Chapter 38
Loaded Knick-Knacks (I)

When Aizawa answered the phone, his greeting gruff and unwelcoming in its shortness, there was only the feeble silence of static in return. He hadn't happened to glance over the time. However, no signs of light oozed through the bedroom curtains and no noise in the form of prattling or traffic rung itself from outside the apartment. Late into the night? Early Sunday morning? Aizawa's body sank in upon itself, ready to fall back into the isolated comfort of sleep; but at last, there appeared a voice on the other end and Aizawa was jolted into awareness once again.

'Aizawa-sensei-san!' Whether surprised or distraught or excited, it was hard to say. 'Oh! How good to have you on the phone! It's Rin's grandmother.'

It had only been hours, but the sound of her name – single syllable, fold and flatten of the tongue, the movement of it daring and heartbreaking against the bedroom's empty hush – made Aizawa ache as though she'd been gone for days now. "Hello Sasaki-san," he said, voice harshly flat. "I'm sorry to be so blunt, but if you're looking for Rin–"

'Actually!' Rin's grandmother cried, 'I only wanted to tell her good morning ~ she's never slept too well and can be rather grumpy in the early hours. I try to cheer her up where I can! Though she's been very spry the last few weeks whenever I've called…' Something like a hum resonated over the line. Before Aizawa could interrupt her – not that he entirely wanted to, for the recognisably airheaded chatter was irresistible while also being gut-wrenching – she continued with more focused vigour, 'Oh! Listen to me. I'm babbling! I was looking for Rin, but I've actually been hoping to speak with you for some time now, Aizawa-sensei-san.'

"Me?" Despite his lethargy, his miserable detachment, Aizawa's voice quavered in uncertainty, "What about?"

A disturbance on the other end inspired a muffled series of somethings. A heavy drop. A gravelly murmur, followed by Rin's grandmother's own whispers from which Aizawa could just make out 'No, no, my dearest. It's still dark out' and 'Put your slippers back on, darling.' Then with more clarity, back into the speaker once again, she said, 'I wanted to ask for an honest answer about Rin ~ you must know how she is, she never wants to worry anybody with anything…' Oh, how badly Aizawa wished he didn't know it. That he didn't know it with enough vivid intimacy to writhe at the very thought. 'But she does worry me. Sometimes I wonder about all this hero work she's been doing ~ she's a little too clever for her own good, and doesn't really have a heart for big, bad things.' A meaningful pause, and then a distant thought spoken aloud, 'Her mother was just the same.'

Aizawa just about winced, making an attempt to interrupt, "Sasaki-san–"

But Rin's grandmother cut him short, 'Anyway! If there was anyone in this world Rin would talk to, it would be you.' Aizawa could have screamed, could have pounded his head into the wall for all the spontaneous welling of frustration. 'And since Rin's still staying with you ~ she told me her wound hasn't been healing properly, that silly girl ~ anyway, since she's still staying with you I thought perhaps you'd be able to tell me if… well, if she's okay.'

There were any number of things Aizawa could have told Sasaki Akane – that Rin was far from okay and he was far from okay and he had never in his life put up with so much shit from another person for the simple reason that they were beautiful in an inexplicable multitude of ways and that, with the entirety of his being, he wanted nothing more than to forget anything had ever happened between them. But he'd already forgotten once, apparently, and along that same vein he couldn't bear the thought that he'd lost her before and would lose her again. Again. Rin! Why would she do all of this only to run away? Why did he allow her to do so?

All too grossly convoluted and illogical, Aizawa could find no words to answer Rin's grandmother with. The cellphone burned against his ear, demanding conversation. His self-loathing and disgrace – if only he'd just been rational from the start, if he'd only done what he always did and had not allowed his heart to best him at whatever game they'd decided to play – squeezed at him from the inside out. He fought down the bile in his throat. He felt something inside of himself die and rot and bloom and die again.

The other end of the line rattled and scrunched, the sound like dry leaves being crushed. Rin's grandmother said softly, 'Aizawa-sensei-san? Did…' She paused for breath, perhaps considering her words. 'Is Rin alright? Is she there?'

"Sasaki-san," Aizawa muttered, curling over himself as though he were wilting. He pressed one hand to his forehead, elbow leaning upon his knee. "I need to ask you something."

No reply.

"A while ago, when you and I first spoke over the phone, you said something – you said I brought Rin back to you." It sent a chilly wave of nausea, a terrible foreboding, up Aizawa's spine. Over the phone, he heard Rin's grandmother make a thoughtful noise and, affirmed, he pressed onwards, "What did you mean by that?"

'Uh–' Sasaki Akane seemed to hesitate, and Aizawa almost couldn't stomach the weight of the silence that followed. Even in its shortness, no more than some seconds, he cringed inwardly any number of times. As though in shame. As though in pain. 'Give me a moment.' A moment passed. In it, Aizawa could make out more murmurs and rustlings – 'Don't worry, my love. No, don't get up. I'll only be a minute, you don't have to come with me' – and then a dull thump like a door being closed. With a slightly echoing quality, perhaps because she was standing in a bathroom, Rin's grandmother spoke with a thrown quietness, 'Aizawa-san?'

"Yes," he grunted, the hairs on his neck pricking upwards. "I'm still here."

'Don't you remember what happened?'

"There are a lot of things I don't remember, Sasaki-san," Aizawa said. "Now's not the time for me to explain that though." For the simple reason that he couldn't – wrapping his head around the whole thing still caused him sheer agony – and even if he could explain, he didn't want to.

Rin's grandmother offered nothing in the way of words for a short while, only sighing over the line. Then slowly, gnawing on the answer before offering it up, she said, 'They gave the whole thing some silly name. The something-something case, I can't remember exactly ~ but there were apparently ten to twenty children just… locked up in some warehouse outside Tokyo… Surely you must remember that?'

Aizawa wanted desperately to say yes. But he said nothing at all. Not so much as the slightest sound.

'The police said the children were going to be shipped off,' Rin's grandmother continued with a certain resignation. 'It was too awful. How anyone could do that to children… I couldn't understand it. And Rin! She'd run away. Oh god, it took months before she told us why. That her mother–' A sharp pause, followed by a whimper. Aizawa listened guiltily as the woman drew a ragged breath, willing her to continue despite the effects. 'She said a man plucked her off from the street, promised food and somewhere warm for her to stay. But then – well, yes…'

"How was I involved in any of this?"

'Are you quite sure you don't remember, Aizawa-san? Rin said–'

"I'm quite sure."

Aizawa imagined her biting her lip, or tapping her fingers agitatedly as Rin would do. Sasaki Akane heaved another breath, the labored quality making Aizawa feel selfish and embarrassed – but still he did nothing to emancipate the woman, waiting expectantly for her answers though he was unprepared for them when they did at last come. 'You rescued her. Rin. And the other children. You and the man she works for now.'

"Doctor Voodoo," Aizawa clarified, only just managing to maintain the reserve in his voice while a dreadful darkness welled within his chest.

'Yes,' Rin's grandmother said cautiously. 'I never did like the sound of him though. Rin didn't say so, but I'm certain she didn't want to take that job at his agency ~ she felt obliged, I'm sure. Trapped even, after all the attention he paid her while she was in high school.' Aizawa swore he heard her scoff. 'And then there was that other young man… Oh, what was his name again? Something with a K? He was there too, at the warehouse-rescue. And when she got older he wouldn't leave her alone, was always sending bouquets of paper flowers and origami and the like when she came home during the holidays. It was charming, in a way, but Rin's grandfather said from the start he was questionable. After all, he was a good eleven or twelve years older than her. Men like that should have no business wooing high school girls ~ but Rin liked him, and that girl just doesn't know how to say no…'

It left Aizawa miserably dizzy and ill. Nothing came as a surprise anymore, but instead hammered into him with destructive intention. Indeed, he remembered working with Doctor Voodoo in his days as a debuting hero, but the memory was abstract and left itself largely unacknowledged in the back of Aizawa's mind. Now too, there was Paper Cut. Kizashi – with his supposed paper flowers and origami and venom. Fucking Paper Cut. What sort of snaking influence did he have over Rin in high school? What sort of things had happened right under Aizawa's nose? He couldn't stand to hear anything else. But he needed to know more, needed to make sense of the questions that knifed him.

"Did Rin ever mention having nightmares?"

'Well, not to us,' Sasaki Akane admitted. 'But soon before Satsu… Before her mother died... She, Satsu, my daughter, would sometimes call us in the middle of the night to say Rin was screaming in her sleep. She refused to allow Rin to come stay with us even though that household was no place for a little girl.'

"Do you know what sort of things were making her so upset?"

'Besides everything going on with her mother… dogs, apparently. She dreamed a lot about dogs barking at her.' Worked up, Rin's grandmother cleared her throat. 'We got her a kitten when she came to stay with us after everything ~ pet therapy, supposedly. She'd never go to sleep without having Blink on the bed with her, and it apparently did help.' Suddenly perking up, Aizawa was surprised to hear Sasaki Akane giggle. The youthful, pastel giggle so familiar. 'She said she named that cat after you. For a long time, Eraser Head was the only thing we ever heard about. Eraser Head says this and Eraser Head did that.'

"I…" Aizawa's heart rose into his head and fell again into the depths of his stomach. "I see." What had Eraser Head said to that little girl? What had he done? All of this. All of this knotted poetry. What sorts of things had lead to it? Coiling ever deeper into himself, Aizawa dreaded the pain that was certain to arrive at any moment. More than that, he resisted the desire to scream as a long-forgotten tension throbbed around his throat. It was an aching he hadn't felt since Shirakumo. Something he had hoped to never feel again – but now Rin was gone and there were no answers to be had and, quite unfathomably, Aizawa was almost sure he'd lost an entire piece of his soul.

Just what sorts of things had the past versions of him felt for the past versions of Rin?

'Aizawa-san?'

"Mmm?"

'Has something happened?' So much. Too much. 'To our granddaughter, I mean?'

Aizawa didn't know what sort of answer to give, but to say nothing seemed cruel in grotesque proportions. Like leaving an arrow, whose tip was poisoned and splintering, in the wound. So in spite of himself, in spite of his almost callous honesty, he sighed and said with trained but strained distance, "Rin's fine. She's still sleeping." Fuck, it hurt. "I'll tell her you called." It was going to hurt even more when Rin never called back.

Not sounding convinced, her grandmother cooed, 'Oh ~ oh, alright. Please do tell her that her grandfather and old Blink say hello too! And that we love her.'

"I will."

'Thank you, Aizawa-sensei-san.'

"Shouta."

A surprised hush. 'Pardon me?'

And then Aizawa hung up, dropping the phone next to himself upon the bed and leaning both elbows onto his knees. Burying his face into his palms, not fully aware of the scratch of stubble nor the hot, draining wetness down his cheeks. It hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It hurt to miss Rin like he was missing organs – indeed, everything inside of him seemed to tumble in an uncontrollable confusion, and no amount of rationality would help him now.

Sasaki Akane had told him enough and nothing. Her words replayed themselves in a jumbled haze at the back of his mind, fading out into a sick montage of colour and burning images: the something-something incident, in all its unknowable singularity,and paper flowers with blood-tipped edges, and dogs hunting down a little girl with bare feet and white hair, and Blink the cat. Blink the cat, somehow named after Aizawa. It should all have meant something more to him than simply being a collection of excruciatingly loaded knick-knacks. Memorabilia from a past-life not his own. What had Rin done to him? Why had she made it so easy for these things to slip from his grasp?

They were right there, poised upon knife's edge at the very edge of his mind. Poised, and guarded well by a maniacal quirk – but waiting, waiting to fall back into place.

The grounded, more level-headed side of Aizawa demanded that he stand and do something. Absolutely anything to get the truth. And weakly, he did stand; he did shuffle out from the bedroom's stifling stillness to look for his car keys and lock-picking tools. However, the other half of him, the part fattened and dazed by the disaster of his feelings for Rin, made his limbs drag. Made him weak with the few memories he did have of her – the taste of red wine that night they'd first kissed, and her doodles on his mark schemes, and the sweet yelps of irritation when she'd ditzily walked into furniture. Moments of nothing. Things that meant everything.

A/N: MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY! xxx