know. They care. But...I don't need them to cheer me up. It will pass, this mood of mine. I will get over it. I will forget him soon enough.
Water fell beyond the veranda, splashes echoing all around.
Fall was more my season. The rich color of the dying leaves, the changing from summer fun to solemn autumn, silent but submissive to the oncoming chill of winter...Preparing all for its cold...
Rest. That's what I need. Rest. To sleep until this hurt goes away, to fall away and forget what I must forget. To hibernate like a tree or a bear during this harsh season...
I may not be the same Oriya but...I will not have this pain in my heart.
The pain in my chest seems to always grow stronger. It has been a week since she called.
Ukyou is worried about him. She hasn't heard anything of him. Missing for a month...
I told her I did not know where he had gone. I wish I could tell her but...her in such poor health... It was enough to silence me.
"Do not make me lie to her again." I found my own voice foreign to me as I stared up at the ceiling of the veranda as I lay on the wood. "Do not make me..."
My chest felt heavy from both this pain and my illness. I don't understand... I should be worried about my health. Why am I thinking about some dead man, pining for such an irritating man...!
I must forget. I must forget... Must forget... Forget...
The rain continued to pour down. A chilling wind hit me and I moved to throw my rich purple kimono over me as I lay there.
Sick. Sick with grieve? Is that it? Have I become bedridden due to loosing him?
I do not know.
I doubt it.
I can recall...that night the university burned down... It was totally engulfed in flames. The news report said that the fire started from the basement. The fire had been so intense, any human remains would have been impossible to find... Burning away wood and melting glass...everything was in ruin. I remember...I was unable to move. I had known he wouldn't return but...I couldn't help it. I found myself gasping for air, hunched over on all fours, face wet with sweat and tears.
The news report made it so much more real. If I hadn't seen it, I would probably be waiting for him to return now...
I had Mother-San worried then. She kept an eye on me for the first week, as if afraid I was going to hurt myself...or someone else. For that first week, I wanted to hurt...something but I kept myself hidden away. Only she visited me during that time...
The flames...they had been so intense... like a crematoriums' furnace. That would be a fitting end for him, to die among his experiments and his life's pursuit with no trace of him to be found.
The murderer disappears.
The doctor disappears...
"Damn you..." I said aloud, eyes shut and my hands folded over my stomach under the kimono.
"Mibu-San!" Mari, one of my new girls, came up along the veranda and stared down at me, her orange red hair wide around her face, a Japanese American bred girl. I opened my eyes to look at her and sighed.
"Yes?" I said, shutting my eyes again. Had she heard me talking to myself? Eh...who cares? Maybe they will think I'm going mad. Maybe I have gone mad already...
"You have a visitor." She said brightly, moving to kneel above me, a chilled hand touching my forehead, pulling my hair out of my face gently. My geisha are meant to be tender, to be illusions, to be the perfect women, to be a dream for my customers. Expensive dreams, mind you... Those soft hands, the soft skin of my geisha always reminds me of silk.
However... I could not focus on that.
Her message made my eyebrow twinge and a snarl curl my lips.
"Tell them to kindly screw off"
I was in no mood to be nice. I was in no mood for human contact.
Beings from beyond my world, my home...were unwelcome in daylight hours...
"But Mibu-San-"
"Mari!" I found myself bark at her, becoming increasingly annoyed with the female.
"How very rude of you, Oriya." A voice a cool as ice came, drifting in the cold air.
The voice was gentle, like a cool breeze to anyone who heard it. However, it hit me like a brick.
I shot up so violently, I nearly head butted Mari. Spinning to all fours, I stared over at a pair of white dress pants, polished white shoes...
I almost didn't want to look this being in the face but I forced myself to look up along that white attire to the pale, sharp featured face. That single silver eye stared down at me and the look inside it told me he was amused with me but it held another glint that made me want to cover up even as I was fully clothed.
"Muraki." I spoke but it wasn't my normal voice, softer and breathy, my mouth hanging open slightly. I noticed this and shut my mouth, making that face glow with a smirk.
Pushing myself up, I got to my feet, naturally being slightly taller than Muraki, I didn't need to look up at him. I'm thankful for that...
"Oh, you do not look well. I had heard you were under the weather. That is a shame... Maybe I should give you a full examination?" His tone was light and friendly but only I heard that dark undertone; the wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Oh you're a doctor?" Mari piped in, cheerful. Right. Mari was still with us. I had forgotten all about her.
"Leave us." I said to her as I scooped up my kimono and she bowed deeply to us. She left without another word. I threw the kimono over my shoulders and folded my arms, hands deep inside of the sleeves of the kimono that I was properly wearing.
"Mur-"I began but his quick movement forward made me stop, take a step back and wince. What had compelled me to react like that, I wonder... A cold hand met my forehead.
"Oriya..." Muraki said and I opened my eyes to look at him.
His smirk had faded slightly. That mask had wavered. However slight it was, it wavered!
He actually cared whether or not I was afraid.
"You surprised me." I muttered, giving him the only explanation I had, my hand slapping that pale one away.
"Did I?" Muraki then moved and pushed open my room's door and lead me inside it.
"Well at any rate, you do have a fever. You should not be out in this cold."
"Don't treat me like a child." I said to him and Muraki shut the door behind us. His hand hooked around my wrist and he pulled me over to where my bed remained unmade and a mess of sheets and blankets. I went to protest but a coughing fit made me more submissive.
So, I behaved for him. I let myself be led to my bed and puched down on the egde without further protest.
"Oh I am perfectly aware of how much you are not a child." He said to me as his hands pulled my top kimono off my shoulders.
About to protest to sleeping, I opened my mouth to speak but a hand pulled at the obi I wore and I had to grab that wrist, silently glaring up at the other.
"Oriya, do you sleep fully clothed or don't you?" Muraki then spoke as if addressing a child and I frowned up at him.
"I can undress myself." I said to him, looking away. Standing, I pulled my obi off my waist and found that a pair of eyes was still watching me. This made me stop.
"Muraki..."
"I have seen you before with far less than you have on now. Why so shy Oriya?" Muraki said, smirking at me, his eyes roaming over me.
I glared at him.
I hated when he did that.
"Well, you've been gone so long. Maybe while I'm doing what the doctor orders, you should go and call your future wife. She's been hounding me for info for the past month!" I then shot at him with some venom which made him frown.
"Very catty of you, Oriya" Muraki commented and he turned his back to me but remained in the room. He was annoyed that I wouldn't let him watch. Let him. I got out of my kimono and got into bed. Thankfully, I was actually wearing boxers so I wasn't completely naked.
Lucky me.
A pair of cotton blue boxers was my only defense against Muraki.
Great.
Yes, I had woken one night with a naked Muraki pressed against me and if I hadn't woken up and thrown his ass out of my room, I know that something would have happened with him at the helm.
It was odd. I owned a brothel, I buy my geisha off the black market, I have seen many erotic things yet I could not walk around naked, not with another around. Muraki was completely comfortable with or without clothes on. It made no difference with him. Maybe that was just apart of his madness...
He turned and came to sit on the edge of the bed, I, on my side, facing and looking up at him.
A coughing fit hit me, hard and heaving. It was the type the forces you to loose all control of your body, to go ridged and threatens to yank your heart out of your chest with each cough. It forces you to forget you need to be polite and cover your mouth and you become a drooling mess of your former self. When it all passed, my cheek and pillow were wet with saliva.
I wiped my mouth with my blanket and looked up at Muraki, expecting to see one of his looks of disgust but...the look I got from him was more harmful for me.
There was a solemn expression on his face. The type a person gives to another when they feel some heavy burden. That burden, it always seemed, was something like guilt. He looked off and into the darkened room then shut his eyes.
His mouth opened and what came out was soft and honest. Not something you'd here from Muraki... at least not usually.
"Forgive me, Oriya. I had promised-"
"Shut up" I cut him off flatly. Muraki being sincere...How unthinkable! Not now, at least...The last him he was sincere with me, he was walking off to die! I did not want to hear it. Never again, not at least… not with that look on his face…
"Oriya." He said but I shook my head, my head's movement limited by the pillow.
"I know. And it's fine." I knew he wanted to apologize for going back on a promise but I never wanted him to make that one promise, let alone keep it.
I like Muraki. Despite his...quirks, he is my friend. I know I'm one of very few friends this man ever truly had. And it's simply because...I accepted him, murderous tendencies and all.
We have our history. Nearly 20 years of history when he used to share the same classes I did that second year of high school.