Author's Note: You know, I think I've started almost every new chapter I've ever written with "I'm sorry." What does that say about my character? Oh well. Hopefully the new chapter will make up for the long wait.

By the way, I did a new summary, but it doesn't seem like it changed at all. Is that just me? And if it isn't, do you like it?

Disclaimer: I don't own Yami no Matsuei or any of its characters.


Chapter 2

Pain had never been a foreign concept to Hisoka. It was something he had grown up with. On the rare occasions his mother actually touched him; it had been specifically for the purpose of smacking him around. By the time he had turned sixteen; Hisoka had already been brutally raped and cursed, which had ultimately resulted in a slow, agonizing death.

His suffering hadn't ended there. If anything, death had only been the beginning. His afterlife was highlighted by incidents in which he had been kidnapped, tortured, and very nearly burned alive. Hisoka's body had even been hacked apart by a cleaver at one point. That being said, waking up after being dosed twice with sedatives in a relatively short period of time was hardly the most unpleasant thing he had ever experienced. It just might have made the top ten though.

Sluggishly, Hisoka forced his eyes open. Same white ceiling, same boring room. Someone must have carried him back to bed after he had passed out.

"Oh good, you're awake," a young voice said from somewhere to his right.

Startled, Hisoka slowly turned his head to see a small girl, no older than three or four, sitting next to his bed. She was wearing a pink and white dress, and her shockingly white blonde hair was tied back in pigtails. Sitting on her lap was a doll with wide blue eyes and black curls. The toy was obviously well-made, and would have probably been very beautiful had it not been for the large crack spider-webbing across its porcelain cheek.

"Who are you?" Hisoka asked.

"I've been waiting here for a very long time you know," the girl informed him, as if he hadn't spoken, "I thought you were never going to wake up."

"I'm…sorry?" Hisoka answered, although he wasn't sure why he felt the need to apologize for something he had no control over. "Why are you here?"

But the girl seemed determined not to answer his questions. Instead she simply smiled, reaching out to touch the shinigami's cheek. "You're so pretty. You look just like one of my dolls. I could dress you up in ribbons and lace, and you would be much prettier than all of them."

Hisoka blinked, not certain of how to respond to the girl's odd, and he couldn't help but think, vaguely creepy compliment.

Fortunately, the weird conversation was cut short by the sound of the door opening. "The last thing you need is more dolls, Sachiko." Apparently, Hisoka realized as a shiver went creeping up his spine, Muraki had returned.

"Papa!" the little girl, Sachiko, cried gleefully. Evidently, his apprehension wasn't shared.

Papa? Hisoka thought incredulously. Muraki had actually fathered a child? He would not have pegged him as the child rearing type.

But now that the initial shock and the haze of medication had mostly faded away, he realized for the first time that the man in front of him was not the murderer he knew. The resemblance was there, and it was startling. However, his hair was slightly darker, and his eyes were not that strange shade of glinting, mismatched silver that Hisoka was so familiar with. This man was not Muraki.

The man, whoever he was, bent down to his young daughter's eye level. "I don't know why we keep buying you dolls when all you do is break them. What happened to Marianne?"

At the question, Sachiko's sweet face suddenly darkened. "She was being a bad girl," she said, grabbing the doll's ebony tresses and tugging savagely. "Bad girls need to be punished."

The whole scene struck Hisoka as incredibly disturbing, which considering all he had seen in both his life and afterlife, was saying something. Muraki's look-alike on the other hand, simply smiled and pried the girl's small fingers out of poor Marianne's hair.

"You really should be more careful with your toys," he said in a gently scolding tone. "What are you doing here anyway? You know better than to bother my patients."

Sachiko looked down at her feet, the picture of childlike remorse. Had it not been for the sight of Marianne's ruined face, Hisoka would have thought he had imagined the darkness lurking in her eyes just a few seconds ago. "I overheard the nurses talking about a new patient, and I wanted to see him for myself. I'm sorry."

"Just don't let it happen again," her father replied, patting the little girl briefly on the head and pushing her gently towards the door. "Now, I need to talk to Kurosaki-san in private, so run along."

"Okay, Papa." But just before exiting the room, Sachiko turned to Hisoka with a bright smile on her face. "Maybe once you get a little better, we could play together sometime!"

The green eyed shinigami nodded, all the while desperately praying that the suggestion would never come to pass. The girl seemed harmless for the most part, but he couldn't forget that unnerving, slightly insane expression that was so at odds with her sweet young face. He couldn't help but think that it reminded him of someone else.

However, the young child did not know Hisoka's thoughts, and was satisfied with his apparent agreement. With a final little parting wave, Sachiko skipped off; poor, abused Marianne still clutched tightly in her arms.

Soon after the girl was out of sight, her father turned his attention back to Hisoka. "I apologize if my daughter bothered you in any way, Kurosaki-san."

"Oh yes, we wouldn't have wanted my medicated unconsciousness to be disturbed." Hisoka replied sarcastically.

"Again, I apologize, but you must understand at the time you were hysterical. I had to calm you down somehow, and you weren't listening to reason. I felt sedatives were my only option."

"But the nurse said that I had been sedated before. What was your excuse the first time?" Hisoka asked suspiciously.

The man shook his head, "I wasn't the one who dosed you then. Apparently, your parents hadn't believed that you would be willing to come here on your own, so they knocked you out to make the transport easier. It was not a method that I would have recommended."

My parents drugged me? What kind of people would do that to their own son? Actually, considering that they used to lock him in the basement, he could imagine them doing that, but this was supposedly the year 1925. Hisoka's parents wouldn't have been born yet so how could they have possibly...and he was going to hold that thought to reflect on later. The subject was making his head hurt, besides, he had more immediate concerns.

"What is this place? Who are you?" He couldn't possibly be Muraki, but the resemblance was too uncanny for it to be a coincidence.

The man smiled. "Yes, your nurse told me about your lack of information. I thought your parents would have at least discussed the subject with you before sending you here…but no matter. I am Dr. Muraki Yukitaka, and this is my hospital."

At the mention of the name, something clicked in Hisoka's head. Yes, that made sense. Hisoka dimly recalled hearing somewhere that Muraki's grandfather had also been a doctor. He had even turned his own house into a hospital, which would explain why it was so far out in the country. Muraki Yukitaka was probably that grandfather.

But one thing still didn't make sense…"Why did they bring me here? I'm not sick." Anymore.

Muraki sighed, "I'm afraid you are. If what your parents say is true, for a long time now you've periodically experienced "episodes" in which you are prone to drastic mood swings, particularly if anyone tries to get close to you. At one point, you even threw a vase at your mother, screaming at her to "be quiet." Occasionally, these incidents would become so bad you would succumb to fainting spells. Your parents feared that you could become a danger to yourself, and after yesterday, I'm inclined to agree."

"I am not crazy!" Hisoka growled.

"I never claimed that you were. You are sick, plain and simple. With the proper care, I believe you can get better." Muraki said, leaning down to sit on the bed, most likely in an attempt to make his presence less intimidating. However, his hand inadvertently brushed Hisoka's arm in the process, and through that contact the empath received a sudden burst of clarity on the doctor's intentions.

He may claim that Hisoka had medical problems, but the doctor didn't truly believe his own story. He wasn't concerned, he was curious, even somewhat excited. It reminded Hisoka of back when he was alive. He had met with specialist after specialist, each one fruitlessly attempting to decipher what was killing him. They had all felt just like this; far more interested in the disease than the patient.

Muraki couldn't have cared less if Hisoka "got better." He considered Hisoka's abilities to be an interesting anomaly, something he wanted to test, study, and possibly replicate. It was probably the same with Tsuzuki as well.

It was with this thought in mind that Hisoka decided to broach the subject of his partner with the "doctor", "What about Tsuzuki?" he demanded. "Why is he here?"

Muraki's eyes darkened, much like Sachiko's had, and for the first time Hisoka noticed just how much she looked like her father. "That man is none of your concern. He has been a patient here for a long time and you will stay away from him."

"Why?" Hisoka asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Like I said, he is none of your concern." Muraki repeated. "Clearly, you've developed an attachment to him, perhaps seeing in him a kindred spirit, but I won't subject a patient to the stress of another's delusions."

I though you said I wasn't crazy, Hisoka thought sardonically. But of course, those words were merely an excuse. No, the doctor was hiding something, and Hisoka intended to find out what that was.


Between the sedatives and the shock of waking up before World War II, Hisoka hadn't been given much time to truly contemplate his circumstances. But if there was one thing a hospital offered in abundance, other than medication and general suffering, it was spare time. Unfortunately, after pondering all the factors and looking at things from every angle, the only conclusion Hisoka came up with was that nothing made sense.

He understood that somehow, he had ended up in the past. All he had to do was look out his window to confirm that. But Hisoka had never heard of such a thing being possible. Even if it was, there was no way that he would have existed in this time frame. Yet, nobody seemed to question his presence. The way Muraki made it sound, he had a life here, a family, and his arrival at the hospital had been planned for quite some time. Maybe he had infiltrated someone else's body? Someone with the same name, appearance, and judging from Muraki's list of "symptoms", the same powers as him? It was too much of a coincidence. Was it possible he was reliving a past life? But past lives weren't supposed to actually look like their present selves. They didn't usually have any relation to one another at all.

And what of his empathy? It kept fluctuating unpredictably, even long after the meds had worn off. One second it was so strong he wanted to clutch at his head and scream, even if it brought every nurse into his room, the next it was barely a whisper in his consciousness. Even as a child, before he had developed his mental barriers, Hisoka's powers hadn't acted like this.

It wasn't just his empathy either. All of his shinigami powers were gone as well. Hisoka's finger still ached from where he had cut himself with a knife earlier to see if the wound would heal. All the act had earned him was a disturbed look from the nurse, (who had been an unanticipated spectator), a discernable absence of anything that could be considered sharp from his room, and medication. Apparently they were concerned that he might have masochistic tendencies.

Hisoka had been wary of the little white pills at first. Empathy and controlled substances, such as drugs and alcohol, did not mix well. They destroyed his mental shields and made everything he felt more potent. That, coupled with the substances natural effects, disoriented him and made it hard to differentiate between his own emotions and everyone else's.

However, when the beady little eyes of the nurse watching him intently made taking the pills unavoidable, Hisoka soon discovered he had nothing to worry about. The meds were nothing but sugar pills. Muraki wanted to study him after all. It wouldn't do to give Hisoka something that could possibly dull his senses. He would probably start experimenting with his reactions to certain chemicals at some point, but not this early in the game with so little data.

Hisoka supposed a lack of information was one thing he and Muraki had in common. The doctor would come into his room often, ask him questions, sometimes show him flashcards and study his reactions, taking notes all the while. However, Hisoka could sense his frustration. His was not a gift that was easily studied, especially in this age with so little technological assistance. Empathy wasn't like mind reading. He couldn't hear thoughts as sentences in his head and parrot them back. It wasn't something as exact as that. Sometimes, if an emotion was strong enough, he could feel a person's desires and intentions, but he couldn't identify whether the card Muraki was thinking of was the Ace of Spades or the Queen of Hearts.

Basically, all Muraki's work was useless without Hisoka's cooperation, which wasn't something he was willing to offer. He wouldn't even let on that he knew what Muraki was after. The "Hisoka" in this time period may have been dumb enough to open his big mouth (for how else could he of ended up here), but he certainly wasn't.

Instead, he bided his time. Like Muraki, he was frustrated with just how little he knew, and one way to help rectify his ignorance was to take a look at these "records" Muraki was keeping.

It was disgustingly easy to sneak out of his room. Years of slipping outdoors behind his parents' backs had taught Hisoka stealth. Furthermore, with his empathy he could sense whether or not someone was coming. Although due to its currently unpredictable nature, he didn't plan on relying on it much. He had also spent several days observing the nurses, becoming familiar with their schedules and habits. He knew when they changed shifts, when they went for coffee breaks, and when they snuck off for a smoke in the garden. Even if his powers had suddenly failed him, he would have still had a general idea of where everyone was.

It was also relatively simple to locate Muraki's office. Every human being radiates a distinct energy that often lingers in places where they spend a lot of time. He supposed some would call it a person's aura. Hisoka simply followed that sense, and when it led him to a door with the good doctor's name written on it, he knew he had found the right place.

The door was locked, but Hisoka had expected that and equipped himself accordingly. One oddity in the hospital was that everything was done in a very western style. The architecture, furnishings, even the food were all evidence that Muraki had studied abroad. Before he had been put on suicide watch, Hisoka had managed to pocket a fork and had spent much of his time carefully bending it into a shape that could properly accommodate a key hole.

Unfortunately, a contorted fork was hardly an ideal lock pick, and it took an irritating amount of twisting and maneuvering before he was rewarded by a soft "click". A sound that seemed far louder than it actually was when listened to by someone under the stress of criminal activity. Hisoka waited a moment to make sure no one was coming (or would be coming any time soon) and quietly slipped inside.

Hisoka had expected Muraki's office to be clean, as spotless as the pure white lab coat he was always wearing (it was truly shocking how alike Muraki Yukitaka was to his grandson. Even their sense of fashion appeared to be similar.) It was not. There were papers scattered across the desk, making the wooden surface almost unrecognizable. On the floor, there were scattered clothes and empty dishes still bearing the half eaten remains of what had probably been the man's dinner. Pushed in the corner of the room was a small futon and tangled blankets, a visible indent making it obvious that someone had recently slept there. Hisoka dimly wondered why Muraki had chosen to make his home his workplace when he clearly preferred to more or less live in his office.

Stepping carefully to avoid disturbing anything, Hisoka walked towards Muraki's desk, pausing to turn on a small lamp. It was inconvenient that Muraki was apparently such a slob. It would make finding what he was looking for that much harder.

Hisoka sifted through notes, employee performance reviews and medical journals with a sense of urgency. He had originally been counting on Muraki's office being empty this late at night, but judging from all the personal items scattered around, the man could walk in at any moment. Hisoka could only hope that Muraki was either spending an obviously rare night with his family, or his equally evident workaholic tendencies would keep him on the floor well into the night.

Eventually, about halfway through the deskwork, Hisoka discovered that the doctor apparently did have a sort of disorganized filing system. It probably made perfect sense to him, but was almost unfathomable to the rest of the world. Certain papers were grouped together in messy piles. Unfortunately, there was much crossover between the stacks, and some of the paperwork didn't appear to relate to each other at all. It reminded Hisoka of Watari's shoddy filing system for his potions and experiments, which often resulted in many accidents and the blowing up of his lab on more than one occasion.

In the end, Hisoka found himself with his head in his arms, nursing a growing headache and knowing more about the hospital administration, its employees, and certain pharmaceuticals than he had ever cared to learn. It wasn't until Hisoka sat up; on the verge of begrudgingly surrendering for the night, that he noticed a set of drawers under the desk's tabletop. Locked drawers. Hisoka smirked to himself, and had to fight the sudden, uncharacteristic urge to cry, Bingo!

The locks were a bit smaller than the one on the door, so they were harder to get in to. However, after a few minutes of turning and whispered curses, Hisoka managed to pop them open. The contents in the first drawer were unremarkable. A pack of cigarettes, matches, and a bottle of scotch. A doctor should probably know better than to drink and light up in his office, especially in a hospital, but nothing in the drawer could really be called incriminating. The second drawer was where Hisoka struck gold.

Manila folders brimming with papers were arranged neatly bearing patients' names in alphabetical order, a stark contrast to the mess on Muraki's desk. Medical records, finally.

However, Hisoka's relief didn't last. It only took a cursory glance to realize that neither his name nor his partner's were present in the collection.

Frustration seized at Hisoka's insides. Muraki had to have records on them. Hisoka knew he did. But where else would he keep them? He had already looked everywhere…

His eyes fell on to the first drawer. He had originally thought it only contained the indulgences of a doctor that was supposed to be working, but looking at the oddly empty drawer again a crazy idea formed in his head, born from being forced to watch far too many murder mystery movies with Tsuzuki.

There was no way Hisoka's theory was correct. It was too cliché, too over the top…but yes. Knocking against the drawer's bottom revealed a hollow sound, and when Hisoka's fingers discovered a cache cleverly disguised as a knot in the wood, he wondered just how paranoid Muraki truly was. But then he remembered that he was breaking into the man's office, so maybe Muraki was paranoid just enough.

Inside the drawer was a stack very similar to the one beside it, but considerably smaller. There were maybe ten folders in all. None of them had names, only numbers, but after flipping through a few Hisoka found what he was looking for.

He read his own file first. It contained his family history, a full medical report on his overall health, and notes upon notes on his behavior.

Parents report that subject claims to be able to "feel" things. These feelings appear to intensify with physical contact. Must study further to confirm.

Subject is decidedly uncooperative, and he doesn't trust me. Needs to adjust to hospital atmosphere before true work can be done.

Condition doesn't seem to relate to other's thoughts, but I can't be sure. He hides his abilities well, and he isn't talking to me about it.

Other than the fact that Muraki apparently had excellent penmanship, the notes didn't reveal anything Hisoka didn't already know. He quickly moved on to Tsuzuki's file, which was labeled under "Subject 0", was infinitely more vast than his own, and appeared to include a journal.

Subject 0's consciousness hasn't surfaced since he got here. He's gone three weeks without food, water or sleep.

Subject 0's body has been proven to be impermeable to fire and knives. Perhaps next I will see his reaction to poisons…

Subject 0 briefly surfaced from his vegetative state today. He then proceeded to attempt to bash his head against the bed frame. He was promptly sedated and slipped back into his coma.

The more Hisoka read, the more horrified he became as he comprehended his partner's torture. How much pain had Muraki inflicted on him, merely to see if he could bounce back? How often had Tsuzuki tried to commit suicide, only to fail and quietly slip back into catatonia?

Before, Hisoka had assumed that he and Tsuzuki had been transported to this time together. However, after reading this journal he began to consider for the first time that maybe Tsuzuki actually belonged here. He would have certainly been alive in 1925 after all, and while Hisoka was supposedly a new arrival, this journal went back many years. But if he was human, he shouldn't have his shinigami powers…

Hisoka suddenly remembered a night spent under a bridge, Tsuzuki's head in his lap while Hisoka repeatedly assured him that yes, he was human. That he was the most human person he knew. Was this why Tsuzuki was so afraid of the contrary? So afraid that he felt his very existence should be erased?

Hisoka didn't think he could answer this question. Not tonight. Too many things were whizzing around in his brain, and he had been here for far too long already. After putting everything back where he had found them as well as he could (not that he thought Muraki would notice), he made his exit, being sure to lock the door behind him.


Its watchful gaze bore into the boy as he made his retreat back to his room. He was certainly a sharp one, but it wasn't worried. True, it hadn't counted on his presence, but he could prove to be useful yet. He was quite talented, far more talented than he knew, and with careful manipulation, it was certain he could be of help to it.

But for now, it was content to wait and watch to see how its adorable little chess pieces chose to move, blissfully unaware that they were playing right into its hands.


Author's Note: This should have come out much sooner than it did, but I've been lazy. I promised myself I'd spend this summer writing, but now it's more than half over and this is the first thing I've posted. It's sad really, so this time I'm giving myself a deadline, and if I don't make it, feel free to kick me in the butt and tell me to get on a move on.

Deadline: The end of October

Last of all, please review!