Chapter 14 – Trick Play
There was something utterly loathsome about hospitals. It probably had to do with the smell, the general lack of color. Either way, Yomi had never had the patience to be an obedient subject that willingly stayed in her bed. And so the moment she opened her eyes to discover where she was at, her mind was immediately racing to decide how best to escape.
"Ah-ah," a familiar voice chided, "You shouldn't be so hasty. If you sit up that fast, you might give yourself a headache~"
As though that even mattered – her head was already experiencing a fierce throbbing that left her struggling just to sit up in the first place. Yomi's focus centered on the owner of the voice and with some surprise she mumbled, "Ah. Uzaya-chan, so you're here, huh?"
Those lips of his were curled up but there was nothing benevolent or kind about his smile. It was just another indication that he was already scheming something. Any other person would have been unsettled but Yomi just stared blankly back at him as he addressed her. "That was a really dangerous stunt you pulled. Lucky for you that Shizu-chan was so willing to burst into a burning building to save you, hm?"
"Lucky?" she echoed back. Her voice sounded strangely hollow. It was quite clear that she did not consider herself in any form fortunate that Shizuo had rescued her. Although a part of her felt some measure of gratitude, the rest of her was left filling empty. Yes, she was alive but for what purpose? What was there to live for? That was what she struggled with.
And as though he could read her mind, Izaya guessed this. "You wish he had never come, hm? Wish that you could have been left in there. Would that ease your guilt, Yomi-chan? Would you feel better about everything you have done to get this far if you had only died?"
She shot him back a glare.
"Hm? Angry that I'm right?" he challenged. When he received no answer, he continued. "But see, I am not so easily fooled as to think that you have a conscience about the people you hurt to get this far. I think there is something else here, Yomi-chan. Something that you haven't told anyone – that you don't want anyone to know about."
In a split second, the girl who had moments ago been lying complacently in her bed seemed to snap. She shot across the railing of her bed, her hands reaching for Izaya's throat as he sat motionlessly on the bed beside her. Having prepared for this reaction, however, he immediately dodged by slipping just out of her grasp while the IV drip that was hooked into Yomi's arm was suddenly ripped out. Yet while blood came trickling across the white blanket covering her, she did not cry out. Instead her brows were furrowed, her eyes half-lidded – glaring at the person who had managed to escape her. Her lips had pulled back to reveal her teeth, gritted together in frustration.
"I... will kill you," she warned him in a hiss, completely betraying the calm disposition she had just moments ago.
"Oh? Will you?" he responded in turn, clearly unimpressed. "See, I have no doubts that you would kill me if you could. But why kill me when there is someone else out there that I am certain you want to kill much more?"
This suggestion left her regarding him quizzically. "What are you talking about?"
"Hm? Hadn't you considered it before?" Seeing that his seat was safe once more now that she had leaned back in the bed, Izaya settled back down before explaining. "The whole reason that your precious Hiro-chan got into that accident was because someone leaked him some information he should not have had in the first place. Isn't that right? So, technically, aren't they the ones at fault? Aren't they the one you should be blaming?"
This seemed to completely shock Yomi. While she was usually so prepared for Izaya's mind games and maintained a steady facade, all of that had crumbled. She revealed her surprise immediately and did not even bother attempting to mask it. "That's right," she whispered back as the realization occurred to her. This whole time she had been so preoccupied chasing the people who had more directly affected her and Hiro without considering the source of the problem.
Beyond her own shock at this revelation, Yomi could not see that her entire reaction was going along completely according to Izaya's calculation. But of course he gave no hint to suggest that she was playing into his hand. Instead he gave the impression that she had come up with the idea herself and he had merely supported it.
"Since you're an informant, you should know something, right?" Yomi asked. "Such as where I should start looking for this person."
He stroked his chin thoughtfully, the ring on his finger creating a reflective glare that made that contemplative look of his only appear more sinister. "Hm, I think I could find something out. But what will you give me in return?"
Yomi clicked her tongue in annoyance. Of course – she should have expected as much. How foolish of her to play along without considering that he would only bring this up in the first place for his own benefit. "What do you want?" she asked impatiently.
Instead of answering, he just shrugged. "Who knows? You already owe me and you intended to die without repaying that debt. So this time you can figure out something. Until you can bring me something of interest, I'm not going to tell you anything. Good luck, Yomi-chan." Having finished his business, Izaya abruptly stood and started toward the door. Before leaving entirely, however, he paused. "Ah, that's right... Shizu-chan is in this hospital, too. It's too bad – if he had died in the fire, I wouldn't mind giving you whatever information you wanted free of charge."
That suggestion did not go unnoticed on Yomi's part. Clearly he was hinting that he wanted something "unfortunate" to happen to Shizuo in return for information. Yet the fact that it was not explicitly stated gave Yomi the hope that he would accept some other form of payment. The idea of something happening to Shizuo made her feel nauseous, although she was not entirely sure as to why that was.
Despite the pounding in her head and the blood still oozing out of her arm, Yomi tossed her blanket aside and eased herself off the bed. Her bare feet pressed against the floor and she found herself a little dizzy as she attempted to stand. No matter, she thought, because checking on Shizuo was more important than how steady she was as she walked.
Her body lurched forward and she quite literally stumbled the whole way to the door. A little worse off than she would have initially thought. No matter – she could navigate easily enough. Shizuo's room could not be far. With that thought in mind, she peeked from room to room in hopes of getting a glimpse of that unruly blonde hair.
"Hm, nope, not here," she muttered to herself as she peeked into a room where an elderly old man was visiting merrily with his family. Their conversation was interrupted by her arrival but her departure was quick enough to avoid their probing, incredulous stares.
It seemed as though she had peered into every room down the hallway before she finally arrived at his door. And when she had found him, he was not by himself but with a woman in a form-fitting black suit and yellow helmet.
"Hello," the woman greeted by flashing a bright-screened PDA in Yomi's direction.
There was obviously something off about the woman, though Yomi could not entirely put her finger on exactly what it was. Like a curious puppy, she tilted her head from side to side as she stared blankly at the black visor covering the other person's face from view. Yet within, Yomi could not even see a silhouette of a face.
"Go back to your room," Shizuo said gruffly.
Yomi's attention was immediately drawn to him and she grinned. "Aw, Shi-chan, no reason to get so angry at me. I just wanted to come see how you are. You know, I don't much care for hospitals so I have no intention of staying here."
He stared back at her before averting his eyes.
"Shizuo doesn't like hospitals, either," the strange woman informed.
"I don't think you're a nurse," Yomi stated suddenly as her gaze was drawn back to the woman. "Nope. You aren't wearing white. And nurses don't drive motorcycles, I think. So that must mean... you're part of a motorcycle gang!"
While Shizuo let out an audible sigh, the woman – who Yomi was sure really was part of a motorcycle gang – was hastily typing something out on the face of her PDA. "No," she quickly told Yomi. "My name is Celty Sturluson."
"Okay. I understand," Yomi responded with a grave nod. "You don't want people to know that you are affiliated with them. But you aren't doing a very good job of hiding it if you're cruising around on that motorcycle in black, you know."
"No, I –"
"Explaining is pointless," Shizuo pointed out. Obviously he had experienced these antics before first-hand. If Yomi had settled on Celty being a member of some motorcycle gang, no amount of telling her otherwise would be convincing enough.
"Alright," Celty conceded with some hesitancy.
Having that out of the way, Yomi directed her attention back toward Shizuo. "No permanent damage, right?"
"You both got out relatively unscathed."
"Your arm?" Shizuo prompted in dissent of Celty's assertion.
At the mention, Yomi peered down at her arm – remembering how she had used it to deflect that burning board. A bandage now covered the area. It had looked pretty gruesome when she had managed a glimpse at it before falling unconscious on the motorcycle. Although some medicine had probably been applied to it, she was certain that her skin was probably marred in blisters from the contact. Yomi was not a doctor, however, and so even if she removed the bandage in hopes of assessing the damage it would have proven pointless.
"It doesn't hurt," Yomi responded finally. That was not entirely true but not necessarily a lie; there was a light tingling running across her skin. She could, at the very least, tell that some ointment had been applied. And whatever it was, it had managed to alleviate most of the pain and heat.
"Did you just get up?"
"Oh. No, I was up for a few. I had a visitor."
This earned a look of suspicion from Shizuo as Celty asked the question that was no doubt nagging at the back of his mind. "A visitor?"
"Yeah, Uzaya-chan came to see how I was doing."
"I-za-ya is... here?" Shizuo growled out through gritted teeth as he slowly crawled out of bed and proceeded to traipse toward the door.
"Shizuo! Wait! You are wearing a hospital gown! Don't –" Celty seemed in a panic as she hurried to type out those words, chasing the blonde down to try to dissuade him from leaving. Certainly the last thing they needed was a confrontation between Shizuo and Izaya in a hospital.
It was Yomi, ultimately, that managed to easily stop Shizuo who was marching full throttle toward the door to chase Izaya down. She skipped over to him and immediately threw her arms around him. It left Celty in shock and Shizuo frozen solid, considering both of them were wearing particularly thin fabric that left each partially exposed behind. Fortunately the area of contact during their one-sided embrace was done face-to-face.
"Ah, Shi-chan, it always feels really nice to hug you," Yomi confided with a pleasant smile as she peered up at him.
Her body was definitely pressed too close. Even if Shizuo wrote Yomi off as an eccentric annoyance, he could not help but notice how warm and soft she was. No – no, that had to be some pain medication working through his system or something. He needed to just push her away and take a deep breath. But he felt like a statue.
Fortunately Celty had enough sense to make up for the two blockheads in front of her. She stowed her PDA away and peeled Yomi off of Shizuo, grabbing the girl by her shoulders and hauling her toward the door.
"Huh? Where are we going? I wanted to be with Shi-chan some more~"
The sound of Yomi's voice was abruptly cut off as the door slammed behind the two women, leaving the blonde to himself. Strangely enough, he could feel his cheeks burning – strange. It was not a sensation he could recall experiencing much before.
Out in the hallway, Yomi was giving Celty a pouting glare. "You're not being very fair. You aren't Shi-chan's girlfriend or something, are you? Or... are you jealous? But I don't really want to have to share Shi-chan with anyone. This is frustrating."
"I'm not his girlfriend!" Although the words were only written on the screen of a PDA, it conveyed Celty's annoyance quite clearly at the suggestion. "You said you don't want to stay here. Go back to your room and I will get you clothing."
"Aw, okay. But first, Celty-chan, you did take my gun out so they didn't confiscate it... right? Right? 'Cause it would be a real pain to have to get another one."
Celty was not entirely sure that someone as unstable as Yomi should have a gun to begin. "Yes, I took it out of your jacket so they wouldn't notice." Perhaps it would have been better to lie and say that it had been taken.
But Yomi's eyes lit up in relief. "Really? Wow, Celty-chan. You're pretty great, aren't you? Well, if you say I should wait patiently in my room I guess I have to~" Given how jovial she was being and the compliments she was laying on Celty, it made it difficult to be too annoyed with Yomi.
Having established this agreement, Yomi obediently returned to her room where she waited rather impatiently until the headless woman returned – as promised – with clothing. It was certainly not what Yomi had been wearing when she had been brought to the hospital. No doubt those clothes had been singed and stunk of smoke. Most likely the jacket and shirt had been toasted badly enough to make them unrepairable.
The clothes that Celty had given her were casual – and unlike what she usually wore, color coordinated. It actually made someone as odd as Yomi look rather normal. Aside from her hair, which was matted and disheveled. Her skin, too, was covered in soot, making her look rather unkempt.
"Shi-chan is going to get dressed too so we can leave together, right?"
"Yeah, Shinra brought him some clothes, too."
"Shinra," she echoed, baffled by the familiarity of that name. She had heard it before. And, come to think of it, she had heard Celty's name spoken before, too. Although this was the first time that the two of them had interacted much. Then something clicked in her head. "Ah! You mean Doctor-chan. That's right. I remember him. You guys are the ones that followed Shi-chan and I when we went on a date, right?"
The fact that the dark-haired girl had so clearly recalled that event left Celty hesitant to confirm but she finally responded with a vague, "Yeah. That was us."
Yomi was not the least bit put off by this information. She only smiled pleasantly at Celty before making toward the door. This time her feet were covered – her shoes, at least, had been the one thing salvaged from what she had been wearing when she had been brought to the hospital.
The four regrouped in Shizuo's hospital room, where the blonde had resumed his usual attire – a bartender outfit. Yomi could scarcely have identified him in any other clothing. She had grown too accustomed to seeing him this way.
And the moment that she and Celty entered, she was flying across the floor and throwing her arms around Shizuo. "Shi-chan!" she declared gleefully as she nuzzled her face against his chest. The display of affection had him averting his eyes and scratching at the side of his face, unsure how to respond.
"Good to see you are both so lively," Shinra commented with a chuckle.
"It seems that 'lively' is an understatement," Celty interjected dryly.
"Ah, maybe I should –"
As though reading his mind, Celty held out her hand to catch Shinra's face as he started to approach her. She could already tell what was on his mind. Considering how big of an oddball he was, Yomi's influence was certainly not helping.
"Aw, puu dun harta ber sar curld."
Celty shoved him away rather roughly after he mumbled against the palm of her hand, words too stifled to be discernible. "Anyways, we should get going. No point in lingering here too long. The doctors wanted to ask me all sorts of questions when I brought the two of you here, anyways. Doesn't help that your burn injuries coincided with that warehouse burning down."
"Yeah," Shizuo agreed quietly before glancing down at Yomi. "And you."
She peered up at him innocently, "Hm?"
"Let's go." Rather than reciprocating the embrace, he placed a heavy hand on her head that prompted her to release him. However, as much as he might have liked to break any association with her on their way out of the hospital, Yomi had managed to grab onto his hand. Even his reluctance was not enough to dissuade her.
By all rights they were the most conspicuous looking couple – a tall man with bleached-blonde hair in a bartender suit whose face was set in a permanent scowl, and whose hand was linked to a woman almost half his height who was skipping along merrily while humming a tune.
"I think we would have been better hiding them them in the dirty laundry to get them out unnoticed," Celty confided, making sure that the screen of her PDA was visible only to Shinra who was walking beside her with a countenance similar to Yomi's.
Regardless of how suspicious their entourage was, they escaped unquestioned to the bottom floor. Once they had strayed from the main path and returned to where Celty's motorcycle was parked, the four finally stopped.
It was then that Yomi released her hold on Shizuo's hand, albeit only because Celty was returning her gun to her. "Thanks, Celty-chan," Yomi chirped happily. However, she soon found that her new clothing afforded her no pockets or folds in which she could hide her weapon. Frowning, Yomi put the safety lock on. "I guess I'll just have to put it here," she sighed.
The three others standing around her froze as she suddenly grabbed the collar of her shirt and stretched it out, slowly tucking the gun inside. And while it worked well enough that it was not visible, there was a strange outline in her chest that suggested she was carrying something suspicious.
"I... don't think you should put that there," Celty told her in exasperation.
"Haha!" Shinra chortled. "How ingenious!"
"Take it out," Shizuo muttered quietly with a sigh.
Frowning, Yomi obediently did as was suggested. "I don't know where to put it then, Shi-chan."
He snatched it from her and eyed the weapon with some apprehension. "Why do you have this?" No doubt the question that was on all of their minds.
Rather than play it off, Yomi answered him seriously. "I think you probably figured all of that out by now, Shi-chan. You know why I was at that warehouse, don't you? For Hiro-chan. To get revenge."
"Haven't you accomplished that now?" Celty ventured.
"I didn't kill anyone, if that's what you're asking."
That seemed to relax some of the tension in the air. But Shizuo still kept a firm grip on the weapon. "You don't need it," he declared.
"That's right," Celty added in agreement.
Suddenly Yomi became listless as the two attempted to encourage her to drop her mission. "You don't understand," she told them accusingly in a voice that hinted at the pain lying beneath the facade. "There is no meaning to my life without Hiro. If I don't have revenge, then I don't have anything. That gun doesn't belong to me. It's Hiro-chan's. It's a reminder of why I'm here. I have nothing else."
Perhaps that was a line of reasoning that the two men present could not entirely follow, but Celty could sympathize on some level. For her, finding her head had become her entire purpose. She had come all the way to Japan solely for that. The reason why she stayed? Maybe it had something to do with Shinra – but ultimately, the loss of her head had left a gaping void that nothing else seemed capable of filling. She wanted it – needed it – to know who she was, to feel whole. For that reason, she could not contest what Yomi was saying.
Shizuo's feelings, however, were much more in line with Shinra's. And while he had not expressed them up to this point, he found the words coming out without his permission. "What about me?" He said it in an even tone that did little to show his disappointment that Yomi did not even consider him in her explanation.
However, having heard that, Yomi gave it some consideration. For a moment she was pensive but then she shook her head. "Does it matter if Shi-chan makes me happy?" Suddenly she was deflecting the question entirely. "Actually, you are pretty annoyed by me when I'm around, aren't you?" She gave a sad smile that suggested she was not as ignorant as she made herself appear.
"I–" he started to say.
"What? Are you going to tell me that you like me, Shi-chan?" It was the first time he had ever seen her like this and it shocked him into silence. "It would be pretty funny if you said something like that. Honestly, I don't know why you bothered saving me. That was pretty stupid. You don't even really know me."
His eyes were set wide in surprise at this assertion. Was this the Yomi that had persistently chased him with unrivaled fervor, that had wriggled into his heart when he had tried his best to keep distance from her? Why had she gone to such lengths only now to declare that anything between the two of them was useless?
"You don't have to look so surprised. Well, I am thankful – I still have something I still need to do in Ikebukuro before I die. But maybe it's better if we stop the lie here, Shi-chan. The truth is, if you really knew me, you would hate me."
"Why?" he asked without thinking.
The expression on her face completely belied the next words that came out of her mouth. "Because even I hate me."
Up until this point, both Shinra and Celty had kept their silence. While the doctor seemed to have no intention of interrupting their heated conversation, Celty wanted to try and calm the two of them before things escalated any further. Jerking herself out of her stunned state, she quickly typed on her PDA, but before she could finish, Yomi had wrenched the gun out of Shizuo's hand.
"Well, I'm sorry. In the end it was a waste of your time to come into that building to save me." She was still smiling as she said that. "I really do like you, Shi-chan. You are a really great person. Celty-chan and Doctor-chan, too. So for that reason, stay away from me from now on." Leaving the trio behind to soak up those words, she bumped into Shizuo's side as she left. The backs of their hands grazed and this was the last of their contact as Yomi marched around the street corner.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Yomi paused, her gaze not leaving the ground. "I know you think you are really sneaky, Uzaya-chan, but I knew you were listening the whole time."
"Oh?" Mildly impressed by how perceptive she was, he stepped into her line of sight from behind a telephone pole just a few feet in front of where Yomi was still standing. "That was quite the speech you gave. I would give it a seven out of ten. Needed a little more emotion in the presentation."
She regarded him with an unamused look. "You were waiting here to take me back, right? I can stay at your office still, can't I?"
"Certainly!" he chimed back with an accommodating grin.
The two walked side-by-side, Yomi carrying the gun out of sight, as they headed for the station.
Author's Note: So I know I said I'd update before the month would end but I didn't expect it would be this soon. Well, hopefully this makes up for how slow I have been with updates in the past. I will be updating again in a week. Past that, hopefully I can continue to update as steadily but I usually jinx myself when I say that.
Again thanks so much for the reviews. You guys are awesome!