**Why hello there, my dear friends, I'm deeply sorry for not posting this chapter last night! . My internet is messed up right now (Noooo!) and therefore I am currently at my friend's house, loading this chapter onto Fanfiction. *cries*. However, I hope you didn't miss me too much. ^^" Ugh... food... um, yeah, random mood.

**SPOILER ALERT** (sorry, I forgot to put this at first when I posted it. .

CHAPTER 14

He stares at me, confused, and suddenly I feel like a complete idiot. Of course he has no idea what I was talking about! All I was doing was mumbling and stuttering anyway. It's not like I came up with anything coherent until the very last sentence that jumped out of my mouth. I really need to work on my impulsiveness. Why did I just do that?

"Um... go back where?"

I swear I just felt one of those anime gloom clouds form over my head, like I have my own private little torture session, in which I'm being attacked by all these inner emotions, one of which is embarrassment, another anger at myself for being so stupid and impulsive.

"Sorry," I mutter as I turn away from him and start walking back to Izaya's apartment. "I was just muttering to myself."

He seems to realize what I was suggesting at that very moment, and I hear him following me as I try to get away. What am I thinking? I can't just invite myself over to someone else's house without permission of any kind. I'm so pathetic, and not only that, but the suggestion in itself is rude! It's unbelievably rude!

"Hey, wait," he says as he catches up to me, grabbing my arm as I walk away from him. I don't turn to face him, for fear of showing him my presumably ultra-red, embarrassed face. I really do feel like an idiot. I just want to go... where? Home? I don't have a home, I remember now, and I relax my tense muscles slightly with that thought, letting his hand tighten around my arm.

"Here, come on," he says, dragging me back in the direction in which he was headed.

"Ah!" I cry in alarm, "Kida! What are you-?"

"It was your idea, wasn't it?" he asks as he continues pulling me along. He doesn't seem very happy about this, though, but I'm not sure why. Is it because I was the one who invited myself over in the first place? No, please say it isn't because of that. That would be worse than anything I'm feeling right now. "Besides, you don't want to go back there, and I don't want you to go back to that freak. It's not like he'll miss you. He's probably just playing games with you, right? He treats you like a toy."

"Yeah," I mutter, following him willingly now. We're walking slowly, but in the same direction. It feels weird going over to someone else's house like this. I haven't done this in so long, but I guess it's nostalgic in a way, only when I went over to friends' houses two to three years ago, it was never because they wanted to convince me that the person I'm living with is no good. Besides, I already know that. "He does..."

Now I'm not even going to a friend's house, but an acquaintance's house.

We stop in front of a short blue house with one storey. Kida steps in and takes his shoes off at the door, and I do the same. He turns to me a second later and, though he looks a little worn out and awkward, he's probably looking a lot better than I am right now.

"My parents love guests," he warns me, "so don't be surprised if they start doing something weird just because you're here. It's the same with all my friends."

Again, that word pops out at me, and I feel a darkness weigh heavy on my heart, and suddenly I'm slouching again. So when this guy says 'friends' what does he mean? Does he mean acquaintance? Or does he mean just any guest that comes over to his house?

"Masaomi?" I hear his mother's voice call out to him, and I'm once again finding it odd to hear him called by his given name, no matter who it is that's talking to him. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," he calls back as he leads me into the living room, where the voice came from. I follow obediently, but because of the awkwardness of the situation, I deliberately stop quick enough so that I'm hidden partially behind the wall. I don't want them to see me right away.

His mother is sitting on the couch with his father, and both were watching TV, but are now looking in our direction, only amplifying my desire to hide.

"Masaomi!" his father says in a happy tone that depicts absolute joy at seeing his son home from school. "You're late! Did you stop to see Saki?"

"Yeah," he says, "I have a friend with me too, and I was wondering if she could stay over for the night." Suddenly his parents' eyes go wide, and I feel my face flush with embarrassment. Why did he have to phrase it like that? "Just one night," he adds, and my face goes even redder. He's making it sound worse!

" 'She'?" his mother replies, her eyebrows raised at him. "You want a girl to stay over for the night? Not in your room, I hope."

"No!" he cries in horror. "You're disgusting, that's not what I meant!"

It sure sounded like it, I think privately to myself as I start feeling sick all of a sudden.

"It sure sounded like it," his father says, as if reading my thoughts exactly. "Masaomi, you need to be more specific when you say words like 'stay over' and 'she' and 'friend'. There are many, many ways those can be taken, and lots of them are the wrong way."

"Yeah, yeah," Kida sighs, glancing back at me now. He seems to find this entertaining somehow, but I'm not really sure how. Don't tell me his sense of humour is anything like Izaya's... that would be – though ironic – quite disturbing.

"So where is this friend of yours?" his mother asks, and Kida looks at me again. I'm standing right beside him, but am currently hidden behind the wall, watching the three of them converse and argue over stupid little things from behind my shield. "Can we see her?"

Reluctantly, I step out from behind my hiding place, revealing myself to them. It takes me a moment to take in everything about the couple, though, because when I look at them, I'm suddenly attacked by a vicious wave of nostalgia. His mother's hair is dark brown, and her eyes light, and his father's hair is black, along with his eyes. To be honest, it's weird for me to see someone's parents, because I can barely even remember my parents' faces. I have to admit that when I see them, I feel both weighed down and lifted up simultaneously as I remember their tones when they first heard him walk in the door. They were happy to hear that he was home.

"Ishikawa Shiori," I introduce myself with a polite bow. "It's nice to meet you both."

"Oh, my!" his mother exclaims happily. "Masaomi, she's so cute!" I feel my cheeks turn red as she turns to me and adds, "How old are you, dear?"

"Um... eighteen," I manage to get out as I stand up again, trying my best to hide my embarrassment. "I'll be nineteen in two weeks."

"Really?" his father says with a boisterous laugh. He's joking when he speaks next, but I nonetheless I feel my heart jump down into my stomach as all the blood in my body rushes to my face. "Well, you're too old for our Masaomi then, aren't you?"

"Dad!" Kida cries in embarrassment.

"W-What?" I demand loudly, my hands suddenly going in front of my chest, as if in a defensive position. "N-No-no-no-no-no! I'm really not interested in him like that!"

"Oh, we know," his mother says with a laugh, and I feel a huge sigh of relief escape me. Once that's over with, his parents continue to laugh, but I feel like I can barely stand up because of the awkward moment that I just suffered. I realize now that I haven't been in an actual social situation, interacting with normal people for a long time – ever since my friends deserted me after my parents died, actually. It's been a long time, so I guess I have a good excuse about why I'm so awkward around these people.

"So," his father says immediately after, as if the moment that was so awkward for me has absolutely no effect on anyone else. Even Kida, who stands beside me looking exhausted and agitated by his parents, doesn't seem as embarrassed as I am right now. Suddenly, his father claps his hands together enthusiastically, grinning widely. "Ishikawa-san, why don't you help Masaomi in the kitchen? He can't really cook, so he'll need someone to look over him – wait. Can you cook?"

"Y-Yes," I mutter as I put my bag down. I almost feel compelled to inform them that I've lived alone for the last two years because of what happened to my parents, but I realize before I speak that something like that could easily ruin the fun atmosphere that this couple are creating for me as they push me into the kitchen with Kida-kun.

"Great, thanks Dad," Kida grumbles as he puts his hands up behind his head and heads over to the kitchen. "The only reason I can't cook is because you never let me unless I have friends over – and that's usually just to embarrass me."

I smile quietly at that as he turns around to face me, his expression apologetic, but at the same time humorous. Good. His sense of humour is completely different from Izaya, I see now, and my smile suddenly becomes genuine. Like I said before, the last thing we need in this world is more than one of that guy. I can only imagine the havoc that he would wreak around the world if he had even one clone.

Kida leads me to the stove, and just looks at me for a few seconds, during which time I'm slowly getting more and more weirded out by the look he's giving me. It's thoughtful, but at the same time casual, like he's thinking about something trivial. I haven't seen that look in the last two years either. Weird. This house seems to be bringing back a lot of memories...

"What do you want?" he asks, and I find myself getting indignant at that.

"What do I want?" I demand, annoyed. "You're the one staring at me."

He laughs at me, and looks away from me, still grinning. "That's not what I mean," he chuckles as he steps toward the cupboards and opens them, and takes out some rice and holds it up for me to see it, and approve it.

"That looks good," I say, looking around. This is definitely weird. I'm making supper with Kida at Kida's house. Even in my terms this is weird. "I guess we need something else with it, too, though, right?" I go to the fridge and pull out some vegetables, followed by meat from the freezer. "How does stir fry sound?"

"Yeah," he says, "That's fine." Suddenly, he laughs as he's filling a pot with water, and I'm getting the cutting board out. I look over at him, confused. He doesn't even have to see my face to know what I'm thinking, as his back is facing me while he's at the sink. "I remember when I brought Mikado here right after he moved to Ikebukuro. He was forced to make supper with me too, while my parents lounged on the couch. When we went out there to tell them it was ready, they were making out."

"Ugh," I say, disgusted. "Why are you laughing? If I ever caught my parents making out on the couch while I had a friend over, I'd be doing back flips, I'd be so freaked out."

Why is he telling me this? Really, that is disgusting, and it's not really something a guest should know, right?

"Yeah, I think I normally would too," he chuckles quietly as he comes over and puts the newly filled pot on the stove, and turns the burner to high. Then he turns to me, still smiling, and leans against the counter while I continue to chop up the vegetables. "But it's Mikado we're talking about here. I've been friends with him since we met in kindergarten, and it's hard to believe, but we're still good friends, even after everything that's happened, so I guess it didn't really bother me that much."

I feel my hands slow at this, and that same bitter feeling that I felt when I was around Mikajima suddenly wells up inside me again. It's not quite as bitter as it was before, but it's still bitter. What is this? It's disturbing, and it keeps showing up, whether I'm talking to Kida or Mikajima. The knife in my hand is cutting the vegetables softer now, as I am reminded once again that I don't have any close friends anymore, and all those that I had deserted me after what happened with my parents. If that's the case, though, then why is Kida standing here with me?

"Kida?" I address him quietly after a short pause between us. He looks at me with those eyes full of life, and I find myself envious of those eyes. They aren't naive – no, in fact they know more than I can even dream of knowing – but they're happy, whereas the most I can manage to fill my eyes with is tears. How can he look like that, after he was so depressed to go see Mikajima today? I don't understand.

I don't want to sound rude, but is there really any other way to phrase this? "Why are you telling me this?"

He pauses, but then that smile fades away and his eyes seem to die a little bit as he looks away from me, his face suddenly grim and dark. It's obvious to me now that I've hit a soft spot, and when he started this conversation, he was almost hoping to avoid the point. He was hoping that I wouldn't see it, but he was making himself pretty obvious, after all.

"About today..." he mutters, "I don't want Mikado to know about Saki. I don't want him to know anything about that monster you're staying with either. I don't want to get him involved, so if the subject is brought up in a conversation, could you avoid it?"

Suddenly, I'm the one laughing at him. I turn and point at him with the knife in my hand, and he backs away slightly.

"Do you even realize that what you just said makes no sense at all?" He just stares at me, looking surprised by this. "First of all, I never even talk to Ryuugamine, and since when have you ever seen him come up to me and start a serious conversation? Second, I know absolutely nothing about your past, so what would I tell him anyway? I might be able to tell him about this Mikajima girl, and what she told me about Izaya, but I know those are all lies anyway. Obviously she has no idea what he's like at all!" Once again, that bitterness consumes me and I slam the knife down on the vegetables this time, making some of them go flying. Kida seems surprised beside me, but I'm ignoring his expression.

"U-Um... Ishika-" he begins, but I cut him off halfway through. I'm not listening to him anymore.

"He's cruel, and unreasonable! How can she even think that he's a good person? He's a horrible person, leaving me in that huge place all alone. He never even comes to visit me there, and it's his own stupid apartment!"

"Um, Sempai..."

"He's such a jerk too! He never gives me the respect I deserve." I turn to Kida here, glaring viciously. "Did you know that today, on the roof of the school, he dug his fingers under my ribs? I could hardly breathe!"

"Sempai!" he cries suddenly, interrupting me as he puts his hand over my knife hand, stopping it mid-chop. I look at him, confused, and he looks back at me with eyes that I swear belong in the circus. Great, now he's laughing at me too? Isn't it bad enough to have Izaya doing that all day long? Of course, Kida's laughing is a lot less annoying, because his amusement involves a lot less pain for me.

"Look at what you're cutting," he tells me, and when I look down, I see that the knife is directly over my hand, which used to be holding a carrot, but is now completely empty and lying flat on the cutting board, as if just waiting for the knife to come down. I slowly move the knife away from my hand and set it down on the table beside me.

"You take over," I say, "I'm not in a great mood right now."

"I see that," he says as he takes my place at the counter. "You can go in the living room or something, and just relax there."

"No, that's OK," I mutter, suddenly embarrassed. I feel my face go red again, and I wonder momentarily how I can be so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I can almost cut off my own fingers? I suddenly hate Izaya for the millionth time since I've known him. "You still haven't told me anything that could possibly reach Ryuugamine's ears," I add, and at that he looks at me harshly. He doesn't want to talk about it, and if I know him, I know he can be almost as stubborn as me. "I want to know everything, Kida. What did Izaya to you that made you hate him so much?"

"It's not what he did to me," he answers after a few moments. "It's what he did to Saki... and what I didn't do." I recognize the tone in his voice as an emotion that I've felt a lot since my parents died, and I lower my eyes to the floor. It's guilt... but why?

"What happened?" I ask quietly, but he doesn't answer, so I push him. I know it's not the right thing to do, but I want answers. I want to know everything I can about Izaya, and if Kida wants me to stay away from him so badly, it's in his interest to tell me. It's not like I have a choice, though, I realize suddenly for yet another time. Why is it that I'm trying so hard to get answers when I don't even have a choice? Doesn't that make this whole thing seem completely futile?

Suddenly, I hear his voice next to me and I look up to hear him talking. "Izaya is an informant," he tells me, "He also loves to see other people suffer, so he can easily use his job to his advantage, to let him have fun all the time. He used his job like he used any other person with Saki and me. Like she said earlier, Saki was good friends with him, and she knew him well..." He pauses, then glances at me before he turns back to the vegetables. What was that? "At least, she thought she did. She still does.

"I was..." He pauses again, but doesn't look up at me this time. He seems like he doesn't want to say another word, but he knows that without this information I definitely will go back to Izaya. Or maybe he's thinking that even if I don't have a choice, this information will somehow give me a choice as to whether I can leave my captor or not. We both know I'm trapped, but to be honest, most of the time it doesn't feel like that.

Kida continues soon enough. "At the time I was with the Yellow Scarves. Actually, I led them. They called me general, and they followed me. I hate it now, but back then I was stupid. I ended up going to Izaya too, for information, and asking him to help me with things that I was stuck on, like how to beat the Blue Squares. Then, one day, Saki was taken by them. She had become a good friend of mine – more than that, actually, and I cared about her a lot more than I cared about anyone from the Yellow Scarves."

"Wait," I interrupt, "So Mikajima-san was your...?" I trail off, unsure of what word exactly to put in there. Girlfriend, maybe. Is that the word I'm looking for?

"Yeah." He looks like he's got the weight of the world on top of him again, with his head low and his shoulders hunched. His movements are slow as he puts the vegetables in the wok, and there's a melancholic air around him. "Izaya betrayed her. He let the Blue Squares get their hands on her – no, actually, he led them straight to her. I got a call later on from the Squares. They said they had Saki, and I had to come save her. I tried, but halfway there I got scared and stopped."

I just stare at him silently. So it was Izaya's fault that Mikajima-san is like that? It's his fault that she's stuck in a hospital bed. No, not his fault – it's his doing. From the sounds of it, he had a lot of fun doing what he did, and if he could go back, I doubt he would change a thing. Suddenly, I don't blame Kida for hating him, but somehow, a part of me also dreads the anger that I'm starting to feel toward him. That part of me doesn't want to hate him at all.

Suddenly, Kida's mother pops her head in the door and smiles at us. "Is it almost ready?" she asks enthusiastically. "I don't hear anything coming from the kitchen, so you must be done!"

I smile slightly at her, and she does the same back at me, and then looks at her son. "Masaomi?" she asks, sounding concerned all of a sudden, but he just smiles back at her and laughs, leaving me to wonder how exactly he is able to do that. At least she looks less concerned now as she leaves the kitchen.

Once the supper is done, we go out and announce this to his parents, at which point they join us at the table, where we've put everything out.

"Wow," his father marvels as he takes a seat. Then he looks back at me and grins. "Good job, Ishikawa-san! Masaomi has never been able to cook like this."

"Thanks," Kida mutters sarcastically as he takes his seat. "You know exactly what a guy likes to hear, don't you Dad?"

"Well of course he does!" his mother exclaims excitedly as she starts dishing food onto her plate, along with her husband. "He's your father, isn't he?" I laugh as she turns to her husband now and steals something off of his plate. He yells at her, but she just laughs and steals something else.

Kida gives me an apologetic look from the side, but I shake my head, not accepting it. Honestly, I like it here, but there's something heavy weighing down on me again, and somehow it feels like I'm betraying Izaya. I mean, I know he doesn't really care, seeing as he's never there, and he probably won't find out anyway, but still, I feel something nagging at me in the back of my mind.

I push it away, though, and just continue to talk and laugh with Kida's family as they endlessly interrogate me, and tease me about their son, at which point I tend to go extremely red and deny everything of what they're saying. Of course, this only spurs them on even more, until Kida saves me by changing the subject, and for a few minutes we get stuck on talking about exams and how desperately we hope that we magically won't have to take them this year.

It's such a normal, non-serious conversation that I almost forget that I'm not at home. So when his dad turns to me and asks me what my parents do for a living, I'm caught off guard. I realize that for a moment, this was my family to me. His parents are kind and generous, and they don't mind their son having a friend over at the very last minute, which is nice. My parents would have flipped if I brought someone of the opposite sex over to my house after not coming home immediately after school, but I wasn't exactly their best child. Yes, I was their only child, but I admit that they couldn't trust me. It was wise of them not to trust me.

I swallow hard, not wanting to ruin the good mood, but Kida seems to notice something is wrong. I see him open his mouth to cover for me, but I don't want him to. I don't want him to save me from this one, so I'll save myself.

"My dad's an engineer," I tell them, and Kida looks surprised beside me. "He works a lot with planes and stuff, so I don't see him a lot, but he likes his job. My mom is a nurse at the hospital." I'm telling the truth. I'm telling them what my parents did before they died, so I'm not lying – I'm just fantasizing. If they didn't get themselves involved with Yagiri Namie, they would still be doing those things. They would be waiting for me at home, and I wouldn't know a thing about Orihara Izaya.

I'm not sure if that would be a shame or a blessing.