"Hey, Saki?"
Jun's voice beside his ear shook Hisoka out of his thoughts, bringing him back to 2-C and the chatter of the second-year boys and girls eating lunch indoors, and the faint and steady hush of the rain falling lightly outside the window.
He turned to face Jun. Something was bothering him, and what it was Hisoka could probably guess. "What's up?"
Jun opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. "Never mind. It's none of my business. . . ."
Hisoka turned bodily in his seat. "No, it's all right," he said quietly. Maybe it was his guilt over getting caught yesterday, making him feel like Hiragawa's death was somehow his reponsibility as much as Muraki's and Fujisawa's; but he owed it to Jun, Hisoka told himself, at very least, to help him with his loss however he could. "What's on your mind?"
His gentle way of asking must have had some effect on the other boy, because he looked around them rather than dismissing Hisoka out of hand. He looks as bad as I feel, Hisoka thought, noticing the dark shadows under Jun's eyes. Though it probably wasn't smart for a shinigami to do, he couldn't help empathizing with the other, even if he was aware he might only be projecting his own frustrations onto Jun—his frustration about the sudden lack of communication between himself and Tsuzuki.
"Can I talk to you outside?" Jun said.
When they were alone in the stairwell it finally came out. "Did you . . . know Fujisawa from somewhere before, Saki?" When Hisoka opened his mouth to insist he absolutely did not, Jun added: "Be honest. He wasn't just bothering you because you're new here like you told the police, was he?"
Hisoka closed his mouth. He lowered his gaze. What could he say? Jun wouldn't let him be until he heard what he wanted; but it wasn't as though Hisoka could just tell him everything, about a dead boy coming back to life and he being a shinigami. Even if Jun did believe him, there was protocol to follow. "Why are you asking me this now?" he said instead—a question for a question.
Jun lowered his own gaze to his hands in his lap, where Hisoka now noticed he was turning a cell phone over in his palm. "He isn't the type to kill someone, is he?"
While Hisoka fumbled for a response, Jun looked up at him. "I—I got this message last night," he told Hisoka, pressing buttons on the phone. "Here."
He held out the phone for Hisoka to take—which Hisoka did cautiously, aware of the traces of anxiety and anger that struck him like a static shock through the plastic case. Trying not to let his disgust show on his face, he read the message displayed on the screen: YOUR FRIEND HIRAGAWA WAS REAL SWEET. TO THE LAST DROP. DID YOU KNOW HE WAS SO GIVING?
There was no doubt in Hisoka's mind: Only Fujisawa would have written such a provocative thing. But he asked anyway, "Who sent this to you?"
"I don't know. I didn't recognize the number." Jun lowered his voice. "But I'm sure it's him. It's gotta be. He must have gotten my number from Toshio's cell after he killed him. That's the only explanation I can think of."
Hisoka bit his lip. But he couldn't argue with Jun. He had hit it dead on. He recalled Fujisawa's words to him last week: Hiragawa was a trusting boy. . . . Yes, this sounded just like him. But he didn't need to tell Jun that. "How can you be sure he isn't just making it up to get to you," Hisoka said. "I mean, if this is even from Fujisawa in the first place?"
"Does this sound like the sort of thing someone would make up as a joke? And anyway, you don't know Toshio like I did. You weren't there, you didn't see how he looked at Fujisawa. As though . . ."
Jun bowed his head, and the wave of grief that emanated from him nearly overwhelmed Hisoka.
"As though?"
"As though Fujisawa were a god."
Hisoka didn't know what to say. It was not as though that information surprised him in any way. What Tsubaki had said to him years ago had never left. To the very end, she had believed Muraki was some sort of angel. Even after he had shot her in the back and left her for dead. She had known Hisoka would never understand that. He only wondered if Hiragawa would have agreed. Would Hiragawa have stood up for Fujisawa the same way, even after what was done to him?
"I know you're no priest," Jun began again when he said nothing, "but can I confess something to you anyway?"
"What are you talking about?"
"What I did to Toshio."
Hisoka started. "But, Jun, you didn't murder him—"
"I know that, but I was his closest friend. He trusted me more than anyone, and I let him down. Maybe that was part of the reason he would go with someone like . . ."
A pained smile pulled at Jun's lips; but it was only a defense mechanism, a poor attempt to stop him from breaking down before he could say what he needed to say.
"He told me once that he had fallen in love with me. It didn't really come as a shock, either. I guess in the back of my mind I always knew he was into guys, though his family would never have sat for it if they knew. You see, my dad enrolled me here because he thought it would be a safe environment," and they could both appreciate the irony of that, "but Toshio's folks really do believe all that stuff in the Bible. I knew it was hard for him to admit how he felt. But he trusted me. He must have just assumed, the way I treated him, that I felt the same way about him."
Jun blinked rapidly at the memory, and slowly let out a deep breath. "Anyway, when he found out I didn't . . . He just stopped talking to me. He started isolating himself from everyone, said I wouldn't understand. Like he thought he had betrayed our friendship or something—"
Jun's breathing hitched and he couldn't say any more for several seconds. Just sat there on the step, hanging his head, until the emotion suddenly burst out of him. He lashed out at the wall next to him, hitting it twice with the side of his fist before the utter futility of it sank in.
"It's all my fault he's dead!" he said, voice trembling. "I failed him, didn't I? I should have said something while I still had the chance—I shouldn't have let him close himself off like that—"
"Sometimes you just have to let those you care about work things out for themselves," Hisoka told him. Only after the words were out did he realize what a hypocrite he was being. After all, if he had followed his own advice yesterday . . .
What? Tsuzuki might have tried to hurt himself again because of something Muraki would have had the chance to tell him? No way Hisoka would have stood back and let that happen. "You couldn't foresee this."
"But if I had just been there for him," Jun was shaking his head, "if I had just made him talk to me, he wouldn't have gone mooning after Fujisawa and he wouldn't be dead right now."
"You don't know that—"
"I'm sure of it!"
Jun's words ricocheted off the walls of the stairwell like a gunshot, startling them both.
"You haven't replied to that message, have you?" Hisoka asked him when the silence had returned, the boy beside him looking utterly defeated.
"No," Jun said slowly, though he seemed to be holding something back.
"Good. Don't. He's trying to provoke you. You must not play into his game."
"Jesus. . . ." Jun breathed. "He's after me now? Is that what you're saying?"
"I don't know. What blood type are you?"
"O-positive. . . . But what does that have to do with any—"
"Then he's not interested in you. Not really. You don't have what he needs."
Jun knitted his brows. "I don't understand. 'What he needs'? Saki, what are you talking about?"
"I can't explain it to you. I just need you to trust me on this." Please, Hisoka prayed silently, just shut up and trust me. He hated being stuck in a corner like this, but there was no other way. Jun had to be made aware of the danger, but it was dangerous for him to have too much information. He would thank Hisoka for it later, if nothing happened to him in the meantime.
Come to think of it, it probably wasn't healthy for Jun to think of him as a friend, either. "And I probably should have told you before, but I'd rather you didn't call me Saki. That name . . . doesn't exactly have good memories attached to it."
Jun's phone was still in Hisoka's grasp. As he spoke, he entered his own number into its phone book. "Here. Here's my cell number. Call me if Fujisawa tries to contact you again, or if he approaches you—"
"My dad's a cop," Jun told him shortly. "I think I know what to do about a fugitive suspect."
"Then promise me, Jun! Promise me you won't respond, you won't do anything he tells you to do. Promise you won't give him anything he can use against you."
Jun narrowed his gaze. "You do know someth—"
"Promise me."
It felt like a long time before Jun answered, and Hisoka saw his mission balancing on a precipice. Trust me, he wanted to say, even after all he had said to deserve Jun's suspicions. He could deal with suspicion, as long as Jun trusted him on this one matter, and stayed far away from Fujisawa.
Jun looked down at the screen of his cell phone, where Hisoka's number was still displayed. He wouldn't look Hisoka in the eye as he said, "I promise."
Tsuzuki had put on his trench coat when he left the hotel that morning, but it hardly seemed to matter now that he had been standing in the rain most of the day. It soaked his hair, running off the tips of wet strands into his face, and soaked his skin beneath his coat.
Yet in a way that some might have deemed masochistic, he welcomed that feeling and always had. Being wet and cold did not bother him. It did not bother him even when it threatened to chill him to the bones, though he would have been the first to cozy up to a heating vent indoors. The cold autumn rain helped him focus his thoughts so that he hardly felt it. Although perhaps it was really the other way around, and to take his mind off the nasty weather, he turned his thoughts wholly toward solving the problems at hand.
That trick was not working quite as well as he had hoped today. He could not get past his meeting with Muraki the day before, and the questions the doctor had raised within his mind. Why he would continue to bring up the subject of Tsuzuki's mysterious genetic makeup, for one. It wasn't like Muraki to make careless comments, so why return to that line of discussion Tsuzuki had thought exhausted, a given he was past?
And what did Muraki's grandfather have to do with this school, or the resurrection of the Fujisawa boy and his crimes, or any of this mess the doctor had pulled him into?
Why orchestrate such a complicated plot just to talk to me?
The church bells rang the hour from across the school grounds, and shortly after, students in the uniform of the Sacred Heart school began filing out of the front doors, opening umbrellas or pulling hoods or book bags over their heads. As though the rain would melt them, Tsuzuki thought melancholically as he watched them like a crow from the roof of the building.
He turned as the door creaked open behind him and his eyes met Hisoka's.
The boy lowered his own quickly. "I thought you wanted to case the school," he said as he made his way out into the rain toward Tsuzuki, putting his hands in his pockets. "In case anything happened. Kind of hard to keep an eye on things from up here, isn't it?"
Maybe his partner hadn't meant to sound as sarcastic as he did, but it still made Tsuzuki bristle. He still hadn't forgiven Hisoka, not wholly, as much as he tried to convince himself otherwise. As much as he told himself he would have only done the exact same thing if his and Hisoka's situations had been reversed.
"I like to think I have a pretty good view."
He tried not to let those feelings show, but Hisoka knew him better than he knew himself sometimes.
The boy's mood softened. "How long have you been out here?" he said when he was beside Tsuzuki. "Look at you. You're soaked, Tsuzuki."
"I hadn't really noticed. Besides, it's not like it really matters for a shinigami."
"Idiot. You could still catch a chill and regret it later."
Hisoka pouted, and Tsuzuki had to smile at that. It must have occurred to his partner as well, how this scene recalled the old times. Standing in the rain when they were new partners, barely tested, and they decided aloud to give one another a proper chance. Nothing had really changed in the five years since, despite all that could have come between them. Weren't they just being petty to let this little thing make them doubt their trust for one another?
Then again, wasn't trust at the crux of the issue?
As though reading his mind—and perhaps he was—Hisoka said: "Tsuzuki, about what happened yesterday. . . . I just wanted to apologize properly—"
"Don't."
Hisoka blinked. "If you'd just let me say it," he began to murmur.
Tsuzuki's smile cut him off. "It isn't necessary, Hisoka. Really. You don't have anything to be sorry for."
But by the look on his face, Hisoka wasn't completely buying it. He could see right through that forced smile, and always had, though this time he chose not to call attention to that fact.
"Bastard," the boy said under his breath, though there was no resentment left in his person. "You know that if that invitation had been addressed to me, you wouldn't have let me go alone. You would have tailed me or something, too."
"True, though I might have been a little more careful about it."
Hisoka turned to him, and the hurt look in his wide eyes made Tsuzuki start.
"Well, because I've been doing this job a lot longer than you have," he quickly backpedaled.
Though he hardly need have worried about Hisoka misunderstanding him. He looked down over the railing at the last stragglers to leave class. His gaze seemed so solemn, it took Tsuzuki by surprise when he said out of the blue, "'Because we're partners.'"
"What?"
"That's what you said to me then," Hisoka told him. "That time, after our first case together in Nagasaki, we were standing in the rain just like this and I asked you why you came after me, even though you knew you were walking into a trap. 'Because you're my partner,' you said, or something like that." He crossed his arms as though taken with a sudden chill, but Tsuzuki didn't miss the faint smile that pulled stubbornly at the corner of Hisoka's mouth. "That was all I wanted to say."
Tsuzuki didn't know how to respond. It was true. He had said that, not knowing how its context would change over the next few years, with all that those cases spent together would bring. Yet it always managed to ring true for this partnership with Hisoka, despite how many other relationships of his had failed. Why was that? What values had been entered to get the formula right this time? Perhaps that wasn't for him to question.
"Then again, I've never had a partner I had to take care of before," Hisoka added when he had said nothing.
Tsuzuki started. "What do you mean?"
His partner sighed. "You dork. . . . You said that that time, too! I was trying to make a joke, but I guess it flopped royally—"
Tsuzuki snorted.
"Then we're good?"
"We're good," Tsuzuki agreed.
Even if, by the wary look on Hisoka's face, he still wasn't completely buying it.
"Jun received a text message from Fujisawa last night," Hisoka said as he leaned his back against the wet railing. Tsuzuki had to marvel at how quickly he could jump between personal matters and business. "And when I talked ot him, Fujisawa told me something would happen if Muraki didn't get his way. I'm thinking he might be trying to target Jun as payback for me following you yesterday."
Tsuzuki turned to face him. "You're serious? Then why aren't you with him?"
"I've been thinking about it all afternoon, and Jun doesn't fit the pattern. He's not the right blood type and he can't stand even being in the same room with Fujisawa. Not only that, his death wouldn't serve any purpose, and if there's anything we can say for sure about the recent murders, it's that they all had a reason for their execution. Specifically to get us here."
"Yeah, but now we are here."
"I know." Hisoka furrowed his brows. "That's why I asked Jun if he would stay home for the evening."
"What did he say?"
"That he would follow my advice, after stopping by the police station on the way there. It's probably as safe a place as any, and apparently his father's a detective."
"Are you thinking of posting a watch at his house?"
Hisoka looked at him. "It wouldn't fit the pattern to attack him in his own home, either, but I don't want to leave him there with no protection. I figured at least this way we could concentrate our attention on downtown. It's very likely the message was just a ruse, to distract us from where those two really plan on striking. Fujisawa would do something like that."
"I wouldn't put it past Muraki, either," Tsuzuki agreed. "I'll call Gushoushin and see if we can't pull another favor from them. As though I don't already owe them big time. . . ." His shoulders slumped a little at the prospect.
"Tsuzuki?"
Tsuzuki glanced over at his partner, not liking the doubt that had entered Hisoka's tone.
"If you were Jun," Hisoka asked him quietly, "would you trust me?"
"What reason would I have not to? You have his best interest at heart." But Tsuzuki knew as well as Hisoka did that was an answer designed for nothing more than to make him feel better.
Your friend Hiragawa was real sweet.
Jun stared at those words on his cell phone's screen until it went dark. Then he pressed the down button and stared at them some more.
Did you know he was so giving?
To the last drop.
A shiver of disgust ran up his spine. As he read those words he could practically hear his upperclassman speaking them in that cocky way of his that irritated Jun. He could almost see him smiling as he typed the words, as though Toshio's death were some great achievement to brag about. Knowing Fujisawa, he probably thought it was.
Jun couldn't be sure how much of the day he had spent just staring at that message for minutes on end. His eyes had begun to burn, but he couldn't stop himself. The music and sound effects of the machines in the game center created a deafening cacophony around him that he barely registered. The lights and colors of Virtual-On's idle screen flashed across his face and the phone's as he sat slouched in the hard plastic chair, his shins propped up against the control board. He still had plenty of money left, but the game didn't interest him in the least aside from being the last place he knew of where Toshio was seen before he ended up in that alley.
Knowing that, and just thinking about what depravity Fujisawa's message referred to, as he read it over and over again, stoked his anger, which he clung to with all his might. That anger was his right, his reason, his direction. He might have failed Toshio in life, but he would make up for it, one way or another. He would get justice for Toshio if he had to sin against God to do it. No one else would. The police were doing a piss poor job of finding Fujisawa. He would have sworn they had given up trying, for all they had accomplished over the weekend. It was up to him to do it, and the means was sitting right in the palm of his hand.
"Sorry, Kurosaki."
He pressed the reply button with his thumb, and began typing.
A tinny, electronic version of the first few bars of "Ring of Fire" echoed off the tiled walls, and Fujisawa flicked the excess water from one hand as he reached for the cell phone lying on the edge of the tub.
He brought it toward his face and peered at the screen, and grinned. One new message.
It was from the Inoue kid. Took him long enough to reply. He must not have been able to bear it any longer, the thought of what Fujisawa had done to his friend. If anything, Fujisawa was a little surprised he had waited so long to reply. Must have been the Catholic schooling in him, he mused, slowly painting itself over the sense of honor innate in Inoue's person. But it couldn't bury it completely.
Fujisawa situated himself more comfortably in the hot water and opened the message. He wanted to savor this.
There was only one line. Inoue did not mince words. WHAT DO YOU WANT? A clear enough invitation if Fujisawa ever read one.
And since the kid was asking so nicely, it would have been rude of him not to answer the question.
He had hardly begun to do so when the door creaked open.
The feeling that something was amiss, the feeling of being intruded upon, was a slow one to shake when one had gotten used to coming home to an empty, quiet room.
It took a second for Kiyoko's thusly conditioned mind to relax when she arrived home to the sound of the television on in the main room, and the bathroom light shining through the cracked door. That's right, Fujisawa was still here. It was only him. Though after that encounter between the boy and Muraki the afternoon before, she was hesitant to use the word "only" in conjunction with Fujisawa's name, as it seemed the quiet life she had tried to lead since her husband's death had come to an abrupt end with his stay here.
She rapped her knuckles gently on the door but did not open it. The sound of lapping water reached her ear from inside. Was it just her imagination, or the TV, or had she heard him murmuring something when she came in the front door?
"Fujisawa-kun," she said sweetly enough, "I just got back. Can I get you a change of clothes?"
"I'm fine." A pause. She could hear him shifting in the tub. "Unless . . . maybe you'd like to join me?"
Kiyoko closed her eyes. He had the kind of voice that could persuade a priest to break the seal of confession. Even remembering how he had mocked her to Muraki the day before, that voice had a certain pull she was sure the Devil himself would envy.
Still, she replied coolly, and with restraint, "Perhaps another time." She almost detected a note of genuine disappointment under his chuckled, "Suit yourself."
As Kiyoko proceeded into the main room, it felt as though a girlish spring had entered her step, brought on by their short repartee. Stop it, she told herself, this isn't a game. What she felt for Fujisawa was mindless attraction, nothing more, and even that she hated herself for. The two of them, Muraki and Fujisawa, had played her for a fool. And since yesterday, what sympathy she still had for the boy had all but evaporated. At least Muraki had promised her Fujisawa would soon be taken off her hands. Though if he did not hurry up about it, she would have to put her foot down. She only hoped it would not come to that.
Hands on her hips, she turned toward the television. The evening news was on, and along with it an annoying series of loud, rapid-fire advertisements that grated on her nerves. Some would call her old-fashioned for it, but she never had cared for television, even as a child. Perhaps it was the way the hum of the screen felt like it was slowly drilling holes in her skull. In any case, it was just another thing she could not understand about Fujisawa's generation: the constant need for stimuli, the short attention spans, and the fear of being left in silence. It was no wonder young people these days had no idea how to appreciate the arts. A noh performance would knock them out faster than a sleeping pill.
And leaving the set on while he was in the bath was just a ridiculous waste of energy. Kiyoko reached for the remote control that was sitting on the coffee table, but the book lying open beside it made her pause.
It was the same one Muraki had been reading the day before. She recognized it by the color of its binding. Fujisawa had shown some interest in it as well, but until now she had assumed it was only for academic purposes. But the boy was attending a Catholic school, and the symbol emblazoned on the cover was a Jewish one—though if she were honest, she could not say whether it was that discrepancy and not something else that made her pick it up in curiosity.
She kept track of the page with her finger as she turned the book to face her. It had been open to the story of Rabbi Loew and his golem.
She scanned the page, picking up foreign words in the Japanese translation. It said that it was in the sixteenth century that the rabbi, the Maharal of Prague, was supposed to have built his legendary man made out of clay and brought it to life to protect the Jewish ghetto from attacks against its people. That the rabbi, a mystic scholar himself, performed an ancient ritual to summon the daemon Ashtaroth, who revealed to him the magic word that would bring his clay man to life when written upon its forehead. . . .
". . . local police are asking citizens to be on the lookout for a young man wanted as a suspect in the murder of a private school student last week. Investigators say an adolescent male going by the name Fujisawa—"
It was an automatic reaction to those words that made Kiyoko look up from the book to the television screen. Once she had, she found she could not turn her eyes away, except to quickly reach for the remote and turn down the volume.
". . . and was last seen wearing a gray uniform bearing the insignia of the Sacred Heart private Christian school," the news anchor continued, listing off physical characteristics as a photograph of the same boy who had spent the past weekend with her was displayed on the screen. "He was last seen by classmates Thursday, and police are urging anyone who might come into contact with the suspect not to confront him. They have reason to believe he may be armed. There has been no official statement substantiating rumors of a possible connection between the student's death and the recent 'Liver-taker' serial murder case, though we will continue to bring you any new information as it comes into the newsroom—"
"Anything interesting on, Mrs. Komatsu?"
Kiyoko nearly jumped at the sound of Fujisawa's voice in the same room with her. She willed her heart that was suddenly hammering in her chest to slow. It would not do any good to let him know he made her nervous. For the first time, she realized she had no idea what he might do. After all, if the news was to be believed he had already killed one boy, and possibly those poor men she had read about in the paper as well. Hadn't he said something about hearing them inside his head just yesterday?
However, there was a significant difference between herself and those murdered men. At least, that was what Kiyoko told herself to assure herself she was safe.
Flipping off the television set and putting down the remote, Kiyoko turned to face Fujisawa. "Not particularly," she said, not sure he would believe she had not seen his face on the screen. But maybe he would believe she posed little threat to him, too little a threat to wish her any harm.
It was hard to believe he would have done anything to hurt her in any case, the way he was. He stood naked beside the foot of the bed, having no doubt rushed out of the bath upon hearing his name on the television news. There was something off, however, even knowing what she did now, about his lack of modesty, something too exhibitionist even for a cocky teenager. She averted her eyes.
"Get yourself a towel," she said. "You're dripping all over the carpet."
"Yes. Haven't I told you to mind your manners with those who are showing you hospitality?"
Kiyoko started. It was Muraki who had spoken, as he followed the boy out of the bathroom, a towel in his hand. He pushed it toward Fujisawa, who had no choice but to take it. But it was on Kiyoko that the doctor's eyes remained through the transaction, scrutinizing her through his glasses and the veil of his silver hair.
Waiting to see how I will react, Kiyoko knew, what I will do. Whether I'll turn him in.
"Get dressed," Muraki told the boy as he took a step toward her, and Kiyoko found herself unconsciously taking one back. Fujisawa may have been wanted for murder, but it was that man alone who had the power to frighten her, no matter how unmoved she willed herself to remain. "We're leaving tonight."
Fujisawa uttered a sound of acknowledgment as he put the towel over his head.
"So soon?" Even in this grave situation, Kiyoko's sarcasm did not abandon her. Rather, she clung to it like one might cling to an unloaded gun. "Things were just getting interesting, Doctor. You never told me I would be harboring a killer."
A small, amused smile pulled at Muraki's lips. "Yes, I never had to tell you anything. You see, the beauty of women like you, Kiyoko, is your willingness to infer whatever you want to believe from the vaguest information given you." His gaze flickered briefly over Fujisawa. "I apologize for the boy's behavior while he's been here. And I do regret you couldn't have remained ignorant of his situation."
"What do you have to apologize for? Unless you plan on killing me now. Or are you going to make him do it?"
"Of course not. Oriya would be disappointed."
"I don't intend to inform the police," she told him defiantly. "But I cannot give you the same guarantee where my neighbors are concerned. Someone is bound to recognize him from the lobby. A young man of his looks has a tendency to stand out, even around here."
"I suspect as much myself," Muraki agreed as he turned to Fujisawa, who was tugging a button-down shirt over his shoulders. "In fact, I am counting on it. Much like yourself, he is an exemplary work of art. Wouldn't you say?"
As their gazes met, this time lingering upon one another, some tacit meaning passed between the two men that chilled Kiyoko to her core. There was evil in it, she knew, even if she could not guess that evil's nature.
It made her turn her eyes from her company's faces. Instead her gaze dropped to Fujisawa's bare legs, where the hot water of the bath had made the scars that crossed his body much more pronounced than they had been before. She had not noticed when she'd lain with him how the scar on his left hip seemed to circle around the entire leg, or how the one around his right knee effectively divided that leg into two sections—a thigh and a shin whose color on closer inspection did not quite match. . . .
"My God," Kiyoko breathed as it struck her. A work of art. . . . But not like she had been. This piece standing before her, if what impossibilities she feared were true, was more a collage than any living being had a right to be.
"That's right," Muraki said softly. "You can see the strings behind the illusion clearly, can't you, once your mind is opened to them?"
"I thought his scars were signs of abuse you were rescuing him from," Kiyoko said. "I only wish I had known. . . . That abuser was you the whole time. But I never suspected the Kazutaka I once knew to be capable of something so blasphemous—"
"Blasphemy?" Muraki laughed. "Is that what you would consider this superior product, this beautiful creature?"
He put one arm about Fujisawa, who had stopped in the middle of dressing to watch Kiyoko's reaction. "Don't you like his legs?" Muraki asked her, while his white hand cradled the boy's cheek. "It's all right to admit it, Kiyoko, even if there are two decades between you in age. They were a given to me by an old professor—his parting gift to his star pupil before he died."
Muraki took one of the boy's hands in his own, fondly spreading the fingers into his palm. "He gave me these as well." And Kiyoko remembered the queer rings around the outer two digits that had stuck in her mind the other day. "They are beautiful, aren't they? Their shape is nearly perfect. It's only a shame my professor could not find something that matched a little closer, but it was not as though I had the originals to work with. Someone," he said with a disapproving note, "had removed those and thrown them away before I ever got to the boy. If you ask me, that is a blasphemous act."
Though she felt as though she might vomit, Kiyoko managed through gritted teeth, "What did you do to him?"
To her surprise, Muraki shot her a hurt look. Not unlike that seventeen-year-old boy who had just lost his parents to unknown causes, whom her foster brother had brought innocently into the Mibu fold, like a poor little dog. If only Oriya had known then what his friend would become. . . .
"He was broken," Muraki told her in his defense. "I merely repaired him."
"Why?"
"To see if it could be done."
Kiyoko's knees felt weak. She feared to move lest she start trembling and give herself away. But the scene before her appeared now as something out of a horror film, it was so unreal. Broken. Repaired. Oriya had used terminology like that once, to describe the women who had died mysteriously around his dear friend. The patients, the dates, the whores—"Are they nothing but dolls to him?" She hadn't understood then. She had not been able to. But looking at Fujisawa now, with his eyes obediently downcast and a faint smile on his lips, as still and compliant beneath Muraki's manipulations as a mannequin, she was beginning to see. Yes, and very clearly.
Muraki put his lips to the boy's crown once again. She heard him murmur, "Finish getting dressed," before releasing the boy.
To Kiyoko, he said, "I appreciate your generosity during these past few days, Kaede-san. I will not forget it." And she hated with every ounce of her being the way he addressed her—the way he would not let her forget the past, and in what ignorance she had treated him kindly then. "I suggest returning what you bought the boy if they will let you, as he won't be needing them any longer."
Kiyoko made no attempt to reply to his false geniality. Her jaw trembled, and she clutched the book still in her hand tighter.
"How . . ."
He turned expectantly at the sound of her voice.
"How can you stand there and speak of all this with such calm, such indifference!" she said, her voice cracking. "Is it true after all, the Kazutaka I knew is dead? Has he been dead all this time?"
Muraki did not answer, but his silence was what she needed. It was the best affirmation he could give her. It fueled the righteousness within her.
"That boy," she cried as she waved the book at him, "is nothing less than an abomination, and you a monster! Is this all he is to you? Your revenge? Your golem?" A bitter laugh arose from somewhere inside her. She threw the book down on the carpet, heedless of how the two looked at her for doing so. Was that really what it took to shock them, after all the unholy deeds they had committed together? "Well, damn your little project, Muraki, damn both of you to Hell! I am not impressed. I'm disgusted! Frankly I don't know what they see in you that could be worth an iota of love, Oriya and Ukyou. That boy. . . ."
She shook her head at Fujisawa, who was fixing the school uniform he had come to her in, staring at her for once without the faintest trace of amusement.
"Damn you for involving us in these selfish games of yours!" she growled at Muraki. "You think you're so blessed, so righteous, just like your father did, and his father. What gives any of you the right to play God! I'm beginning to think that brother of yours had the right idea in erasing the entire Muraki family from the face of the Earth. Would that he had only gotten rid of you first—"
Kiyoko yelped in surprise, as no sooner had those words left her mouth than Muraki was at her side, his fingers wrapping around her wrist so tightly her skin turned bloodless-white beneath them. She stumbled backwards against the arm of the couch, anticipating the next blow, but it did not come. But she could see the muscles clenching in his jaw at this close range she had avoided for so long, and make out the tiny wrinkles of scars around his right eye through the veil of his hair. More than anything in his gaze itself—more than the murderous intent that flickered across it, which must have been the last thing those women less fortunate than herself had ever seen—more than the scars that had crossed Fujisawa's own body, the grotesqueness of that right eye terrified her.
It was not natural. In its shape where the echoes of laboratory nightmares, of cursed experiments brought to life that no horror movie could dream of conjuring up, nor any government condone in even its darkest time. The hideous faces of ghosts and demons that populated the most macabre kabuki scene were merely imitations of the kind of evil that had shaped and reshaped that eye. It frightened her like few things in this world had the power to, yet Kiyoko could not look away.
If he killed her now, that would be the image she took to her grave.
But Muraki did nothing further to hurt her. "Do not speak to me of my brother," he hissed, the threat in it rumbling like magma just below the surface, daring her to give it some reason to unleash its full fury.
But she gave it none, and Muraki released her.
It took Kiyoko but a second to recover herself, and when she had she pointed to the door and told the two: "Get out of my home. Now!"
"Believe me, I am only too happy to do so," Muraki said, his cool, polite air returning as though nothing had just happened. "Ready, Fujisawa? Those servants of Yomi will soon be returning to us."
For a moment, Fujisawa could only stare at her, and Kiyoko would have sworn there was something of pity in his eyes as they remained locked on her face. She tried to hold on to it, tried to will the boy to embrace that kernel of doubt inside himself and turn away from Muraki before it was too late. But could that look not have been merely a product of her wishful imagination? The next moment it was gone, replaced by that cocky grin that was almost as disturbing as Muraki's.
"I'm ready when you are, Sensei," Fujisawa said as he shrugged on his uniform jacket.
Like a soldier shrugging on his armor, Kiyoko could not help thinking.
"Then this is where I bid you adieu, Kaede-san." As he followed Fujisawa to the door, Muraki added under his breath, "And may Fate never conspire to bring us together again."
Then Kiyoko was left alone. If not for the clothes she had bought the boy and the book lying on the floor, she might have been able to convince herself she had imagined the whole thing, and that she had been alone in her hotel room the entire time. The silence she had thought she was craving now seemed so cold.
"Thanks a bunch, Imai. I hope you're happy."
A folded newspaper soon followed that sarcastic remark, dropped unceremoniously on the desk beside his work.
Imai glanced over at the headline on the front page. NEW DETAILS ON MURDERED YOUTH—WAS HE THE LIVER-TAKER KILLER? So what? he thought. He and his partner had been suggesting a connection between the two cases all along. So the papers got it a little wrong. What did that have to do with him? He looked up.
And into the displeased face of Sato, one of the lead detectives on the so-called Liver-taker case. Apparently it was a big deal to him.
Imai pushed the paper aside. "What're you talking about? I had nothing to do with this."
"No? Why do I find that hard to believe? You and Tubbs over there have been looking to get your paws on a high profile case since day one. My partner and I have been busting our asses trying to solve these murders, and you two do-nothings come in after a nice weekend off saying you've got all the answers? Well, forgive me if I'm just a little skeptical."
Asai looked away from his computer screen at that, his cup of coffee paused halfway to his lips.
Clearing his throat, Imai rose calmly from his seat. "First of all," he said, "I haven't said one word to the press, nor do I plan to because, as you should know by now, I don't work that way. They must have figured out this angle all by themselves. It couldn't've been hard. There are enough similarities between the two cases for anyone to draw their own conclusions.
"Besides," he added for good measure, unable to keep the high and mighty tone completely from his words, "I never suggested our victim was your perp. I said he was the latest victim in your case. Big difference, I think you'll agree."
"The DNA from the livers we recovered from our suspect's place of residence should prove it one way or the other," Asai added from his seat. "Initial testing has already shown that the livers were all from donors with type-AB blood, same as our vic. I have no doubt when DNA does come back you'll find that four of them match your victims."
Sato folded his arms across his chest. "You suggesting we have more than four victims?"
Imai fixed him a stupid look and nodded. "Yeah. That's exactly what I'm suggesting. And ours makes number five."
"That kid didn't have his liver cut out."
"Yet. Maybe the killer hadn't gotten around to it. Or maybe he didn't need it after all."
"He was after blood," Asai agreed with a nod.
Sato rolled his eyes.
"Look," Imai told him straight. "You may not want to believe it, but we are working the same case. Sooner or later the chief is going to have to recognize that, whether you like it or not. The body of evidence is overwhelming. We're both dealing with the same sick son of a bitch."
"I heard you tried to convince him you were looking for a boy who's been dead for four years," Sato said, still unconvinced. A wry grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. "The press is going to have a field day with that one when word gets out. That's not a threat or anything; I'm just saying. . . ."
Damn. Imai hadn't been aware that information had gotten around. He knew his partner didn't care, but that kind of thing didn't exactly help their credibility. He shrugged anyway. "So what?" he said to Sato, trying to sound as indifferent as possible. "Asai and I just follow where the evidence leads us. We can't help it if that happens to be right to your serial murder investigation."
Sato just shook his head. After a moment all he could come up with was, "You smug . . ." The expletive was omitted. It made Imai grin. "You'd just better make sure your leads hold water before you butt into my investigation again, Imai. Is that clear?"
"Crystal." Smug, and justified.
With that Sato turned and left, and Imai allowed the grin to drop from his face. He glanced back down at the newspaper and the glaring mistake in that headline: The press wasn't aware they were blaming the victim. No, he wasn't happy about this at all. "I could use another cup of coffee," he told Asai under his breath, to which his partner replied with a generic, "Okay," and turned back to his computer screen.
God, Asai could be dense. Imai sighed and tried again. "Could I talk to you for a moment?"
Reluctantly, Asai pushed himself away from his desk and followed his partner to the break room down the hall.
He listened patiently while Imai grumbled about his frustration with Sato and poured himself another cup of coffee, only interrupting to say, "You know he wouldn't have said anything if he and his partner where making half as much headway on that Liver-taker case. We're making them look bad."
"Yeah, I know," Imai sighed. "But it's not like everything is peachy on our side either."
"My theories so far might have been a little on the outlandish side, but we're not the ones using a dead boy's name as a cover to commit murder."
"And my misplacing my badge didn't help us win any points either. I still can't believe I did that." Imai shook his head. "No, I really can't believe it! This is going to sound crazy, but have you gotten the feeling since we took this case that someone has been actively trying to prevent us from solving it?"
"Crazy?" Asai echoed.
Imai rolled his eyes. "Look who I'm asking. . . . Never mind."
"Actually, now that you mention it—"
That line of conversation did not get much farther, however, as before Asai could finish, Inoue's son appeared in the break room's doorway. "I-I'm sorry to interrupt. I wasn't eavesdropping or anything, just so you know."
Though Imai didn't see what was so humorous, Asai smiled. All Imai could think, however, was how terrible the high-schooler looked, as though he hadn't slept in days. Losing a friend at that age was hard on anyone, but when it was to murder it was infinitely worse. If it was awkward for him, being the detective on his friend's case and not having any new information to reassure him with, then Imai could only imagine how awkward it was for Jun to meet them here like this. He and Asai must have looked to him like they were just loafing around. Was there even any way to explain in a situation such as theirs that they were doing everything they could, when everything still wasn't good enough?
"Are you looking for your father?" Imai asked him.
"Yeah." The kid sounded distracted. "He said he was going to be working late on a case. I thought I could drop by and talk to him about something, but I must have missed him."
"He just stepped out to get something to eat. He should be back in fifteen or so if you want to wait." It was a long shot—what opportunities he had had to speak with Jun in the past had been frosty to say the least—but Imai couldn't just let the boy go without asking, "Unless, of course, it's urgent. In which case, do you want to tell us what's going on? We'd keep anything you told us in the strictest confidence—"
"Not really. I'd rather keep it between me and my dad."
"Is it about Fujisawa?"
Imai might have imagined it, but Jun seemed to start when he said that name.
He quickly shook his head, however, and told them: "No. I wish I could say I'd seen him or anything, but . . . I'm just gonna leave Dad a note and go." And Jun pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the detective's lockers. He had visited his father enough to become almost as familiar with the department's layout as any of the officers there.
He turned to head that way, but Imai stopped him by speaking his name.
"Yeah," Jun said.
"Take care of yourself, will you? We're going to catch this guy. I promise you that."
Jun didn't say anything at first. He looked down at his shoes, and when he did speak it was with a patience he hadn't shown Imai before. "Thank you, Mr Imai. That means a lot to me coming from you."
The boy gave them an awkward wave, and departed.
Imai could not shake the feeling that this wasn't like Inoue's son at all. "There's something wrong with that kid."
"Of course there is," Asai told him as he handed his partner his mug. "His good friend was murdered and he probably feels like we aren't doing enough to set it right."
It was something more personal than that, Imai thought. If Jun's only problem was the police's lack of action he would have made that clear. He would have taken it out on Imai. No, something else was on his mind. But couldn't it just be teenage angst? Maybe it wasn't really as big a deal as Imai's instincts wanted him to believe. "Yeah. Yeah, that must be it," he concurred with his partner.
"I can understand his frustration. The deeper we dig the more bizarre this case gets."
"Talk to me, Asai. What have you uncovered this time?"
"I didn't want to say anything in front of Sato," Asai said to the other's nod, "in case it compromised our own investigation, but I suppose it will come out sooner or later. I've been digging into the career of the late Dr. Satomi and, I have to tell you, his resume reads like the reading list of a medical thriller book club."
"I'm listening."
"Well, I mentioned before that his name sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn't remember where from? Turns out Satomi is a name synonymous with infamy in the scientific community, but you wouldn't know it unless you were keeping up on cloning research."
"You're saying Satomi was into cloning."
"No, Sempai, he was a leading researcher in the field, one of the very top experts in the country and a self-proclaimed disciple of Dr. Muraki Yukitaka—who, you might remember, had a reputation as something of a medical maverick himself. Satomi practically worshiped the man as a god. In fact, the one thing he's most well-known for is playing God—or at least believing he could. His career piqued in the nineteen-eighties when he suggested in his published articles that he was close to growing viable human organs for transplant from cloned stem cells, but after about 'ninety-one, 'ninety-two he all but dropped off the scientific community's radar. When he committed suicide he was teaching at an escalator school in Kyoto, publicly shunned by his colleagues."
"How far the mighty have fallen."
"You can say that again. It didn't add up. Why would a man with so much promise suddenly hit a wall and incur so much wrath? There had to be a good reason, so I dug a little deeper, and I discovered what the late doctor was really working on. His life's mission, if you'd believe it, was to create an entirely new individual from separate, artificially grown parts. Apparently this had something to do with his obsession with Dr. Muraki but I couldn't find a connection. Much of Muraki's career is still classified, if the records haven't disappeared altogether from the face of the earth."
"Let me see if I understand you right," Imai said, making a whoaing gesture with his hands. "Satomi was putting together a human being from parts he had created in a lab—like Frankenstein and his monster? You're right. I don't believe it."
"I find it difficult myself, but it looks as though he might have been successful. Or at least partially. He was denounced officially as an affront and an embarrassment to the scientific community for his unethical procedures. Official documents are vague, but it sounds from some of his most vehement attackers that they might have actually seen this being he was working on. They demanded that he destroy his project and all related samples or risk being discredited completely as a doctor of medicine."
"The scientist's kiss of death."
"It certainly gives him a motive for committing suicide. Better to die while your reputation is intact. Although, then again, he had no shortage of enemies among his colleagues and their political backers. Someone could easily have been hired to take him out, make it look like he offed himself."
"But I imagine the technology he was working on would have won him favor from at least one faction in the Diet," Imai said. "You're talking about healthy organs ready for transplant without the moral complications of waiting for a suitable donor to die. Top level politicians, bureaucrats and the corporate elite are always the first to grab at whatever new promise of eternal life comes along, and it sounds like Satomi's research had far-reaching implications that would have been realized within his own lifetime. Why would anyone want to kill him and undo everything he'd been working toward?"
Asai nodded and took a sip of coffee.
"But that still doesn't help us. What is his connection to our killer? Someone had been living in his house, and I find it hard to believe one high school student would have had the connections to pull this off alone."
"There is one other name that grabbed my attention," Asai said.
"And what is that?"
"Interestingly enough, Muraki. Muraki Kazutaka—that is, Doctor Muraki Kazutaka, the grandson of Yukitaka and a graduate student of Satomi's whom the late doctor seems to have been particularly fond of. He first starts showing up in the mid-eighties as a footnote in some of Satomi's papers. But a few years later he's practically a co-author." Asai shook his head as he said, "I skimmed through some of their joint projects, and, I'm no scientist, but I noticed a significant difference between them and Satomi's solo work. In the methodology, the rate of experiments' success—even the presentation of the data. That kid was remarkably brilliant. It led me to wonder if he wasn't responsible for Satomi's other achievements as well, if only indirectly."
Imai found himself standing still as a suspicion entered his mind he could not shake, though he couldn't well understand it either. "What became of this Muraki?"
Asai shook his head, which didn't bode well. "He had a practice at his grandfather's old clinic in Tokyo until a few years ago when he up and disappeared. The last time he was spotted was in Kyoto, a few days before Satomi's death. From the police report, it sounds like he went to pay his old professor a visit."
"For old time's sake?" Imai huffed out of the side of his mouth. "I'm not buying that. Tell me he isn't dead, too."
Asai knitted his brows as he looked at his partner, but Imai knew him well enough to know it was far from a look of suspicion, but a sign they were thinking on the same wavelength. "A body was never found."
"Asai, I could kiss you," Imai said over his shoulder as he hurried out the door.
Asai deadpanned as he followed, "Tell me you're joking."
"Then let me just say I don't know what I would have done without you." He cracked his partner a rare smile as he said, "Muraki Kazutaka has just jumped straight to the top of our list of suspects."
"Do you remember how to set a selective barrier like I taught you?"
Fujisawa looked up from the small vial of blood that had been placed in his hand, that in the faint light of the darkened building looked as black as oil, and met Muraki's eyes. Never had they looked so much like Izuru's than at that moment, holding in them that odd mixture of resignation and defiance that Fujisawa had once admired and hated so much at the same time. "I remember," he answered.
"Then you understand that once it has been set, the man who possesses that DNA will not be able to cross the threshold, but neither will I. There will be no going back. You'll be on your own, Fujisawa."
"I understand perfectly, Sensei, and I'm ready. I have only one regret."
"M-m? What's that?" the doctor asked distractedly.
Fujisawa smiled.
"That I was not able to wear the colors of Saint Michel tonight."
The rain was really coming down now. The light showers of earlier that day had given way to a full-fledged downpour, and the local news stations predicted a thunderstorm to be rolling in within the hour. Jun could hardly ask for a more appropriate cover. He wasn't completely sure he believed in fate, or the idea many of his classmates subscribed to that God invested his efforts in the lives of individuals; but it did feel in some strange way as though he had been given this small window of opportunity in which even the weather was on his side, and he would regret it forever if he did not take full advantage of it.
He could see the facade of the Sacred Heart church across the street. The uplighting that brightened it made it loom, threateningly, out of this eerie dark imposed early by the rain clouds.
Beyond that he could make out the windows in the upper storey of the school building. Its classrooms were dark, the cleaning staff already gone home, but somewhere up there was the person he had come to kill. His last message to Jun said as much. It's not what I want that matters, Fujisawa had written, but what you want. If you want justice for your friend, come to class after dark. I'll be waiting.
Now all that was left for Jun was to work up the courage to do what he knew he had to, as he stared at those dark buildings from beneath an awning across the way. The pistol he had taken from his father's locker back at the station sat heavy in his waistband at the small of his back.
If anything made Jun hesitate, it was knowing the pistol would be traced back to his dad, who would be reprimanded for Jun's actions. His father tried to do right, when he was actually home—though taking Jun to a shooting range was his idea of bonding—but he just didn't get it. The whole father thing had never been Inoue's strong suit, not like busting organized crime units had been. Jun loved him, of course, but he should have known better than to use his son's birthday as the combination to his lock. As a cop, but moreover as a father, he should have known better.
Fujisawa's image drifted to the fore of his mind again, and he clenched his jaw, setting his resolve. He couldn't be sure his father would ever forgive him, but this had to be done. The thought struck Jun that this may be the last time he would ever see the school again from the outside. One way or another. Once he moved out from beneath this awning, that was it. There would be no turning back.
He glanced back down at his cell phone and backed out of Fujisawa's message, into his phonebook, where Kurosaki's number waited patiently for him. His thumb didn't seem to want to do it, but he willed himself to push the call button.
He took a deep breath as he put the phone to his ear and waited for the ring.
Perhaps the most painful part of all of this was that in order to redeem himself with one friend he had to betray another.
Tsuzuki was too preoccupied watching the evening foot traffic moving up and down Shimotori and Nishi-Ginza streets to turn away when Hisoka materialized on the roof beside him. Only when his partner held a plastic container out to him with the words "Your dinner, Tsuzuki," did he decide he had earned a bit of a break.
He managed a small smile. "Thank you, Hisoka."
The multiple price tags on the top of the box of grocery store sushi caught Tsuzuki's eye as Hisoka handed him a pair of chopsticks, and his smile grew wider. "You held out for the lowest price, didn't you?"
He could just make out Hisoka's blush in the dark. "That doesn't make it any less fresh, you know! Besides, you're the one who just had to have sushi."
"I know." He just liked to tease Hisoka. "And I don't appreciate it any less."
Hisoka took a seat next to him and pried open his own prepackaged dinner. Down below them, the people of Kumamoto hurried back and forth under the rain, hiding their individuality beneath the generic canopy of an open umbrella. At least the two shinigami were dry for the moment, underneath the narrow bit of overhang from the roof of the building next to theirs. The rain dripping off its eaves made a harsh slapping sound as it hit the pavement, as though the adjacent building were relieving itself on theirs, and the glow of neon lights lit their tasteless dinners in unnatural colors as they ate.
"Have you seen anything suspicious so far?" Hisoka asked Tsuzuki.
"No sign of Muraki or Fujisawa, or anything that would look like their doing."
"Yeah. Same here."
"I have seen a lot of students pass by, though," Tsuzuki said hesitantly, as though he really didn't want to but could not keep it to himself any longer. "I hadn't really given much thought before to what Wakaba said last week about 'hooking up'—beyond what applied to our case, that is." He shook his head. "I guess I never paid close attention before. I probably sound like an old fart just for saying this, and I have to remind myself this isn't the Taisho period. Is it just me, or do young people these days not seem to mind being treated like objects to be used?"
"I don't know if that's a fair generalization," Hisoka said. He certainly could never hook up with a stranger like that, no matter what compensation he was promised. But then, given his past. . . .
"No. It probably isn't," Tsuzuki conceded. "It's just that watching these school-age girls approach random men from up here—you know some of them can't be older than thirteen—I can't help wondering how hopeless they must have to feel about their own futures to put themselves in that situation. Do they even know their lives could be in danger? Or do they not care? Did Hiragawa really think he was safe when he followed Fujisawa into that alley?"
Was that what this was really about? The hopelessness in Tsuzuki's voice touched Hisoka, and made him put down the bite of salad that had been halfway to his mouth.
"I'm not so sure he did," he said, trying to think back to his classmates at Sacred Heart, who had unconsciously started projecting their own fears and desires and hopes the moment they heard he read fortunes. How many other kids the same age had he met in all his investigations these past six years, who might have come from different cities, different households, but still felt exactly the same way?
Perhaps Hisoka wasn't the best one to ask about this sort of thing. He'd never really had an adolescence—not a proper one anyway, as it had pretty much been spent dead, for all intents and purposes. But he could remember how those closest to him had gradually closed themselves off from him. Emotionally and physically, literally. That sort of isolation had a way of forcing one to grow up.
"But whether it was safe or not isn't really the issue. I don't think the thought crossed his mind at all," Hisoka said, "that he might be murdered. You think you have your whole life ahead of you at that age, that nothing can touch you. Not permanently, anyway. You think none of what you do will matter in the long run, and you'll have plenty of time to make up for any mistakes you make today."
"That's a sad way of putting it," Tsuzuki sighed.
"Maybe it is," Hisoka admitted, now that he really thought about it. But he hadn't meant it that way. It seemed to him that there was something liberating in believing oneself to be invincible, even if it was in many ways a delusion. What he wouldn't give to have been able to experience that delusion himself, while he had still been alive.
Rather than be stuck in bed, unaware of the passing of his fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays, wishing for death to come and end his suffering. Unlike some people, he didn't feel any nostalgia for that time in his life. He was just glad it was over.
"Or maybe you should just forget what I said. Who knows if there's any truth to it, or if the morale of young people in any given time is just something that ebbs and flows with the state of the economy."
He heard Tsuzuki chuckle beside him in the dark. "You always have a way of telling people just what they need to hear, don't you, Hisoka?"
"Well, you're the one who asked what I thought." Suddenly embarrassed, Hisoka jabbed his chopsticks into his dinner. He hadn't meant to get all philosophical about it anyway. Maybe it was this change in the weather, getting under his skin.
But more likely, it was nothing more or less than their case, which was disturbing enough for a lifetime. If they had never crossed paths with Muraki again after Kyoto, Hisoka would have been content to reap as many souls as Enma needed him to, for as long as he needed him to. But now that the doctor was back, his mind turned once again to revenge. It should have disturbed him that, in a perverse way, he was actually glad to have another chance at it. Avenging his death had been his purpose, his reason for continuing to exist.
But at what cost? Who else had to die before Hisoka could complete that mission? Because he could not convince himself that he was blameless in Hiragawa's death, or all those men before him. Even if he had not wielded the knife. They were killed because of him, because of Tsuzuki. Hisoka could begin to understand then why Tsuzuki would want to give it all up, and obliterate himself in Touda's flames. Somewhere it has to end. At some point, your own existence just can't justify the body count.
Before he could even attempt to air any of that aloud, however, Tsuzuki's ring tone startled them both. Balancing his food on his knees, Tsuzuki dug into his pocket for the phone. "Gushoushin," he told Hisoka as he pressed the answer button.
"Checking in?"
Tsuzuki shrugged. "Tsuzuki speaking," he said brightly into the receiver.
Hisoka was ready to turn his own attention back to dutifully putting away his dinner. But he could just make out the younger Gushoushin's words coming tinny through the cell phone speaker, and they gave him pause. "Tsuzuki!" The librarian sounded like he was trying to catch his breath. "Forgive my brother and me, but something urgent came up and we only arrived at your boy's house a short time ago—"
"That's all right," Tsuzuki tried to calm him down. "Just tell me the kid is doing all right. No one's moved over there, have they?"
"That's just the thing!" Gushoushin sounded like he was going to burst into tears. "He wasn't here when we arrived!"
"What do you mean?"
Hisoka turned to face his partner. But just as he opened his mouth to ask what was going on, his own phone rang. He put it to his ear before he could read the number of the incoming call, but it was bound to be the office anyway. No one outside of Enma-cho had this number—
"Saki? I'm sorry. Kurosaki."
Hisoka started. That's right, there was one other person he had given it to. He jumped to his feet, dinner falling to the concrete. "Jun, is that you?" He exchanged looks with Tsuzuki, who told Gushoushin to hold on the line. "Where are you? Are you all right?"
"What?" Jun sounded confused, distracted. "Yeah. I'm fine. I just called to say thank you. For everything you've done. It might not seem like a lot, just listening to what I had to say, but I really did appreciate it."
"Why are you telling me this now? Jun, I told you to go home!"
"I really do think we could have been friends under different circumstances."
What kind of answer was that? Hisoka tightened his grip on the phone. This was exactly what he had feared when Jun told him Fujisawa had been in touch. But like watching a crystal vase tumbling toward the floor, being unable to reach it in time, he could think of nothing to say or do to change Jun's mind. The feeling of powerlessness was overwhelming.
"I just wanted you to know that," Jun was saying so quietly that Hisoka could barely make out his words above the clanging of bells in the background. "Before it all comes out in the morning. I know if anyone would understand, it would be you."
His voice wavered, but he steadied it by clearing his throat. "I hope you can forgive me, but there's something I have to do."
"Wait! Just tell me where you are so I can come to you!" Hisoka yelled into the phone. Already he was afraid he could feel the other boy drifting out of his reach. But he had to keep trying. "You promised me you weren't going to do anything stupid, Jun! Jun? Let's talk about this—"
But the line was already disconnected. It took all of Hisoka's self control not to throw the cell phone down on the concrete and shatter it in his frustration. That would have accomplished nothing. He swore under his breath instead.
"He's been talking to Fujisawa," Tsuzuki guessed.
"That bastard must have known just what buttons to push. Jun doesn't realize he's walking into a trap!"
"I wouldn't be so sure of that."
Hisoka looked up at him in surprise as the pieces fell into place.
"Where is he now?" Tsuzuki asked him. "Would he say?"
Hisoka shook his head slowly. "The bells, though. . . ." He glanced at the phone's face again, where the digital letters displayed the time. It was just past the hour. "Those must have been the Sacred Heart church's bells. Shit. . . . He went back to the school!"
Without another word he took off in that direction, trusting Tsuzuki would follow close behind him. The cold rain had him drenched almost immediately, soaking his jeans as he dashed through quickly rising puddles, but he hardly noticed. More than anything else Hisoka was aware of the trickling away of time, and it was not on his side. This is my fault, his conscience screamed. If it were not for me, if I hadn't gotten caught by Muraki at the cafe, if I hadn't followed Tsuzuki, Jun wouldn't be in this mess. And if I don't get to him in time. . . .
His grip tightened around the cell phone in his hand as he ran, as though it were his only tether to Jun, the only connection he had that had any chance of keeping Jun safe. Hisoka focused on the landmarks that pointed the way to the school. He could not afford another innocent death on his account. Nor could he, or any of them in Summons, afford the fallout if Tsuzuki blamed himself for this one too.
If only Jun had just done what he asked.
But Hisoka knew just how easy it was to get carried away by the prospect of revenge.
He slid to a stop outside the church on the far corner of the grounds, feeling Tsuzuki's tap on his shoulder as he arrived a step behind. The same thought occurred to them both. The grounds looked completely deserted for the night. "He's not here."
Hisoka redialed Jun's number. It rang and rang, eventually going to the voice mail service. He swore in frustration. "He's got to be around here somewhere. This is where he called from. I'm sure of it."
The doors leading into the school's main building were unlocked, and Hisoka was sure no janitor would have left them that way. Traces of emotion like the afterimage of the sun burnt into the retina flowed through him as he touched the handle. Anger. Regret. Determination. Resignation. Jun must have come this way, but how long ago and where he was now Hisoka could not say from a mere touch.
He tried calling again. If Jun were close by, even if he would not answer, there was a slight chance they would be able to locate him by his ring tone.
But this time Hisoka got his voice mail immediately. "He's turned off his phone," he muttered to Tsuzuki.
"Let's hope that's all it is."
"Jun?" Hisoka shouted. He knew it was a potentially risky move doing so and that it gave away his presence, but the other boy's safety was more important to him now. Unlike himself, Jun was mortal. "Jun, it's Kurosaki Hisoka! If you can hear me, give me a sign and let me know where you are!
"Please," Hisoka added under his breath, "let me know you're okay."
Only the sound of their footsteps echoing in the hallway replied. Tsuzuki followed close behind him, putting his head in each room they passed, but each one was dark and empty. There was no sign of human life anywhere.
They reached the end of the hall. On one side were the double doors of the library, and on the other the stairs led up to the second floor and down into the basement. "We should split up," Hisoka said impatiently. "We can cover more ground that way."
He was surprised when Tsuzuki shook his head. "No way. If this is a trap, I'm not leaving your side."
It struck Hisoka as a tad hypocritical that he would say that, after what had happened just the day before, but he suppressed the strong urge to call attention to that fact. "Don't be ridiculous. Time is of the essence, here, Tsuzuki. Who knows what could happen to him while we're searching the wrong end of the school. If something happened, and one of us could have prevented it . . ."
Hisoka shook his head. "If something happened . . ." No. That was not an option.
As though on cue, a loud bang split the air and resonated throughout the building.
The two exchanged glances. For half of a second, Hisoka wondered if it could have been the first crack of thunder signaling the predicted storm, the aftershock of a particularly close flash of lightning. But there had been no light, and he could not convince himself it was anything other than what he knew without a doubt it was.
Gunfire.
"That came from the second floor," Hisoka said and dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He heard Tsuzuki's warning to wait, they had to be cautious, but paid his partner no attention. Jun couldn't afford for them to wait. Heavy dread sank into him, weighing down his strides, but he pressed on for that boy's sake.
The echo of the gunshot continued to ring in his ears, disorienting him even more than the darkness as it ricocheted off the cold, thin walls of the second storey. The hallway was empty. Theoretically, the shot could have come from any one of the classrooms, but instinct told Hisoka otherwise.
When he neared, he saw the door to 2-C was already open.
He halted at the threshold, reaching inside his jacket for a fuda. The scene before him confirmed his worst fears.
The desks had been pushed to the back of the room for the cleaning staff, and against their dam of laminated tabletops and steel legs lay Jun's motionless form, with Fujisawa crouched over him.