"Do you really believe you'll be able to lock those doors and get out of my reach before I get to the other side of this counter?"
The trembling woman froze, her knee hovering tentatively, mere inches from the switch that would spell the end of the line; and Harumi knew it.
"I didn't think so," Harumi continued, surprising even herself as she slipped so naturally into character," You have a choice then - either walk out now and save your skin or, perform the police's duty for them and lock those doors. But what then? You'll be trapped in here with me. And if you've even been half-listening over the last minute, I'm sure you'll have more than a clue as to why that would be a very bad thing for you."
Harumi took a steady step forward, forcing a suggestive grin despite the nausea in her throat.
The terrified rabbit kept her teary eyes, enlarged by the thick lenses, transfixed on Harumi's hands as she scooped up the scattered loose change so craftily bestowed on her in lieu of precious banknotes. Suddenly, she didn't feel so crafty, nor in control.
"I'm not telling you to do anything. The choice is entirely yours." Harumi finished.
The past fifty years of the tired woman's life rolled past her eyes as a translucent film tinged with sepia; Harumi's image slipped neatly behind. She saw her life; her husband, her two daughters, her four grandkids, three boys and one girl; all the result of her sensible decisions. Yes, the sensible decisions she had made and she alone. Consciously, she would make another sensible decision. Control returned to the woman.
She lowered her knee and straightening her leg, turned from the polite young lady who happened to be a notorious criminal, and started walking. She felt the soles of her sensible shoes push back reassuringly against her feet as she left her sensible shop and her sensible livelihood. The misty street greeted her calmly. Yes, this was the sensible decision. She vanished into the night.
Harumi gaped as the automatic doors met with a soft hiss, once more distorting the misty evening behind thick glass.
She was a better actor than she thought. But how much time would her little act buy her? Not much.
Harumi took another step forward; this one wasn't so steady, her firing nerves now made her legs feel as useful as jellied eels. Another step and she stumbled, narrowly catching the cool plywood of the countertop before she fell. Harumi glared at the rippling black and white of the checked floor; it's sheen nauseating. She was back aboard Takamoto's boat. She began to take deep breaths, just like Mei had suggested to whenever the seasickness came on too strong.
She had planned for something like this, the very night before she set out on the journey. She had considered a great many things. Perhaps she had only considered. But that said, she had at least accepted the probability, had she not? Whatever consequences befell her, she had sworn to accept them all if they would bring Yuzu even an inch closer to home. But this was different; her fears were alive now, and kicking valiantly. This was a whole other beast. Deep breaths, deep breaths, just like Mei sai -
Mei? Mei! Yes, she knew all about what Mei had to say - that goddamn murderer who started all this run and hide shit. If it wasn't for her - if it wasn't for her - no. This wasn't her fault. Goddamnit listen to yourself Harumin, when did you start the blame game? Focus.
Harumi gripped the wood until her knuckles were white.
No, Mei wasn't just some cutthroat infatuated with fueling her own gains, the past week and a half had demonstrated that clearly. She had been wrong about her.
Harumi eased her grip.
Mei had agreed, wordlessly, to become a lamb primed for slaughter. Mei had unhesitatingly saved Harumi's life at the risk of her own. Mei had saved Shinobu's life. Mei wouldn't even condemn her when Harumi decided to make her the victim of her rage, but instead - consoled her. The sudden loss of control still haunted Harumi. She still couldn't comprehend Mei's unthinkable reaction. Even now, she hadn't settled on how this made her feel. But, now wasn't the time for sorting out her feelings. Mei was her friend, a stellar friend at that. She felt confident enough to admit that now, and that was enough.
Harumi let go of the counter at the sudden revelation. She had to pull herself together, for the woman waiting for her outside. She was relying on her, for Yuzu's sake. She didn't have time to break down now.
Harumi raised her eyes from the revolving ground. Her sweeping gaze fell on the cash register. She fell back into character.
Still not trusting her balance entirely, she used her hands to shimmy around to the opposing side of the counter. Faster now, aware of her limited time.
Upon reaching her destination, disappointment ensued. A miserable excuse for a five hundred yen note, the balding man's scattered change and her recently owned thousand yen were all that remained amongst the scarce change of the otherwise empty till. Harumi looked out through the glass into the cold of night; a few droplets of rain from an unnoticed shower dotted the glass. The lady's trip with grand kids was definitely off. Harumi looked back down to where her hands gripped the drawer of the register.
She questioned the boundaries of her acting ability. She questioned her morality.
/
Mei's impatience was beginning to nag her now. That, and getting rained on. She backed off the cold brick of the wall and took a few paces down through the white mist of the alley, her feet making soft splashes in the minimal rain water that had outwitted the high alley walls.
Her ears, reddened by the cold, had grown more sensitive in her lingering. The savage call of an overhead crow, muffled laughter, the clinking of glasses and plates as restaurateurs donned aprons and catered for the first influx of exhausted salarymen; these sounds now found her company in the narrow alleyway.
The rippling baritone of laughter increased in volume then softly died as Mei continued on, passing invisibly below the restaurant window far above. It was Friday. Not for her, though. Day's were just days now; all committed to the same purpose.
She heard her footsteps echoing off the alley walls, marginally distorted by the impenetrable fog.
Perhaps she was insane for thinking so, things might even have been different if the loss of the academy hadn't shattered her already ailing heart, but in truth, she preferred her freshly warped lifestyle. She had grown to prefer her company for one. And, at least now, she lived every day with intention - even if she was just a means to an end.
Mei stopped walking. She couldn't see the end of the alley but was aware she was close to it. She listened once more. Her acute ears detected city people milling around just beyond the slim veil of her hiding place, the nearby sputtering of an old diesel engine and still - her footsteps.
Mei felt cold sweat form on her neck. The footsteps were not her own, and to her renewed fear, getting louder and more erratic as they came. Whoever they belonged to was determined to reach their destination, and soon. Mei remained motionless still straining her ears for a further mental picture of her developing situation.
The person was undoubtedly in the alley with her now. Mei finally started to step back. Turning her head, she discerned the soft shape of a wheelie bin skulking to her right. Several overflowing plastic bags were dotted at its feet; a free space amongst them. Mei whipped her vision forward once more, lingering on split-second decision. Stay? Hide? A silhouette was forming in the not so far off distance now; she could hear heavy breaths.
She crouched and started towards the area behind the bin, praying the silhouette's owner would just pass by. She never side-stepped those two paces. Instead, she froze as new sounds generated in the alley.
Fog distorted, they bounced off the brick wall dead-ending the alley and reverberated back to her eardrums. Words? She recognised the words. Her name? She recognised the voice.
Her legs unfurled before the command of her brain as Mei registered the uncharacteristic note of panic in Harumi's voice.
"Harumi?!"
"Mei? Mei! "
"I'm still here! What's the hu-"
Harumi breached the wall of fog blindly, prompting her inevitable point-blank collision with Mei's semi crouched form. Mei felt herself contact the cold concrete with a bitter jolt that sent a shockwave of pain pulsing through her lower back as she was thrown completely to the ground. Harumi then tripped over Mei's sprawled body triggering a series of fitful attempts to restore balance before she too came down on top of Mei with another painful crash.
Perhaps it would have been safer behind the bin, after all, Mei thought dejectedly, attempting to regain her usual calm despite her sparking irritation at the double serving of unnecessary pain.
"Oh, God - I'm so sorry," Harumi mumbled, pulling her face from Mei's breast with a look of absolute apology.
"I'm starting to wonder if you still have a grudge against me," said Mei, just managing to squeeze the words out of her pained lungs; wriggling out from under Harumi's weight as she did so.
"Can you stand?"
"Yeah, don't worry it's not that ba-."
"Alright, good, but - we have to go right now!"
Mei's desire to verbalise her confusion was never fulfilled. The second Harumi pulled her to her feet and had given her a second apology and brief once over, she was off like a shot, disappearing once more into the white smog of the alley from which Mei had originally emerged.
Mei stood in her own company once again, squinting into the mist at Harumi's semi-concealed form. A growl of infuriation followed by the discordant clang of a shattering bike bell announced an end to a long-lived life as their impaired mode of transport hit the concrete with tremendous force; the dishevelled remains of the bike taking its well-earned place on the growing list of inanimate victims to Harumi's destructive episodes of outrage.
Harumi paced venomously back out of the smog, "Goddamn hunk of crap! We'll make it out of this on foot if we have to."
Harumi took Mei's hand. The revolving brick walls kissed Mei goodbye as Harumi spun her on her heel and pulled her helplessly towards the alley mouth. Harumi broke into a rapid walk; her hand hot and sweaty in Mei's despite the advancing cold of night. Mei knew something was very wrong; she struggled to keep up.
The wind billowed as they turned the corner. Mei kept her eyes forward as she trailed Harumi back onto the moderately populated street. After a few more yards, the pain finally retreated from her chest and throbbed less in her back, allowing her to catch up and match Harumi's hastened pace. Harumi had significantly cooled off, but Mei took the initiative the source of her display of temper involved more than a mere broken bike.
Mei spoke in a hushed tone as she flanked Harumi. "What?"
Harumi glanced about herself, reorientated her direction in the darkening smog and chose the left fork in the road before replying.
"They know. The whole of Japan knows. There's no going back now. Not for - either of us."
"What? But, d -How? They only have my face and name; you're innocent."
Mei felt the muscles in Harumi's hand tense at the last words. She hesitated for a fleeting second but replied nonetheless.
"Tell that to NHK. If you haven't heard, the cold-blooded killer Mei Aihara is on the run with an equally ruthless yours truly, after mercilessly robbing a helpless couple in their sixties."
"Those - sewer rats." Mei struggled to find a more derogatory term, "How widespread's the police outfit?"
"Whole of the Japanese force."
"Tell me this is your idea of sick humour?! Do they know we're in Kobe?"
Harumi nodded grimly, weaving around a low hedge and into a park. Their feet scattered droplets of fog formed dew as they snaked through the grassland.
Mei took sudden awareness of her changing surroundings, noting, in particular, the advancing form of a large wooded hill peeking out over the mist; though only a mere infant cousin to the colossal description of mount Rokko onto which it joined.
"You don't intend to make a direct run to Osaka?"
"I don't feel like getting mowed down in mere minutes, you?"
The howl of police sirens blared in the not so vast distance behind them.
"Harumi, what happened in that convenience store?"
She didn't hesitate.
"I was recognised."
Sunlight fell on Mei's artificially lit picture.
Her hand fell from Harumi's as she redoubled her speed, assuming the lead. Harumi followed suit. Wordless, the plan knitted together. The forested slope vanished from view as the fog of the foreground consumed it.
"Do you think that woodland will be dense enough?" Mei asked, masking the trepidation from her voice.
"With this fog on our side? We'll probably succeed in surviving the night if we can get there in the next ten minutes." Harumi replied with equal steadiness.
"Alright, then."
"That said, I don't think running through the streets like madwomen will play in our favour either."
"Right."
The pair continued on at the mutually decided pace in strained silence; neither's calm words reflecting the storm they felt inside, but each nonetheless, giving their damnedest effort not to panic the other.
The fog encroached on them; it was hard to breathe. Mei felt hard concrete under her feet once more; the damp suffocation constricting her already narrow airways as she passed through the tall park gates. She shook away the psychological torture, berating herself for her loose tether on the hypochondriacal thoughts as the first dark figures began to roll into the view. The people, cloaked by the fog, manifested one by one as Mei sped down the narrow path. She jerked her eyes over each one as they passed: A preschooler and his grandma, empty space, a sharp office worker, an equally self-confident plumber, seven minutes of ground left to cover, two wry faced pensioners, nothing, a single mother. One black uniform and it would be over.
The gossip of distorted sirens shattered through the area behind them; they were getting closer. Mei increased her pace, firmly nudging against the agreed boundary of limited speed. Harumi didn't protest. The hulking grey shape of the rise was visible again now, the path tipping uphill in cooperation with the landscape.
Five minutes. A trio of inebriated salarymen staggered out of the white air, the most dishevelled of which made red-eyed contact with Mei and swiftly began on a crusade to try his red-faced luck with this goddess of the fog. Mei darted around him, nimbly and forged on without sparing pardon. An inaudible obscenity was lost in a howl of wind, the trio dissolving into the mist behind her.
The hill steepened with Mei's breath, the fog now rushing vertically upon her like a stark white waterfall. Mei stole a glance behind her. Harumi's climbing form crumpled slightly against the gravity of the incline, was falling behind, though still in her wake. Mei flicked her vision back to her goal. The inconsistent sirens were lessening in their ferocity now. Mei stole a smile at the thought of them flailing aimlessly below, unaware of the crafty location of their targets. Soon they would give up, perhaps even judge the whole fiasco a mere false alarm. Mei put a stopper on her overstepping mind, not due to superstition, but fearful of jinxing the potential fortune of the uncertain situation with a slip in mental caution.
The proportion of people on the hill declined with increasing foliage. The thinner layer of fog gave way to the murky green of pine tree's, then oak, then a three-piece family, followed by further oak, next a matted homeless man, then empty fog. Three minutes and they would be at the edge of the dense woodland. Pine, pine, mist, oak, man. In uniform. Black uniform.
The end.
Delayed horror befell Mei as the ebony wolf rose out of his ivory lair. The buzz of the police radio slung to the black of his belt stung the air. A froggy voice punctuated by intervals of white noise re-announced the description of the female, 5ft 7 brunette roaming Kobe after her second reported robbery to date - though not confirmed, potentially also accompanied by an accomplice of similar height, black-haired, also female.
Mei's eyes briefly met those of the squinting young officer's; he was vaguely handsome. She flicked her stare down like a shot as his attention left his radio and filtered back into his current reality. He stopped walking. She continued. He hesitated, then turned, peering into the fog from which she had emerged. Mei didn't look back; she knew what he was waiting for - the brunette.
Mei waited; he waited. Mei tensed; so did he. She couldn't linger any longer; she opened her mouth. He wrapped his fingers about the cool plastic of his radio. She prayed her shout would give Harumi the advantage at the very second of her discovery. He prepared himself to warn his unit at the very second of his discovery.
There was no discovery: just empty fog, and silence.
The forgotten sirens called out to one another below. The static punched the air again - A sighting behind a row of stores half a mile south of the city centre, all available officers in the area required. The man looked behind him a final time.
"Pretty girl."
He fell back into the flurried mist below.
Mei clenched her jaw and unclenched, though the turbulent waters of her mind refused to still. She attempted reasoning nonetheless. Was that ill-fate disguised as luck? There was no way in hell even Harumi's eagle eyes could have spied that police officer before she did, she was too far behind for one and visibility was just too poor for another. No. Mei assured herself she was the only one who could have seen him. So, where the hell was Harumi?
Mei stopped. The fog had slightly thinned with the ascension but was still too unnecessarily thick to discern anything anti luminous. She looked behind her. Go back or forward? Mei strained her ears; a faint flapping played on the breeze. She took a step down the hill.
"Harumi?!" she called, as loud as she dared.
The sudden disturbance caused a disoriented pigeon to shoot out of the whitewashed scene. Mei's heart jolted as the confused bird whipped past her, its talons flailing in the panic. Mei felt warm blood erupt from the punctured skin of her face as the tip of the most extended claw traced her cheekbone in the sudden disarray. The spasmodic sound of flapping grew dimmer then ceased altogether as the fog once more consumed the bird. Mei felt tears sting her eyes as the warm blood trickled down the cold skin of her cheek, the salty liquid a mixture of bitter cold, pain and frustration.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a watery streak of red-stained pigment smeared across her skin. Renewed frustration gripped her at the sight. She felt childish for crying over such a tiny cut, though knowing full well the sting in her cheek was far from the sole cause of her tears.
The unforgiving howl started up again; the pinprick flashes of red and blue now just visible in the city below through the climbing layers of fog. She looked up at the mere remainder of the hill there was left to climb to safety. Mei felt a sudden sense of pointlessness in even considering the act of continuation.
With the coarse whistling of the wind, she wiped the last vestiges of uncertainty from her eyes and turned back down the hill. She would go back. She had to go back.
Steeling herself, arms outstretched against the relent of blindness, she staggered down the hill in search of her missing companion.
/