Here's the First Chapter of Hide and Seek
I hope You'll like it..
The streets were narrower than Mikan Yukihara's memory. Front yards were cemented. Later, after the day's heat, some ladies would set up chairs on their lawn to have some tea.
The station house was clean-colored Square with clear windows. She continued inside with cozy-chairs, turbo blast air-conditions, files stacked orderly.
Mikan moved to the front desk. "I want to file a missing person's report," she told the woman behind the brown desk.
The woman didn't look up. "Child or adult?"
"Adult."
"Mentally disabled?"
"No," Mikan told the woman's crown in need of touch up.
"Physically disabled?"
"No."
"Possible victim of foul play?"
"Bingo." Mikan had never perfected the art of making friends.
The woman's head snapped up. "Yuu," she yelled her eyes shish-kebabing Mikan. "Possible missing." She jerked her head toward the back, her sprayed bouffant solid. "Third desk on the right."
Mikan was almost to the waiting Yuu with the keen, beady gaze when she heard her name spat as question. She yanked her head around just to find herself chest to rib cage with Natsume he was bigger than she liked to remember and solid as the brick walls she'd been running into her whole life. He sported some messy hairstyle not popular among the cops. Mikan knew he'd never known in his twenty five years. The planes of his face were still the same the line of his mouth as soft as when she had first pressed her own to it.
She reined herself in while he checked out her two hundred-rabbit haircut, the designer clothes, the air of success and confidence she'd struggled for since she was ten. Only she knew the third-rate brokerage firm where she'd worked had gone bust, her stock portfolio was in the crapper along with her ex-customers' and her personal financial strategy of making no more than 'the monthly minimum required' was a hint as to why she should never have stepped onto Kagurazaka in the first place.
But she forgot all that as her gaze fell to where it shouldn't have, and caught the badge low on her old lover's belt loops.
"Son of a bitch," she said to life general, more specifically to the unwelcome hum in her limbs gaining power.
Natsume smirked. "Can take the girl out of the neighborhood but can't take the neighborhood out of the girl?"
Before she had a chance to redeem herself with a more tasteful response, the man who'd taken her virginity on a studio couch turned to his fellow officer. "I've got this one." With the same power he'd used to claim her maidenhood, Mikan was led to a cubicle with oak walls.
"Have a seat." He indicated the leather chair by the desk.
She tried for an elegant lift of her head. "Are you sure it's ethical for you to handle this report, considering our past?" Much better than her initial discharge.
He propped one muscled his hip on the desk's corner and smiled down at her.
His eyes alone could make woman say yes.
She tightened her mouth, tightened her limbs. "Don't try and weasel out of it by telling me you don't remember."
"I remember."
His tone, even more than his honesty, told her the man he'd become. She shot him a smile. After all, she had been as eager as he. Last maiden on the block had held no honor in her neighborhood. Nor any pleasure for a curious teenager whose closet run-in with titillation had been when she confused which orifice between her legs should be plugged with a tampon.
"Natsume Hyuuga. A cop. Damn." She plopped down the chair.
He cocked his head, gave her another good, long once-over. "Stockbroker?" he said as if it were a guess.
Her eyes narrowed. "You're good but you're not that good."
He chuckled, the sound hitting her square in the gut. "You've got a ripped up stock order ticked stuck on a ward of gum on the bottom of your shoe."
So much for aplomb. He was right. She stunk of the neighborhood.
"My mother might have mentioned it, too."
He could have gotten away without telling her that and impressed her big time. He hadn't
"More than once," he added in a way that said his mother had harangued him daily.
Mikan suddenly adored Mrs. Hyuuga. "How is your mother?"
"Moved to Osaka two years ago with a guy with Elvis hair."
Flashback:
Knock on the door of the yellow row house with the brown roof at 2:00a.m, Mikan and her sister on the stoop in their pajama. The door would open to Mrs. Hyuuga. Sometimes Mikan's mother had still been bleeding, always starting to swell. Once there'd been cracked ribs…
End of Flashback
He studied her, the pain of his own past no less than her own. "She was right. You did okay, Mikan, for a skinny, flat-chested runt from the neighborhood."
"I wasn't too skinny for you one night." But already her voice was softening. Even if he had broken her heart, she'd happily handed it to him. And Natsume's mother had been a good friend to Yuka and her two girls, not that Mrs. Hyuuga had ever been able to convinced Mikan's mother to leave her husband. Mrs. Hyuuga's own marriage had ended after her thirteen-year-old son had tried one Saturday night to protect her from her drunken husband. It'd taken four year s and Natsume's two-week hospital stay. So Mrs. Hyuuga understood what didn't seem understandable, opened her door to Mikan and her sister and her mother any time day or night. Even knowing after one or two days, an apology and promise it would never happen again, and Yuka would go home to Rei.
"You didn't do so bad yourself Hyuuga." He smiled. The hum inside her swelled.
"For a lying skunk."
His expression showed no offense. "I didn't lie, Mikan."
"Hell, no."
He smiled wider. "Then what are you pissed for?"
She attempted indignation. "You could have at least called and given me the chance to turn you down."
"I wasn't that a nice guy."
"You weren't a nice guy at all."
"I'm still not a nice guy."
Mikan heard the warning and appreciated it.
"So, what brings you back down memory lane?"
"My mother. I'm afraid something's happened to her. She'd missing."
"Missing?" He became all cop now. Again Mikan saw the man he had become.
"I called her last night. My sister had left a message on my machine yesterday to call her. She sounded a bit hysterical, but then again, that's not unusual for Luna. She seems to thrive on high drama. I called the last number I had for her, but it'd been disconnected. That's also not unusual for Luna. So I called my mother to see if she had a number for her. When there was no answer at the house, I called the bar. They said Mama hadn't been in all night, and Persona had just left. When I reached his house. He said Mama was gone. Said she'd taken some cash and left him."
"You don't believe him?"
The cynical twist of her lips revealed the woman she had become. "Would you?"
"I don't believe anybody."
"Me, either."
Nothing in his eyes flickered sympathy. She was grateful.
"Does she say anything to you about leaving him?"
Mikan shifted. Her gaze skittered about leaving the office expensive looking walls. "I never really got that dutiful daughter routine down. I sent flowers on birthdays, Mother's Day, checked in with her every few months, but weren't close." She didn't have to ask for understanding, not from Natsume, but she knew her eyes pleaded with him anyway.
"So, how do you know your mother didn't take the cash and split last night?"
"People don't change, Natsume."
"Some do."
"Maybe." She'd given him that much, but she could see the that kept his eyes dark and made him choose to wear a gun strapped to his side. Despite all appearances, he was holding on just like her.
"How far could she have gotten without her car?" she asked.
"She left her?" Natsume was cool enough not to lean forward but she'd gotten his interest.
"And that's about it." Her mother's dresser drawers had been empty; her bedroom closet had been the same except for a few hangers. Nothing. Not one odd sock, old shirt. In the mirrored medicine chest in the bathroom, there'd been no makeup, no Noxzema, no Topaz that her mother said was the only thing that killed the stink of Saturday night behind the bar. It was almost as if someone wanted to erase all traces. Except her mother's hot red Porsche Boxster S she'd called "Cherry" had been parked in the drive.
"My mother's car keys were on the kitchen counter along with a dry cleaning ticket for next Tuesday and an overdue video. Mama always did like to meet her responsibilities."
"No note? Anything like that?" Mikan shook her head.
"Somebody picked your mother up. A girlfriend?"
H e was respectful enough not to sat "boyfriend." After all, Yuka had changed his diapers. Still, the possibility Yuka had run off with another man was there like the spring bruising Mikan's butt now.
"I guess anything's possible." She gave Natsume a deliberate glance. "Nah. You know my mother. She was brought up that marriage is a sacrament, divorce is a sin."
Yuka's first husband's – Mikan's father – died due to heart attack when she was seven. Four years later her mother had married Rei 'Persona' Serio. The honeymoon hadn't lasted long. Yuka's choices in love were as bad as Mikan's hot stock picks.
"Only a few months ago, my mother and Persona had gotten a new place. Bought a fixer-upper not far from downtown. The place need some work but it had a couple wooded acres. Mama said the deer would come and eat right out of her hand. Last time I spoke with her, she…" Dead air.
"She sounded happy."
"When was that?"
She counted back mentally, avoiding Natsume's gaze. "Five, six, maybe eight weeks."
"That's a long time for happiness to last."
At least in the world they'd come from.
"When's the last time you talked you talked to your sister?"
Guilt made her gaze flit about the room again. "She called me about three, four months ago. We didn't talk much." She shrugged, hating that she still felt the need to ask for absolution. "Same old, same old. She needed money. I sent it." She was almost afraid to ask. "You know anything about her? Maybe where I can find her?"
"She was hanging out at a place called Mother's down lower South Street."
"Near the port?"
"I'll find her" he said.
Stay out of it, she heard in his tone. She threw him her best low look of warning. He gave it right back to her.
"I used to walk these streets too, Hyuuga."
"Yeah, in Keio closeout." His gaze raked over her body and her five-hundred rabbit French outfit.
He had a point. That pissed her off even more. "Hey, I wasn't the only one who got my butt kicked from one end of Lansing to the other on more than one occasion."
"Stay away from the port."
He'd tried to tell her what to do. He'd made a big mistake.
He took out a business card. "Where are you staying?"
She had no idea. When she'd called and learned her mother was missing, she'd used her frequent flier miles to take the first available commuter, then a taxi to her mother and stepfather's house where she'd found only "Cherry" and her bald-headed, beer bellied stepfather in his boxers. She hadn't thought any further ahead than that. She wasn't going to stay at her stepfather's. She didn't know who was left in the old neighborhood.
"I'll get a hotel room."
"Do you have a cell phone?"
She nodded.
"Write it down. Does your sister, your mother have that number?"
She slanted her gaze. "Mama had my old number. My cell got stolen a few weeks ago. I meant to call and give her my new number…"
He glanced up. No sympathy, no reproach and she were grateful.
"Mama always called the apartment anyway."
He wrote on the card. "On the front is the station house number. This is my cell and my pager number on the back. Call in your room number when you get one. I'll bring Luna to you." He stood. "In the mean time, hang on out at the hotel, order some room service and a chick flick and paint your nails."
Damn if he hadn't done it again – ordered her around. She was getting steamed even if the things this man did with toes were almost worth excusing his arrogance. "She's my mother Natsume."
"Whatever happened, it's not your fault, Mikan."
"I know that." But it sure felt like it.
"Do you have any recent picture of your mother with you?"
"And you almost had me guilt-free here."
"We'll need one. I'll start looking for Luna, stop by your stepfather's bar and talk to him. C'mon." He touched her arm with carefulness she didn't remember. "I'll walk you out."
"Besides being a righter of wrongs, got any other good surprises for me, Hyuuga?" she asked as they left the station house, crossed into the parking lot. "Married?"
"I'm not that much of a changed man." He spotted the Porsche. "You're driving your mother's car?"
"I'm borrowing it." They reached the car. She slid into the driver's seat.
He moved between the open door and the car. "What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Married?"
"Supposedly. Until I found out that he's cheating on me. So much for true love." She shrugged. "Like mother, like daughter, huh?"
He shook his head, telling her no. Mercifully the black of his eyes stayed hard, flat. She wouldn't accept otherwise from him.
"Well, I did take the Limoges vase we'd gotten from his aunt as an engagement present and gave him a concussion."
"You always did have classy was about you." He smiled, a compatriot, and she remembered why she'd let him get into her pants.
"A cop and a Kagurazaka wheel-dealer."
She didn't correct him. "Who'd have thought it when we were young?" For the second time, his crimson eyes soften. "We were never young, Yukihara."
He looked at her so long her insides hummed like hive. He was a crazy maker.
"You ever have a cop before, Yukihara?"
Bless him. She shook her head, straining to her him above the purr.
"Yeah, you did."
"That didn't count."
He ran his finger down her cheek. "Yeah, it did." He grinned, and then shut the car door.
She fastened her seatbelt.
Lower down town had once been a wasteland of low-income housing, abandoned building, small inner-city businesses with bars across their windows. But revitalization fueled by district representative eager to get one step closer to the governor's mansion sitting high in the distance and an influx of young professionals had made the area fashionably urban in the past few years.
Now town houses alternated with crack houses. Drivers complained to city hall about lack of decent parking. Still, the renewal had not reached to where Mikan was heading. The warehouses were flat brown or a sad yellow and had the look of abandonment whether they were or not. The barges slat heavy and still in the gray-green water and the smell of fish and fruit and longshoremen's sweat wafted through the car's vent. Despite of the heat, she'd let the top up. She hadn't spent two hundred rabbits on a haircut to let nature have its way. Still the sweat trickling down her sides was from more than the summer heat. No one knew except and an overpriced therapist, even fewer would believe it, but she hated to drive.
She parked in lot several streets over from the docks, locked the car and started towards a squat, flat roofed building with a neon Miller sign in one window and Person's in faded blue letters above its door. She had changed her clothes from well-heeled Kagurazaka to denim and one-hundred percent cotton, charged at Junky store uptown. She figured that concession was close enough to obeying Natsume's orders to stay away from the port.
She stepped into the bar, stopping to adjust to the darkness after day's bright sun. For that second, she wished she didn't always feel compelled to do the opposite of whatever she was told to do. Even in common denim and White Cotton Slub Hurst Top and Keds, she was as conspicuous as hungry starlet.
She made a beeline for the bar, inviting the man to go back to their dart games and their beer and their alcohol-included sense that nothing was amiss.
The bartender was lean and his hair was shaved. "What can I do for you?"
He threw a cardboard coaster on the Naugahyde counter. She appreciated the attempt at the ambiance. She slung herself on to a stool as if she were a regular and smiled to show him there was no reason why they couldn't be friends. He folded his arms.
"I was told I might find Luna Yukihara here."
"That's right? Who told you that?"
She hesitated and was instantly out. The man's eyes narrowed. Natsume was right. She'd kept sharp dealing with daily roller-coaster ride on Kagurazaka, the early-learned practice of trusting no one and showing no fear making her seem born to broker. But she'd been away from these streets too long.
She just matched the man's mean squint when something flickered in his gaze.
"Mikan?"
She kept her own stare hard. "Maybe."
The man's meaty lips smiled. "Mikan Yukihara."
Mikan concentrated on the man's face, but nothing clicked.
"It's me Mochiage."
"Mochiage?" She remembered a sunken chested bean of a boy whose butt was kicked up and down Lansing ten times more than Natsume and hers put together.
The fleshy smile widened. "Actually they call me Mochu now."
"Doesn't make sense, what happened to you?" she asked.
"A little Marines. A little steroids and ba-ba-bing."
"Ba-ba-bing." Mikan echoed.
He wiped several sticky rings off the bar. "What can I get ya? It's on the house."
It wasn't much past noon and the strongest she'd had in past ten years was a nonfat latte.
"Double snake bite." She wasn't about to lose any freshly gained ground.
"So, what bring you home?" Mochu set the shot in front of her.
She supposed if she'd ever really had a home, this city would come the closet. "What else?" She picked up the glass, her eyes crossing from the drink's fumes. "Family."
"What always," he agreed with a truly painted expression for a man with dagger dripping blood down his forearm.
"Hear, hear," she tossed. Mochu watched her closely. It was now or never. She'd been gone too long and too far on the basis of old times alone. This is for you, Ma. She swallowed the drink in one gulp. She smacked her lips, released a satisfied "A-h-h." She still had it.
"Looking or little sis, huh?" Mochu picked up her glass for a refill. Her pleasure at her performance waned.
"The last number I have for her is no longer in service. I heard she hung here."
"She in trouble?"
She told him the truth. "I don't know."
"She never seem to stray far from it." He set another shot in front of her and leaned against the back counter.
Mikan recognized the challenge. In this neighborhood, proving yourself was part of the game. She eyed the drink. Two of these on an empty stomach and Gentleman George, who she'd seen still set up camp on the city's corners with an almost elegant woven basket for change and paper bag of Mad Dog 20-20, would be suave compared to her. Still, she needed info and she hadn't gotten any. On the other hand, Mochu could be calling her bluff. They'd both played the game. She reached for the drink. On principle alone, she never backed away from dare.
She had glass to her lips when Mochu circled her wrist with callused palm. "'Shiro Neko.' You never could never resist playing with big boys, could you?"
She looked up from the signature tattoo of the gang called Alice, inked on Bill's inner forearm. "Story of my life, Mochu."
He drowned the drink himself. "I heard you did pretty well. Luna, she was always going on about you."
Compared to her younger sister's mixed up life, Gentleman George was a successful story.
Mochu poured himself another shot. "Luna was real proud of you."
The guilt was familiar as it was keen. She'd stayed away with acceptable excuses but she knew the real reason she rarely came home. She was afraid –afraid of helplessness she experienced every time she thought of her sister, her mother. Afraid of small chant that came every time she saw them. There but for the Grace of God… Now her mother was missing, her sister obviously still strung out, and she, the prodigal daughter, right back where her she began – broke, frustrated, burning for more than her barely blue-collar roots. And, as illustrated by her earlier reaction to a man who had ruined more women than a cheap bikini wax, not one iota wiser.
"Listen, I'll tell you what I told Hyuuga –"
"Natsume's been here already?" Not that it mattered, she reminded herself. Besides a moment of insanity when she'd let herself be engage to a cheating bastard, she'd never let anyone tell her what to do.
"You kept up with Natsume?" He eyed her slyly. "You two used to cha-cha, no?"
"It was once –"
Mochu lifted a brow.
"Hey –" she'd given up the virgin act readily long ago when she learned what waits on the other side. Still, nine years of Sunday school and no patent leather shoes during her formative years was hard to break. "What do you know anyway?"
Mochu shrugged. "Nothing. Hyuuga 'cha-cha'-ed every skirt I knew. Just checking to see if it'd been a clean sweep."
"Where's my sister Mochiage?"
Her tone was too close to "cut the crap." Mochu's gaze went into caution mode. She knew what he was thinking. Shiro Neko.
Sunken-chested butt-kicked bean boy, she mentally threw right back.
Mochu heaved a sigh. The piercing in his ear shimmied. "All right."
One for Shiro Neko.
"I'll tell you what I told Natsume. Natsume. A cop. Can you beat that?"
"I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it. So where can I find Luna?"
"She worked here for about two months… when she showed up. Most of the time if she did show, she was too lit up to be any use to me anyway, but she'd start singing the blues and well, her and I, we go back some."
Mikan nodded. Like most addicts, her sister was a master of manipulation. It was a survival skill. Even aware of it, Mikan herself had let her sister work her over more than once.
"She hung off and on with a dude who worked the tankers. Name's Koko. He'd come up from Osaka. Smooth dog. Threw a lot of money around whenever the ship docked in the port."
"He still around?"
"He comes and goes. I haven't seen him in a while neither Luna. A couple of weeks ago, I caught her taking cash out of the register and pocketing it. I let her go. She got all huffy, as if I had some nerve firing her because she was stealing me blind. She'd a real piece of work, that one."
"She's a classic. And you haven't seen her since?"
"A few nights ago, I stopped at your father's joint –"
"He's not my father."
The man raised his hands, her point was made. "Wednesday, I think it was."
"You talk to her?"
He shook his head. "No, I stayed away. Your mother was serving that night. She and your sister, they seemed to be having a 'discussion.' Then Luna stomped out, not looking too happy. Nor too healthy."
"My mom was working on Wednesday? Last time I talked to her, she was only working on Friday and Saturday nights."
Mochu shrugged. "Maybe she was filling in for one of the other girls. Picking up little spare cash."
For new house? Or new life?
"What is Koko's whole name?"
"Kokoro Yome. He busted a guy's nose one night for calling him freak."
"Sound like a sweetheart. He and Luna like to hang out anywhere else?"
"Anywhere there was action, if they're still hanging together. One of the regulars last week said they'd seen Luna at a place downtown. The Golden Cue. But she wasn't with Koko."
Mikan slid off the stool, pulling out the twenty she'd found stuffed between the car's seat cushions when she searched for the seat belt. "Thanks, Mochu."
"Hey, I told you it's on the house."
Mikan hesitated. She didn't like accepting favors. Time come they'd be called in. But a perceived insult could be just as deadly. She worked to appear gracious.
"Okay, well thanks again."
"How long are you in Town?"
"I'm not sure." She looked into Mochu's eyes, "A while, I guess." She scribbled her cell number on a cocktail napkin. "If you see Luna, will you give her this? Tell her I'm looking for her."
Mochu enjoyed watching her walk to her car. He watched as she got into her car, jumped right back out, her mouth working while she took down the car's convertible top. Still talking to herself, she got back in checked the side and rear mirrors, then drove out of sight. He waited another minute before he picked up the phone.
End
First and for most I would like to say sorry for some of my grammatical errors. :(
Well, anyway Please don't forget to leave a Review all of your opinion(s) are welcome..
Till next Chapter
XOXO
~Claire-chan143