Chapter 10 – Black and White

It was a cold morning, the first day of December. The ground had frosted over and the air was both cool and crisp. She huddled beneath a heavy jacket as she trudged down the sidewalk with her gloved hand clutching the handle of a briefcase tightly. The moment Namie exhaled she could see her breath visibly, rising into the air like smoke. Already nine o'clock and it was still so frigid that her entire body felt numb.

She had considered taking the day off... (Which meant calling Izaya and informing him that, so long as that annoyed blue-eyed brat was staying in his office, Namie wasn't interested in doing work there.) But from the moment she'd woken up, to the moment she'd taken her shower, apparently she was too preoccupied with her routine and thoughts of her brother's well-being and happiness to consider her own. That's how she usually was, though.

But when she arrived at the office and noticed a yellow note tacked to the front door, Namie felt a bit apprehensive. She was, admittedly, a bit annoyed at the lame way Izaya had chosen to convey a message to her. "Obviously went out to cause more trouble," she mumbled to herself as she ripped the piece of paper off the door and casually scanned over it.

Namie-chan~

I'm borrowing your uniform again because the troll wanted me to go out with him this morning. He is acting kind of suspicious! Have fun with your paperwork~

-Yomi

There was also a particularly crude drawing that resembled a blob more than the happy face with what Namie assumed was supposed to be a peace sign. She crumpled the note in her hand and threw it over her shoulder. Such gestures were little more than annoying, but at the very least she wouldn't have to go through the headache of dealing with Yomi lounging around the office all day.

Though Namie wasn't sure what to think about Yomi wearing her old school uniform all around Shinjuku. She breathed a sigh. At least it might embarrass Izaya. If it managed to do that, then perhaps Namie had achieved revenge in some small way.

Meanwhile, instead of being embarrassed as his secretary had hoped, Izaya was silently amused as he lingered just a few feet behind Yomi. They had been meandering through the streets and had encountered many apprehensive and questioning glances. (Including probing stares from perverts that Yomi felt obliged to point out, thereby humiliating the sick old men whose eyes had been previously glued to her.)

This time they were trolling the streets in every sense of the word. Yet there was a purpose behind all of the chaos, whether Yomi had quite realized it or not. She seemed to think it was a date, as she had so eloquently pointed out to him. (Eloquent? More like crude.)

"Yomi-chan, I hope you brought your wallet~"

She paused, mid-skip, to turn around and face him. The skirt around her waist seemed to bounce with the movement. "My wallet?" the eccentric girl questioned with a lopsided smile. "Are you trying to get me to buy you a new coat?"

"Ohh~ how perceptive," he responded with sarcasm that Yomi didn't even seem to notice. "You didn't think I had any interest in wandering the streets with some like you as company, did you?" As usual he was mocking her.

"You really don't know how to go on a proper date, Uzaya-chan," she lectured back, wagging her finger at him in disapproval. "Someone like you is so hopeless. Don't you know that's why Namie-chan won't date you?"

"Those two things have noooothing to do with each other." Stepping forward, he reached out his hand and flicked her on the forehead.

Glaring back at him as she furiously rubbed at the newly forming bump on her forehead, Yomi responded, "That's not true. You probably just think something like 'dating doesn't sound interesting so I won't do it.' Such a boooring way of thinking."

He smirked at her observation. Although it was true that she lacked any form of common sense, Yomi at the very least was intuitive enough to understand him to some degree. Perhaps that was why he could tolerate her despite the annoying conclusions she often came to. But likewise, he had come to understand her way of thinking more than she knew. "How about you, Yomi-chan?"

"What about me?"

For whatever reason, he didn't answer her and just briskly walked past with his hands shoved into his pockets. Yomi, curious as to why he seemed content on ignoring her, followed after him quickly. Her hair, which she'd tied up in pigtails once more, bounced with every step. At the same time she could feel the utterly painful ache in her side that kept her breathing shallow. Silently she wondered if, perhaps, Izaya had noticed this small detail.

"Aha," he whispered in a quiet voice as he stopped suddenly, causing Yomi to crash right into his side. Though Izaya obviously felt the impact, he gave no indication that it had bothered him in the least. Instead, he pointed his finger across the street and told Yomi, "Look there." There was a tinge of mischievousness mixed with amusement in his voice.

Curious as to what it was that had so suddenly grabbed his attention, she peered over at the place he was motioning toward. Mixed along the bustling traffic of people still scrambling to work or whatever other various places their lives often led them, was a couple with hands linked together, walking and smiling. Nothing particularly uncommon. She blinked slowly as she tried to understand why it was they were observing something so... Normal.

Before she could jump to wild conclusions, Izaya cut in, "Humans are so interesting. Do you know why they partake in dating, Yomi-chan?" Not that he was about to give her a chance to answer; whatever she said would surely be some ludicrous and incorrect conclusion that he could give no credit to. So instead, Izaya told her his theory, "In this world the past is the only thing real, only thing tangible. People preserve their existence through memories, thereby making relationships in order to do so along the way. Humans don't want to feel forgotten. Memories have power."

"Are you sure they don't want to just-" She was definitely about to say something inappropriate.

Izaya chuckled, "What do you think is stronger, Yomi-chan, love or hate?"

It seemed like a trick question but Yomi, of course, didn't notice. "Love is," she responded easily, "My love for Hiro-chan surpasses everything!" To emphasize the extent of her emotional attachment toward Hiro, she waved her arms out wide.

A smirk slowly made its way onto Izaya's lips as he tilted his head back. "Oh really?" he challenged mockingly. "Are you sure about that? Haven't you given up everything in life, driven by hatred, to seek revenge?"

"It started as love," she tried to argue.

He quirked a brow back at her. "Hate always stems from love." Then Izaya turned his gaze back toward the couple that had been stopped just shortly down the street at a crosswalk, where the light had turned red. "If he sleeps with another woman and she feels betrayed, then hate will overpower the love she had for him. It's more impressionable. Humans love to hate... Because they know they will remember it longer."

Although she remained particularly stubborn in her insistence that love was stronger, Yomi silently found herself willing to believe what Izaya was saying. Perhaps it was true. She knew it firsthand. Hatred had ruled her life and had a far more powerful hold than love ever had, even if she wouldn't admit it. (And she wouldn't; Hiro, who was her everything, was the only thing Yomi was willing to believe in.)

"Can you say that for sure?" she asked suddenly, still somewhat entangled in her thoughts. Yomi had abruptly turned serious, the look on her face genuinely inquisitive. "Have you never loved someone, Uzaya-chan?"

"Of course, I love humans."

"And hate?"

"You seem to be so curious about me, Yomi-chan, asking all these questions."

Her head tilted to the side, pigtails swaying with the motion. "Of course I want to know, U-za-ya-chan. If you think that hate is more powerful then doesn't that mean that whoever you hate has the most power over you?"

"Oho~ so Yomi-chan can come up with something witty now and then." The conversation ended there. For reasons unknown, Izaya did not care to disclose whether or not he bore any grudge. So instead they walked along.

And Yomi, who was not content to the silence that had fallen between them, was quick to speak up as soon as something popped into her head. "Uzaya-chan, where is this store of yours? It is beginning to seem suspicious that we have been walking this whole time." She was definitely about to jump to another one of her wild conclusions. "Maybe your real aim is to-"

"Yomi-chan, what would you say if I asked you if you were really Hiro-chan's sister?" The question was abrupt – seemingly out of nowhere. The troll – as she had deemed him – stopped suddenly. His hands were sheathed in his pockets, shoulders slumped. And there was a particularly mischievous grin on his face as he tilted his head at her. "Hmm?" He was prompting her to answer.

"Are you writing some kind of novel?" she asked eagerly, seeming excited rather than put off by his inquisition. "Ah! Hiro-chan and I could be star-crossed lovers and-"

"That would be considered incest," he reminded her with an impatient sigh, eyes narrowed. Even Izaya, apparently, could become annoyed by Yomi's unwavering denial. She cracked a smile every time he spoke. But to Izaya, it looked more like a mask. "Ah, here's an idea Yomi-chan. Have you heard the saying, 'A tit for a tat'?"

"Is that like tic tac toe?"

Honestly speaking, he should have known better to ask in the first place. But instead of explaining, because it would be too lengthy, Izaya suddenly whipped his hand out of his pocket. In the same blink of an eye that he managed to place the blade of his knife against her neck, he felt something bump against his chest. A slight glance down told him that it was the barrel of the gun that she had been hiding in that jacket of hers. Always on guard. He smirked. "If I cut your neck.."

"I will shoot you straight through your heart." She smiled as she said it.

"And that," he told her, as he lowered the knife away and stuffed it back into the depths of his pocket, "Is a tit for a tat."

"No," Yomi corrected quizzically, "That's called homicide. Sometimes I don't know if you have any common sense, Uzaya-chan."

It was definitely pointless. But, wearing his ever-unsettling smile, Izaya turned to continue walking. As expected, Yomi followed after him, struggling to keep up with his brisk pace. It turned into a sort of game, as he moved faster until she had to start jogging, then slowed as soon as she caught up so the two matched at a sluggish gait. Then finally he said, "A question for a question."

"You're just trying to leech more information from me, Uzaya-chan," said Yomi knowingly. "Since the show is coming to a close soon, I guess that is okay. As long as you ask questions that I want to answer."

"Ah-ah. You owe me a favor. Remember the men who knew Hiro-chan?"

Albeit vaguely, she did recall something along those lines... A frown befell her face as they turned the corner, still ambling down the sidewalk leisurely. "I guess that information could still be helpful. But I already have a bishop moving in to wipe out the other side's defenses." She seemed to sway between curiosity and an unwillingness to divulge more information. At last, because Yomi was the type of person whose curiosity was never satiated – and she had an endless appetite for simply "knowing" things – she relented. "Okay, I'll answer another question."

"How did Kaiya-chan die?" The gleam in his eyes, a probing curiosity that left an unpleasant taste in Yomi's mouth as she regarded him with some measure of suspicion, left the blue-eyed woman with the impression that he knew before asking. It always seemed that Izaya's questions had some hidden meaning beyond the basic preface he supplied.

Rather than answering instantly, she seemed to take a moment to ponder over the answer. "How she died," Yomi echoed thoughtfully. "The way that twins are connected, they cannot exist without the other. I think it's like that. So if one dies, the other can't be left alive, can they? So she had to die because she couldn't live without Hiro and Hiro couldn't die without her."

To anyone else it may have been a misleading answer that seemed drenched more in philosophy than reality. Nonetheless, Izaya seemed to understand the meaning beneath Yomi's words. "You are making it more complicated than it needs to be. Why not just say honestly that a part of you died when he did, hm, Kaiya-chan?"

Being called by that name seemed to elicit a frown on her face. Yomi suddenly stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Passersby maneuvered around her and Izaya paused just up ahead to peer over his shoulder. He was grinning, perhaps pleased that his words seemed to have struck a nerve. "It's not right to call me by that name."

"Isn't it the name your parents gave you?"

"I don't respond to that name. Yomi is the name that Hiro-chan gave me."

"So it's not true that Kaiya-chan went abroad after all. But why do you suppose, Yomi-chan, that there is no trace of you being here in Japan within the last six months?" Regardless of the appearance of genuine curiosity on his face, it always seemed that Izaya knew the answer to his questions before he ventured them.

Having tired of his incessant questions, Yomi resumed her pace and brushed past him. "You are finally asking something that I really don't know the answer to, Uzaya-chan. If you want to know, you'll have to find out for yourself. I'm not really curious about that. Something like that seems really trivial."

Izaya easily caught up to Yomi, maintaining a long, smooth stride as he ambled beside her. His chin lifted as he gazed up toward the sky. "According to your brother's friends," and he made it a point to emphasize the relationship he had discovered between Yomi and Hiro, "Hiro-chan seemed really anxious a few days before he was killed. He suddenly cut off contact with them, saying it was dangerous. Curious, don't you think?"

"He knew they were after him, that doesn't change anything, Uzaya-chan. It is supremely unhelpful."

"You don't want to know why?" He was trying to goad her again.

But Yomi kept a poker face. "Not really. It wouldn't matter to me either way. The people who killed Hiro-chan are going to die and that's all I care about. So unless they gave you any helpful information, you really wasted my time answering those questions for you, Uzaya-chan."

"Scary, scary!" he responded in a chirping voice, putting some distance between the two of them. "You sound so angry, Yomi-chan. Did I get under your skin with my questions?"

"Well, your questions are kind of annoying... But it's okay, since you are letting me stay with you."

Izaya eyed her with great intrigue. It seemed as though, with the answers she had provided, Yomi had still not managed to satiate his growing curiosity – his unquenchable thirst for knowing everything in regards to the happenings of Ikebukuro. His lips twitched at the thought of disclosing more, and it certainly seemed to Yomi that he knew more than he was letting on. Alas, the informant kept silent in regards to any knowledge he did or did not have as to the identity of Hiro's killers.

"I have another appointment," he said suddenly in that smooth voice of his. "I'll send you the bill for my coat later, Yomi-chan. Just don't forget it was a custom order and you'll need to provide a tip~" With a backward wave, he was off, diverging from the path they had been set upon.

Left behind, eyes narrowed as she watched him leave, Yomi muttered to herself, "He is like an annoying flea, after all." And rather than splitting up there, something crossed her mind – something that had nothing to do with Izaya's odd swagger or incessant humming (that strangely reminded Yomi of herself). So without a moment's hesitation, she set off after him.

Although she wanted to be inconspicuous, to trail after him without him knowing, Yomi was not entirely aware of the meaning of subtlety. In fact, more than anything, she was drawing gasps from the crowd of people who saw her tip-toeing and pressing her body up against buildings as she followed (not-so-stealthily) after Izaya. It seemed like a scene straight out of Mission Impossible, only more juvenile, amateur, and generally ineffective.

Yet, for however terrible she was at hiding herself, Izaya did not peer over his shoulder to look back at her. Nor did he speak a word. There was no action from him to signify he knew. For all intents and purposes, it seemed as though he was entirely unaware. But even Yomi was intelligent enough to guess it was all an act on his part.

Nonetheless, she tailed him all the way to Ikebukuro. Through the bustling subway and street corners, until he finally arrived in front of Raira – a school whose uniforms Yomi recognized. Immediately she deduced he was either meeting the creepy glasses chick (Anri), the bumbling buffoon playboy (Masaomi), or the quiet suspicious guy (Mikado). Hiding behind a narrow street pole, where her flashy clothing stuck out on both sides, Yomi tapped her chin in thought. Whatever she seemed to be mulling over was probably as ridiculous as her outfit. Regardless, there was the sound of a dialing phone in the background. She peered around the corner of the steel pole, eyeing Izaya who seemed to be tapping out a message on the keys of his cell.

When he finished, he seemed to gaze up at the school. There was that wry smirk on his face, which he always seemed to wear, but it was unusually more sinister than before. At least Yomi thought it was. And while he was waiting, she too was forced to loiter. Time seemed to tick away but since Yomi was not one to carry around any sort of device that could tell time, she was forced to peer up into the blinding sun, which, despite the clouds, had risen almost to its highest point in the sky.

And then she heard Izaya speak. "Ah, I thought you would make me wait even longer. But whats the hurry? All the rush, rush – something must be going on, hm?" His eyes closed as his smile widened. As innocent as he tried to make himself appear, he was a creeper, as far as Yomi was concerned. His actions just seemed more suspicious than before.

"Y-Yeah. Sorry to keep you waiting, Izaya-san." Out of breath and flustered, Mikado came to a skidding halt after sprinting out of the gates of Raira. His face was flushed as he hunched over to regain his composure. "When I thought of the people who might have some information about Hiro-san, you were the first person I could think of..."

"Oh ya? Have I become your last resort?"

The blue-eyed boy slowly shook his head. "N-No, that's not... Well, it's because Yomi-san suddenly left her apartment and said she gave up."

Izaya cocked his head back, brows lifted questioningly. "Hm? What's this? Are you concerned about her?" It almost seemed to elicit a chuckle from the depths of his throat to see Mikado worried over a person who had so obviously used him. But before Mikado could answer, Izaya uncharacteristically offered up something for Mikado. "Apparently there are some questions that should never be asked, and some answers that are better to not be given. After all, once you hear something, you can't unhear it, can you?"

Not quite following along, Mikado nevertheless gave a nod of agreement. "That's seems to be true."

"Aha! So if the yakuza have a secret they don't want anyone to know, then...?"

Since Izaya was leading him directly to the answer, it made it easy for Mikado to reach the conclusion. "They would kill you?"

"But what if you were in the organization? Organizations have their codes, members cannot kill other members. So what do you do to force a lowly dog with a loud bark from spilling everything?"

"Threaten?" As a good-natured person himself, it was difficult for Mikado to entirely fathom the underhanded tricks that gangs employed to keep silence among their members. So while it was not as though his guess had no basis, it was still wrong.

"Ah-ah. You dig your claws into whatever is close to them. No dog likes its bone to be taken, right?"

Still hiding behind the pole, Yomi blanched as she heard the words. For as much common sense she lacked, she still understood what it was that Izaya was telling Mikado. Yet, whatever thoughts were going on in her head were hidden by the mask she wore.

Similarly, the blue-eyed schoolboy seemed to come to a realization at Izaya's words. "Do you mean... Someone is coming after Yomi-san? Because Hiro-san asked too many questions and found out some information that he was not supposed to?"

"Oh, oh, look at the time!" Izaya exaggeratedly glanced down at the wrist watch that he did not have. Then he clapped his hands together. "Lunch period will be over soon." It was his inadvertent way of saying that he had no intentions of revealing any more information. As always, he was being stingy, revealing only enough to elicit some interest before pursing his lips and refusing to divulge anymore. He was a weasel by all considerations – or at least by Yomi's standards.

"R-right..." As though unaware of Izaya's usual scheming and conniving ways, Mikado offered him a nervous smile. "Well, thanks for your time." He gave a brief bow before turning and heading back into the school's courtyard.

As soon as the dark-haired boy had taken his leave, Izaya turned to go back the way he came. Yomi popped out from her hiding spot and fell into sync beside him, marching much like a stiff-legged soldier. Whether she was trying purposefully or not to be comical, or it was simply her generally odd nature, was unclear.

"You should really work on your stealth skills," Izaya chided her playfully.

She turned her head toward him and frowned, eyes half-lidded. "You are starting to know too much. Have you been snooping, Uzaya-chan?" As she spoke, her voice had lost its usual chipper tone. Yomi glared at her companion meaningfully, full of malice and resentment.

"How scary!" he said with a mock gasp, soon replaced by a wry smirk. "This side of you is much more interesting. Why don't you stop pretending to be sweet? Or do you think that you fool everyone with that facade?"

For a moment she studied his face as though debating his words. Then Yomi smiled promptly. "Ah, Uzaya-chan, you never fail to annoy me! What was all that talk about a dog, anyways? You don't seem the animal loving type."

"Oh? Well it does seem like I've recently attracted a stray cat."

There was an obvious insinuation there that, at first, he might not have expected Yomi to catch on to. She raised her eyebrows with a smirk. "They say you should be careful about feeding strays, you know. If you keep feeding it then it will keep coming back. But you know, cats aren't loyal like dogs..." Her gaze shifted. "... They tend to betray you at the most inopportune times."

Author's Note: I fail hard at updating quickly. I felt so unmotivated to write a 6,000 word long chapter like I used to. So, yes, this one is significantly shorter and future chapters will probably be of similar length. I figure better to post faster and shorter than to post every six months with something lengthy. Next one should be much quicker and less half-arsed. :\ My apologies for taking so long and thank you so much for the wonderful reviews, they're what keep me going.