Chapter 2: in a whole new world Author's Note: haha life succs hallelujah
"
"If I change shape, and you forget time, do the spring leaves ever fall?"
Izaya wakes up feeling as though he has plunged himself into a whole new world.
At first, everything was normal, deceptively so. Although his bedsheets were more ruffled than usual. He was not one for tossing and turning in his sleep, and he has no recollections of dreaming anything the previous night. Passing it off as morning drowsiness, he stretches out of the bedding and makes his way to the bathroom.
(Of course, he does not yet notice the framed picture on his bedside that has definitely never been there before.)
Even when he showers, he somehow feels that everything is wrong. As though the laws of physics itself has been entirely warped in some way, minute but there. Though, the water still flowed down with the permanent force of gravity and washed everything from the previous days clean away. Grime, grogginess, guise.
Reaching for his shampoo, even it felt different, less smooth. Weird. Even that was wrong, different. The brand name was one he would never even think of touching - too cheap, and did not have the same silky quality he liked that was present in, different types of shampoo. Despite that, he brushes it off as being clumsy while shopping, which is rare - he's never clumsy. Gods were never careless after all, they were omniscient, in their perfect giant homes.
And if God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.
He leaves the shower feeling more disgusted than refreshed, like he's entered a purgatory of some sort. What was with his place today? There were things in here that most definitely had no place in his household, much less the vanity area. The makeup - okay, that wasn't too unusual; he has certain means to get through to people sometimes - but sparkling purple? And the books were atypical and weirdly varied, some more suited to the taste of teenaged girls, and others perhaps a few intent readers of the magic realism audience. Though, there were also some he recognised as the ones he had at home, but he is certain that he has never brought them to his bedroom to read before. And he can't remember the last time he invited his sisters over - if ever, really - but they most certainly never played with toys. Most troubling of all, however, were the dusty bottles of half-empty blonde hair dye, shoved and forgotten to a corner. Izaya would most definitely never have needed those. He squints and turns the offending bottle in his hand, looking at it from every bizarre angle. It just didn't fit.
Trembling, he sets it back down so fast that it hits the marble top with a clang. He does not know why he's shaking. It's as though someone has uprooted his own stage, warped his very being. He feels like an imposter in his own home.
"Just what is happening." He speak to the face in the mirror. Predictably, it doesn't answer unless he tells it to.
He pushes himself away angrily, unnaturally annoyed at the day's events. It hasn't even been a few hours since he woke up but something was terribly wrong.
And when he gets out, he sees exactly why.
A wild Shizu-chan is on his bed, reading a book. Similar to those ones at the vanity.
What. The. Hell.
Izaya gapes at him for a solid three minutes, until even Shizuo starts to get worried. As soon as he moves to get up, Izaya shuts the bathroom door behind him in record speed. He makes the slow count to ten and begins to squeak it open again. His mind a wreck of speeding thoughts. Brown hair? Shizu-chan? Reading? Brown-haired Shizu-chan reading?
"..."
Nope, still there.
It was almost too funny, but he wasn't laughing.
Swiftly, he lunges himself to his closet to acquire the extra blade that was always hidden in his jacket - only, he can't. This closet was mixed with someone - or a few someone's else's clothing, including some very revolting familiar bartender outfits.
Before Izaya could contemplate on his next move, at that moment, the door opened to reveal a young girl. She was a bit on the petite side - delicate, with a sharp diamond face and sharper brown eyes with black, silky hair flowing just past her shoulders. She was pretty no doubt, and looked around high school, so why was she here, gliding in as if it was a comfortable routine. Izaya gapes - just what is happening?
He doesn't and has never slept with anyone anywhere younger than twenty-one!
He barely registers her speaking.
"Breakfast's ready, come on out to eat. Eh, Otousan, you look really pale." She said, taking a step forward worryingly.
Silence, Izaya didn't know who she was referring to.
Otousan?
Maybe she's talking about Shizu-chan, maybe he's infected some poor girl with his monstrous genome and this is just a by-product. Nevermind that she did not look like Shizuo in the slightest.
There was a possibility that Shizu-chan's monster genes weren't that dominant, right?
...wait, just what the hell am I thinking?
"...Ah, I'm fine." He's unsure whether whatever he does will have any implications yet, but if Izaya were anything he would most certainly be cautious. He wasn't stupid enough to disclose just how in the dark he was yet. This territory was foreign, and he was going to throw caution to the wind and edge his way along slowly. Whatever it takes, he would make things happen on his own terms.
A warm but strong hand lands on his shoulder and he almost jumps ten feet backwards. He doesn't. However, he flinches ever so slightly - it's negligible, really. Startled claret eyes meet flaxen and for a second, he has forgotten how to breathe, and Izaya almost resolved to stab him right then and there.
"You sure?" Shizuo's voice sounds so naïve, and his words, embarrassingly direct, Izaya feels completely exposed by them. The sound of him echoes deeply in his head and Izaya almost feels intoxicated by everything that has transpired over the last few minutes, and he hates how it is starting to make him lose himself.
"You - "
"If you say so," The girl cuts him off before he nearly makes an uncharacteristic mistake, "anyway, I'm heading to school early today. Kanna wants to meet up to do homework."
"Stay safe, and can you walk Suki to school too?" Shizuo asks, firm hand still on Izaya's shoulder, as if trapping
"Sure, but seriously, he's old enough to be able to go by himself. I mean, Haru-nee was seven when she started making her way around herself." She complained, but only barely.
And, in the most unexpected turn of events, she walks forward to give them both a peck on the cheek before leaving.
He has heard of people short-circuiting, or their brains shutting down with no understanding of the rest of the world in that moment, but he has never expected himself to be so shocked that he'd experience it himself. There's never been anything in his life that was so unpredictable that it was disarming, nothing that was beyond his understanding.
Except, when it came to him.
Izaya only jolts to life when he feels the heat radiating at his back, from the shape of a sizeable hand slipping to his waist. Immediately, he jumps at least ten feet away, still facing Shizu-chan - Shizuo, with wariness in his eyes.
"What the - Izaya? What's wrong with you today? You're acting weird."
That's right, he absolutely cannot act brashly anymore. There has to be...something this situation would offer him, and he needs to figure out more to do so while not raising alarm. That's right, he would come out of this in his own terms.
Straightening himself without losing all the taut lines of stress in his body, just in case, he walks towards Shizuo, careful to stand back a foot as he follows.
"Just peachy." He smiles without comfort.
Izaya spends the rest of his time changing contemplating the situation. He has narrowed it down to possibly he fact that he has been kidnapped, likely by one of his older, more powerful clients, and was currently put under some special sort of torture. Seems a bit excessive, but humans were nothing if not restless and greedy in their pursuits. When they exit to the living room, he sees a boy. Now this is just terrifying. The remote control was resting on his alpaca themed-clad stomach for easy access. Terrible posture, and probably going to give him arthritis. He also, did not seem to want to acknowledge Izaya's presence, which was a small comfort in this endless madness, these strange happenings.
If Izaya was being honest, he looked like a mini Shizu-chan. Except with red eyes.
Just what sort of Karisawa fantasy have I entered into?
He takes the time to observe any differences. Furnishing wise, nothing is actually different from his own set-up back home, just more messes scattered upon the floor, and bits of more colour here and there.
The people who planned this must have been careful to emulate his apartment, line-by-line, no less. But then, they had been stupid enough to forget that the Fighting Doll of Ikebukuro was blonde, not brunette.
For this could be nothing more than an elaborate joke, he kept telling himself. A joke for which someone would have to pay for dearly. And the one to pay the most would certainly be the not-blonde-not-bartender beast at his side, who looked a bit too concerned for comfort.
The sound from the television brought his attention away. It was displaying an old Disney movie with Japanese subtitles at the bottom. Ironically or perhaps fittingly, it had hit a scene where the main leads were riding on a flying carpet, singing about a 'Whole New World'. Izaya is despaired at finding himself relating to mindless children's media. When had his life turned into such a joke, a dive into the twilight zone. Next thing he knows a towering 500-foot Martian will appear, warning him of the end of times. He would rather prefer that, actually.
He is on constant guard as he manoeuvres around the couch to the tiny island in the middle of his kitchen. Shizuo seats down next to him, there's a hand that comes onto Izaya's shoulders that just simmers and smoulders through his loose shirt, instantly touching skin. Izaya flinches that hand off, glaring metaphorical daggers in place of the literal ones he would have had prepared and preferred.
Shizuo looks extremely taken aback, eyes wide with vulnerability and so out of character that Izaya is almost more surprised than amused, but he takes his hand back, looking more guilty than angered. His heavy weight of disquiet etched on Izaya's every move afterwards. Izaya ignores it as easily as he can and focuses on the contents of the table instead, where breakfast was comprised of plain rice and miso soup: just how he liked it. He felt his stomach lurch at the thought, feeling greatly violated.
Nonetheless, he gingerly lifts the spoon to his mouth, spending a great amount of time speculating each grain of rice before experimentally taking a bite. It tasted too good.
As they continue eating, he finds that Shizuo fast forwards the 'scarier' (was an Arabic man with a most horse-like face and a giant snake really considered traumatising?) parts of a film while watching it with - there was no denying it - his kids. The girl - Hana was her name, honestly Izaya was quite disappointed at their naming choices, they were all probably Sh- complained about Shizuo being too soft, but the young boy did not seem to mind much. Actually, Izaya found that his attention was extremely focused on his being, scrutinising him, even if he kept feigning ignorance when Izaya glanced back.
It was too surreal.
"How nice it would be..." The older, other girl muttered. (Just how many were there?) "to be able to have a genie. You know, to save the day, grant wishes. Stuff like that." She said, pumping her fists lazily.
"You'd only have three wishes." Itsuki mumbled.
"Well, three is plenty! What would a greedy boy like you even want beloved-brother-whom-I-love-and-am-totally-not-asking-because-I-still-don't-know-what-you-want-for-your-birthday."
"Some peace and quiet in here, for once." Hana said in her straightforward manner.
Haru raised her eyebrow, jumping up from her spot on the couch. "That should be my line!"
"I like things as they are now," Shizuo says, eyeballing Izaya from the side. "mostly."
Itsuki merely shrugs as a response.
"Dammit again!" She exclaims, pulling at her brown locks in frustration. She grabs Itsuki by his shoulders and shakes him about frantically, all the while the young boy managing to maintain one of the best poker faces Izaya has ever seen. He must have gotten it from his uncle. Izaya frowns at that thought, disturbing it was.
"Why won't you make my life easier for me and stop being a cryptic little thing! All I want to do is try to be a good sister for you but you make it so haaard!" Squawking crows could not compare to her whining. She relents after a while and puts a hand on her chin while giving out an exasperated sigh. "Well, I actually think it'd be pretty nice to have more friends sometimes."
"That's surprisingly honest." Hana blinked.
"You'll be fine. I used to wish I had more people surrounding me as well, but in the end you realise that it doesn't matter how many people you have but which ones will stick with you till the end."
"Otouchan...that was surprisingly deep."
"Oi, surprisingly?"
"You're alright," Itsuki's face softens as he looks back at his sister, acting more an older sibling, a role reversal that did not go unnoticed by Izaya. "I mean, Ha-ni has friends, and I don't know how people manage to stay around her for so long."
"Said by the devil himself, I see."
"Izaya?" A hand occupies his field of vision and his attention is once again forced back to the last thing he would like to see right now. "You're never usually silent on discussions like this..." He says, worried again by Izaya's lack of participation.
"What do you think, what would you want?" The way he's said it sounds more than just a mindless question.
He feels stunned by the sudden inclusion. Just now, it had felt so different, like he was watching the whole thing behind a screen rather than having it play out right in front of him. The silence he is bound to leave in his wake if this attitude is kept up will no doubt be awkward and uncomfortable. But he, he really can't find anything to say, he knows what he wants, always has and always will, but -
"That isn't difficult to think about at all - eternal youth! He's always acting so vain, it's only fitting!"
"You know, now that I think about it, doesn't Otousan look younger these days?" Haru comments, as if just seeing Izaya for the first time. He supposed she technically was.
Izaya's breath hitches as he finds all eyes on him, and he can only remain uncharacteristically silent. And he absolutely hates it, not being able to control the torrent of foreign feelings welling inside of him. He whips around in panic to face Shizuo, who is also starting to notice the difference. Now that Izaya thinks about it, how did he not see how...aged Shizuo has become.
How does Izaya look like now?
"...Ah, well, I do have my secrets for staying young. Wouldn't you like to know?" He says smoothly, being a master at feigning his way out of difficult situations, though he is a little late. They don't all buy it, but the suspicion is quelled nonetheless.
"Stingy, stingy demon!"
He tries to shift conversation before any suspicions could be raised and attempts to do so with the children. Most kids were prone to spilling more than they knew.
"Aren't you supposed to be at school soon? He starts with the youngest. The boy was not the most naïve child around, and in fact has proven himself to be quite perceptive, but he was still the least experienced all the same, so it was a safer bet. In another time, he might have tried acting kinder, sweeter, but he had no room for compassion now, being too exasperated and desperate to care.
"Why, you're absolutely right! I suppose I am." Itsuki bites.
Now that was a surprise, Izaya was at least certain he would never raise a brat like...himself. Oh.
"Then why aren't you getting ready?"
"Don't feel like it I guess." His voice embodying every discontent child Izaya has ever heard. He sounded as if he was recalling something from earlier and was beginning to shut himself out from further development. It didn't matter - Izaya had already gathered enough.
Shizuo quickly shoos him out of the door after that, where Hana was waiting to chide him loudly as he pulls up his socks. Itsuki hisses back some more and shrugs on his black gakuran and schoolbag, not sparing either of them so much as a 'goodbye' before he is out the door.
Seems like Izaya isn't the only one who wants to get away.
As the two bicker their way away, Izaya decides that the way the act is too disturbingly familiar.
"What about you?" Izaya asks the oldest girl. The question shoots through his mouth like acid. That's not the real question he should be asking, it should have been What are you?
And when she looks up with his eyes, he feels his mind snap.
Not for the first, not for the fifth and not for the fiftieth time that morning, Izaya has the uncontrollable urge to ruin. Nothing about this situation was suited for anyone present, least of all Shizuo, who seemed to be content in his lot. At the very least, Izaya feels the smallest sense of victory at how uneasy he has been acting towards him. It gave him some semblance of control in the uncontrollable direction this was all going, as well as the reassurance that his presence could still be a cause for irritation for the immovable man.
"Huh?" She replies, almost as if she has forgotten. There was an air headedness there, or a hint of dreamy obliviousness that Izaya thinks he has frequently seen in Shizu-chan when the other didn't know he was watching before. "Oh, well, today is a half-day for me, so I can't be bothered to go at all!" She smiles.
In the end, Izaya is too out of it to register which one of the two left in the apartment has flipped the channel to something else. Somehow, Izaya finds himself in the very awkward situation of being caught between the two brown-haired individuals. Another unwanted information he has found out is that Shizuo likes watching nature documentaries (like the one called Our Planet) on sites that were still in their early stages of development in Izaya's own world. Animals probably could relate to each other in a certain way Izaya never wants to understand.
Now, when everyone else was distracted, Izaya takes it upon himself to piece together everything he has collected so far, and just how much he can use, and just how much he needs to destroy. Rip apart their false security with the secrets no doubt they were all hiding inside.
Since there was no apparent threat, he's decided to drop his earlier theory. It was a bit far-fetched, even by his standards.
Starting with the blatantly obvious, this was supposed to be a family.
One where he was involved.
Izaya did not do families. No, his love was so pure that he had to love humanity as a whole, every single human on earth equally, and that included his own family. No one went beyond the boundaries and rules he has set up.
This should have been no different.
He wondered how this development happened. Shizuo was the straightest person Izaya has seen over the years, frankly, even more so than Shinra - if he could even be considered a person, that is. As far as he knows the only people Shizuo has had crushes on in high school were all female, (upperclassmen and teachers alike) and even afterwards he has only ever shown consideration to women.
More than that though, even if Shizuo was attracted to men, there was still the problem of them. IN all of this the most contradicting and out of place factor was their involvement with each other, and the intense hatred that divided them like a giant glass wall, miles of pain wide and years high. If there was any truth that Izaya could be trusted to tell without any deliberate nuances it would be that he hated Heiwajima Shizuo, hated him with as much emotion as Shizuo hated Izaya back.
It was a hatred so fundamental to their relationship and culture of Ikebukuro that for that universally shared view to be shifted under his feet left him free-falling through the ground, not knowing when the impact would kick in.
Izaya himself would never consider the option that this could happen. He was not blind to the type of people they were. Heiwajima Shizuo, for all his misgivings, stupidity, aggressiveness, impulsive brashness, propensity for violence and injuring those around him that cost even the slightest inconvenience was still, at his core, a man driven by black-and-white grade school morals. Which, while laughable and immature, also meant that he was not someone who would take advantage of another human being's weaknesses, and could technically be classified as a 'good person' in the barest definition of the word.
Heiwajima Shizuo is a good guy.
Heiwajima Shizuo is not a nice guy.
Heiwajima Shizuo is not happy with himself.
Those were the only three truths that Izaya could ever be certain about that man, not that he wanted to spend more time than necessary with him. Regarding Shizuo, there was always bound to be unpleasantness.
Orihara Izaya, on the other hand, was different. He was the type of man who had no room for morals in that dark mind and soul of his. Where his heart should have been there was only a void hole that was constantly bleeding love for his humans, the type of love that was black and eternal and tainted everyone. He was the lowest of the low, capable of anything so long as his desires dictated it, casting aside innocents and sinners alike. It did not matter, for he loved all of them.
Orihara Izaya is not capable of love.
Orihara Izaya is not loved.
Orihara Izaya is fine with that.
Those were the biggest misconceptions he hears about himself often. He was capable of love - just that it was the all-encompassing kind that should be spread out for everyone. On one person...it could prove dangerous to himself, or the other. He did not want to end up as either some Martyr or Monster. And while he may accept his unrequited love for the humans who no doubt despised his help, he was loved in his own way. So long as he could be ingrained in the lives of his humans, his existence forever scarred in their minds, he was loved enough. He wouldn't be fine with that otherwise.
They were polar opposite people whose personal values could not have been more misaligned, like they were two parallel lines travelling in opposite directions, never allowed to intersect in those regards.
While one could say that love and hate were two sides of the same coin, it did not change the fact that those two sides would never face each other.
So why then, despite everything, did such an illogical outcome occur. It was entirely unexpected, just like that inhuman thing.
If anyone had posed the question: 'What if Orihara Izaya was in love with Heiwajima Shizuo?'. The answer he would have given was a hysterical laugh and pure happiness at the spectrum of oddities that his humans could come up with.
But when said possibility was currently his reality, what would his answer be then?
The answer was that there was no answer, for such an occurrence should have never been possible in the first place.
Deciding not to think any more about that, he moved on to the more...hands on part of things.
He had concluded that they were likely a result of some biological procedure, maybe In-Vitro, for they resembled physical traits too uncanny to have been coincidence. Or at least, two of them. The middle one did not resonate with the same features as either of them. She had a sharper face than both of them, along with her detached earlobes which made it so that it was unlikely they were blood related. Adoption would have made more sense. However, he stopped thinking about it quick because the more pressing questions about all of them were increasing by the minute, and he did not particularly want certain ones entertained.
One thing that Izaya does wonder, however, if any of them has gained Shizuo's source of self-hatred. So far, there had been no indicator from any of them, psychological or physical. But then again, Shizuo had been acting severely out of character, too kind, too genuine, too self-satisfied, too attentive - too much. He was reacting so different than anything Izaya was used to that he was at the brink of begging him to just throw something already.
The oldest, the middle, the youngest. Three. They had three. That was three more than Izaya had ever wanted. In the first place, infants were terribly tedious to deal with, spending what little time he did with his sisters has taught him that much. And teenage-hood was not so much better, just more broad.
In all of this, he can't escape that thrumming desire in him to see just what the future had in stall for not just him, but the city, or more accurately, humanity. Like yesterday's failed encounter with that client, what could, would and should have happened to him? There were so many humans to see what had become of, especially after their slow and ripe evolution.
The shuffling of soft, long hair and arms wrapped around his side shot him back to reality, causing Izaya to stiffen. Was she really curling up to his side?! (There it was again! This whole consuming reality that threatened Izaya's plans and more! What good was everything he had done so far if it all amounted to this, if it all ended the same way, this boring, this - underwhelming!)
There had been an unsettling feeling creeping up on him the whole day. If eventually...his humans got over everything and changed...when would they want him again? Was he ever needed in the first place if this was always going to be an outcome? Boring domesticity in the face of all their flaws? Maybe it spoke volumes as to how he has changed or remained if his own family could not yet tell the difference between once and future.
Just how was he needed?
Only one bitter thought manages to cross his mind at the end of all his conjecture, clear in the haze of utter contempt and confusion.
A whole new world indeed, that has such people in it.
Author's Note: Btw if anyone is interested, I have a tumblr. You can find me m3hwhateverworks so feel free to come by and we can talk about these two idiots together :D. In the future I hope that I'll post more of my art and story ideas that I can't find the time to write there.
(Also, I have a plan to start an ask-blog, but it's a bit too much right now so maybe some other time, but I definitely want to do it soon :3)
(...I can't believe it's 2019 and I still want to start a shizaya ask blog what am i doing?)