Chapter Seven is finally up! I'm so sorry for the long wait. My sister came into town and it was Halloween (yeah, I know that not a good excuse) and I was busy. But! This chapter is by far the longest chapter I've posted so far. Please enjoy the reading and review!
By the time they reached the park, Izaya was smiling again and his sisters were chattering nonstop. It seemed as though they had forgotten the previous feeling of melancholy they had been surrounded by earlier. Shizuo, however, had not.
He was still thinking about what Izaya had said.
"'I'm not the one who's doing the hating,' what could he have meant by that?" Shizuo muttered to himself.
He watched as Izaya and the twins walked toward the ice cream stand. Izaya put Kururi down and went for his wallet. Shizuo found this strange. He would have thought Izaya would talk his way out of paying by threatening or black mailing the person. Not willingly give them money. He must really care for his sisters for Izaya of all people to use his money. Then again, Shizuo didn't really know him that well, so maybe Izaya always pays for things… oh well, it doesn't really matter anyway.
"Kururi wants chocolate, Mairu what kind do you want," Izaya asks the girl as she glares at the ice cream, trying to decide what kind she wants.
"Hmm… I want the orange one Iza-Nii!" Mairu shouts excitedly and grabs Kururi hands while twirling, making both girls giggle.
"Okay, okay calm down," Izaya gives the man the money and takes the ice cream from him, "You have to sit down on the bench before I give this to you."
Both girls stop twirling abruptly and stared at Izaya with horrified expression, "IzaIza, we don't need to sit down. We won't spill!" Kururi complained and Mairu nodded desperately.
Izaya gave them a stern look until they relented and sat on the bench. The pouty looks on their faces almost maybe Shizuo laugh, but he held it in for fear of Izaya spotting him. Shizuo couldn't let Izaya see him yet, not until he got some answers.
As soon as the girls sat down, Izaya handed them their ice cream and sat between them. Kururi and Mairu were talking about something Izaya didn't quite understand before he interrupted them.
"Kururi, I want you to tell me why you were crying now," as soon as the words left Izaya's lips, all the talking stopped. Izaya looked at Mairu and Kururi to see both of their heads down.
Izaya sighed, "You know you can tell me anything. It's okay."
Mairu bite her lip before quietly saying, "The other kids were being mean to Kururi."
Izaya looked at Mairu, slightly shocked and then looked down at his lap, "Bullies, huh?" He stayed quiet for a bit before looking up again and he turned to face Kururi, "I'll just have to teach you girls how to take care of bullies now, won't I?"
The twins looked at Izaya's smirking face and Kururi asked, "you know how to get rid of bullies?"
"Of course I do!" Izaya stated loudly with a mischievous glint in his eyes. And so started the lessons on getting rid of bullies. Of course, way Izaya was telling them was much to violent for the public to know.
Shizuo, who was watching from a far, grew very worried for the young girls sanity and the safety of the poor people who would decide to bully them later in the future. Shizuo had to wonder where Izaya learned this stuff in the first place.
Despite the gruesome and somewhat disturbing topic they were discussing, Izaya, Kururi, and Mairu looked really happy. Seeing them sitting on the bench and smiling like that reminded Shizuo of a memory from when he was younger.
He and his brother, Kasuka, went to a park one time when their parents were away. They didn't really have much to do so they sat on a bench. Kasuka brought a book and started to read that as soon as they sat down, and Shizuo sat on the back of the bench with his feet on the seat and a bottle of milk. Shizuo remembered there being another boy around his age sitting on the bench next to his.
The boy had a little girl in a blue dress drinking from a sippy-cup, sitting next to him and another girl wearing the same thing play on the back of the bench. On the other side of the boy was a bag with a sippy-cup for the other girls and other things like a coat or blanket.
From the expression in the boy's face, Shizuo could tell he did this a lot and he guessed that their parents weren't home most of the time. He wondered why his parents would be gone so much with two three year old girls and a twelve year old boy waiting at home for them. It wasn't fair to the boy.
As Shizuo looked at the boy, he noticed how empty his eyes looked. How dead they were. They almost held no emotion in them at all, except for the pain they carried.
With eyes blank of everything, it shocked Shizuo to see tears falling so suddenly from them. And as soon as they fell, the boy wiped them away as if they were never there and he and his sisters vanished.
Shizuo realized now that that boy was Izaya. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did. And it just confused him more. How could that boy turn into, well, this. And why was Izaya so sad that day? Was he still sad?
Shizuo shook his head vigorously, banishing the thought. There was no way. Izaya was heartless and he didn't care if he hurt others. He deserved to be miserable and sad. He was a coward.
At some point while Shizuo was thinking, Izaya had finished his discussion (evil plans) with his sisters and they had run off. Izaya sat on the bench and watched as they played. As Izaya sat there, Shizou noticed his eyes glaze over and some of the emptiness from Shizuo's memory returned.
Izaya was brought out of his trance when he heard Mairu crying. He looked over at the girls and saw the ice cream on the ground and on their hoodies. Izaya got up off the bench on knelt next to Mairu.
He started wiping the tears from her eyes and Mairu noticed Izaya was there while Kururi stared at the fallen ice cream cones, "Mairu, don't cry, it's just ice cream," Izaya pulled out some money and said, "I'll buy you a new one, so stop-"
Izaya cut off what he was saying as he noticed Shizuo a few feet in front of them. He stared at him a long while and Shizuo was getting uncomfortable. He hadn't expected Izaya to spot him yet and now he didn't know what to do. So he just stared back at Izaya.
Izaya knew by the way Shizuo was so relaxed that he had been there for a while. He may have even been following him, but what Izaya wanted to know was why. Why was Shizuo just standing there, watching? Shizuo wasn't attacking him. Shizuo wasn't even glaring at him and that puzzled Izaya. He wanted to know why Shizuo was so calm. It unnerved him.
Not taking his eyes away from Shizuo, Izaya addressed the twins, "Kururi, Mairu, take this and go buy yourselves some ice cream."
"But what about our hoodies?" Mairu started to complain, but Kururi held her hand and pulled her away from Izaya to do as he said while eyeing Shizuo curiously.
As soon as they left, Izaya stood up and walked toward Shizuo. Shizuo didn't know what to do or even what to think. He had never seen Izaya face so void of emotion. There was always a never ending smirk on his face. And to see him now, without a smile, kind of scared Shizuo.
"Shizu-chan, what are you doing here?" Izaya asked without expression. He was standing in front of Shizuo now.
"I was curious, is all," Shizuo mumbled loud enough for Izaya to hear.
Izaya glared at Shizuo before hissing out, "So you followed me? How long?"
Shizuo saw a somewhat familiar look on Izaya's face and relaxed a bit, "Since school ended. I thought you were up to something, so I followed you."
Izaya widened his eyes slightly and narrowed them again, "Well, Shizuo, as you can see, I am not up to anything. Unless, of course, you see some ulterior motive to taking my sisters to the park."
Shizuo flinched at the harsh words coming from Izaya and at the use of his name. This would have to be the first time he has ever used Shizuo's given name.
"No, there's nothing wrong with that," Shizuo said after he recovered from slight shock of Izaya's words, "I misjudged you, I guess."
"Yes, you did," Izaya turned away from Shizuo and called for his sisters, he then turned and smirked at Shizuo, "Goodbye, Shizu-chan."
Izaya left before Shizuo could say anything with each of his sisters' hands in his. Shizuo wondered whether Izaya was angry or if he was just pretending. Shizuo had a lot more questions now than he had answers and it annoyed him to no end.
