All sort of sounds, atrocious screams, loud bangs and screeches of eerie laughter echoed in the usually calm Togami Manor. Byakuya Togami, holding the telephone to his ear, had started to shake in silent rage.
Who dared trespass his family's sanctuary?!
And why was he taking a call if the only sound, apart from that mayhem, was Kobayama's anxious, ragged breathing?
As if reading his master's mind, the Togami Head Planner inbreathed hard, putting together his energies to speak.
"Can-can you still… hear me, Byakuya-sama?!"
Kobayama's voice sounded stressed and agitated. He had never heard him having a panic fit, but he was inches away from it. He was making an effort to keep his voice steady and smooth as always, but it still sounded like a kid's whine.
"I'm here… where the hell are you? What?!"
Togami's face went pale. Paler than usual, if possible. Cautious as he had always been, he had raised the stereo playing Caprice no. 13 from Paganini so loud, only the phone filter ear/mouth piece made it easy to hear and speak.
"I'm… I'm in a closet… a back closet… I had to retrieve something… but before… they axe down the cellphone receiver… please listen… He allowed them to enter… What I feared… has happened… "
No way -no way - no way.
His mind went in fast rewind.
Entry year at Kibougamine – 1 month before term start.
"Omae… Imasu-teme…"
The imposter Togami stopped in his tracks. Usually, the disowned siblings have a first task after defeat: find a new name to go live in obscurity. They have to register it so the family is aware of their location, and never allows them chances of good education or success in later life. The reason: they had already burned out their one and only claim to fame.
His official name was Byakuya Togami, but people at the household called him Imasu-chan. Just as a mere robot or drone, "Being-chan". Now Byakuya was calling him "you louse Imasu", a name that made his insides quiver.
"The current family head left his Kibougamine grant unused. If I feel like it, I'll be using my own next fall." He spoke to himself to delve in the wound further. "After the spell I spent in Gordonstoun School, I feel I'll be getting bored in Eton, so Hope's Peak doesn't seem as bad. The Togami Group still has a grant waiting to be used. I want you to use it… More like… either use it in the likes of pathetic you, or allow it to go to waste…"
He stared back at the real Togami, who was clearly, cruelly, enjoying himself.
Of course, Byakuya Togami was lying. But his sibling was unaware of that.
It will be amusing, he thought. Spending a handful million yen, watching that nobody believe he was finally going to be somebody, would be enough entertainment for him.
"You cannot go as me, but you can go as Super High School Level Imposter. I think no one has a talent better suited in the whole high school alumni pool."
The tiny ray of hope he saw in the usually abashed, obese teenager, was amusing him so much, he decided to continue the mockery.
"Maybe – maybe, if you really behave well… they might view you as someone…Not as a mere copy of me. A nobody that becomes somebody as a copycat. Nice, isn't it?"
Hopeless drone. He was practically wetting himself with anticipation. He could sign a blank paper to go to Kibougamine Academy. This was going to be so funny, that hopefully he would have no qualms of boredom. He suppressed one of his dry, mirthless laughs by turning it into a cough.
"Well. I'm waiting for an answer"
"You are?"
"You thought I wouldn't ask you your opinion?"
He was sadistically enjoying the look in his blueish eyes. Ah, allow hope to roam free.
"You're right. I don't care for your opinion. You're already in my hands, whether you want it or not"
All the most enjoyable, to thwart said hope.
He looked back, smiling. The impotence in his fat counterpart pleased him.
"You are already scheduled for a screening. They're going to pick you up tomorrow morning at five. Get yourself ready, they don't like to wait"
He heard the pudgy steps stopping just behind him. "Well? What is it?" he asked briskily.
" …But if I don't have a name…"
"You do worry? It's a portmanteau big enough for two... If someone wants to kidnap or kill me, they may end up getting you…" He scoffed. "As if someone was stupid enough to mistake you for me… but well. We won't be acquainted in any way in the school. Your name will be Daremo Eien."
Forever Nobody. That was a pun worthy of the Heir, the defeated sibling had to admit.
"And watch your step. I'm doing you a favor unworthy of your lowly position. Try and put me in a difficult situation… and you will be turned into the toerag you were supposed to be from the start…"
He walked away, leaving his overweight doppelganger to chew into his new, unwanted situation.
********************
Togami's room.
Kobayama stepped in, a mug of coffee in a silver plate. Togami took it without looking at him.
"Well? What are you standing there for?"
"If I may, Byakuya-sama… Are you really going to allow him that much freedom?"
"It amuses me. Why not? What can a bug like him do? Lash at me?"
" He cannot do it directly… but he can be dangerous, if not to you directly,to your interests"
Togami took a sip of the coffee.
"He ought to be grateful to me. Without me, he would be nobody"
"I think he's a nobody under you, even if you 'allow him' to share your name"
"So you think he is a threat?"
"Void is the most dangerous of the elements, because all the others don't know how to fill it. I pray to the family gods that you're not making an error of judgement, just for the sake of having some fun-"
The violin bow stroke, grazing the servant's cheek. Icy eyes stared, ablaze.
"I do not make mistakes. Leave that to those who have nothing to lose. If I want to have some fun, I don't need to hear or ask your opinion"
End of flashback
Togami tried, in vain, to stop grinding his teeth in anger. During the first year, he and "Daremo" kept their paths separated. But after the killing of the student council led the mayhem to explode in the reserve class, the fat Togami destitute was missing from the school at times. This had been one of those times.
"Kobayama… the defense systems should be working…"
"They are not" the servant informed, in a weak voice. "He broke into them… no use"
"Then get a gun, go to the weapons shed, do something, you spineless bastard!"
The line creaked. An audible gasp from Kobayama told Togami something had gone horribly wrong.
Then, he heard his own, cold voice on the other end of the receiver.
Other jeering voices echoed in the hall.
"Found the lapdog. I wonder if I should let the master know how this filth died?"
A screech through clenched teeth, coming from the servant, crisped Togami's nerves. They were torturing the Planner and letting him know.
"Quit this stunt, you nobody! What do you think you are doing, you ungrateful little squirt?"
"Ungrateful?", the other retorted in his own voice. "When the rest of us takes over Hope's Peak… I will be, at all effects, Byakuya Togami… because you will only be a corpse rotting in the sun. Just as any other little failure in the family…"
"Care to say that to my face…!"
A scream of agony came through the telephone. A group of people were taking turns on Kobayama, and they were surely going rough on him. His impersonator gave a dry, sarcastic laugh, and hung the phone.
Togami was left squeezing the cell phone in his crisped hand, bared teeth, mind spinning.
What to do, what to do, what to do…
Had he, an expert at calculations, miscalculated the power of retaliation of a wounded drone?