The walk down the length of the building is a quiet one, much unlike what Tatsuya was expecting. He keeps himself close to the brick and watches the resting camera perching over the door into the trash services that seems to gaze too far away from the foot of the door it is guarding. The helmet sits snug on his head when he turns his restricted gaze back down the alley road to ensure his coast is clear, and then, Tatsuya dips inside the apartments.
The interior of the garbage disposal is, surprisingly, a little less industrial than the one in his own apartment complex - the floor is not plain concrete, but covered in linoleum tiles, streaked with wet trash brought down however long ago at the foot of large, metal dumpsters beneath steel plated chutes that go up however many floors there must be in this building. Avoiding the repulsive stains, Tatsuya navigates to the door that leads into the depths of the building, carefully peering out the heavy metal door and down the halls.
There is a janitor with his back to Tatsuya. Tatsuya pales, but he's the furthest from the elevators, so he quietly steps into the hall - floors of polished marble, much different from the tile inside the garbage room - and takes a quick, steady stride to the elevators, mercifully close to the doors.
Waiting for the flight up, Tatsuya keeps his head as straight as he can while he steals glances to his left and right. He isn't sure of the time of day, but a part of him feels as if it creeps close to the end of the average work hour - getting upstairs should be far less of a hazardous risk without the city's elite wandering into their apartments from long days at work. The janitor has yet to turn around, though he clearly seems occupied with wringing the warm, sudsy water from his mop's head to clean the floors.
The elevator arrives. Tatsuya takes a deep breath, and steps inside.
The flight up nineteen floors is quiet until his wireless ear piece rings inside his helmet. He taps to receive. "Suou speaking."
"You up there yet?" Naoya sounds as engaged as he would be if he were awaiting a taxi. Tatsuya silently exhales, and then glances at the button navigation of the elevator. Twenty-two. It crawls to a gentle stop, lurching for a brief moment to settle.
"Getting off now," Tatsuya replies, stepping out. He circles to the stairwell, unoccupied when so high up - he'd hate to have to rush down so many flights in the face of an emergency. "How's Inaba?"
"Preparing the rifle. Looks excited enough."
"It's pretty exciting!" Masao's cheerful voice is distant, but as enthusiastic as Tatsuya does dread. "We'll cover you when you get up on the roof!"
"How's the building over there?" Tatsuya asks, walking up the stairwell - it's a rather large room, the concrete painted an ugly yellow and lit with stale, white fluorescent lights. "Are you inside or on the roof?"
"A few flights up where you should be, actually. I can see Hazama's balcony just glancing out." Naoya walks to the window, and he can imagine Naoya's face peeking out from behind the blinds. "The place is empty. I think it's a vacant apartment."
"You think?"
"Reiji told us it was, but you can never be sure."
"Spare me anymore details," Tatsuya mumbles, and then pushes open the service door to the roof. A gust of wind flushes into the hallway, rustling the parts of Tatsuya's sleeves not bound down from the coat's shape. It steadies once he steps out, allowing the heavy steel to close. He can hear Naoya ask in his ear - "Is that you? Walk to the south corner."
Tatsuya glances around, and follows Naoya's direction, towards the corner of the building that faces a slightly taller building. "There you are," Naoya says, and Tatsuya silently lifts a hand to passively wave at his friend. "Masao, look - Tats is over there, see?"
Masao's laugh is loud even from the distant receiver, and Tatsuya frowns under his helmet. He quietly creeps towards the ledge of the building, and when he glances down he feels his stomach sway - the building looms directly over the street, cars that pass look little more than toys across the ground. The balcony of Ideo Hazama's apartment is glass framed in black pipes, an ornate design blown into the clean glass. A table nestles in the shade of a wall, with a full beverage sheltered from the sun. Ideo seems absent, but Tatsuya doesn't need to be told to know that he'll be back outside any moment.
He holds his tongue when Naoya starts to speak again, directing Masao to take position. "We spotted him going back inside earlier - you have your hook ready, Tats? Or are you going to jump?"
Masao says something, presumably about Tatsuya's silence - for Naoya responds to him with an I figured scoffed under his breath. Tatsuya looks down at the small case in his hand, a thick, heavy cord within tied to the grappling hook. He kneels down to the roof and opens the plastic casing, and holds the steel in his hand, experimentally brushing the curve of the hooked claw with a gloved hand. He's never tied one of these before. Does he latch it on to the edge of the roof? He wonders how it'll hold his weight when climbing back up. Jumping to the balcony would be manageable - barely, but he could close his eyes and pray he doesn't miss.
He won't miss.
"He's coming, Tats. Get ready."
He better not miss.
Tatsuya shuffles a little farther back, enough to still watch the curly hair of Ideo Hazama wander out from his balcony. A thin plume of smoke follows up from in front of him, and the gentle whisper of blowing smoke drifts in the wind high above the city. Ideo leans forward on the balcony, staring down at the cars passing through the street. He seems a man at peace - Tatsuya has never met the man, but he feels a strange force swell inside his chest at knowing this man would die.
Maybe it's because of what he's sworn himself to do. Maybe it's because he knows his empathy stunts itself, except when it decides to not, and then he finds himself falling in debt for Naoya's choices. Tatsuya inhales when Ideo does, and he tries to think of the sting of his own cigarettes to distract himself from the firing shot. Across the street, Masao pulls the trigger of a hunting rifle hiding behind parted blinds in an empty apartment.
Glass shatters.
Tatsuya opens his eyes abruptly.
Ideo has turned around, unharmed, to stare back into his apartment. Shock holds itself on his expression, and he drops his cigarette to the street below. He throws his gaze across the street where the bullet came from, and Naoya begins to scream in Tatsuya's ear.
"You missed?!"
"I-I didn't mean to! My hands were shaking!"
"Why didn't you just let me do it then?!"
"I wanted to- I don't know, come on! I just-"
Ideo begins to run back inside through the shattered glass of his apartment door when Tatsuya immediately jumps down, crashing down on top of him. He swears the balcony trembles, and the heart pounding in his ears tries to distract him from that possibility
No scream comes from Ideo Hazama - he stares up at Tatsuya who covers his mouth with a hard hand, and slams a fist into the side of his helmet with a vicious glare in his eye. The grappling hook in Tatsuya's hand scrapes against the concrete of the balcony as he grips it, forcing himself up and sitting on Ideo's stomach to hold him down. His hand remains over his mouth as he fixes his grip on the hook, and only removes it in quick succession to smash the hook across Ideo's temple. Blood splatters from the curve of the hook scraping against his skin, and all Ideo can scream is a harsh gasp as his head turns to the side.
Tatsuya does it again, the opposite direction, now scraping his jaw and rattling the man's vision some more. Blood follows Tatsuya's swings, and a thin line of mist stains the glass, and he is wholly aware of what he is doing when he heaves another strike down on to Ideo's skull, and again, and again, and once more, until the bruises begin to flourish and there's enough blood pooling around the once-man's head to match Tatsuya's biking suit.
The hook clatters against the concrete. Naoya and Masao's argument has gone dead silent in Tatsuya's ear, who exhales deeply and closes his eyes.
"Is- is he dead?"
"Yeah," Tatsuya finally says, shaking his gloved hand that held the hook to flick any remaining blood off of it. "He's dead."
"Christ, I— Tats, I'm sorry, I didn't want you to—"
Masao shouts something, and Naoya interrupts himself to shout into the receiver - "A neighbour is coming! Get his body inside!"
Without hesitation, Tatsuya lifts himself off of Ideo's body and rolls him over, grabbing him from under his arms and dragging him through the shattered glass of the door frame. When his feet cross over the door's threshold, Tatsuya can hear a woman's voice - "Mister Hazama? Was that you?"
Tatsuya takes pause, so he doesn't step on any broken glass on the carpet inside. He glances around, and notes he's in an office of sorts - a laptop is open on a desk facing the interior, and he smirks from behind his helmet. It's a moment of silence before Naoya is back in his ear - "Alright, she's gone. What do you see?"
"The laptop," Tatsuya says, lowering Ideo's body on to his carpet. Blood begins to drain from his beaten skull, staining his white suit. "I'll unplug it now."
"Look around a little, if you want. Masao and I are packing up and heading to the parking garage - go to the basement when you leave."
"Alright. Be quick."
"I should be saying that to you," Naoya says, and hangs up.
Tatsuya makes quick work to move over to the laptop, noting the screen-saver has yet to crawl over the window, and he wonders if the man was checking something when he had gone inside earlier. Tatsuya notes the tabs open - email services, a video website - and then closes the screen of the laptop, meeting once more with the corpse once known as Ideo Hazama. Tatsuya's jaw tenses when he looks at what he did from a longer distance, and averts the corpse as if its head would turn and he'd be stared through by bruised eyes.
The bag of the laptop is in a deep cabinet of the desk, and when Tatsuya opens it, he notes several letters opened and resealed tucked alongside it - the dates interest him enough to pack them into the pockets of the bag when he brings them up to pack the computer in. Nothing else particularly interests him on the desk, no matter how he searches it. The bag itself holds several flash drives and a notebook, though Tatsuya figures they may be important.
If Reiji had told him what Hazama was harbouring, maybe the search could be more thorough. Tatsuya looks up from the desk to the office door, closed - bag in hand, he crosses the floor, glass crunching beneath his boots, and he checks for the lock. Quietly, he locks it, and then exits the shattered glass door, not looking back to the dead businessman.
Instead, he looks up the length of the building - he hadn't secured the hook before he jumped down on to the man out of murderous instinct. He closes his eyes to sigh, and then turns around to grab the bloodied grappling hook, and throws it up the building. The climb is only a few feet taller than Tatsuya is himself - it's the notion of climbing up a building at all that puts tension in his throat. The laptop bag doesn't make that any easier.
Foot on the brick, he heaves himself up, feeling the hook hold the edge of the building steady - but also the wind rolling against his back, and Tatsuya tries not to think about the height he is from the city below. He is only barely thankful to crawl over the edge and roll against the stone roofing, but doesn't linger on his side. He makes quick work to pack up the hook into the plastic case, and then hurries to the roof door, rounding the stairs and hurrying down the flights to a lower floor, to the elevator, and into the quiet, mirrored shelter.
Tatsuya takes a step back to lean on the railing of the elevator as it lurches to carry him down. He closes his eyes for five flights, then opens them, looking around at the myriads of himself, staring back at him. Black helmeted, red clothed - there's blood on his knees, but it blends in just enough that you'd have to stare at it. Tatsuya pushes the body out of his mind, but it swings back in like a hanging corpse instead, only to collapse on the floor of his thoughts. He can only push it far out enough when the basement is reached, and he steps out of the elevator, hurried.
He rounds to the left and almost runs into a man, possibly the same age as him, possibly not. He stares at Tatsuya curiously, and opens his mouth to speak. Tatsuya feels panic swell inside of him, and he lifts his hand almost immediately to crack the plastic case against the man's head, sending him tumbling to the ground. He heaves a pained grunt, clutching the side of his head, which is enough to keep the horror in his stomach at bay when Tatsuya runs past him and into the parking garage below the building. Blood doesn't stain the case, but he could never be sure now.
Running into a parking lot is a terrible idea. Thankfully, Naoya has pulled his car out of the spot, and Tatsuya runs to him, diving into the backseat, held open by Masao.
"Hop in!" Masao calls out, and Tatsuya rushes to remove his helmet once the door is slammed shut, Naoya hurriedly reversing and driving the car out of the garage.
"Get it off," Tatsuya says, throwing the helmet to the floor of the car and grabbing at his coat buttons.
"Get - your coat off? What's wrong?" Masao asks, pulling the laptop bag and hook case into his lap, watching Tatsuya with caution.
"There was a man in the hallway - I had to… down him," Tatsuya says, regret decorating his words like a terrible curse. "He's alive, but - I need to look normal, anyway."
"Yeah, yeah - take that off, man, keep it back here," Masao says, waiting for Tatsuya to shed the red coat to lean the cases into the front seat, allowing Naoya to usher them down below the passenger seat, out of sight. Tatsuya heaves a heavy, tired sigh when he slouches into his seat, Masao reaching over to draw the seatbelt across his chest. Tatsuya looks at him weakly, and then slouches against the car door.
"You ok?" Masao asks, a hand now on Tatsuya's shoulder. "That looked super brutal, man… I'm sorry, I've never fired a gun like that before-"
"I know, it's - I understand," Tatsuya sighs, fingers running through his brown hair and gripping a handful.
"It was real badass, you jumped down on him, like an assassin type-"
"Masao," Naoya says simply, a warning. Masao frowns, and Tatsuya reaches down into his jacket, rustling through his pockets to find his cigarettes and lighter. He's quick to light himself one, rolling the back window down only enough to let a small plume of smoke to float out, taking a deep drag. Masao slouches in his seat, straining his seatbelt and folding his arms.
"Man," Masao says, "What do you think will happen? You think we'll be clear?"
"Of course," Naoya says, eyes on the road to navigate the sunset-coloured streets of the city. "We'll be fine. Tatsuya's just unhappy he had to do that, is all."
"Wouldn't of happened if I shot better," Masao sighs, looking out the opposite window to follow the streets and pedestrians, people wandering their day, none the wiser the corpse that hangs above them all. He makes a face at the cigarette smoke beginning to swarm the back seat, and rolls his window down a little more than Tatsuya has his to get a flush of cool air.
Tatsuya closes his eyes. He exhales, a false form of peace cast over him now that the cigarette settles in his system. He stares at the ceiling of Naoya's car, holding the cigarette between his fingers while it burns close to his mouth. He tries to scrub the dead man from his memory, and he thinks if he had looked him in the eye, it'd burn him even harder.
He tries to not think about how Katsuya would look at him.
When they reach the Liberty Bridge, an ambulance drives past them, sirens on.