People are actually reading this story! I'm so happy~ I'd really, really love to know what you guys think of how the story is going :D. Please enjoy the next chapter! I apologize in advance; the build-up is rather gradual, but I promise that by chapter four things will be rolling down the hill at breakneck speed 8D.
When he was still in high school, he always knew that living with Kururi and Mairu was a hectic experience. After graduating and living on his own, he looked upon living with the twins wistfully and warily, regarding it as familiar chaos taken for granted.
Now that he was back in the very beginning, with his twin sisters running around his penthouse, he wondered how crazy he must have been even thinking that.
"Kure-nee! Look, look!" Mairu jumped up and down, grazing her fingers across the many tomes shoved into Izaya's bookshelf. Izaya was thankful that he had quickly removed Celty's head from its usual place and hid it stealthily. "Do you really think Iza-nii reads all these, or does he keep them here just so that people only think he's smart?"
"Ah…" Kururi was in the kitchen, standing silently and awkwardly in the middle of the tiled floor. She opened up his refrigerator and dug through it, searching for something to satiate her cravings. Izaya had little worry about Kururi destroying his home; that is, unless Mairu was with her, which was ninety-nine percent of the time.
"Iza-nii! Your place is huge! Why do you keep it to yourself, ne? Here you are, living in a magnificent castle while your family rots and starves in a hovel!" Mairu laughed, skipping along the hallway. Izaya pretended to not hear here as he worked on his laptop.
"Why did there have to be more of you?" Namie grunted, trying to plug her ears and concentrate on her work.
Izaya laughed. Living with the twins was a little more bearable now that he shared it with Namie. "Didn't I tell you that if even I couldn't handle them on my own, no one can? Right again, aren't I?"
"Shut up," Namie grumbled.
"You should bond with them more. Don't females like to cling to each other to pour out their hearts and emotions of love and depression to show off how much more of a tragic hero they are to each other?" Izaya smirked.
"You're insane," Namie said.
"But it's true. You'll be the one to escort them to and from school, after all."
Namie nearly dropped the cup of tea she was drinking out of. "When did this happen?"
Before Izaya had a moment to reply, a loud voice cut his words short.
"Iza-nii! Iza-nii! Where are Kure-nee and I sleeping?" Mairu demanded. She dragged her bulky black backpack full of her things on the ground. Kururi poked her head out of the kitchen, holding several grapefruits in her arms.
"You're sleeping in the last room to the right and Kururi gets the room on the left," Izaya said, not even looking up from his computer.
"But I want to sleep with Kururi!" Mairu said hotly. "You dare separate twins? How cruel of you, Iza-nii! You're trying to make everyone as lonely as you are, aren't you?"
Izaya typed a little more viciously on the keyboard. Namie let out a chuckle.
"I'm starting to like that girl already," she said.
"Let's see how quickly you'll stop singing that tune, shall we?" Izaya said. He looked up to face Mairu, who was attempting to climb the bookshelf upstairs. "Go get settled in your rooms, Mairu and Kururi. Nii-chan isn't going to do it for you."
"Let Kururi and I sleep together!" Mairu ordered, sticking her tongue out at Izaya.
"I don't want you to corrupt Kururi's mind," Izaya said, leaning back in his chair.
"It's already dirty enough!" Mairu giggled. "Come on, Kururi! Who needs to listen to Iza-nii, anyway?"
Kururi quietly obeyed, trotting up the stairs with her collection of fruit. Mairu grabbed her arm and skipped toward the room Izaya assigned for her, dragging Kururi along. When they disappeared behind a slamming door, Izaya immediately turned toward Namie, any sign of humor vanished from his face.
"Are you really serious about me escorting the girls everywhere?" Namie said grudgingly.
"Of course I am," Izaya deadpanned. "Now, they head out to school about seven in the morning every day. They end around three in the afternoon but they have afternoon activities. Mairu goes to martial arts class every Tuesdays and Thursdays directly after school until five in the afternoon, and Kururi likes to go to the gymnasium on Mondays and Fridays from seven in the evening to eight thirty—"
"I thought you told me they could take care of themselves," Namie protested. When Izaya gave her a questioning look, she raised her voice. "Like that time you said they might be bullied at school. You said that they wouldn't leave their persecutors alone. Why are you making me tail them?"
Izaya laughed at Namie and shook his head. "Oh, Namie, you really don't understand me when I speak to you, do you? Don't you see? Of course they can pick on people their own size."
Namie furrowed her eyebrows. "And your point?"
Izaya's laughter cut short. He leaned forward; much more serious and his voice much lower and quieter. "They shouldn't have come to live with me."
"I understand that you might not be too fond of them, but—"
"You're jumping to conclusions, Namie," Izaya said softly. "I suggest you stop doing that. Making fallacious assumptions only makes you look stupider."
Namie crossed her arms, affronted. Izaya continued on.
"People wouldn't care to attack two girls out of the blue just because they are there," Izaya said. "Not normally, anyway. Occasionally you'll have the disgusting brute craving carnal desires, but even then, the chances are thinner. Normally, the twins would just be regarded as two more faces in a sea of identities in Tokyo."
"What are you getting to?" Namie said, frowning.
"Namie, let me introduce you to Patience one of these days. People wouldn't think of specifically attacking Kururi and Mairu. Amateur bullies and delinquents, perhaps: the weak type of people who like to focus on the faults of others to overshadow their own flaws. Those Kururi and Mairu can smite quite easily."
Izaya gazed down at the desk, his fingers tracing unknown shapes on the smooth surface.
"But what would people do when they realize the infamous information broker actually has a family? Orihara Izaya, the shrewd informant without a soul in the world to keep him company, now has someone—in fact, two girls—tied to him by flesh and blood. It's the weak spot that yakuzas would die to have."
Namie quieted. "So you think that if people find out you have siblings, they might use that against you?"
"If you must dumb down everything I say, then yes, that's what I think."
Namie pursed her lips. "And before you barely ever talked or visited them."
"Your observation skills are impeccable."
"Stop acting so damn smart," Namie said harshly. "And here I was, thinking that Orihara Izaya cared for no one but himself."
Izaya's fingers twitched instinctively, but his face remained completely calm and emotionless. "Of course I'm doing this for myself. How would my parents feel if their precious angels were harmed because of me? I'd be signed out of their will immediately."
Namie scoffed and shook her head. "You're pathetic."
Izaya raised an eyebrow questioningly at Namie. "Money is quite a difficult thing to obtain—"
"Stop lying to yourself; you know it isn't true," Namie sneered. "You wouldn't care if you were signed off of their will. You probably have more money that the inheritance right now. Why do you force yourself into denial that you aren't invincible?"
"Of course I'm unshakable," Izaya said, grinning. "I'm not a fool that would bend to others' will because of weak spots. I don't have any."
Namie turned away from Izaya, still shaking her head and muttering 'pathetic' under her breath. Izaya giggled and returned to his desk, humming slightly to himself. When Namie was so engrossed in her work that she paid no attention to Izaya anymore, he let his mirth dissipate. He forced himself back into his work to push any weak thoughts out of his mind.
Of course he had weak spots. But that didn't mean he could be manipulated because of them.
It was all working so perfectly that Yadogiri felt like a god.
Granted, he still ached in the ribs, head, and legs where the cursed Awakusu-kai attacked him, but they all paled in comparison to the extreme triumph that pervaded through him. He watched the small park across from Raira Academy from afar like a hunter waiting for his doomed prey.
There were the two identical girls, waiting by the playground. One of them was swinging, flying so high that Yadogiri could have grabbed her even from the rooftop of the academy. The other watched her sister quietly on the slide, her knees drawn to her chest.
It took a while of waiting before a woman with long black hair appeared. The girl on the swing jumped off and landed lithely on the pebbles. The other twin slid down the slide and joined her sister. After what seemed like a moment of conversation, the twins picked up their bags from under a tree and followed the woman.
Yadogiri grinned. Just as he had expected. That meant Izaya was rather cautious about the whole situation after all. To think that all this was started by Yadogiri sending a harsh email from his company to the one that the Orihara parents worked for, and now everything was falling into place.
Orihara Izaya, the unshakable, the untouchable, the invulnerable, was doing just as Yadogiri wanted.
Let's play, Iza-kun.
It had been a mere five days of living with the twins, and Izaya was quite relieved to find himself still alive and his home still intact. Admittedly, he rarely ever saw the twins during the course of the day. By the time they woke up to go to school, he had already gone out in search for new information. They wouldn't come home until dinner time and directly after eating Izaya forced them to stay upstairs while he had to deal with whatever clients that required his assistance in the evening all the way until the late hours. One meal a day was enough for Izaya; they were loud and talkative and troublesome enough to fill up an entire day.
Namie, on the other hand, had to deal with the twins most of her day. Judging by her gradually souring mood and the twins' excessive energy, their 'female bonding' was failing miserably. Izaya wished to know what exactly went on between his sisters and his employee, but alas, he barely had enough time to see either of them even separately.
"Iza-nii!" Izaya quickly closed his laptop as Mairu flew down the stairs, her braids trailing behind her like whips. "Iza-nii, guess what? Guess what?"
Izaya checked the time on his cell phone. Contact with one of the twins and it wasn't even dinner yet. This was new.
"What now?" Izaya said flatly.
"Don't sound so bored! We barely ever talk to you; you should be grasping at your chance!" Mairu protested.
"I'm not bored," Izaya said lightly. Kururi came down the stairs too with several coat hangers in her arms. Izaya raised an eyebrow questioningly at the elegant garb on the hangers. "Fancy." He nodded toward the dresses in his sisters' arms.
Mairu pouted, stomping a foot on the ground. "Do you even know what this Saturday is?"
"A Saturday," Izaya said simply, typing out a text message to Shiki on his cell phone.
"Wow, Iza-nii! You're so smart! You should win an award!" Mairu squealed mockingly. Izaya rubbed his temple, pretending not to hear Mairu. Shiki was supposed to come in for an appointment at night about some smuggled goods and in all honesty, Izaya didn't feel like dealing with it. Unfortunately, a job was a job.
"Well, then, what exactly are you so excited about?" Izaya asked.
"Hmm? Iza-nii doesn't already know? I thought Iza-nii was the all-knowing, all-powerful king of the city! I suppose I know something that Iza-nii doesn't!" giggled Mairu.
"There is enough information about Tokyo to know even without the petty details," Izaya shot back. Mairu narrowed her eyes and scoffed.
"You don't even care what we're so excited about," Mairu accused. "We've been trying to tell you about it all week but you've never given us a chance!"
"I barely ever saw you this whole week," Izaya pointed out.
"Because you keep avoiding us!"
"That's because—" Izaya was interrupted by the chime of his cell phone. He frowned and glanced at the caller identification. It read 'Masaomi Kida' across the screen. He sighed exasperatedly and turned to his sisters. "Look, you can tell me later, all right?"
"Negative (You'll never listen)…" Kururi murmured before scuffling away. Mairu stuck her tongue out at Izaya before following her sister into the kitchen. Izaya put his hand over his eyes before flipping open the cell phone.
"Masaomi-kun, what news?" he said sharply.
"I need to talk to you," Masaomi's voice crackled on the other end.
"Why is that?" demanded Izaya. "Too dramatic for the phone?"
"Look, I'm already heading to your place, and you will let me in," Masaomi said firmly. "It's about that Yadogiri man you told me to find information on a while ago."
"Ah," Izaya replied shortly. He turned toward the window that overlooked the entire city. His eyes searched the thin streets below him as if trying to spot Masaomi in the crowd. "How much longer until you're here?"
"I'm in the elevator right now," Masaomi said.
Izaya immediately shut his cell phone without bidding Masaomi goodbye. He furrowed his eyebrows in concern. What was it about Yadogiri that Masaomi was so urgent about? He thought that Yadogiri would have been dealt with ever since the Awakusu-kai got their hands on him.
"Mairu, Kururi, go upstairs," Izaya said briefly as he placed his cell phone back in its holder.
"Reason (Why must we)…?" Kururi asked.
"Because I've got to work," Izaya said shortly. Involving the twins in the tangled business did not sit well with Izaya. Even though it was just Masaomi, the thought of letting someone else know more about Izaya and his family than he was willing was sickening to him. Irony at its best. "Just stay in your rooms, all right?"
Kururi gave Izaya a reproachful glare before flying up the stairs. Mairu hurriedly followed Kururi upstairs, but not without giving Izaya a rude hand gesture. Izaya retaliated by ignoring her.
Almost immediately after the doors of their bedrooms slammed shut, someone banged their fist on the front door. Izaya hurried toward the door and wrenched it open. Masaomi, in such a flurried rush, stumbled inside, nearly knocking Izaya down to the ground.
"What's the news?" Izaya demanded, shutting the door behind Masaomi. He headed back toward his desk and opened up his laptop.
"Yadogiri…he's up to no good," Masaomi said, sitting in a chair in front of Izaya's desk. Izaya took a seat in his swivel chair, inserting his password into the laptop.
"I figured that much out myself, funny enough. Pray tell, do you know specifically what he is planning, or is that all you've actually discovered?"
"Of course I know more," Masaomi said a little indignantly. He rested his elbows on the desk. "Look, I've still tailed him after your—your Awakusu-kai people gave him a beating. He got found by some of his men, which was a stroke of luck, really. They patched him up and hid him for a while."
"Where did they hide him?" Izaya asked.
"In an apartment, near Heiwajima's place. I suppose since Yadogiri works with Ruri, who's dating Kasuka, who is Heiwajima-san's brother, there must have been some sort of connection…"
"I don't really care," Izaya said swiftly. "What else?"
"He's assumed a new sort of identity. This is stuff that Saki found out, by the way. Yadogiri's men might have seen me and it would have looked suspicious if they kept seeing me again. It's not exactly anything drastically new; he already had the Awakusu-kai release their anger on him, so all he has to worry about is the police."
Izaya kept his gaze on his and Masaomi's reflection on the glass window darkened by evening. He narrowed his eyes, wondering what it was that Masaomi was so concerned about.
"But now he's planning something," Masaomi continued, speaking so quickly that his words meshed together. "Saki and I see him making lots of phone calls and going to the same places over and over again."
"Like what?" Izaya asked.
"Our school—the Raira Academy," Masaomi answered promptly. "Shinjuku as well. He mostly hangs around Shinjuku and Ikebukuro."
The muscle in Izaya's jaw twitched with annoyance. Already the half-formed pieces fell neatly in place in his head. Yadogiri was an idiot, but he was an idiot that ran on spite.
"How crude," Izaya said quietly. He spun his chair around to face Masaomi. "Yadogiri is being naughty and wants to pay me back, doesn't he? How juvenile."
"He doesn't seem juvenile," Masaomi warned. "He still has his workers. He may not have the Awakusu-kai working with him anymore, but that doesn't mean he's completely alone. He's still rather powerful."
"Give a rich and powerful man a smack on the bottom and he'll hold it against you for the rest of his life," sighed Izaya, rising from his seat and making his way to the front door. "That's who Yadogiri is. He won't ever accept that what he got is what he deserved."
"Even if you say that about him, it won't stop him from doing—whatever he's going to do," Masaomi argued. "Maybe it'll make you feel better that you're dealing with a puffed-up man, but even the egoists can inflict a lot of damage."
"I know that," Izaya said lightly as Masaomi left his seat toward the door as well. Izaya still had the scar on his side from where Yadogiri stabbed him, though it marked his pride more than his physical body. "I still keep him under watch. Very good job today, Masaomi-kun. My regards to Saki—"
Izaya noticed them falling down toward his head without even looking up. He immediately stepped to the side when a rain of thumbtacks showered down from the second floor. Masaomi backed away, slamming against the door to avoid the falling thumbtacks. Izaya gritted his teeth when he heard the all too familiar giggles from above.
"Mairu! Kururi!" Izaya growled, dodging several books that fell from the balcony.
"They're related to you?" Masaomi exclaimed, aghast as he remembered the twins from the Raira Academy. He barely dodged a binder. "I should have known!"
"Why don't you leave, Masaomi-kun?" Izaya said in a dangerous voice. Masaomi clung to the invitation and darted out of the door. A hefty binder fell on Izaya's head, making him stumble and crash into the wall. Mairu whooped in victory from above.
Izaya shook his head, trying to clear his dizziness. He raced up the stairs, his temper flaring like a flamethrower. The twins gasped and quickly dived into Kururi's bedroom, shoving the door shut behind them. When Izaya reached the top of the stairs, he realized that the walls were completely vandalized with black and red paint. Guilty paintbrushes were shoved into his starved bookshelf while the walls depicted ugly scenes of a black-haired characterization of himself in very disturbing situations, many of them involving either Shizuo or a truck.
Izaya didn't even give time to think through the situation, he strode toward the twins' bedroom. He tested the doorknob even though he knew it would be locked. Without warning, he took a step back to give himself more room and kicked the door open. It crashed against the wall, the hinges screaming on the doorway. He could hear Mairu gasp from somewhere in the darkened room. Izaya felt around on the wall before locating the light switch and flipping it. Rosy light brightened the room, betraying the two sisters curled up on top of the bed.
"You want to play, imouto-chan?" Izaya said in a sickeningly sweet voice. He casually closed the door behind him with his foot and locked the doorknob. "You must have been dying to play a game…that's why you were so childish earlier, weren't you?"
Before the twins could react, Izaya turned off the lights, forcing them all into darkness. The twins stiffened, realizing that their only source of knowing was destroyed. They were stranded in the black, vulnerable to attacks from every direction.
Without warning, the mattress flipped underneath them. Izaya had grabbed a hold of the edge of the mattress and overturned it, sending Mairu and Kururi toppling to the floor. Before they had a chance to jump to their feet Izaya pinned them on the ground by their necks.
"How about I suggest the game this time?" Izaya said in a voice far too cheery as the girls squirmed under his grip.
"Iza-nii!" Mairu coughed, trying to pry his hands off of her.
"How about those thumbtacks of yours, Imouto-chan?" Izaya threatened. "You sure love playing with those with others; why not share them?"
Kururi managed to pull Izaya's hand off her neck and lunged at him. She knocked him against the side of the bed. Izaya's grip released Mairu and she too jumped onto Izaya, wrapping her arms around his neck.
"IZA-NII!" Mairu screeched into his ear. "IZA-NII, IZA-NII, IZA-NII!"
Izaya tried to wrestle Mairu and Kururi off of him, but they clung to him too tightly to be budged. He was getting a headache from the screams. "What the heck, Mairu?"
"You're—you're HORRIBLE!" Mairu cried out. She punched him in the chest, knocking the air out of him. He coughed violently, squeezing the girls closer to him. "The only time you ever even talk to us is if you're mad at us!"
Izaya tried to retort, but only coughed some more since Mairu did not stop punching him. He caught her tiny fist in his hand before she could cause any more damage to his sternum.
"Mai—Mairu!" he forced out of his throat.
"Apathetic (Why don't you care about us anymore)…?" Kururi said, burying her face into his shoulder, but not without giving him a single, forceful punch in the ribs. Izaya suppressed a wince; he only allowed Shizuo and his sisters to strike him.
"What are you talking about?" Izaya demanded, his voice slightly rasped.
"You always ignore us!" Mairu said indignantly, her long nails biting his skin. "You always make us go to our rooms whenever we're home! You never listen to us when we want to tell you something because we never see you!"
Izaya stared confusedly at Mairu before it clicked into his mind. All the times he was trying to keep them out of trouble and harm drove a deeper fault between him and his sisters. As much as he believed that his reasons were more practical, he still felt a creeping guilt inside of him for his neglect.
"You used to be the onii-chan who would scare our bullies away when we were little," Mairu said hotly. "And read us stories and play games with us! Why do you hate us now?"
"I don't hate you two! At all!" Izaya said.
"You love humans," Mairu said mockingly. "But you don't love anyone personally!"
"Hey!" Izaya said sharply. He could still love humans and prefer specific ones personally, couldn't he? Would it still detract from his love of mankind? "Mai-chan, listen…"
"Gathering (There's a yakiniku party at school on Saturday)…accompany (and we want you to come)…" Kururi filled in quietly, clinging tightly on Izaya. "Decline (But you won't even let us ask you)…"
"Yakiniku…oh." Izaya remembered Masaomi mentioning it very briefly to Izaya when Izaya was giving him his assignment of making sure Yadogiri was down low. He breathed a sigh that tickled his sisters' hair.
"We don't know anyone in school besides one person," Mairu said loudly. "We want to go but everyone there either ignores us or runs away from us!"
"Dress (We're supposed to dress nicely)…show (and we wanted to show you what we wanted to wear)…" Kururi told him.
"But you don't care, do you?" Mairu snapped, biting his shoulder. He winced and pulled her head away. She pouted at him, her glasses askew. "Even when we walked through the streets bare naked you didn't care!"
"You did what?" Izaya exclaimed, aghast.
"Lies (She was kidding)…" Kururi assured him. Mairu crossed her arms, glaring at Kururi for blowing her cover. Izaya bit down on the tip of his tongue. It was true that he hadn't even associated himself with them for ages, even before they moved in. How come he did not think of his sisters when Masaomi mentioned the yakiniku gathering at Raira? It had never occurred to him at all. He awkwardly pulled the twins closer to him despite their continued attempts to punch and pinch him.
"…go tell Namie to cancel Shiki's appointment for tonight," he said, "and then show me what you want to wear to the yakiniku gathering. I want to make sure it's appropriate for this Saturday."
They gave him confused blinks before allowing a guilty smile creep onto their lips. Even with the age difference and the long moments of separation, their sibling intuition helped the twins know what Izaya really meant. Kururi scrambled to her feet and hurried out of the dark bedroom, beaming. Mairu jumped to her feet and was about to run out of the room before she stopped halfway out the door, spun around, and rushed back to Izaya. She kneeled next to him and wrapped her arms around him.
"Kururi has a date to the yakiniku party," she mumbled into his chest.
"A date?" Izaya repeated, surprised. Mairu nodded furiously, tightening her embrace. Izaya ruffled her black hair. "You don't like that at all, do you?"
"She's my sister," Mairu protested. "She doesn't belong to anyone else! She's not Aoba's!"
Ah, that Aoba boy. Izaya couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of Aoba dating Kururi. The outcome of such a relationship might cause utter havoc to all who surrounded them.
"Tell you what," Izaya said, shifting so that she was in a more comfortable position. "I can be your date. You're my sister and I don't want you belonging to someone else."
Mairu gazed up at him with fogging glasses. "You?" she exclaimed, giggling slightly. "You're so old, Iza-nii! You're such an old geezer!"
"Why does everyone say that?" Izaya said. Mairu stood up, straightening her wrinkled skirt and hiding a pleased smile by ducking her head.
"I suppose you'll do," Mairu said resolutely, laughing softly. She bent down next to him again and held out a hand. "Promise?"
"Am I really a liar?" Izaya said, but he took the hand anyway.
You shouldn't have made that promise to me, Iza-nii.
You shouldn't have come.
I shouldn't have made you.
Forgive me.