Happy Halloween!
"Hey Amai, how much you wanna bet they'll start saying "join us" in unison?" Carney joked, not taking the situation seriously even though the very real possibility of death was right in front of us.
"Shut up, Dipshit, and get out of the car," I said angrily, snapping the phone shut and slipping it into my back pocket, watching the tallest of the five take a single step forward, his movements puppet-like and awkward.
"Wouldn't it be easier for you to get in the car and for me to run them over?" he asked, leaning over the passenger seat to talk to me, his face as serious as forty-year-old lawyer in a custody battle.
"Carney!"
"Relax…I'm sure they'll jump out of the way," he continued, causing me to glare at him in contempt before I figured out a far more nonviolent solution.
"Yeah, I'm sure they would. But, then again, where would the fun in that be?" I asked him, playing on his weakness of having fun while being a sadist. He frowned, his mouth screwing up into a snarl as he realized the cowardly implications of his plan and the empty feeling that he wouldn't be inflicting any real damage himself.
"You're right. Which one you want? The short one, the tall one, the nerd one, or the body builder, 'cause I can go for any of them," Carney said, trampling over his earlier plan of a poor attempt at a hit-and-run as he scooted into the passenger seat and opened the door.
I looked over at him, smirking lightly in preparation of a joke. "Really? I would've pegged you for skinny seventeen-year-old with a fake ID," I told him, snickering at the earlier memory of Carney giving him a phone number before we left the club to complete my arduous task.
Before Carney could say anything to the contrary a knife whizzed past my nose, barely skimming the edge of it and bringing my attention back to the group of red-eyed people, one of which had been getting impatient with our blatant disregard of them.
"You don't have a good sense of danger, do you? Amai Tachibana," the tall one asked, straightening out of his lunge between me and my brother, tilting his head far to the left side, a large grin on his face as he regarded me, his…butcher knife!—laying limply by his side before being brought up high above his head, the edge of the big blade gleaming threatening. "Or maybe this happens often?" he asked before bringing the knife down in front of me, embedding in the asphalt as I stumbled back reflexively.
I scowled at this smiling face, watching silently as Carney grabbed the man's upper arms and stepped on his back, forcing him to the ground and sliding his hands down to grip his wrists tightly while pulling them back. "The only times I have to deal with knives is when I hang out with a certain Eskimo; granted I haven't done that in a few months on account of him being the single biggest asshole I've ever met," I explained, the sneer never leaving my face as I wrenched the butcher knife from his hand and left him to my brother, regarding the other three men and the woman who stood at the forefront of the pack.
"Who are you and why do you "love me"?" I asked them, gripping the knife handle tightly and waiting for the first in a long series of answers to the questions I would have to ask to even remotely begin to understand something that was insane on all levels.
"Like we said, we are Saika. And don't be so flattered, we love all humanity, and as part of the human race you're included amongst the millions," the woman answered, smirking at me like a bitch.
"Gee…I'll try not to let the disappointment cloud my judgment when I kick your little ass," I growled, unwilling to let anything they said make me angrier than I already was. She snickered, unimpressed, and opened her mouth to add on.
"We're already aware that you don't like us, Amai Tachibana. We heard your little speech earlier in that club. It was so moving how you wanted to "find the bitch trying to steal your boyfriend" that we just couldn't resist the chance to meet you halfway," she laughed rather eerily, the two men at her side matching her pitch while the third simply grinned. "So we'll indulge you in your little fantasy before making you one of us." She ended with a show of flicking her switchblade in my direction.
Yeah, like I'm going to be intimidated by a switchblade not operated by a psychotic dick.
The two men beside her—a short, middle-aged man and what looked to be a third year high school student—moved towards me, their movements, like the first man's, were puppet-like and somewhat mechanical before their movements sped up and they ran, carving knives raised slasher movie-esque. Paired with their wide, sick grins they looked like a pair of crazed killers—or white-collar workers who snapped under the pressure.
"It'll hurt, but since you're a masochist you'll enjoy it," I heard the woman say in the background, my senses focused on the pair rushing me—and possibly trying to kill me. It's not like I wasn't used to frontal assaults—or added weapons—but it's not as if it happened infrequently, yet, after multiple viewings of horror, supernatural and cheesy zombie shows, I was taken by surprise in the snap change of speed, raising my arms defensively in front of me, the cast on my right arm a better defense than the butcher knife in terms of blocking.
Their blades didn't make contact however. Although I couldn't see it past my crisscrossed arms and the dim lighting from a nearby street lamp, it was obvious from the glaring of the two men and the slightly shaking knives that Carney and Kuroshi had intervened on my behalf, the small slice of Carney's face that I could see upturned in a malicious smile of his sadistic pleasure.
"Ganging up on a girl? Even if she's a tomboy, it's not very gentlemanly of you," Carney snickered, one hand on the hilt and another on the back of the black blade, pushing back the men's force with relative ease before forcing them back altogether, their bodies stumbling a bit and their grins turned upside down in a fierce grimace. "Although I'm not one to talk either since I ditched my girlfriend for a fight against freaks—"
"There are plenty of other examples besides that one, it's just the one that happened in the last twenty minutes," I cut in, lowering my arms and looking at the back of his head with a deadpan expression. Carney scoffed, obviously feeling a little dejected that I wasn't more thankful for his save, yet not at all surprised by my lack in appreciation. I guess it came with me living with him for near sixteen years. I looked from the two men to the remaining man and the woman, both of whom were smirking at the light turn in events. "Before we begin, I'd like to ask a couple more questions just so I know I haven't gone insane," I continued, stepping forward to stand beside Carney, tossing the butcher knife to the other side of the street and far enough away from the somewhat dissolved group and sticking my hand In my pocket, fingers wrapping around my bat in preparation of what was to come next.
"Despite having crossed that line ages ago you still feel the need to validate it?" Carney commented rudely. I ignored him focusing my attention on the woman since she seemed to be the leader of the group. She stared at me, nothing but a small smirk on her painted lips and a slight narrowing of her bright red eyes as she looked me up and down.
Maybe to see if I was serious?
"Fine then, we were meant to be a distraction anyway," she consented, lowering her knife a bit but not putting it away. Carney spoke before I could; asking his own question which, in retrospect, should have been my own considering it was creepy how they showed up out of nowhere.
"What, you were expecting her to get jealous and track you guys down like a dog?" he asked, the simile at the end irking me a bit in spite of the current situation.
"Isn't that obvious? You were bound to notice the love notes we posted all over the internet," she replied, answering my unspoken question rather than Carney's, "It wasn't meant to be a secret after all." She glanced at me, letting her smile deepen into a self satisfied smirk that further irked me.
I gritted my teeth, my eye twitching a bit at having been so easy to predict. "Why are your eyes red? And for that matter, what exactly is "Saika"? Some kind of cult?" I asked her—them…whoever, deciding to get the most basic questions out of the way first.
She grinned more—as if it were even possible as stretched out as it was—and answered with another question. "Why don't you let us cut you and find out?" It seemed obvious from this answer that we would be going round in circles and making no headway.
"Despite popular belief, I'm not a masochist. No matter how many times that bastard Izaya asks me," I said, murmuring the last bit in slight frustration and everlasting irritation that in the last four months, every time I somehow crossed paths with the red-eyed—or more so burgundy-eyed—man, he asked me how I was and followed it quickly with a jibe at me being a masochist. "Now answer the damn question or face the wrath of my ever increasing frustration!" I shouted, extracting my bat with a sharp flick of the wrist, the segments separating and locking into its pipe-like shape.
They stilled, staring at us with bright—yet dull—eyes and frozen smiles, taking in me: a snarl on my face that seemed to almost match threateningly with my bright red hair and a metal pipe by my side, and my brother: a bright red hat sitting dauntingly on his head, his pitch black blade positioned expertly in front of him—I bet he was happy to have some practice on "willing" victims since he turned legal.
"We are Saika. We love humanity. And you will join us so he may follow; either by will or by force," she answered cryptically, the two in front of us twitching back into motion in that somewhat zombie-like fashion that was sure to speed up again. I faltered, wondering what she meant by the last bit before a gleaming black sword literally cut through my vision as Carney swept it in front of me, barring me from taking a step forward. I looked over at him curiously, wondering what the hold-up was before seeing his smiling face—not that it was unusual to see it in this type of situation, it was just smaller than I would have expected.
"So I guess no more questions, huh?"
"…Not for now."
"Good, then remind me of Ma's three rules for combat," he commanded, taking on a more serious demeanor than usual.
I cracked a smile, snickering at the memory of Mom drilling these rules into our heads from an early age. "Yeah yeah, step one: provide adequate distraction. Step two: take advantage of their disadvantage. Step three: show no mercy," I recited habitually, itching to fight now that the opportunity presented itself.
"Oh right. I keep forgetting the first since it seems cowardly, so I'll let you do it," Carney said, taking his hand off the hilt and removing my hat from his head, holding it out for me to take.
"Brat, do I look like a coward to you?" I asked him, reaching across myself to take the hat's brim between my fingers and flicking it sharply at the man closest to me, obscuring his vision for a moment while I took the upper hand, wrapping my fingers tighter around the base of the segmented pipe and bringing it up, the blunt edge connecting with the middle-aged man's jaw and causing his head to snap sharply to the side and stumble back.
Carney—ever the hypocrite—took advantage of the distracted high-schooler, grabbing the hand that held his choice of weapon—a hunting knife judging from the serrated edge—and pulled his arm straight, wrist bent back towards the ground with his inner arm exposed to the sky.
'Shit!' I thought, recognizing the look in his eye and the stance he took: right leg grounded with his left knee perfectly centered underneath the teenager's straightened elbow. "Carney! Nothing that needs more than a few days to heal! Meaning: do not break the poor kid's arm!" I shouted at him, narrowly dodging a sharp jab at my side as the old man regained his footing and lunged low, the tip of the knife ripping through the faux leather of my corset.
I glanced down at the tear briefly, irritated that I was being distracted by low-rank flunkies and the fact that I now had to figure out how to fix this before I was billed for damages. "You're durable," I told the old man, dropping my bat and grabbing the back of his corduroy jacket and forcing him onto his back before stamping my foot down on his wrist, snapping it in the process and making him let go of his shitty pig sticker as he gasped, the air having been knocked out of him and the pain of his broken wrist having just reached his brain. "My clothes, however, are not."
Carney scoffed, probably thinking I was a hypocrite since I caused several weeks of recovery in a simple move. I wouldn't fight the accusation since I had a slight tendency of doing that, but only if he acknowledged the fact that he had a habit of flying off the handle when it suited him. "He who strikes first wins," he said, as if I needed a reminder of one of the few favorite sayings Mom taught us.
"Same goes for "he who laughs last, laughs longest" but there's still no proof that one's better than the other," I shot back, watching silently as Carney abandoned his earlier plan of breaking the kid's arm in half with his knee and instead tossed him over his back and onto the ground. He glanced back at me, looking over my shoulder at the man and woman who continued to stand there before sheathing his sword and jerking his head at the pair. Curiously I looked, hearing a second sickening snapping sound the second I looked away to find no one there. At first I thought that Carney tricked me so he could do as he pleased but when I turned back around to yell at him I saw that he was looking around questioningly, the kid's hunting knife in his hand and his moaning body limp on the asphalt with his right arm bent far above his head.
"D'you think they ran away?" he asked, unsure where they could have gone in the short amount of time we had our backs turned. I looked with him, stooping to pick up my bat and hit the blunt edge once again against the middle-aged man's jaw, still apprehensive whether he would stay down this time or not.
"Was it necessary to dislocate his arm?" I asked him, paying no mind to his search as I walked closer to inspect the damage.
"I don't appreciate strangers trying to slice and dice my sister. Sorry if I'm not as forgiving as you," he said sarcastically, putting his search on hold to look over my own work with slight amusement. I scowled, trying to weigh which was worse in my mind until I saw slight movement beside the car we going to "borrow". "Anyway, where did those two go?" he asked, looking over the three on the ground before looking back over to the place the group had first appeared from.
I ignored him and walked over to the car, looking over the edges cautiously so nothing would pop up and surprise me with a fucking knife through my neck…it's possible that I've been watching too many horror movies with Colm in his preparations of his dates with Nanako.
"Dunno…but get your sword out anyway, you're making me nervous and I dislike the feeling," I told him getting down on my knees beside the front tire to check under the car. There was no way in hell I was leaving this car alone until I was sure nothing was going to stab me in the face. "Carney?" I called aloud when I didn't hear him grumble or mumble or retort something snarky. I detached my face from the asphalt and peeked over the top of the car to see what Carney was up to and instead found no one—no one standing and conscious at least.
"Carney, I swear if this is some kind of joke I'll kill you," I called out, standing up and brushing my pants off as best as I could with my plaster covered arm, looking up and down the street for the pests.
"Tch, please. Give me some credit, Amai, I know when a situation is too serious for bullshit," he suddenly spoke up from behind me, causing me to jump in fright and swing my bat around haphazardly before recognizing the sudden sound as Carney. He caught the bar deftly in a steel grip looking at it with unimpressed eyes before dropping it, letting it fall back to the ground with a metallic clang.
"Well with you one can never tell," I retorted, getting back on my hands and knees to inspect the underneath of the car before standing back up, confirming that what I might have seen was my own eyes playing tricks on me.
"Touché, but when the situation involves people who seem to be under some type of hypnosis even I have boundaries," he answered, before adding a small yet alarming piece of news, "Oh, and the tall guy from before and the butcher knife disappeared, so we should probably be on high alert for that."
"No shit, Sherlock. Did you forget to knock the guy out before coming to my "rescue"?" I quipped, annoyed that he had forgotten something so basic it was almost sad.
"I did."
The sentence was almost unbelievable because of two reasons. The first was how he could have possibly knocked him out in the short amount of time it had also taken him to cross ten feet to stand directly in front of me and unsheathe Kuroshi to defend me. The second was fairly obvious, if he had knocked him out, then where was he? Where did he go? What was this vice-like grip around my ankle…!
"SHIT!" I yelled, my leg falling out from under me as the hand jerked it under the car, causing me to drop to the ground like a heavy stone and hit the back of my head against the pavement covered sidewalk. For the first time since autumn set in I saw stars in the sky, bright, multi-colored stars that were way too close. "Fucking surprise zombie bastards!" I shouted, shaking my leg to get the offending hand off, only to see a pair of glowing red eyes and the missing tall man's grinning face as he dragged me under the car.
"Holy crap!" Carney shouted, dropping his sword on the ground to grab my arms, pulling me in the opposite direction and nearly wrenching my arms out of their sockets. "Amai, do something useful and kick him in the face!" he instructed.
Yeah, like that thought hadn't crossed my mind a few dozen times, not to mention that since his nose looked flatter than it should be with a few dozen lacerations—the possible result of having his face smudged against the pavement—kicking him wouldn't do much. Although even if I were to kick him, it was kind of hard to do when the red-eyed freak grabbed my other leg and pulled me harder, jerking me out of Carney's—apparently weak—grip and under the car completely.
"How could he possibly love you? What is there to love about you?" he asked me, the edge of his butcher knife held against my neck while his other arm restrained upper body from lashing out against him. I stared at him like he was insane. Love? How can he possibly talk about love when he has a knife against my throat?
"Why don't you answer that question yourself since you were spouting plenty of crap before!" I snarled at him, angry that my bat was out of reach and these bastards kept popping up out of nowhere. He smirked, the knife pressing against my neck moving to my shoulder.
"You're human so we love you, but your personality is less than desirable—" he explained, surprise filling his face for a moment at some outside cause. "What the…" he murmured, his face turning away to look at whatever was outside the car and the blade lifting slightly from my bare skin, no longer a threat for the time being. I looked at him curiously, wondering what got him so distracted before he suddenly disappeared from beside me, his knife and his nails scratching the asphalt as he clawed to escape whatever was dragging him out.
Trying to see what had happened to him, I wriggled my body until I was somewhat parallel to him, seeing, with disappointment, the strange man's somewhat prone body and a pair of legs standing above him. The man began to snicker, looking up at Carney amusedly—at least I think it was Carney depending on the scuffed up pair of combat boots. I second later the man went limp with his head thrown to the side, the cause being my metal bat that now rested against the car door and my younger brother who was kneeling on the ground.
He reached under the car and I felt another pressure around my ankle while I briefly lamented that in the last five minutes I somehow turned into a ragdoll. Again I was pulled by my legs out from under the car, the various tubes and machinery of the car was traded in for the dark, bleak sky boarded by various sized buildings and the red tipped, black hair of my younger brother as he stared down at me with an annoyed expression.
"You realize this isn't a horror movie, right?" he asked me, pulling me up to my feet and leaving me to dust myself off while he went around the front of the car to retrieve his sword. I sneered at his back before looking down at the tall stranger, his face more battered now than it had before, before looking over at the old man and the teenager, making sure they were where we had left them.
"We haven't checked the alley yet, the other two might be hiding there," Carney continued, fixing his sword at his belt before walking back over to me, stooping down quickly to grab the man's collar and haul him off to the sidewalk, leaving him drop unceremoniously before going back for the old man. I copied him, going over to the teenager—who was still whimpering a bit due to his dislocated arm, and dragged him by the collar of his uniform jacket, depositing him more gently than my apathetic brother.
"You take the right, I'll take the left. Keep your ass covered," I told him, scooping my hat up off the ground where I had left it in my skirmish and slapping it against my thigh to get whatever shit there was off of it before slipping it onto my head.
"Keep your own ass covered. I don't wanna play hero if it's not gonna get me anything," Carney bit back, throwing me my weapon before brushing past me to the mouth of the alley.
"What if I bribed you?" I asked him, walking up beside him and staring into the dark alley.
"Sure, buy me a beer when this is over so I can forget I can forget I'm stuck doing this on a Friday night," he bargained, reaching into his pocket and taking out his keys, separating from the cut metal a small flashlight before turning it on with small audible click and shining the weak beam on the objects nearest to him.
"Are you legal?"
"No," he replied, walking a bit away from me to inspect a dumpster while I looked back the way we had come to make sure nothing was going to jump us.
"Do you have your fake ID?" I asked him, stopping when I thought I noticed something move by the corner of the alley. Maybe it was just my eyes tricking me again.
"He's living in the barn and still he finds my fake ID. The old man is skilled. Depressed, but skilled," he said, irritation coating his voice as I retraced my steps cautiously, not wanting the last time I thought I saw something to happen again.
"Hey Carney, get over here," I hissed, hearing definite footsteps around the corner of the entrance. He didn't answer immediately so I called him again, this time getting an answer in the form of a question.
"The people we're looking for are the body-builder and the woman, right?" he asked.
"Yeah. What, you forget or something?" I whispered, turning back to see what he was doing. Surprise and severe disappointment filled my vision as I took in the image of my brother—also annoyed—standing very still with a knife at his throat, the muscular zombie man standing behind him with a smirk on his face. "…I don't think Dad being skilled has anything to do with you having your ID taken," I told him blankly, the threat the man was giving me stalling any actions I would have taken.
"This one kind of got away from me," he replied, the grip he had on the handle of his katana tight, turning his knuckles white in the near darkness, "probably because I'm out of practice." As he was talking, the footsteps I heard earlier came closer to stand behind me. Without even looking I knew they had a large, creepy smile on their face and a knife at their side.
"Let's talk, Amai Tachibana, since regular methods don't seem to be getting through to you," the woman said, slight irritation in her voice.
"You all had the opportunity to talk before all this shit started, but you lost that chance," I told her, my own grip tightening on my bat as I looked back at her, watching my brother out of the corner of my eye.
"Then let's start over," she began, placing her hand on my shoulder and using her knife to point at Carney, "You and I are going to have a little chat, and if you don't, we'll make your brother one of us before you have a chance to save him," she bargained, ticking my last nerve. Scoffing, I nodded my consent, letting her turn me back towards the street and steer me away from the duo.
"Feicfidh mé a thabhairt duit cúig nóiméad a shórtáil seo amach duit féin," I said, watching Carney bob his head once in understanding, a grim expression on his face.
"What did you say to him?" she asked me, looking back him curiously, suspicious.
"Just to not do anything stupid so I won't get a fucking knife in my back," I lied when in reality I was planning to give him five minutes to sort his mess out himself. I followed her around the corner, stopping a few feet away from the mouth of the alley when she did and waited for her to say whatever it was that she wanted to say.
"To answer your first question, we are Saika, Saika is a blade in love with humanity and we are her children, born from the fear implanted in the people cut by mother. I trust this explanation should be simple enough to understand," she explained with a smirk, the penknife in her hand ever present as a reminder.
I bit the inside of my cheek before replying curtly, "I'm not an idiot, I just don't care anymore about what you are." It wasn't exactly a lie, but neither was it the truth, because while it was interesting to know the specifics, it wasn't what was important to me right now. "Why exactly do you love Shizuo?"
There was no hesitation before she answered; it was like she was waiting to explain the reasoning behind their obsession. "Because he's strong. That preposterous strength of his. The absolute extreme of human possibility, the most instinctual and violent strength imaginable. That's what we want. We want to rule all of humanity. And to do that, we need excellent offspring. Such as powerful specimens like him. Don't humans try to leave behind the best possible genes for the future?"
Love. What a fucking joke. "More than love, it sounds like you want to control him like a puppet or a remote control car," I replied, making light of their supposed love. Her reaction was obvious since I basically insulted their love, her face squished into a scowl and her hand gripped the knife tighter as she raised her voice.
"That's not true! Not control, we will possess him, he will be ours, he will be one of us!" she started rambling.
"You make your group sound like a cult, and your love, pft!" I said, laughing a bit at how she had phrased it, "don't get me started on superficial and shallow it sounds. Love? You make him sound like a toy." She screamed, lunging at me with the blade directed at my abdomen. If there was one thing I was good at, it was aggravating people to a certain point, the point here being that she wanted to stab me regardless of her earlier request to make me "one of them". This time I was ready and dropped the bat, leaving it to hit the concrete with a loud metallic clang as I grabbed her outstretched wrist, pulling her towards me a step sooner than she had originally intended and triggering her surprise as I grinned psychopathically at her before pushing her into the neighboring wall, my cast pressed against her neck with her knife wielding arm held tightly against the stone.
"Listen and listen well because I'm only going to say this once: fuck you and fuck your cult-like group of red-eyed bitches. I will never let you get the drop on me. I will never let you take Shizuo from me. I will never let you forget the reason why: you're not capable of loving him because you only love one aspect of him—" I said, my tone growing darker and more threatening with each word that passed through my lips, and my attitude growing more and more lethal until she so rudely interrupted me.
"Hypocrite. We know what you said earlier to that reporter. You love his strength as much as we do," she replied with enough nerve to smile mockingly at me, like she caught me in a lie or like she had found a loophole.
My eyes narrowed to slits before I smiled back at her, hissing my acknowledgement of her words. "That may be true since his power is something to be admired, but my love isn't limited to his strength, it's everything that makes him the Shizuo I know. And as bitchy as this may sound, with your shallow love you'll never understand him, you'll never truly love him, and you'll never capture his love." I tightened my grip on her wrist making her gasp out in pain, yet still she held the knife, as if it were a lifeline.
"How do you know? All it takes is one cut, one simple millimeter and he'll be one of us. Besides, you act as if you're more worthy of his love than we are…but he's already accepted our love! So what is there to love about you?! What could he possibly love about you?!" she screamed, baring her teeth like a wild animal as she fought back against my hold.
I shook her hand, trying to get her to lose her grip on the little knife and succeeding when it finally fell to the ground. Using my foot I kicked it away, the thin knife skidding to the middle of the entrance of the alley where my brother emerged just in time to stop it with his foot, stepping on it and breaking the blade in half.
"Hey, you almost done here?" he asked me, tears and blood strewn across his sweatshirt with the blade of his katana resting against his shoulder, its long edge dripping fresh blood.
"Almost, I just have to deliver the closing speech," I told him, directing my attention back to the struggling brunette looking at us with wide red eyes. "For yours and my brother's benefit, I'll paraphrase what I was going to say," I began, looking her dead in the eyes and daring her to interrupt me, "I don't like people trying to use my brother as a hostage. I don't like it when those same people try to stab me, and I especially don't like it when I see on my favorite chat room, proclamations of love for and plans on stealing my boyfriend! I'm going to let you go now, and if you feel like you have a chance of beating us both in a fight when four others couldn't then bring it, otherwise I suggest you start running."
I let go of her hand and back off of her, the texture imprint on her neck visible due to how hard I had it against her neck. She stared at me hard, her eyes filled with something akin to utter hatred—a total contrast to her earlier claim of love. She glanced briefly at Carney with the same look of derision and took in the long blade with its thin coating of red liquid before making a definite decision to flee. It was the proper choice seeing as it was two against one against people who didn't mind cheating to get the upper hand.
For a moment we watched her retreating back until it became a small blot against the background. By then any fight I had left in me drained out like water down the drain—although maybe that was the adrenaline I had coursing through my veins—as I recalled her earlier words. He had accepted their love. What did that mean? Did he love them back? Or did he just take them at face value, hollow words that he just wanted to hear?
"So Amai, do you still feel like going to the park? Or has this shit worn you out yet?" Carney asked, interrupting my trepidation that my love alone wasn't enough. I didn't answer him beyond picking up my collapsible bat and forcing it into its smaller, more travel friendly size—the deep gouge Carney made going through the middle of it making it slightly hard to do, but I didn't bug him about it, it was just a sure sign that his was a quality weapon. After stuffing it into my pocket I started walking in the same direction the woman had run off in, not stopping when Carney jogged to my side and put a hand on my shoulder.
"Hey Amai, where are you going?" he asked me, his hand slipping from my shoulder as I walked faster down the street.
"To embrace the oldest of Irish stereotypes," I replied, trying to remember which street to turn on while Carney asked me jokingly,
"I thought we just did that?"
"I mean the other one," I said with a sigh, finding the street leading into the middle of Ikebukuro and turning down it, hoping to find a good bar that was open past one in the morning.
"Can I come with?" he asked me, like he needed permission to do something he was going to do anyway.
"You sure? Setsuko might get mad if you ditch her longer than necessary," I told him, glancing at his slightly worn-out figure.
"If she's mad she tends to stay that way for awhile, so it's no big deal or anything," he said, removing Kuroshi from his belt and slipping the length of it into the back of his sweatshirt, flipping the hood up to cover the hilt and most of his hair, trying to look less conspicuous than he already did with his ripped and blood-speckled sweatshirt—good thing it was black, the blood nearly blended in, which reminded me.
"You okay? You didn't get scratched or anything, did you?" I asked him, making sure my brother didn't turn into a brainless puppet. He smirked, grabbing the bottom edge of his sweatshirt and plain undershirt and pulling it up to his pectorals, showing me his tanned, flawless underbelly and, upon seeing his wiry frame, commenting to myself the fact that he seemed to make cinnamon bun cakes vanish into thin air whenever he swallowed.
"All knife and no technique, he kept ruining my clothes whenever he got close enough," he answered, putting his clothes back down, covering his upper body when the chill night air got to be too much and rubbing his hands together. "You okay? I haven't seen you this dejected since officer what's-his-face dumped you like three years ago," he asked, one of his eyebrows rising in rare slight concern for my wellbeing.
I shrugged in response, finding with small delight a small bar with a somewhat warm interior. "It's nothing a small round of binge-drinking can't cure. Come on, I'll buy you a beer and let you vent about Dad living in the barn," I told him. He smiled widely, either because he could vent or because I was buying I wasn't exactly sure, before grabbing my arm and dragging me into the bar I was eyeing, sitting us down at the bar and getting us started on a couple hours of drinking. While the golden rule my Dad taught us stood at the forefront of my mind, I ignored it, choosing instead to let the alcohol rule my mind for a few hours before going home for the night. The only issue that remained was which house I was going back to for the night, but that question disappeared as soon as the first mug of frothy beer hit my lips and the second the cheap taste touched my tongue. It was going to be a while before this stuff got me buzzed.
DRRR!
I blinked slowly, eyes straining in the darkness as I looked blankly at the TV, its screen showing some late night drama rerun. I turned my eyes slowly away from the bright screen to look around my surroundings, finding, with no surprise, that I was inside Shizuo's apartment. I turned back to the TV, watching it for a moment with dull understanding and slight recognition.
My mouth felt dry and as I licked my lips I found them to be dry as well—the price of drinking cheap beer I guess—and found with delight a glass of water sitting on the coffee table in front of me. Prying myself from the wall and hesitating a bit as a small headache started and, for some reason, a sharp sting on my ass, I grabbed the water, downing half the glass before allowing myself a breath. I set the glass down and slowly stood up, stumbling when a sudden dizziness hit me and catching myself against the table, noticing for the first time a piece of paper with an explanation on it. I squinted in the low light, trying to read its contents before giving up and straightening out of my bent over position to go turn on a light, instantly knowing I would regret it.
"Shizuo? You back yet?" I called out quietly, opening the bedroom door and finding in the near darkness a bed whose occupant was much too small to be the man I was looking for. "Time?" I asked aloud, closing the door and zeroing in on the blinking light on the microwave, finding that barely two hours had passed since my—now bad—decision to binge drink my troubles away. "Light, light," I mumbled, grouping the wall by the door for a few minutes until they flicked on, the sudden brightness causing me to curse repeatedly as I shielded my eyes and carefully walked back to the coffee table, stooping down—and feeling again a sharp pain on my ass—to grab the note, reading it's words quietly to myself:
"Dear Amai, next time you decide to get wasted, make sure it's with someone who won't let you do stupid stuff. If you haven't found out yet, I'll tell you now. You got a tattoo, that's right, you are now two-for-two in stupid decisions for tattoo designs, but I won't judge. Anyway, since you seemed adamant to stay over at the blonde's, I'm leaving you here and going back to the gay club for Setsuko. Don't do anything stupid. Signed, Carney. P.S. I pinned an "if lost" note to you in case you leave the apartment. See you tomorrow."
'At least he has the decency to leave me a note,' I thought, my nose scrunching up at the thought that I now, officially, had a tattoo on my ass. I could only hope that it wasn't a stupid design, but for now I wouldn't worry about it, I'd focus instead on the fact that it hurt like a son of a bitch. Dropping the note and leaving it to flutter harmlessly to the ground, I picked up the half empty glass of water and went to the refrigerator, pulling open the door to the freezer and taking out a tray of ice and breaking it against the small counter, grabbing a small, unused rag and wrapping the ice in it. After that I turned on the tap, refilling my glass, turned off the light, and took the ice bundle and my water back to the area I woke up in.
"Wonder where Shizuo is," I asked myself quietly, removing my vest and inching my pants down to my thighs, sitting down against the wall carefully and setting the chill make-shift bag against my butt as I settled myself in to watch the drama for a couple hours, or until my butt stopped hurting and my head stopped pounding a deep, slow beat.
It wasn't long until both pains eventually dulled—but since I wasn't paying attention the time it could have been an hour for all I knew, and by then I was half asleep and ready to drift off until I heard a pair of heavy footsteps approach the front door, the click and turn of the deadbolt causing me to wake up a bit more, waiting like an eager—yet sleepy—puppy for Shizuo to walk through the door. When he finally did he had a smile on his face, which quickly dropped a bit when he found me sitting near the corner of his living room, a wet bag of ice held against my butt and an empty glass in my hand.
"What happened to you?" he asked me, closing the door behind him and turning on the light, making me wince once again at the sudden brightness that brought most of my headache back. When I found the courage to open my eyes, I found myself asking him the same when I found his beloved bartending suit torn all to hell and his face marred by thin scratches.
He looked down at himself, as if he had just noticed this and replied with a curt response. "Something great." I nodded, wondering if I should push the subject of let it fizzle and die for the time being. I chose the latter, more interested in sleeping off my hangover for the time being. "Hangover?" he guessed, walking towards the table and picking up the note I had left there, reading it to himself before glancing down at the wet bundle I held against my butt, most of my ass and panties wet because of the melting ice. "Another tattoo? What's this one of?" he asked me, the tips of his ears growing pink as he turned his eyes away from my butt, trying not to stare at the other part that were left exposed.
I shrugged nonchalantly, looking up at him with soft, tired eyes. "Not sure, I'll see what it is in the morning and decide if I want it removed or not," I told him, setting the glass down beside and laying my hand in my lap, folding my legs in half in a somewhat defensive position. "So…so did something…did anything particular happen tonight? You got back pretty late, so I was just wondering…" I said, hesitating several times as I struggled through the parts of my brain that were still a bit inebriated.
He stood still for a moment, smiling a bit more before at some hidden memory before dropping to his knees in front of me, his arms encircling me and pulling me against him, my knees touching the floor as I was pulled out of my folded position. I was momentarily stunned, not sure what to do beyond letting him bury his face against my neck and hair and taking pleasure from the warm breath that touched my bare skin.
"Tell me you love me." His voice was muffled and hard to hear against my neck and I had to ask him what he said, just to make sure that I heard him correctly.
"What?"
"I've heard it a lot tonight, so I want to hear it from someone who matters," he said, explaining his reason behind why he wanted me to say it. "Tell me you love me," he repeated, detaching himself from my neck and unwrapping his arms from my back to hold my head between his hands, his face no more than a couple inches from mine as his brown eyes watched my lips, watched them intently as I opened my mouth once and twice, biting my lip as I tried to figure out what to say, how to say it, and if I should at this particular moment.
Wasn't it just a few hours ago that that strange woman had told me that he had accepted their love? If that was true, then should I say it? Would he just simply accept it like he did theirs?
No. Shizuo wasn't like that, and like he said, he had heard it a lot tonight, and those people didn't mean anything. He wanted to hear it from me. Someone that matters.
"…Tá mé i ngrá leat," I whispered, speaking in my second language—the result of my nerves wearing down at me at such an important moment, because although I did love him, I had never told him so. And now that I thought about it, I had never said aloud to any of the men I had been with that I loved them, the result being that Shizuo was special.
"What?" he asked me, confusion lacing his voice and features as his eyes flicked up to mine.
"Tá mé i ngrá leat," I said again, louder and more sure of myself than before. The confusion stayed clear on his face, and I smiled to myself, holding back a laugh at the adorkable expression. "Tá mé i ngrá leat, Shizuo," I said again, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing my lips to his in a quick kiss that turned into a deep, passionate one once he finally what I was saying, his fingers twisting into my hair as he held me against him for a few more seconds before releasing me.
I opened my eyes a bit, seeing his own heavy-lidded, his cheeks flushed a pale pink with slight red lines crossing them—the result of a dozen or so knives I'm assuming—and his lips slightly parted. I could only imagine what I looked like. "I love you too, Amai."
"Tá mé i ngrá leat, Shizuo."
"I'm in love with you, Shizuo."
