She slowly opened the door, intimidated, hand shaking on the handle. She had gone overboard with revealing he had gotten shot in front of his fans, right…? Right… She had to apologize for letting herself do that like that. These two girls looked terrified too.
She still didn't get what was up with that idol thing, and she had never seen Izumi as someone with fans attached to his name, but that didn't make it okay.
"Izumi-kun…? It's Kimidori… Mind if I come in?"
No response. Weird, coming from someone as bored as Izumi on his hospital bed. He would have told her to either go away or come in. She didn't pretend like she knew him that well, considering he was usually stiffer than an ironed wooden door, but… She felt like she knew better than that from him.
Who was she kidding? She didn't know Izumi. He was as enigmatic as an unsolved math problem.
"I'm coming in anyway. I forgot to give you today's homework and lessons. Yotsuba-san didn't come…"
She froze upon entering the room.
"…to school today."
Sei approached with timid steps, legs like frozen logs she was trying to move around. A deadly shiver coursed through her body as soon as her feet touched the ground. Her eyes were trying to get out of their sockets. Her stomach turned upside down immediately, not letting much time for her to keep the nausea in.
"I-Izumi..?"
Before her eyes, her classmate, breathing in and out heavily, wrist hanging down from the bed with blood pouring from it in drops. A glass of something spilled on the floor. Blood on the floor, mixing with the greenish liquid.
The smell of almond and copper in the air filled her nose. Was she not too shocked by seeing Izumi like this, she'd have fell to her knees.
"Izumi!"
Mitsuki wanted to fucking punch something.
He didn't know what he wanted to punch. He just wanted to thrust his fists into something, anything, before he could punch someone, anyone. The walls, the table, his chair, Nagi's chair next to him, his glass, the door, the ground, Tamaki's pudding he had been eating before the news dropped, something, anything.
"Mi-Mitsu, you're scary when you're angry…" Yamato whispered.
Nobody else was speaking up. Everyone was either looking away or looking down: there was no escaping the fury having taken a hold of him. None. It may not had been directed at them: it could backfire anyway, would anyone say something even in the slightest aggravating. It was just… terrifying to see him like that, he'd guess.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" the manager apologized over and over again, yet again.
Iori really was right when he had told her it didn't serve much use. Despite the good intentions oozing from her panicked words, it didn't help anything, and she had just dropped a bomb onto them. A bomb whose explosion was Mitsuki's rage.
"It's… it's not your fault, Manager…" Riku mustered up all the courage he had to tell her that.
Mitsuki forced himself to calm down, if not just to ask if she had anything else to tell them about Iori's whereabouts, but it just didn't want to go away. His veins were still filled with boiling lava. No matter what he tried to do, it just wouldn't want to go away. The need to punch something. The need to punch the face of the bitch who had done that to his little brother.
There was no way he was ever letting that go. He didn't consider himself to be someone cruel, but nobody had the right to land even a single hand on his brother. Not again. Not when he was at his most vulnerable. That was just so fucking dirty!
"Manager," Nagi asked despite the overflowing tenseness of the situation, "do you have any news?"
"I do!" her face regained some happiness to it, albeit very slightly.
She got out of her bag some crinkled paper sheets with her trembling hands.
"Huh… The doctor wrote me some stuff, lemme just read it, okay…?"
Mitsuki sat down again, fists clutched into feeling his nails enter his skin. He had never been this furious in his life, not even when that asshole from the other day had shot Iori. He had felt more broken than outraged, back there, and his anger had been strangled by his sorrow. This time around, though… There was no sorrow. Just rage and boiling worry.
He just couldn't get his head to wrap around while someone would do such a thing to Iori of everyone. Maybe he was biased (after all, the victim was his younger brother, not just anyone to him), but really, Iori wasn't a bad person at all. He was rough around the edges sometimes, because that was how his tongue was, but why would someone do something so painful and cruel to someone as selfless and as well-meaning as Iori?
"It's written that Iori-san's not in any critical condition…" Tsumugi's voice was shaking as she started reading the paper.
Everyone sighed in relief, even Mitsuki himself. Riku's sigh was the second loudest, hands on his chest. In a way, some weight had flown away.
"And, huh… Oh dear…"
Everyone then went back to being tense and worried. He didn't know his heart could beat this fast, actually. It felt like it was about to explode under its own beats.
"They identified the liquid Iori-san was forced to drink… as…"
Riku rose up from his chair.
"Wait, you never told us Iori had been forced to drink something, Manager!"
"Riku-kun's right," Sogo added. "I don't remember us knowing about this piece of information, at least."
"I… I'm sorry! I must have forgotten to tell you all!"
Her grip on the paper sheets strengthened.
"Anyway," Yamato calmed everyone down, "what did they force Ichi to drink?"
"A… pyrogen? What is a pyrogen?"
They were all curious, except Sogo who just gulped.
"If I'm not mistaken, it makes the one who drinks it feverish… This isn't good in the slightest…"
Panic washed all over them again.
"You're… you're kidding, right?" Yamato asked, just in case, always just in case.
"Such a thing exists? Why would someone invent something like that?" Riku asked, probably not expecting a real answer.
"It's usually used to get rid of lingering bacteria and viruses who won't go away… I didn't think someone would try using it to harm other people…"
"How did they get a hold of it, though?" Yamato asked. "That crap mustn't be easy to find, right?"
"We don't know much about the assaulter yet," Tsumugi said in a shiver. "She got caught by someone Iori-san knew, but she still refuses to speak…"
Mitsuki got up without a word.
"Mikki?" Tamaki asked, his voice getting a bit shaking.
"Mitsuki?" Nagi asked again, concern written all over his face. "What are you doing?"
"I'm leaving! I can't stay there shitting around on a chair!"
"Where are you going?!" Nagi's worry intensified even more.
"Isn't that obvious?!"
"You can't just leave like that, Mitsuki-san!" the manager tried to stop him. "It's pouring down outside! You'll catch a cold!"
"Manager's right! Mitsuki-kun, you should stay here…"
Yet it didn't affect him at all.
"I'll see myself out!"
He ran to the door, hearing everyone else scream his name behind his back, but there was no stopping him now. He would sprint to the hospital even if it meant getting there exhausted. He quickly grabbed his coat, slipped on his shoes and ran outside in a flash.
And once in the street, the only thing he did was sprint on lengths he didn't expect to be able to run. And, as he did so, Mitsuki let out some of the tears he had contained for what felt like years. It just pained it too much to think…
…to think someone had purposely profited of Iori's vulnerability to do such a horrible act.
When he came to, there was a pounding in his head. A thumbing, unusual pounding. It felt… awful. Everything hurt and felt numb at the same time: his neck, his eyes, his throat, his wrist, his legs… Everything was blurry and muffled. It was all white around him whenever he could open his eyes even a little bit. A bit like when he had first woken up from getting shot, in this same hospital, in this same bed…
Except there were two breathes instead of one, this time around.
"You're…" his brother's voice trailed off.
He knew it was his brother because he would recognize that voice even if he was deaf. There was just something which told him it was his brother.
"You're finally awake…"
His wrist had regained enough sensitivity to feel his brother's hand clutching his. He must had been very worried. Again, may he have added.
His memories feel very fuzzy and remembering what could have possibly happened before he woke up wasn't helping the mysterious headache he had going down in the back of his skull. He'd have to postpone that, or just… ask, after all.
"B… brother…? Wha… What happened…?"
"Oh, sure, you probably don't remember that…" the older boy's voice seemed to come to a halt, before he gulped.
"I… I'm not sure… I wasn't there…"
Another familiar, albeit far less reassuring, spoke up.
"Nobody was, Izumi… Izumi-san." The feminine voice sounded confused for a moment before resuming. "I just happened to walk in on that bitch's shady business right after it happened. That's the only reason why I was able to catch her, in fact."
"Who…? what…?"
He was getting utterly confused. He had barely attributed that voice and tone to Kimidori (why was she even still around?), and yet she was already speaking about people he didn't know like he knew them.
"Oh, that's right. Izumi-kun, you just woke up, you probs don't know what the hell happened to you."
He'd have to bite back despite his strange ailment.
"Then tell me, Kimidori-san…! How am I supposed to know otherwise!" He snapped as he sat up.
His attempt at sounding at least a bit menacing was quickly met with a dizzy spell out of nowhere, which forced him
"Iori!" His brother told him in a hurry.
He then put a hand on his… forehead? What an odd thing to do.
Kimidori cleared her throat.
"Anyway, as I was saying. Shortly after I left you with these two fans, I decided to backtrack and check if…" She looked away and bit her lip. "If you were indeed back into your room. Plus I had to give you today's homework and all."
"She's worried for you!" His brother whispered to him. He smirked back.
"Shut up!" Her fists clenched her arms. "You weren't responding, and the door wasn't fully closed, so I allowed myself in…"
Kimidori lost her dishonest face for an honest, enraged inverted grin.
"That's where I found you with the IV torn from your wrist and the glass of pyrogen on the floor, its contents spilled on the floor, meddling with your blood…"
She exhaled a pained sigh.
"I called for a nurse and then immediately ran back out as soon as I noticed someone had been spying on me checking up on you. And… for some reason, I just kicked her to the ground and stomped her. Apparently, she attends your previous high school, Izumi-kun."
That was a weird detail to slip in there about this assaulter he didn't remember.
"I don't even get what she was trying to spew… I guess she was a fan from that other popular idol band thing, TRIGGER or something, and she was very, very angry at yours for becoming popular? Idol fans are sometimes the worst, I swear."
And then her tone dropped again.
"I'll never forgive her for what she did."
His brother seemed surprised. Well, so was he, after all. Then the older one gritted his teeth.
"Same here. What happened is unforgiveable. I can't forgive someone so cruel!"
Mitsuki wiped tears of frustration out of his eyes.
"I almost forgot… Thanks, Kimidori. You saved Iori from even worse."
Her eyes softened, and so did her posture, contrasting with her previous anger.
"Don't stress it, Izumi-san… It's just normal to help someone in need. Speaking of that… I'll leave you alone. I don't think Izumi-kun wants me around at the moment, and I'm sure you have a ton of stuff to say. I'll be going."
She made her way to the door, then stopped.
"Kimidori-san…?"
Iori called to her. For some reason… He didn't really want her to leave. She had information he didn't have.
"Yeah?"
"You don't have anything more to say…?"
She faced them both again.
"Oh, yeah, I do…"
And she cleared her throat again before gulping. She seemed almost intimidated, in fact.
"Take care, Izumi-kun. I know you're that kind of guy who thinks he'll be alright as long as everyone he cares about is, but… That's not really the case. Izumi-kun, you need to take care of yourself more, okay? And not just for us, even if I know a ton of people are worried for you. I'll come by sooner or later, I guess. See you."
Kimidori left on that, leaving the brothers alone.
A short silence ensued. For once, Iori was the one to break the ice in this room.
"Brother… What… What happened…?" he asked, with a much more hesitant voice. "I'm very confused…"
His voice was very hoarse. Less groggy than when he had just woken up on Saturday, but still very thick and hard to hear himself.
"Huh… Kimidori explained this to me before you woke up. Some weird groupie entered your room and tore off the IV from your arm."
Mitsuki's face distorted into anger. Pure anger Iori hadn't seen in years. Why was he angrier with her than with the gunman?
"And to make matters worse, they found out she had forced you to drink some kind of poison! That bitch tried to kill you off when you couldn't defend yourself!"
"I… I could have, big brother…"
"No! No you couldn't, Iori!"
Shocked much more than he would had liked to admit, he gulped. What had he done wrong by saying that?
"Have you forgotten you're injured again, Iori…?"
He sees tears running down his brother's cheeks. What should he do to make him feel better? Quick, he needs something, anything good…
"No, brother, I haven't…"
"You couldn't have stopped her, Iori… That was why she tore off the IV from your arm. She… she knew you wouldn't stop her if you were in too much pain… And I hate that! That's just so cruel for someone to do! You were at her complete mercy!"
"Big brother…"
Once again, Iori didn't have the words he wanted to have to soothe his brother. To be honest, he wanted to cry too: he didn't feel good at all, he would have said even worse than when he had just woken up from his bullets. Less lethargic, sure, but… dizzier and colder. He had chills all over his body.
"Do you know why… why I feel so bad…?"
Mitsuki wiped the tears from his eyes with his sleeve.
"It's that pyrogen… It's what she forced you to drink…"
"Pyrogen…"
The word seemed to ring a bell, but which one, exactly? His dizzy gears had trouble processing the information… until it fell upon him. A pyrogen. He had a fever. That explained a lot…
In his daze, he hadn't noticed he had something on his forehead until his brother used to wipe his face. It felt… warm, before the latter took it off and put it again fresher. His eyes were unable to really focus on anything. He gave his little brother a soft smile.
"Come to think of it, I've never got to take care of you when you were ill either… You usually take care of everything yourself. I guess this is no normal illness, though…"
A part of him was angry about having to be taken care of. He hated depending on people. But, on the other hand… Did he really have a choice there? He was injured, dizzy, dazed and feverish. There was no way he could actually do much at the moment. Moreover… His brother's presence was more than welcome, at this very moment.
"Do you know… how long it'll take for the fever to go away…"
"If I'm not mistaken," his brother's voice is a bit hesitant, as if trying to remember, "the doctor told me it'd take a day, two at most. The time it exits your body or something."
Mitsuki then gulped and his eyes dimmed down.
"I know you hate this, Iori, but… Please hang in there. Don't do anything too reckless tonight, okay? We don't want it to get worse."
"What… are you talking about…?"
The expression on the older sibling's face turned to sadness.
"You may remember it, since it was a long while ago… But you used to have terrible nightmares when you had a fever, when you were a child. It was terrifying, and Mom and Dad would forbid me to see you, so…"
It all flowed inside Iori's mind.
The nightmares, the night terrors, the times he'd wake up thinking his brother was dead, his parents' worry, the times he'd jump out of bed in sweat… All before he was even in middle school. That was maybe one of the reasons why he had wanted to have such perfect health, after all. It was better to forget about all these almost sleepless nights.
It was all before he had become who he was. And yet, and yet…
Iori was terrified they would come back.
