Disclaimer:
Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!
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FS
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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.
(new version)
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Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
("Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)", by Don McLean)
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The sun had already…
(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)
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The sun had already gone down when they left the cafeteria of Infinity, which put any five-star restaurant to shame with its dreamy scenery and gorgeous cuisine, its precious antique decor and supreme comfort. Apparently, Professor Tomoe treated his prodigies as though they were little dukes and duchesses. Pity that Three Lights couldn't apply for Infinity because it was sponsored by the Organization.
The night was cold but clear—and the four of them went for a stroll in the garden while fifty bodyguards were scattered all over the place like black flower petals. Perfectly timed for Kakyuu's visit, all the students of Infinity were locked up in the music hall, studying the choreography for the obligatory annual ballet performance. A violinist and a pianist were playing Ravel (Ravel's "Tzigane", Taiki reminded Yaten, who had forgotten the name of the piece) with impressive virtuosity and great panache, true to the piece's gypsyesque, romantic air. Yaten, distracted by Kakyuu, couldn't care less about why they were playing "Tzigane", but Seiya, who was interested in all kinds of dances, guessed that the Infinity prodigies were studying the Balanchine choreography to Ravel's famous concert rhapsody.
"Are you going to watch the ballet?" Yaten asked Kakyuu, who was hanging on his arm. Although she was still here, the impending parting had cast a deep gloom over the desolate winter landscape, which was barely illuminated by the distant light from the curtained windows of Infinity's music hall and the starry sky. She would love to watch the performance, Kakyuu said, but their parents didn't allow her to go out for fear that she could be abducted or assassinated by a traitor.
"You don't like my decision to lead the Organization," she observed, addressing all of them although her eyes were glued to Seiya, whose hand she was holding.
He didn't think it was a great idea despite her good intentions, Seiya admitted, but since they still had a few years to change her mind, he didn't worry too much about the future. His immediate goal was to become world-famous and so filthy rich that their parents ran out of excuses why she couldn't leave Kinmoku.
"You don't believe that my plan will work out?"
He doubted that anyone was able to develop the Silver Bullet very soon—at least not without unexpected adverse side effects and serious risks to the people who ingested it. But if the Silver Bullet existed, he would rather see it in her hands and support her Organization than leave it to the government or a corrupt institution.
"I only didn't expect that you've pictured our future like this—leading a syndicate which is already falling apart to fight for a utopia I don't believe in! I trust you—and I think you can do this in theory… if most people were good! But in practice, you'll be assassinated by a few codename members with high aspirations and the Organization will turn into a real criminal syndicate before it's brought down or split into different factions. Our parents rule like tyrants of Genghis Khan's calibre to contain the traitors and the Chicago members. I don't know how you will handle those gangsters if you can't even hurt a mosquito!"
"The female mosquitos consume blood for their eggs. It's in their nature to draw blood! I can't blame them for it."
"I don't blame them for it either—I kill them before they can bite me. And you can't blame me for killing them before they draw your blood because that's in my nature! I can already see myself shooting half of the Organization's codename members because they don't accept the handover or try to overthrow you afterwards. It's not the life I wanted to lead! All I wanted was to be free to do whatever I liked and go anywhere I wanted to go—preferably with Taiki, Yaten, and you!"
She wouldn't ever persuade him into joining the Organization or keep him from doing what he wanted, Kakyuu said. The four of them would always stay together—the Organization wouldn't ever change anything about that fact. They were, after all, d'Artagnan and the three musketeers! Even the musketeers had their ideological disagreements, but they supported each other—even in the last book of the last sequel when they went their separate ways and fought on different sides…
"Every Organization has traitors and moles and rebels—but you can't imagine how many people follow us voluntarily because they believe in our cause and a better future. I know that a revolution will cost many lives—but even more people will suffer and die if we do nothing." For the first time, a tinge of resentment crept into her voice. "I'm not going to curtail your freedom in any way—as if I could do it even if I tried! You've always done whatever you wanted. You only lose to your own temper, Seiya!"
In the end, they agreed to differ. Seiya was the opinion that, while Kakyuu wouldn't limit his freedom, she would restrict the freedom of people like him by shrinking them to the size of a toddler and trying to wipe out—or, to use their parents' words, "reset"—their personalities. Kakyuu retorted that, in many corners of the world, adults had less choices than the children in her utopia. They were still holding hands when they argued, but she had let go of Yaten's arm to gesticulate, as usual.
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At the fountain, Seiya let go of her hand to light a cigarette—a habit he had acquired for the role of Young Moriarty—and Kakyuu, thus abandoned, took the arm Taiki offered her. Yaten contented himself with walking by her side and listening to her talk. In love, feelings weren't always synchronized, and there was always someone who cared less and someone who cared more.
One always suffered when one was attached to the beloved—when in one's mind, love was linked to fears and selfish desires, which led to excessive demands and needy behaviour. Most people clung to rituals, traditions, institutions, and even superstitions in a desperate attempt to foster a false sense of security; but Seiya, Yaten, and Taiki scorned futile hope and chose to let go instead. They preferred to take love as it was—a state of being which was best when it wasn't forced, or a miracle which happened accidentally and couldn't be held on to forever. They were fine with the situation that they all loved Kakyuu, each in his own way; and if she loved Seiya in a more romantic manner than she loved Taiki and Yaten, she was intelligent enough not to let it affect them by rubbing it in.
How was the idol life, Kakyuu inquired. Did you meet new interesting people? Are there any girls? And then, as if in passing, "Do you have any girlfriends, Seiya?"
"Tons of girls!" Yaten exclaimed and—on seeing Kakyuu's horrified gaze—corrected himself, "I mean we see droves of girls every day, not that we have any girlfriends! They've turned chasing us into an adventure sport, and we run as far as we can when we spot them. Seiya is always in disguise unless our agent fetches us with the limousine. He has learned to change clothes so fast it's scary to watch!"
Seiya feared girls like other people feared spiders and lizards, and Yaten doubted that his attitude to women would change very soon. Girls fell head over heels in love with Seiya at first or second sight and abandoned all sense of logic and decency as if they had been fed an overdose of a love potion, which had on him the opposite effect. The more they chased him, the faster he fled. Yaten would find it hilarious to watch if it weren't such a damn nuisance!
Going anywhere with Seiya meant to run into lovestruck girls even when they were in disguise, Taiki informed Kakyuu. Women were drawn to Seiya like desperate moths during their suicidal dive towards the fire. The source of their attraction was just as mysterious as the moths' kamikaze flight since Taiki could swear that Seiya neither said nor did anything to encourage them.
"So your first single was dedicated to me?" Kakyuu asked without coquetry. Seiya hadn't even tried to disguise the similarity between her and the girl in the lyrics, and it was impossible not to draw the parallel between the story of the protagonists and their present situation.
"Of course!" Seiya was visibly puzzled about why Kakyuu had asked him about girls all of a sudden. "I've never dated anyone or even answered a private call." There was no time at all to get to know anyone beyond the small talk during the parties and events he was expected to attend. Even if he weren't practising like a maniac from sunrise to midnight, stealing time to take a walk or a nap after lunch to stay sane, he wouldn't be interested in meeting girls. "Although I really like the fans, I only sing for you! I can't wait until you're free so that the musketeers will be complete. What would Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be without their d'Artagnan?"
Their agent had asked Seiya to stress the romance in the songs and alter the lyrics a bit, for platonic love had gone out of fashion centuries ago and didn't sell well. Romantic images had been added, allusions to a more physical longing had been made, a few words had been replaced. It was the sort of misunderstanding which Yaten and Taiki should immediately clear; but when they saw Kakyuu's smile, neither of them were able to inflict such cruelty.
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Seiya, Taiki, and Yaten—the puppies—were fine, Kakyuu told Taiki when Taiki asked her about her new pets. "Yaten seems capable of reading my mind and always stays by my side, eager to learn whatever I show him. He can already dance and do a few circus tricks like barking the multiplication table and rolling a barrel." Mercifully, she avoided calling the dog "poodle" as if she knew how little Yaten appreciated their parents' homage to his fastidious grooming habits. "But I think Seiya's and Taiki's names should be swapped! Seiya is very calm and smart—he obeys all the commands I give him right away and isn't only the perfect guard dog but also the ideal companion. Taiki—the Border Collie—is a nightmare by comparison! He 'herds' the other dogs and our bodyguards, nips at any foot and leg he can find, even steals food from the kitchen. No one, not even our mother, can manage him, and I might have to give him away to a shepherd so that he can work. If I don't do it soon enough and he becomes too cocky and stubborn for that, I'll have to let him roam the isle freely until he turns feral or is killed by one of the wild animals our parents imported to 'test' you three."
They kissed on parting—only Yaten kissed her on the lips while Taiki pecked her on the temple and Seiya's lips barely grazed her cheek—and the Organization's princess prepared to be escorted home as stealthily as she had been brought to Infinity. Before she stepped into the car, Yaten told her that he wasn't seeing any girls either because he was going to wait. She shouldn't pay attention to his love scenes in Detective Boy Holmes since she was the only one he loved and he was only thinking of her when he accepted the role. In response, she gave him a curious smile and touched a finger to his lips. "You're so oblivious to your own feelings, Yaten," she chuckles, "which is funny since you're so perceptive."
Under Seiya's and Taiki's quizzical gazes, she drew him close to her and whispered into his ear, "When Seiya left Kinmoku Sei, you could have stayed. Taiki should go with Seiya, but you should have stayed with me! You didn't even consider the choice—but I can't blame you since I'd have done the same, Yaten!"
The procession of cars had vanished behind the gate, swallowed by the shadows on the tree-lined roads, which, like a pattern of veins, led to Infinity. Since they had put out all the lamps outside, the stars seemed to shine brighter than usual, tinting the midnight sky a deep indigo, which ran into a dark turquoise where thin clouds had begun to veil the waxing moon's light. There were so many avenues to explore, so many choices to make—but in the end, all of them would lead to Infinity. Yaten had been dubbed "the world's prettiest face" in Naked, an art and fashion magazine advocating natural beauty and the importance of communication and openness, but now even this victory had acquired a bitter taste.
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"What did she say?"
Seiya was gazing down at him with a curious smile as they were strolling down the road to the next car park, where Igarashi-san would fetch them with the limousine. He looked imperturbable, as if Yaten's impulsive, no-nonsense approach to love declarations didn't in the least surprise him although Kakyuu's reaction was unexpected. Yaten wondered why Seiya had bothered to ask, as he must have overheard their talks with his disturbingly good ears. He also looked distracted, as though he was trying to get into his role of Young Moriarty again; and it occurred to Yaten that the revolution could come and the world could end tomorrow and it wouldn't faze "Young Moriarty" a bit. Seiya would continue to wander about the place with an amiable smile, bury himself in Taiki's monographs on comets, and study various autobiographies of criminals to get into his role.
"Nothing!" Yaten hissed before he cracked under Moriarty's attentive gaze. "Can you imagine that she seriously accused me of loving you more than her?" There was the accepted notion that men were obtuse in love, but when women were oblivious, they were infinitely worse. Foaming with rage, Yaten testily took the cigarette Seiya offered. "Let's squeeze those ninja roles into our schedule and audition for the Garagan musical as well so that we can get her out of Kinmoku Sei soon enough! Who knows what theory she will cook up if she stays there for another year!" He shot Taiki and Seiya an inquiring glance as he drew on his cigarette, grimaced, and put it out to toss it with an expression of disgust into the trash bin. "Maybe she'll believe me if I ask her to marry me? I can propose to her with 'Irene Adler's ring' if Itsuki-san agrees to sell it to me. Do you two mind me proposing to her?"
"Not in the least," Taiki said without rancour while Seiya wordlessly put out his cigarette stub and dropped it into the trash. "I'd be relieved if she married you instead of some overambitious codename member. What do you think, Seiya?"
"I'm not trying to own her," Yaten added. "A marriage won't change anything about… this." He didn't know what to call the relationship they had with Kakyuu since they hadn't ever tried to label it.
"Marriage!" Seiya murmured, pronouncing the word with dread as if it encompassed all the social chains and manacles this world had to offer. "I love her as much as you do, but I'd rather die before I let anyone put me in such a straightjacket! I've always thought that she was like me in that respect… You can propose to her if you want, but I don't think that she will marry you."
On the drive home, Seiya was unusually taciturn and only stared out of the car window at Tokyo's brightly, garishly lit streets. His sombre mood could be attributed to the quarrel with Kakyuu or Yaten's talks of marriage but also to the role of Young Moriarty, which was a far greater challenge than the role of Godfrey Norton. Akane-san might only terrorize Seiya because she had either fallen in love with him or thought that she had discovered an outstanding acting talent, who only lacked the opportunity and the motivation to shine (if she really hated Seiya, she wouldn't have told him to audition for the main role in Garagan-san's musical or the Red Ninja out of all roles), but Seiya had been harassed for weeks and had slowly begun to display his rebellious streak and his quick temper, which he had hidden well on the set until now.
"What are we going to do now that Kakyuu has decided to lead the Organization in earnest?" Taiki asked Seiya when they entered their current apartment, which Shizuka-san had found for them after they lost their old apartment to the flames—one of Seiya's fans had managed to sneak into the building and burned down the place because she couldn't take the rejection. "You know it's impossible to change her mind, and I doubt you're seriously planning to shoot the scientist and the mad professor!"
"We'll continue doing whatever we've been doing," Yaten decided. "We don't intervene unless we have to protect ourselves. Maybe we're lucky and the spies and moles and other troublemakers will just kill each other off before we have to make a move. I'm not keen on working from sunrise to sunset on the set and perform at night onstage and going on traitor hunts for the rest of the night, are you?"
Seiya joked that knowing Yaten, this was exactly what Yaten would do if each traitor caught meant an additional hour with Kakyuu, but Yaten could see that Seiya was already tuning out. Who knew whether the Silver Bullet would ever be completed, Seiya said at last. Right now, the more realistic outcome was that the "Black Organization" (which was the uninspiring name the Sherringford Society had received from all those unimaginative conglomerate leaders, terrorist groups, and secret services) would go down.
"Do you remember the games in which you play God and have to fight the humans who were building the Tower of Babel?"
Yaten could remember them well—especially the frustration they caused when one realized that one couldn't win against so many opponents even if they were weak if they popped up from everywhere and one could only eliminate so many enemies at once.
"If the head scientist can't complete the Silver Bullet to unify the members and the secret services manage to use the disappointed codename members to destroy the Organization from the inside, we can pack for the scenario that the Organization goes down before the handover."
Yaten tried—and failed—to picture their parents in jail. Bearing in mind the number of people they had riled, it would be a miracle if they survived long enough to arrive there. If they did, the trial would be interesting, to say the least. They would be hailed as the modern Robin Hood, and the Organization's popularity would only rise since both of them were dramatic orators and possessed a certain charm.
Fleeing with Kakyuu wouldn't be too difficult, Taiki pointed out. "But our parents are going to cause trouble." They wouldn't only try to revive the Organization at the first opportunity, they would also refuse to run out of the conviction that the captain never abandoned the ship.
Locking them up for life was impossible, Seiya agreed, but it shouldn't be too hard to persuade them to flee if the Organization was brought down. They only needed a spark of hope to survive. If it couldn't be avoided, he would even lie to them and promise to take over the Organization.
"For now, we stick by our 'non-interference policy' and continue the idol life to get Kakyuu out of this. But when the Organization goes down, we sweep into the scene, shoot all the traitors and moles and detectives, snatch Pandora's Box, destroy the documents on the ship, get our parents and the bodyguards and the three dogs, and run as fast as we can to Venice to live happily ever after!"
Very funny albeit too ambitious, Yaten objected—although Seiya's enthusiasm was infectious and almost lulled him into believing that Three Lights could fight and win against everyone and everything. And how are we going to persuade our parents to do the sensible thing and run away instead of inciting a revolution with the remaining members even without the Silver Bullet? Binding and gagging them and wrapping them up before asking the bodyguards to carry the parcels through customs?
It's easy, Seiya asserted as he changed into his pyjamas for his nightly stretching routine. "They seem extremely attached to their Silver Bullet project and their two scientists. They'll definitely come with us if we take the professor and the prodigy hostage."
Knowing Seiya, the "hostages" would come with him voluntarily since one of them was female and the other insane, Taiki said in jest, as opposites attracted and birds of a feather flocked together. Perhaps they should focus on the immediate problems and go to sleep before the night ended. After all, they couldn't risk Seiya to crack up and transform into Young Moriarty after seeing what happened when Kakyuu and they played their own version of The Three Musketeers and Seiya got carried away by his double role of Athos and Richelieu.
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A/N: My holidays are over, alas. Tomorrow I might upload another edited chapter before I'll have to slow down again.
