A/N: Check me out, updating before a year had past. Anyway thanks for the lovely reviews, pms and support from all you awesome readers, as well as the favourites and alerts. For guest reviewer Yopu is Crying, refer to the Author's Note at the bottom.
Break You
Chapter 28
A little over a year ago…
"Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday indeed,
Happy birthday to a great big fat phony,
Happy birthday to me."
She blew out the candles on the imaginary cake and tossed back the bottle of gin, draining it to the last.
There were no more safe places anymore, she thought as she sat at the bus stop, freezing her ass off in the dead of night. There were no more safe places. Kimi and Shishizaki were sexing it up by now. Daddy was in bed with the devil. Russia Sushi was closed for the next two days to prepare for a health inspection. And Shizuo… It was the same bus stop, the very same bus stop where she had said yes, yes to Ueno zoo, yes to him. All while wearing that fucking bracelet.
She put the bottle to her lips again, and then remembered it was empty and lowered it. There was am ear-piercing yowl and a cat shot out of a nearby alleyway, scampering into the main road. Nene watched the men standing at the mouth of the alley staring at her like she was crazy, which she probably was. Middle of the night, the red light district, all alone, off your head, you have a death wish or something?
One man wandered over and asked her if she was okay. She said yes, I'm okay, don't worry about me, not worth the trouble actually, bye bye.
The man went back to his group and then they left. Fifteen minutes later, when the cold had sunk into the tips of her fingers, she heard the crunch of gravel, smelled the fresh soap, and snorted.
"You had the cab driver follow me," said Nene, reaching into her handbag. "I knew that punk looked familiar."
"You kicked me out so fast, I never had a chance to say a proper goodbye."
Izaya sat beside her on the bench. His hair was still wet from the shower he'd had to take after she threw the cake at him. He would have taken it anyway. Once in the morning, once at night, reliable as a cuckoo clock. Clean freak. Neat freak. Closet germaphobe.
"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this is what I want to ask, but then if I was dating Shizu-chan I would probably never stop drinking," he said, sighing. When she didn't respond, he kept going. "You know I'm going to have to get my shirt dry cleaned. Red velvet stains. And I bought it new and everything to celebrate this auspicious occasion. Don't worry though, I'll send you the bill."
"You know I'm living in a hostel right. If you send me a bill I'll probably have to use it for toilet paper," she said, snorting at the imagery of her own destitution.
"What? Your boyfriend hasn't offered to move in with you? Shocking."
"Who says I didn't reject his offer?"
Izaya tutted loudly.
"Once the queen of freeloaders and now you won't even share the rent with a protozoan like Shizu-chan," he said. "Where has all this pride emerged from? Or is it guilt? But what could Nene-chan possibly have to feel guilty over?"
"Why don't you go bug Anzu or something?" asked Nene, waving her arm about, bottle swinging precariously from her fingertips. "She sent me a- a birthday present you know. It was a dead crow. With maggots. What do you do to these girls to make them so crazy?"
"I don't do anything. They do it to themselves," said Izaya.
Nene could feel his gaze on her, but she just hunched over and began picking the label off the empty bottle. Here it comes.
"Take Anzu, poor, pitiful Anzu," began Izaya. "Abandoned first by the father, who didn't know her mother from a streetlamp, then by the mother, who would spend every morning staring in the mirror before looking past her daughter like she was an ugly piece of furniture. And finally, the older brother, the great protector, the promiser of better tomorrows, runs way, all because he couldn't bear to look at something so pure and innocent after what he'd done.
"Suddenly poor, sweet Anzu was invisible. Not because the big, bad world had made it so. No, the big, bad world doesn't give a shit about fourteen year olds with brother complexes. Anzu was invisible because she wanted to be. Foster care. It sounds like the opening for a tedious fairy-tale, doesn't it? Resolved by godmothers and prince charmings and lumberjacks with large axes, and that's what Anzu turned it into. Every loving mother became a crone, every sister an ugly, jealous idiot, every teacher a lascivious wolf luring her from the path. And she rotted and rotted waiting and waiting."
"And then you came along, Prince Charming," Nene said without masking her disgust.
"The godmother who finally loved her," said Izaya, smiling softly. It would have been handsome were it not so cold. "Her guiding light, her absolution."
"So now what, you're some sort of messiah? Is this her sick fantasy or yours?"
"There are three types of people; broken people, people waiting to be broken, and empty vessels," said Izaya. "Anzu threw away everything she was so that she could become everything for someone else. Ignoring her would have been true cruelty."
"So you just set up shop, oh great bringer of truth."
Izaya's smile turned bitter as he stared at her, calculating. Then after a moment, he said, "As terrible as you may think I am, Nene-chan, I didn't cut out her insides and make her hollow. It was already like that when I got there. You bring it on yourselves.
"I mean look at you; right now you are choosing to be cold and alone even though one phone call to your father, to anyone, would have you safe and sound tucked away in bed in under an hour. But no one is worthy of poor, misunderstood Nene, are they? I can't make any of you more pathetic than you already made yourselves."
"You're always making speeches. Big long asinine speeches. Do you practise your big long speeches in the mirror? I bet you line up all your girls like dolls and make speeches until they throw themselves off rooftops. I bet you wonder if they'll bounce."
"Nene-chan's a mean drunk."
"And you're wrong," said Nene. "It's me who's not worthy of them."
"Ah, so we're moving from the misunderstood heroine to the self-exiled martyr. Do you pick your personalities out of a hat?"
"But you know what's messed up? I am worthy of you," she said, handing him the bottle and getting unsteadily to her feet.
"And people accuse me of hubris," said Izaya, rising to his full height and tossing the bottle over his shoulder. It shattered loudly in the diffident silence of the red light district.
"Oooooh, I feel another speech coming on. Or are you just gonna stick your tongue down my throat like last time?"
"Have you already forgotten," he said, brushing her hair from her face. "You're all dried up now, Nene. You're not worthy of anybody."
"So if I tried to kiss you right now you'd push me away," she said leaning forward, rocking on the balls of her feet as she breathed her gin soaked breath all over him. "That's okay. I'll just go home to Shizuo. Shizuo doesn't push me away. Quite the opposite."
Izaya's fingers curled around her neck, his thumb pressing her throat.
"I have it on good authority that that's not true."
"Hey Izaya," said Nene, grinning at him. "I think that dry cleaning bills gonna get bigger."
And then she puked all over him.
The love hotel was a nice touch, he thought, emerging from his third shower of the day in nothing but a silk dressing gown. Nene wore a matching one as she lay face down, passed out on the bed. The maid had been kind enough to change her out of her puke covered clothes after Izaya had passed along a wad of cash for her troubles. Why hadn't he done it himself, he wondered, perching on the edge of the bed. The power he could have lorded over her and Shizu-chan would have been exquisitely cruel. Then he remembered what she'd said… there were some things you could never come back from. So far, he'd managed to come back from a lot. It used to be that he took pleasure in pushing her boundaries, at seeing how far he could go, but these days he didn't feel like it and that annoyed him. Three months she'd avoided him after he'd kissed her. Three months she had thrown herself into that protozoan like he was some sort of inoculation against him. But he'd clawed his way back from that too. He could crawl his way back from anything really.
The bedsheets rustled and Izaya felt rather than saw her sit up and rub the sleep from her eyes.
"Did you undress me?" was her first question.
"Maid. You smelt like a rotting deer carcass," said Izaya. "I sent your clothes to the incinerator."
"Water?" she muttered, gripping her head.
"Bedside table."
She groped about in the dim, pink mood lighting, knocking over a lamp before she got to the glass of water and chugged it down.
"I need to go," said Nene, stumbling out of bed. "Everyone will be worried."
"No they won't. I sent them messages saying you were staying with your father," said Izaya, twirling her phone by its panda strap. "So it'll be doubly suspicious if you head back now, smelling like gin, wearing nothing but a love hotel dressing gown. Oh the dishonour."
Nene sat on the bed again, pressing her hands against her head as she squeezed her eyes shut. The nap had done very little for her nausea. Grabbing the bin, Izaya walked round and shoved it in her arms before sitting down next to her.
"Stay here tonight. Tomorrow, I'll take you shopping. A late birthday treat. Buy you something that didn't fall off the back of a truck," he said, lying down.
Bin still hugged against her chest she lay down also.
"Why do you keep doing things like this, Izaya?" asked Nene. "Coming to school on white day with chocolate, paying for my rent and then sending Shizuo the bill, and let's not forget crashing the dinner with my parents. If I'm all dried up now, why bother?"
"Who knows? Maybe I'm dying."
"That's not funny."
"What? Would Nene-chan weep for me? Would you beat your chest in anguish," said Izaya. He chuckled dryly. "At this point I would have thought they would be tears of happiness. Just do me a favour and don't bring that oaf of a boyfriend to my funeral. He'd probably throw my coffin into the sun."
"I thought you wanted to be cremated."
"My final rights performed by Shizu-chan. I don't think either of us could stomach that honour."
"I don't think I could imagine a world without you in it," muttered Nene. "It hurts my head to think about it."
She was still a little drunk.
"You never know. The secret to immortality might just be at our fingertips, waiting for us to seize it by the hair."
"Well if anyone could figure out a way to immortality, it would be you. Let's talk about something else."
"I had a little peak in your handbag. So condoms, huh? That's cute. Do you still leave milk and cookies out for Santa, too, just in case?"
Bristling, Nene was suddenly very quiet. Izaya waited. Sometimes the silence was enough to draw out the secrets.
"It was meant to be tonight," she said, arms tightening around the bin.
"How long did it take you to get him to agree to it?"
She got up suddenly. "I should go. Shizuo's probably worried."
Before she could leave the bed, his hand wrapped around her wrist and held her there. It wasn't even tight, but he had a way of turning her to stone with just a touch.
Sitting up so that their shoulders were pressed together, Izaya slipped his hand into hers, fingers interlocking. She didn't stop him, even when he pushed his forehead against hers and snaked his hand into the gap of her dressing gown to hold her waist.
"If it was meant to be tonight," he said. "Then it should be tonight."
And she kissed him.
Fingers wrapping around the back of his neck, dragging him down into her, her robe unfurling as she pulled him between her thighs and he was kissing her back.
She didn't remember when the laughter started, only that it was gradual. Shoulders trembling, mouth slipping off and on, clumsy kisses, the wheezes, the tears. Gradual, so that she could claw his neck and hold him as long as she could just in case, just in case, just in case this wasn't happening, just in case, gradual so every last shred of hope could be exhausted, all the dignity could be squeezed from her like a day old sponge.
Nene's eyes widened as he rolled off her, holding his naked stomach as he convulsed on the bed, shrieking his laughter into the high ceilinged room so that it bounced off the walls and surrounded her. She lay there for god knows how long, listening to him, her mouth still tasting like him, her insides shrivelling while the moisture on the inside of her thighs seemed to burn like hot coals.
How long? A long time it felt. A lifetime it must have been because something died for something else to live, for something else to sit up from the bed. She tied the dressing gown up tightly, not trembling, not really existing, grabbed her handbag and left. The door closed gently on the laughter and she walked home without shoes.
The next morning Nene broke up with Shizuo. She played the greatest hits and by the time the record stopped, she was empty.
Today…
There were whole things, and broken things, and there were empty things in this world. It was like the domestic abuse version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Whole things beats broken things, broken things beats empty things, and empty things sit at their feet and claw affectionately at their ankles. Nene had always been an empty thing, she'd realised it that night. That was why Izaya had never been able to break her. There was nothing to break.
She'd been stripped away gradually by all the broken people around her, death by a thousand cuts. Mum and dad who had never really known each other, not in the way you're supposed to at least, but in the way you think you're supposed to. They taught her that truth was too subjective, too individual to be quantifiable and so it didn't exist. Old grandmother with her five broken marriages, two of which had broken her so bad she'd ended up in hospital, could not stand the sight of this little girl who could see the devils in people's shadows before they could strike. How dare she not know her place in how-it-works, how dare she pity her with those coal coloured eyes, the colour of her first husband. Kimi, who had never been loved but tolerated as what happened when you conquered successful business man and needed a new challenge, buried Nene in an avalanche of affection, eclipsed her, so grateful was she that she had finally found someone to love her and to love in turn. By the time Nene had reached Shizuo and Izaya, she was hollow. It was no wonder they piled their broken pieces inside of her like a reliable old cupboard.
But even a cupboard has its limits. One day you'll open the door to put another thing in and it will all fall out and crush you to death.
"What do you mean you're not going to give us the disc?" said Jun.
Ryo stood next to her, his hand on her shoulder, and Jun just stared. There was something in her eyes, all the way at the back like the sound of the train at the end of the tunnel; madness was coming, but the hand on her shoulder was warm and she clung to that feeling, let it anchor her.
"Something's come up," said Nene, walking around the room, collecting up her camera equipment and stuffing it into the duffel bag filled with clothes at the foot of the bed. "I can make better use of it another way."
"No," said Jun. "This was our one and only shot. Where is it, Nene?"
Nene tossed the wig in, zipped up the bag and hiked it onto her shoulder, facing them tiredly.
Jun shrugged Ryo off and stepped forward.
"We have worked so hard for this, Nene," she said. In between sentences she was sucking air between her gritted teeth, like she was in pain, and she was of a sort. "Izaya needs to be stopped. You said it yourself."
"Yeah," said Nene, scratching her head. "I did. And so did you. And so does everyone else that's ever met him. But even in a best-case scenario, blackmailing Orihara Izaya, all it would have done would earn us some extra cash, maybe enough to pay off our tuition fees, but stopping him. We were naïve. I've seen what was on his computer, Jun. You can't stop a freight train with your bare hands."
"We could've gone to the police. That was always an option."
"No we couldn't have. If we go to the police, Izaya would disappear and the yakuza would have been after us instead. And not just the yakuza," said Nene. "Our vendetta was always petty. This tiny little victory we've had was all we were ever going to get."
"The yakuza would be after us, huh?" spat Jun. "Don't you mean your father?"
"What's she talking about, Nene?" said Ryo, there was confusion in his voice, but she didn't care. He had been largely silent for the most of it. Maybe because Jun had enough anger in her for the both of them.
"That's right," said Jun, smiling a little now, thinking she had the upper hand. "I know all about the great embezzler Akiyama Aito, who spends his nights licking the arses of Awakusu-kai. When were you planning on telling us, huh?"
"Never," said Nene. "It was none of your business."
"Right. You've had your fun rebelling against daddy and now it's got too real for you," said Jun. "This is all for our sake, is it? Or did you see something unpleasant about dear old deadbeat daddy in those files?"
"No. Something came up," said Nene, reaching for the door handle.
"Stop. Nene, you have no idea how much we've suffered. The things Izaya did to you are fucking party tricks compared to what he did to us," said Jun, grabbing Ryo's arm and pulling him forwards, presenting him the way a charity holds up posters of malnourished children. "Maybe you should know. Maybe someone should let it slip to the police how Akiyama Aito, wanted on suspicion of colluding with the yakuza, is living in a small cottage on the outskirts of-"
Nene's eyes narrowed sharply and suddenly Jun felt as though someone had wrapped their hand around her throat. It was that look. His look.
"Is that so," said Nene, hand falling to her side. Putting the bag down, she walked up to Jun, slowly, like a cat. She tilted her head and inspected her with a soft smile. "And maybe they'd like to know the exact reason why Yamamoto Tsuna took a nosedive off the Rainbow Bridge three years ago. Finally close that case. There wasn't a suicide note after all and maybe it will be good for closure."
Jun stepped back, her legs getting tangled up. Ryo grabbed her shoulders and steadied her.
"Nene," said Ryo, scowling darkly at her. He had recognised the look too, the look that made him feel like a snake had just slithered through his bowels. "I think we all need to take a second and calm down-"
"Don't give me that anger management bullshit," said Nene. "I wasn't the one who went there first."
"Fucking hell, do you even hear yourself?"
"You proud, Nene" said Jun, fists curled at her sides. "All this time trying not to be like him and now look at you."
"Let's get one thing straight, Jun," Nene said frostily. "If you do anything stupid, I won't even go to the police. I'll go straight to your aunt and uncle and I'll tell them what you did to that poor girl, the one who loved you like a sister."
Tears were spilling down Jun's frozen face, her eyes wide. She looked stupid and scared and Nene felt a surge of disgust for the girl.
"That's enough, Nene," said Ryo, holding Jun to stop her from collapsing. He was glaring at Nene, his fingers itching, almost as if he wanted to hit her. "You're way out of line."
It was obvious how much Ryo cared for Jun, maybe not love because she was beginning to think Ryo was too caught up in his chivalric image to truly love someone, but he cared for her, the same way he cared for himself, as broken things tend to do. She had to cut him off. It was unfortunate, but she couldn't have him and Jun coming after her.
"I don't think you have any right to be talking about lines," said Nene. "After the one you crossed in Todai. How much money did the university have to give the Motome family to buy their silence?"
Ryo went white as a sheet. He let go of Jun and stepped forward, his fist curling as if he was going to punch her, but she was too quick.
"There are other things," said Nene. "Shibuya. Anzu's father. All that money you stole. The baby. I may not know everything, Ryo, but I know enough to hurt you. Same goes for you too, Jun. Keep your distance."
The click of her heels was deafening as she went and picked up the duffel bag.
"I was wrong," said Jun, leaning against the whiteboard. "You're worse than him."
The door slammed shut and the two of them stood in the apartment for god knows how long, in silence, the kind where all the terrible things that ever were you in your life grip your face open and scream into you.
After a few blocks, when she was sure she was far enough away, the duffel bag slipped off Nene's shoulder and she shot into an alleyway to throw up. It was watery and hot, like her insides had been boiled out of her. Breathing hard, she wiped the spit off her face and shakily slid into a heap on the ground.
There were no more safe places anymore. The contact list of the bright pink phone in her pocket was empty but she had a few numbers committed to memory. One was Kimi's, but by now Nene imagined that the number had been disconnected and her best friend was on the train to Osaka.
Had it hurt that Kimi had not tried to say goodbye to her? Nene wasn't sure. When she'd found the plane tickets in her briefcase a week ago, she had considered mentioning it to Kimi, what she was about to do, but she didn't want Kimi to look at her the way Jun and Ryo had. Most of all, she couldn't bring herself to tell Kimi that she knew. Admit out loud that she had failed. Wrapped up in petty vendettas, rooftop reconnaissance, this amateur martial artist had abandoned the person she had loved most.
They'd met during a dinner between their parents at Kimi's house. Mum and dad were fighting all the time, about bills, about missed dates and absent touches, and Nene was often at her grandmothers where she would spend most of her hours crying and begging to go home. So she had been angry sat at that dinner table watching mum and dad play nice with the illustrious Toyoshimas, acting like nothing was going on while she still had the welts on her wrist from grandmother's cane tucked under the frilly sleeve of the dress her mother had forced her to wear. Back then, she hadn't understood the need to play nice in front of one's employers, back then all she saw was liars and phonies who didn't love her enough to play phony for her.
The daughter did not have to wear a frilly dress. She got to wear a t-shirt, beige shorts and a pair of glittery purple sandals, the kind Nene had always stared at in the store before mum would yank her towards the cheaper stuff. The daughter was glaring at Nene with the same intensity Nene was glaring at her parents with, and Nene noticed. So she turned and glared right back. The daughter did not expect that.
After dinner ended, the daughter snatched Nene's hand and dragged her out into the garden while the parents looked after them tittering stupidly to themselves about kids getting along like a house on fire while Nene shot them a dirty look over her shoulder.
"My name's Toyoshima Kimi and I'm a princess," was the first thing Kimi said to her out in the garden. And then she pushed Nene over. She did not expect Nene to go for her the way she did. With teeth and nails.
Nene had made sure to leave a bruise, right on Kimi's face so that all the parents could see. Look what I made for you, mum and dad. But when the two girls had staggered back inside for tea, Nene's dress torn in several places, the purple bruise glowing iridescent on Kimi's face, Nene did not expect Kimi to lie for her.
"We were playing on the swings and I ran in front of Nene-chan," Kimi told her father. And again, she took Nene's hand and dragged her up the three flights of stairs to her room where she spent the whole night introducing her to her doll collection.
"You hate your mum and dad, don't you," Kimi asked her, thrusting a pretty doll with long red hair in her lap. "There you can keep that one. And I'll keep her sister. We're sisters now."
"I don't like you," Nene had said, ripping a bit of the dolls hair out.
"Shut up. Yes you do."
Nene had taken the doll home, despite the meaningful glares from her mother and her father as they apologised for their daughter's rudeness and offered to pay of course. Toyoshima-san wouldn't hear of it, the benevolent man. Nene had taken the doll home and thrown it away right in front of her parents and when Kimi had asked her about it a week later at a play date, Nene told her what she'd done. And Kimi had grinned and given her another one.
There were no more safe places left, thought Nene, tossing the phone in the gutter still fresh with her insides. But maybe when this was all over, she could run away too. If the storybooks had anything to say about fate, she could run away so far she'd run into Kimi again. A figure across the street stopped and stared at her as she sat on her knees by the side of the gutter. Framed by the mouth of the dark alley, he grew larger and larger, his blonde hair brighter and brighter until he was all she could see.
A conversation was about to happen. They could sense it in the air like a fly buzzing around waiting to land.
Freshly showered and wearing a grey tracksuit, Nene sat cross-legged on the sofa, which had seen better days, largely from before it had met Shizuo, and sipped her green tea. Shizuo was in the kitchen doing his dishes. Through the open shutters Nene watched his back, involved in the movement of his shoulder blades, his back muscles, drifting off a little in the familiar mechanics.
The final cup was placed on the dryer rack and the fly landed.
Shizuo dropped onto couch next to her, running his hands up over his face and through his hair.
"I can go if I'm making you uncomfortable," said Nene, placing the cup down on the coffee table, which had long strips of silver duct tape wrapped around its middle.
"I asked you to stay, didn't I?" said Shizuo, adding, "You're not making me uncomfortable."
"Were you looking for me?" asked Nene.
"Yeah. Since… you know, what happened. I wanted to apologise," he said. "I acted like an asshole. Sorry."
Nene shrugged. "So did I."
"I'll pay for a new phone."
"That won't be necessary. I've decided to go without a phone for a little while."
"Saw you drop that pink one in the gutter," said Shizuo. "Something happen?"
"Nothing I can't handle."
"Huh. Sure."
"You still working at the bar?" asked Nene.
Shizuo's back straightened up a little. "Yeah. Longest I've managed to stay in one place."
"I bet Kasuka's proud."
"Hm."
"I saw one of his films last week," said Nene, not mentioning that she had been living in one of those old movie theatres for a the last few weeks and had in fact, fallen asleep to it several times. The similar bone structure calmed her down. "He's a good actor."
"I used to think you had a crush on him," muttered Shizuo.
"I know. You were always in an awful mood when I talked about him. So I stopped."
"Sorry."
"I hate your co-worker," said Nene, holding it up like some humble peace offering. I'm just as petty as you, it said.
Shizuo's head snapped round, startled.
"The one with the big boobs," said Nene.
It took him a moment, but then it dawned on him. "Miyuki-san."
"So you noticed."
"'Cos yours got smaller?"
"I don't know whether to be flattered that you're keeping track or accuse you of being a pervert," said Nene, folding her arms over her chest.
Once upon a time, Shizuo would have blushed pink and told her to shut up, but after the six months they'd spent in each other's company, intimately, both of them were more than aware of his experience with breasts. Instead, he just said, "They look good either way."
"Mine or Miyuki-san's?"
"Don't play dumb."
Nene grinned. Shizuo smirked back. It felt like old times. What the hell was she doing? Suddenly the hem of her t-shirt was very interesting and she was picking at a stray thread.
"Went to your dorms, when I was looking for you," said Shizuo.
"You met Inari," said Nene, pulling the thread out and wrapping it round her finger.
"She said if that if you knew what was best for you, you wouldn't come back. Then she shoved a naked picture of the flea in my face."
Nene looked at him. "Did you kill her?"
"I thought about it," Shizuo said quietly, eyebrow twitching. "What stupid shit has he pulled you into this time?"
"How do you know I didn't pull him into it," was what she wanted to ask. Instead she just said, "You don't want to know."
"I won't get angry, if that's what you're afraid of," said Shizuo, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one. "But if you don't wanna tell me that's up to you. I'm not gonna force you. Anyway, since you don't have a place to stay, you can stay here until you sort yourself out, I don't mind. It's up to you. Couch folds out."
As he spoke, the realisation settled on her gently, like the flakes of first snow. What had she said to Shizuo exactly? What had been her exact words? You always decided on everything. With a lot of people, even after being told what was wrong, they stayed stubbornly in the seats they had occupied for god knows how long if only because they were too afraid to stand up and stretch their aching limbs, too afraid that they wouldn't work anymore. Nene had expected Shizuo to be one of those people and she felt a tremendous pang of shame as he proved her wrong.
"Shizuo, what are you trying to do?" asked Nene.
Not now, not when she was about to do the unthinkable, please not now.
"You said a lot of things, about what went wrong. You were right about a lot of it, all of it probably."
"We just weren't good for each other. It happens," Nene said gently, desperate to put an end to the conversation. It felt like old times because it was getting to be like old times, what the hell were they doing. Stop it.
"You said I didn't love you. I only agreed to date you 'cos I pitied you," said Shizuo, leaning forward, smoke trailing past his shoulder so that to Nene his face was grey behind the screen of smoke. "Yeah, I didn't love you."
Even though she'd always suspected it, hell hadn't Izaya said as much, it was still a blow to hear him say the words like he was reading them off a shopping list. She steeled herself, made her muscles tight, tried not to feel for a little while longer.
"I didn't know what the hell love was when I met you … it wasn't pity though. I think I was just being selfish."
"Finally, someone to look at you like in the movies," said Nene, taking care to control her voice.
"Maybe," said Shizuo, snuffing his cigarette out in the ashtray. "Yeah, I didn't love you, but I didn't know you at the beginning."
The silence wasn't an invitation for her to speak and so she waited, her stomach turning while he organised his thoughts.
"I don't know when it happened," he said eventually. "It wasn't like in the movies. One day it was just there, like it had always been there, like you know… one of those universal truths. And it wasn't 'cos no one else would love me, or 'cos I pitied you, 'or cos I felt guilty. I just… shit I'm not making any sense."
Shizuo reached into his pocket for another cigarette but then he caught sight of Nene's face. Dropping the packet on the coffee table, he reached for her but she jerked back. She was pale as a sheet and it was clear to them both that she was trying not to cry.
"Hey… I'm not trying to upset you," said Shizuo. "I want this time to be better. I want to be better."
"I'm not worth it," said Nene. Her chest felt tight, like someone had reached in, curled their fist around her heart, and started to squeeze. "You don't know what I've done, what I'm about to do. There are some things you don't come back from."
Shizuo thought about this for a while, staring at the spot behind her head, wondering about the naked picture Inari had thrown at him and all the Nenes he'd seen in the parks and the alleyways and the bars and the street corners and about how she'd been there when he'd woken up on that factory floor and Ueno Zoo and the mating habits and the smile on her face when she talked and how bad she was with children and probably didn't want any and the day after he'd been dumped when Izaya had turned up and said all those things about love hotels and beauty marks beneath breasts and the way she tasted like raspberries and tart sweat and how that was okay because he didn't need her to be good or kind or sweet or virtuous.
"You can always come back to me."
So long as she was Nene.
They slept late into the afternoon the next day. It wasn't until the sun was at that exact point in the sky so that a shaft of bright yellow light could pierce through a crack in Shizuo's blinds and hit Nene square on the face.
Quietly, she got out of bed, Shizuo's arm sliding off her, and got dressed with methodical efficiency, trying to ignore Shizuo as he pretended to sleep so that she could have some mental privacy. It was kind of him to try, but he had never been a good liar and she felt crowded all the same. Shooting one last look at the lump on the bed, she marched out of the bedroom, grabbed the duffel bag by the door and left the apartment.
Shizuo rolled onto his back when he heard the door shut and stared at the ceiling, thinking about all the things that had been said and done the night before. In twenty-four hours when he would get that call, (this can't be happening this isn't real) and would be sprinting to the police station (where are you Celty where are you when I need), he would be thinking about what an idiot he was for not saying the words (love you I love) when he'd had the chance.
Author's Note:
I'm leaving this here and not saying anything. A lot of people have sent me PMs asking questions and sadly gotten the same response. Patience xD I know it's a bitch, but as much truth as I'm willing to reveal will be coming soon. I hope this chapter made things a little clearer. I've had to delete the original extra for Izaya, as I've decided to go in a new direction, but will write a new one and put it up as soon as its done. Sadly, it is not a priority.
Yopu is Crying: Your comment is completely understandable, and I recognise that the word has a problematic history with misogyny and can send a very awful anti-feminist message. Sadly, as it fits in with Ryo's character, problematic misogyny included, I have chosen to leave it in there for the sake of honestly communicating the character. Perhaps I can go back at some point and make it clearer that Ryo's language is an expression of something dark and misogynistic, which ties into his later rape threat.
