2
Whatever thoughts had been in Kamichika Rio's head as she passed through the Alpa mall doors dissipated in an instant.
The jacket was what caught the girl's eye first. Rio had seen only one person dressed in that specific garb in her life— it would not be inaccurate to speculate that a unique coat like that was either custom made or rather pricey— but though it was enough to make her pause, it was not an instant recognition. Where...? I've seen it before, but where? In those first few moments, the association and name itself escaped her. Rio blinked hard and clutched the strap of her schoolbag while she searched her mind. It would have seemed silly to be preoccupied with the mere spotting of a coat she'd seen worn before; it could've been anyone's she had seen on the street, in the city, any place the girl had ever gone... But the anxious feeling that had formed in her stomach as soon as she walked through those doors signaled that it was something important. It had to be.
The man in front of the fountain some meters ahead appeared to be texting with eyes locked on the phone's screen. As she struggled to recall the identity of the one in her sights, the girl's heart beat faster. Her whole body was simply on pause. Rio's instincts and subconscious were screaming to move. The confused and irritated reactions of strangers as they parted around the young girl who'd halted so suddenly in their path went unnoticed as she finally took a single step forward, and then another. If she could just see his face closer...
While the student's slow and deliberate movements brought her nearer to her target, he himself was still focused on the distractive electronic world. Head lowered, the young man's face remained undetermined with features unluckily obscured by the phone he held up.
With Rio a few feet away, the cell's top half snapped shut quite suddenly. She could see at once that his eyes were burgundy.
Him...
The distantly familiar face was the same as the one in the dreams that left Rio feeling haunted and weak. She could block out that night throughout her everyday thoughts with ease, but subconscious had the tendency to bring back painful memories against her will in the form of restless nights and the occasional night terror— her parents had run into her room while she screamed, held her as she shook, but she couldn't remember, she did not know why she was jolted out of dreams by her tears and shrieks but— everyone has 'falling dreams', right...?
Standing frozen in place a couple meters away from the trigger himself, that was the very nauseating sensation Rio felt then too—falling, falling, her stomach churning while her body began to tremble with something that could not be merely shock or fear alone, and she felt as though she might faint.
Rio did not notice she was moving until she found herself in the dead-end of a bathroom stall and was greeted by her own pale-faced, wide-eyed reflection in the toilet's water. Without delay, she began to gag, and both her emotions and the breakfast she'd eaten that morning spilled out at once.
Nakura had looked at her.
The text alert on one of his cell phones was beeping.
As the entrance doors to the mall opened and some more people spilled inside, Izaya reached into his pocket to retrieve an older model displaying a message from his secretary. The tetchiness of her phrasing was hardly subtle. The iPhone he used primarily for business communication purposes had been turned off for the day, but that wasn't enough to deter her from demanding why he hadn't called that morning to inform her there was no need to come in to work; in that moment he nearly regretted giving her this number as an emergency backup in the first place. Staring at the text with a slight sigh, he considered ignoring it altogether.
Moments later he received a second incoming message that bared the same exact words as the original.
It was quickly joined by a third.
"A reasonable question, but wasn't the note I left..."—a fourth text interrupted his typing—"...on the desk saying you could go home clear enough?" Before he could press send, 1 New Message from Yagiri Namie interjected yet again. Was she planning to fill his whole inbox with duplicate texts simply out of spite...? "Also, I get it, I get it! Stop spamming me."
Her reply was instantaneous, as though Namie had predicted his own slightly evasive response and prepared a barrage of appropriate counterattacks to leave ready and waiting in her drafts. Izaya did not put it past her. "It took me this long to even find your stupid note. You could've just put it on the door!" The woman was obviously irritated that she'd already blown half of what could have been a day off at work anyway needlessly organizing documents that her boss wouldn't need ready until tomorrow... well, he couldn't blame her for that. It wasn't as though he hadn't expected this sort of reaction either, or even prompted it. The thought of leaving the note on the door had in fact been his first instinct. But Izaya didn't think she would take being told 'You're right, I did this to screw with you' quite well. The two exchanged a couple of wry responses. "Next time you should take a minute out of your precious day to just call me with a heads-up! Don't you dare give me more of your excuses- don't bother replying at all. I refuse to deal with you for the rest of the day. I'm going home."
Izaya smiled at her finality. "You texted me first and now you're telling me to go away? What nerve..."
"Shut up already"
Allowing their brief interaction to end for the time being, he made a mental note to ask how her wonderful day had gone later and finally he pushed the phone's upper half closed with his index finger; his thumb retracted itself instinctively from the bottom before it was painfully sandwiched in-between the screen and the keyboard, a second nature habit he'd mastered a few years before. Being accustomed to conducting much of his business and appointment scheduling over the phone and through email had helped develop the ability to respond to even multiple separate messages quite rapidly and with ease. His job as an information broker was a fitting compliment to these assets and his recreations, where the ability to utilize the convenient speed of the digital age came up just as often as in his work. Although similarly tech-savvy youths often lacked and sacrificed true social skills as a fair trade for virtual, effortless contact, Izaya's charisma was unchallenged.
Of course, this charm seemed lost on his secretary. Well, you can't win them all...
As Izaya pocketed the cell phone and raised his head back up to the small weekday crowd, he found himself inadvertently meeting the gaze of a young girl a few feet in front of him. A Raira student, he noted, and as he took in her appearance Izaya saw that the girl's whole body was shaking. He quickly returned his eyes' view to her face, which had paled so fast it seemed he'd blinked his vision of her from full color to grayscale in an instant.
The girl stared at him for a whole second more and then, mouth open in what appeared to be horrified shock, she bolted, schoolbag slipping off her shoulder with disregard and falling to the ground as she ran. Izaya watched the teen flee from the sight of him in puzzlement, peering beyond the fountain to follow her with his eyes; she disappeared from sight soon after, veering around a corner that he assumed must lead to public restrooms on the other side of the mall.
Izaya continued to stand in place near the entrance, glancing around at other people moving along without real acknowledgement of the girl's panicked sprint. Anyone who had taken notice probably figured she had seen a friend she'd planned to meet up with; he would have speculated just the same, if not for the deer-in-headlights stare she had given him. "Just what was that about...?" He bent down and picked up the girl's abandoned bag.
First off, how does she know me? Such an unabashed reaction of terror was abnormal, even among his most cautious and mistrusting acquaintances. Izaya had not recognized her face, which made it likely that it had been a one-time encounter.
This narrowed the possibility down to someone he had once hurt. So, by process of elimination, that meant this girl could be...
...Well, anyone at all, then.
The unsuspecting victims of Izaya's hobbies— after having served their designated purpose of entertaining him— were forgotten straight away, without exception. He held no special place of remembrance in his head or his heart for those he met with purely for his experimentation with human feelings. They were merely test subjects for his studying of cause and effect. Pull on the right strings, and they would take the predicted action; give them a push on the back and they would tend to stumble in the direction of his choosing; or give them something they had been without, only to take it away and watch them flounder.
Izaya decided to guess which game he'd played with this one.
"I think I deserve a little hint. So, what's your name, Ms. Mystery Student?" He held her bag up by the thin pink strap and stuck his hand inside, feeling around. His fingered wrapped around what had to be a hardcover textbook for one of her classes, which he retrieved for examination. Leafing through a few of the pages first, Izaya flipped back to the inside of the front cover. "Bingo. 'Issued to... Kamichika Rio'. Rio, huh?" He reflected on the name momentarily, still coming up blank as he slipped her book back in the bag. "Well. I can't say that rings any bells, too bad."
Izaya headed for the restrooms Rio escaped to with her bag slung over his right shoulder. "Guess I'll have to ask you to your face, then, won't I?"
The grin on his face was one of purely disturbing enthusiasm.
Back against the wall, Rio remained on the dirty tiled floor until her breathing slowed. The frighteningly uncontrollable contractions that forced air down her throat were subsiding, although she could still feel her heart beating a mile a minute. This was the first time since the initial moments of her abduction one year ago that the girl had felt genuine fear. Unfamiliar to the irrepressible sensations of a full-blown panic attack, feeling her body hyperventilate involuntarily had sent her into a further state of terror, and now Rio's chest continued to heave with an aching gloom.
Despite the perfect details of her restless nights still escaping her, she sensed she was trapped inside a real-life reenactment of her recurring nightmare. Why? Why is he here? Using the side of the stall as support, Rio rose shakily to her feet and flushed the evidence of her unsettled stomach.
I'm... so stupid. I just ran. I ran away! A flash of anger towards her cowardice replaced the remnants of fear while she left the restroom. Rio given thought to a second meeting with Nakura countless times, and in each fantasy, she got the last laugh. Such idealistic results had proved to be unrealistic expectations. It took only the sight of that stupid jacket to catch her off guard, and Rio was turned to a sniveling mess on the floor of a bathroom stall at their eye contact. The fact that she had even dropped her bag before fleeing— despite being the last thing on her mind— was somehow even more humiliating.
Exiting the private and safe space, she did not give any thought to what Nakura's own reactions might be at this moment. Nor did she consider that their chance encounter had not in fact ended the moment she sprinted for emotional recovery in solitude.
Rio was just as unprepared to hear the sound of his voice as she had been unexpected to meet his indifferent gaze just minutes before.
"That was quite the dramatic exit, you know." Nakura was standing poised and ready beside the bathroom door. He stepped up behind her, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder the moment it swung shut. "In fact, I just can't help but think it seemed personal..."
Post-Chapter A/N: Whoo... my 1,800+ word goal for this chapter was met and succeeds around 2k- so I think my any satisfaction on my part is pretty fair. :')
Before publishing, I hadn't worked on this fic for several weeks; I really wasn't sure how well I would be able to jump back into the groove for continuation. The first section in this chapter ended up going through a ton of revision and rewriting in the past couple of days, but from the second one on everything was new writing from scratch, so I hope that everything flows just fine!
If I can manage to stay focused, part 3 will be finished by the weekend. Any reviews can only boost that motivation, haha!