Cruel Moon
Chapter Four
Pumping my legs as fast as I could manage, I sprinted down the grubby and darkened street. I could feel it coming, like slime running down my spine. Damn it! I ducked into an alleyway, glancing behind me. The complete isolation rasped against me. I knew what it was like to be alone, completely separate from the people around me. But to see Tokyo's streets completely void of human life? Alone, except for me and It and...
Rei! Where the hell was he? Images of the cat-like boy flashed in my head, his blood splattered against a brick wall, face down in typical alley muck, his body not even twitching... I shook my head. We had split up hours ago, in the hopes that at least one of us could find safety long enough to at least come up with a plan. It had followed me. But his safety couldn't be guaranteed, not with Voltaire's little minions scurrying around. The sun was a long time coming and the moon had disappeared for the night.
Footsteps echoed through the empty, concrete street. I mentally cursed before taking off down the alley, hesitating only briefly about whether it would be better to take to the roofs. Better not to risk it. Too limiting of my movements and not enough of a handicap against It.
The feeling along my spine intensified and I clenched my hands to keep from clawing at it. It had caught sight of me. Have to keep moving, have to keep moving. The alley opened onto another street and he turned right, back towards the direction he had come from.
I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I mentally chanted. I couldn't take It on. The only thing I could possibly do against It was to run. And It would catch me. And I will die.
I ducked into a different alleyway, trying to calm my breathing. Why hadn't we figured it out sooner? It was so simple! If only they had gotten the name right! It wasn't the Amulet of the Full Moon. It was the Amulet of the –
"Boo," a voice said, directly behind me. I jumped a mile high, desperately trying to choke back the girlish scream that threatened to escape. Whirling around, I brought my Browning out of its holster straight into Rei's chest, my trigger finger trembling. Wait... Rei?
He smiled at me. "Are you alright?" I nearly dropped my gun as I collapsed into him, hugging him for all that it was worth. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I was going to die, and he was going to die, and...
"I'll take that as a yes..." Rei pulled away, only to then close the distance between us, lips to lips.
My gaze slid from his face to over his shoulder, and I tried to warn him. Tried to yell, "It's here!" but nothing came out. Rei casually ignored my distress, murmuring more things that I couldn't make out. Oh shit, I was going to die, and he was going to die, and...
Shadowed in the alleyway, the black-haired, red-eyed girl strode towards us. I felt like giggling when I noticed her school uniform complete with the navy plaited skirt. She raised one hand to strike –
My eyes snapped open, peering to the darkness while my hand fumbled to turn on a lamp. A warm glow filled my bedroom. Nothing seemed out of place. I sank back onto my bed, shoving my damp blankets off of me. Just a dream. A really, really, sweaty dream.
--
A bright, shrill voice brought me out of my trance. "Good morning, Kai-kun!" an entirely too happy girl with bouncing pigtails greeted. I glared at her. Who the hell did she think she was to greet me so familiarly? Oh right, Minami Aiko, president of my official fan club. Yes, really.
In an attempt to ignore her and her two sidekicks, I glanced around the classroom. As always, the other members of my classroom's chapter of the fan club watched and giggled exactly sixty degrees to my left. Exactly thirty degrees to my right, chatting with the other guys in the class to keep them from trying to murdering me with their glares – as if I cared – stood the one person I could tolerate to get me out of such an ambush, although lately that standing was on shaky ground. It didn't matter anyway, Rei was completely oblivious to my faltering temper.
"So, the school festival is coming up..." Minami hinted, grabbing my arm and sitting delicately with her side pressed up against me on the bit of chair that I wasn't occupying. I just stared at the clock, daring it to go faster. I knew what was coming – how could I not? – and the only thing I wanted to do was shove my Browning (which was currently at home, sigh) into her face and scream that if I hadn't wanted to go out with her on Christmas Eve, and I hadn't wanted to go to the Doll Festival with her, and I hadn't wanted to go to the hundreds of movies and dinners she had previously proposed, why the fuck did she think I'd want to go to the school festival with her? "So..." A headache was already forming. "Do you want to go with me?"
Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I pushed her off of my seat. She squawked, waving her arms uselessly before she sprawled across the floor, her uniform's short skirt nearly riding up to show her intimate features. Great, now she was gawking at me. Couldn't she just pull her skirt down and leave me alone? I ignored her and the other classroom students that gawked at me as well, placing my full attention on the chalkboard straight ahead of me.
"Is that a yes?" she asked.
My hands clenched.
"Hey, Aiko-san," Rei greeted, holding out his arm politely to help her up. Damn that idiot! She was begging to be put in that position. Whore. "He's just a bit tired." Don't excuse me! "He's had a... stressful weekend."
"Oh, poor Kai-kun," Minami said, sounding like she was about to touch me again. Note to self: bring knives to school in future. Rei at least knew enough to steer her away from me. A trio of stupid idiots glared at me, and I knew that they would approach me to defend Minami's "honor," but the door slid open and our history teacher, Daisuke-sensei, and a tall man dressed in a suit stepped into the room.
"Good morning, class," she said, setting her briefcase onto the desk in the front.
"Good morning, sensei," the class, except for me, replied, as they hurried to their seats.
"As I told you on Friday, we have a special guest," Daisuke said, motioning to the man standing beside her. The other students seemed confused, but I felt like smirking. Take that, idiotic essay! "This is Mamoya-san, an expert from the Human Defense Coalition. He's here to talk about..." she glanced over at him.
"Safety," he supplied.
"Yes... safety," she repeated. "But before we get to that, please pass your homework essay to the front of the room.
Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it! I had forgotten! Oh wait, why do I care about some stupid essay? I practically threw the papers handed to me to the desk in front of me.
Yes, I wasn't in a good mood. So?
"Oh, and Kon-kun? Did you get that note signed?" she asked as she picked the piles up.
Oh, right, the note. Little Miss Kitty had been late to class on Friday. Instead of detention, Daisuke had merely asked him to get a note signed by his parents since he's usually such a good little boy. By the look on his face, I think that he would've preferred the detention.
"Well, um..." Yay, now I get to watch Rei suffer. "No..."
"No?"
"My parents live in China," he explained. In a town where they only get mail biweekly, yadda yadda. "But maybe Kai could sign it?"
"Hiwatari-kun?"
Damn, why does everyone think that they can just give me cutesy honorifics? The only one I want is -sama!
Wait a second...
"Well, because I live with him."
I resisted the urge to jump over the desks and strangle him. I don't want to be associated with him! I don't want to be associated with anyone! The rumors, by God, the rumors!
"Hiwatari-kun?" Stop with the effing – "Could your parents sign this..."
Glaring at the front of the classroom, I merely said with as menacing a voice as I could get away with in such a setting, "No."
"Are they away --"
"No."
"Are they ill --"
"No."
"Are they --"
For effing sake! "No."
"Why --"
"No."
Just give up already! I could see Rei out of the corner of my eye trying to give me an apologetic look. Right, like he's really sorry. Things were so much simpler on the Demolitions Team!
"Well, alright. I suppose I could let it slide."
Finally.
"But just this once." Daisuke took a moment to shuffle the essays in her clutches, then headed to the back of the classroom. "Mamoya-san? If you'd like to begin."
He nodded, and stepped in front of the teacher's desk.
--
It was something of a blank in my mind exactly why, when my skin was nearly bursting into flames from anger, I had decided to retreat to a department store. There were people! Milling around! Looking at him! And smiling... the horror! The horror.
Sure, this would have happened if I had taken the train home, but at least then I would have the solitude of my apartment to look forward to. But no, my feet had detoured to the SOGO department store located next to the train station. At least though, SOGO usually had a spacious and practically deserted restaurant on the eighth floor. My stomach, although I would never admit it, might be growling even louder than Takao's. Because of that stupid, stupid dream, I hadn't bothered with breakfast and had it really been worth it to make that kid scream and cry from bento torture? I shivered involuntarily as I reached the top floor. Yes, definitely worth it.
"Probably," a lyrical, feminine voice floated. "A very creative use for takoyaki."
My head snapped to the side. In the shop across from the booth, a Japanese woman lazily dressed in a crimson kimono lounged across on a large navy pillow. She smiled and waved her fan at me. "Although that bento would have been a better snack than anything you can find at that place," the woman continued, flicking the fan towards the restaurant. "Your boyfriend is such a wonderful chef."
My hands clenched. "Who the hell," I gritted out, "do you think you are?"
She stood up, walking to the edge of the tatami mats that line her half of the floor. Her fan snapped closed. "The fortune-teller Kurinsan." With her closed fan, she pointed upward. "Can't you read?"
And with a start, I realized where I had ended up. There was a least one of these fortune-telling shops in the larger malls, and there were varying smaller ones around which Minami and her possy had tried again and again to drag me to. Something about showing me our "love" is really destiny. Now they were preventing me from getting my lost lunch replaced? Meanwhile, Kurinsan glided back to her seat.
Glancing back at me, she said, "I guess you can stay there if you want, but sooner or later you're going to look stupid."
Fine, whatever. Screw people! As soon as I turn eighteen, I'm leaving this god damned infested country to live somewhere bearable. Maybe Rei knows an isolated house in the Chinese mountains I could use. Or Tala could tell me – no! I'm not asking anything of that... that... Not going to ask anything of him ever again.
"You're going the wrong way, idiot," she said, her back still facing me. "When you're trying to obtain a product or service, you usually start by entering their store."
I turned my back on her. "I don't want my horoscope. I don't want to get my palm read. I just want to get away from people like you."
"And like him and her and like everybody else. What could it really hurt? Well... maybe your pride."
I snorted and tried to walk away towards the restaurant, or maybe just go to hell promptly instead of lingering on the outskirts. Tried being the operative word. I couldn't move.
"My shop," she drawled, "draws people that need my services to it."
"And the only way to get out of it is to pay you money for wasting their time," I snarled. "You're just a conning witch."
"If it makes you feel better, you don't have to pay."
"What?"
"The information I get from your fortune will be enough."
Whatever. I'd get my stupid fortune told, leave this shop and finally get what's coming to me, my lunch. And she could go touch herself or something with whatever 'information' she gets. She and the rest of the world. Yeah, I do actually read those fan sites!
Kurinsan smiled, not even bothering to hide it behind a fan. Was she really this rude to all of her customers, or just me? She's really starting to get on my nerves. I sat down cross-legged on the pillow across from her, and glared. Glaring is always an appropriate response.
She held out her hand, and I glared at it. See? Works for all occasions. She held it out for several moments, with me still glaring, before she whispered, "This is the part where you place your hand in mine." Like I was stupid. Well, I had a few words for her. But that would be telling. Gruffly, I slapped my hand into hers, and her thumb slipped over the back of my hand.
This is going to end up where she's actually a fan-stalker, isn't it.
"You know," Kurinsan started. "When your friends start to believe that whenever you receive bad news that you'll try to kill yourself, that's a time when you should start rethinking your personality."
"I wasn't going to kill myself," I told her, grudgingly acknowledging that Rei certainly thought that, thus not making her not such a lying, cheating crack pot.
"But he thought you were," she said. "And perceptions are everything."
I snorted. "Only for fools."
"Well, you do seem to be awfully preoccupied by them..." She waved her other hand distractedly.
What! Had she ever met me? "I don't care what other people think of me."
"Oh, you certainly do," she practically purred. Now that he noticed, her face was getting awfully close... "Otherwise, you wouldn't have had to resort so drastically to that with your lunch."
"That peon shouldn't have been messing in my business."
"Oh?"
I glared at her. Creating perceptions or whatever were for hot shot businessmen and little girls like Minami Aiko. I dared her to say I just projected this cold exterior to protect my ooey and gooey soft and sweet inside. That's what Minami says.
"So Rei is your business, huh." Her lips twisted into a smile. She was trying to look down at me. Damn her.
"I – am not – gay!" I added a scowl to my glare for extra measure. How did she even know Rei's name? Oh wait, fangirl.
When she replied, her voice almost sang. "You shouldn't deny where your heart leads you."
"I don't have a heart."
"Of course you do," she said smoothly. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have acted so outrageously at your last tournament."
"I don't know what you mean," I replied coolly.
Her hand clasped around mine. I felt like pulling it loose, dragging it out of her grip, just to show her that she can't control me. I didn't, because that would've been controlling me too. Or maybe I just didn't want to admit that her grip was stronger than it should have been. Too... different from a woman's.
"You obviously felt you were in love with the Dark Master," she said. Somehow, without moving, her face was even closer to mine. I could feel her soft breath on my nose. "That is, until you realized you were just attracted to her power. Even your beloved Rei was drawn to her for that."
The power over immortality... the power to see what's to happen... the power to control what goes bump in the night... the power to have absolute control.
"The only question is..." she trailed off as her eyes looked into the distance. Then she once again turned to look me eye to eye. "How are you going to bring the Sun Master's enemy back to life?"
Understanding hit me like a bolt of lightning. I snatched away my hand, I pulled away from the eerie intimacy of closenes. I nearly tripped over my feet in my haste to get away from her. "So that's what you want," I breathed. My body and I laid in waiting across the room from her, ready to fight. "You're a witch... mind over matter, and all that. That's how you knew about Rei and how you knew about Shadra. You're spying for Holly."
Kurinsan didn't look all that concerned with my flight backwards. "No, I'm not," she told me, then smiled. "I may be a witch, but I turned it towards divination. So what does that tell you?"
My head turned to the side, as if I could gain some knowledge by looking at her from the corner of my eye. "You're aligned to both," I replied after some time.
She shook her head, a few tresses of hair falling over her face. "I'm aligned to the Dark Master," she said. "I'm aligned to the Master of Time."
"So, you want Shadra to wake up," I said.
"Yes."
"And you can see the future..." If she really was under Shadra's banner.
"I don't know how to revive her," she said, shaking her head again. Those few loose strands of hair bounced on her forehead. "Where my Master is concerned, or even where any Master is concerned, I cannot tell the future. Only the Master herself has that ability."
"Great," I said, rolling my eyes. I turned to leave.
"I do know that you should go with Rei to his kitty club," Kurinsan called off. "And don't mention me to your boyfriend –" I turned my head and glared at her "– he'll get jealous."
I turned all the way back around. "What the fuck are you talking about?" I demanded.
"Well," she said, putting a finger beside her lips and shyly turned her eyes away, "I am a very pretty boy."
My jaw was slack, and I didn't even care how undignified it was.
She – he laughed.
I whirled and stormed out of that shop. Damn transvestite fortune-tellers!
--
The door to my apartment was already locked by the time I reached home. After indulging in a rather unsatisfactory teriyaki burger at the McDonalds next to the train station, I had mixed up the entrances to the train station and only realized I was going the wrong way down the track when I saw farmland peak out between the smaller residential buildings. Definitely not Ginza. Now it was dark out.
I didn't bother calling out "tadaima" since I didn't want to bother Rei. Or rather, I didn't want to be bothered by Rei. Instead, I softly closed the door behind me and threw my uniform jacket and bag onto the sofa. Maybe I could just hide – uh, stay in my room all night.
No such luck. Whether by preternatural senses or my plain bad luck, Rei beckoned me into his room as soon as reached his door. I could have pretended that I hadn't heard him, except that he had left his bedroom door open and was looking at me. And I was looking back.
Inwardly, I sighed and entered his room, even sitting on his bed when he motioned me towards it. I deserve a little bit of rest after such a hectic day. But no, I had to talk to him.
"What was that about today?" he asked.
I could have replied with something sarcastic, but sometimes it's just best to go with the classic response. "Hn."
"He had to go to the school nurse!" Rei practically snarled. "That's not 'Hn'!"
"Hn."
He sighed. "Never mind. I was looking around for this Amulet of the Full Moon." He motioned his computer monitor. I could see the various results on some search engine. None of them were even close. Just some stupid fake Wicca moon charms.
"Do you have a better place to look?" He must have seen me roll my eyes.
Kurinsan's way to effeminate face popped into my mind's eye. I waved it away. He wouldn't know anything if he really couldn't see the futures of the Masters. Not that I would trust what he'd say, anyway.
Rei continued when I didn't answer, "Then we might as well look at all of the options. At least until we've got something more concrete." He turned back to the computer screen. It looked like I was being summarily dismissed. It irked me, even if I hadn't wanted to be here in the first place.
I gave one last glance at his overly cluttered room, and turned out the door. As I walked down the hallway to my room, I heard him call out, "And don't pull anymore of this crap!"
I gritted my teeth.
To be continued...