"Tsk, everyone's a moralist."
"Morality has nothing to do with it. But that's nothing you don't know already."
Izaya jumped around and looked as if he was about to go over the railing. In reality each skipping step was calibrated to perfection. Izaya simply wanted to dispel the mood of its eerie undertones.
"That's me alright, Orihara Izaya: knowing stuff! All you ever wanted to know, Orihara Izaya knows!"
As it so often happened Izaya's amusement increased with his antagonist's discomfort. He enjoyed being off kilter in his humor precisely for that reason.
"That's wonderful, Izaya. I got to go now, it's getting late."
It was just what Izaya wanted to hear but he of course put on a sweetly sad face that fooled no one. Nor was it supposed to.
"Such a shame. Bye bee! Don't be a stranger!"
Enthusiastic waving followed.
"You're the stranger. You always were."
Izaya actually pouted and went to the extent of sighing.
"How can we say that, we practically grew up together."
"No, we didn't."
Izaya could afford to be at ease.
"That's a way of looking at it. What a shame, so many memories of our youth we failed to forge together."
Shinra did not quite know what to say to this. He tossed him something that Izaya easily caught mid-air.
"Don't say I never gave you anything."
"Rubik's cube?"
"It's your kind of thing, isn't it? Have fun with it."
Izaya turned it on his hands as if he half expected it to explode if handled too roughly.
"This is for me?"
"Do you see anyone else around here?"
"Indeed I don't. But to what do I owe this sudden act of generosity?"
Shinra plunged his hands into the pockets of his perennial lab coat.
"To your chance of becoming an actual real person. Let's call it me taking a chance on that possibility."
Izaya looked at it with studied disinterest.
"Thank you, Shinra."
Shinra was already walking away, heading for the stairs. He spoke without turning around.
"There was a time when I believed there was more to you than being an smart ass. I'm trusting those days. Try not to disappoint me."
**
Izaya would have found it difficult to bring himself to break the harmony of the cube's perfectly arranged colored faces. Fortunately it was already mismatched. Izaya nearly glowed as he considered the many methods for solving this simple but highly entertaining puzzle.
With so many combinations there was an almost endless potential to this. Izaya found himself hooked in no time, his hands moving in tandem with the calculations running through his mind, so that he felt more composed than he had in a long time.
The fact that this was a tangible proof of something amounting to friendship played a part in his absorption but Izaya minimized any emotional attachment by approaching the puzzle in its purest form: that of a riddle for him to solve.
All and all Izaya was not entirely satisfied. His damage control had been exemplary but probably not enough. Clearly Shinra knew and Izaya could hardly keep him from spreading such compromising knowledge. Which was a huge disadvantage. But there was one person who could avoid the leakage and that was Shinra himself. Which was to say, Izaya was fairly certain that Shinra would keep his discovery to himself.
Izaya even carried the cube to the bath. Before running a bath he tapped the faucets very lightly and always filled the tub to a precise imaginary line that he calibrated to the millimeter. Presently he was languishing in the water, one of these days he would solve the cube with his eyes closed to make it more challenging, when it occurred to him that he needed to square off the new situation with Kadota.
He had been avoiding directly approaching the subject but the warm water combined with the soothing effect of color blocks falling precisely into place with mathematical predictability induced a kind of relaxation of his own inbuilt barriers.
In the grand scheme of things Kadota was not particularly relevant. Even Kida held more potential. But Kadota's importance had grown to disproportionate dimensions. Not by becoming a strong player in the power arena but by occupying Izaya's personal life to the point of upsetting it.