Idols I have Loved so Long
By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )
Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. Otherwise, I'd put myself in the canon...
All comments, etc., are welcome. Notify before archiving. Slight T/H, T/T. Takes place sometime after Kyoto Arc but before Gensou Kai Chapter. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~
Idols I have Loved so Long-A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction
CHAPTER ONE
*
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong;
Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
-The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, LXIX
***
"Unlocking gates two through seventeen. Check." Beep.
"Unlocking extreme gates. Check." Beep-click-beep.
Where was he?
All he could see was a square of white that shone with incredible ferocity. Squirming, he turned his face aside and tried to rise, failed, and stopped struggling. It--the light--was making him so tired. So tired. A small bit of him desperately fought against falling asleep, against the will of the light, of the coldness...he ached for someone to come to his rescue. Someone he didn't quite remember. The memory of this someone was closely associated with one of the presences he could feel nearby. It was all so wrong...so wrong...
*
The purple-eyed child floated, pale and curled like a misshaped pearl under the light of his illuminated tank. He had been moved there recently from his womb--his metal-plated, insulated womb. How he'd entered the womb only two of the five men huddled around the tank knew. The others were mere students, brought here exclusively for the analysis of such a rare speciman. They were deferential and courteous to their elders, the actual creators of the whole project. Behind the backs of these same elders they whispered of the maniac glitter in the eyes and the quiver on the edge of the lips that the two older men always displayed when examining their precious speciman. "They're nuts," the youngest said; "They've been nuts," said the eldest. "Who else would do something like this?" The other man, with spectacled eyes--the other boy, really; all three were under twenty--said nothing. He merely watched as his sensei stood recording the newest data for the child.
*
Watari Yukata sighed deeply and avoided looking at either the sleeping Hisoka or at Tsuzuki, who he knew from experience to be staring pathetically at his partner. "Tsuzuki," he said finally, trying to be gentle, "you've been watching Hisoka-chan for hours. It's not going to work. Go home and get some sleep. I promise to get you if he shows any inclination of waking up." Tsuzuki turned a fraction and mournfully sniffled, complete with puppy accessories. "Well fine then," said Watari, somewhat annoyed but a little relieved that he could go off and experiment without having to worry about Hisoka rolling out of his bed and bashing his head open, "give him this--"he held up a vial of semitransparent fluid"--in an hour. He shouldn't give you any trouble. If he starts thrashing around again come and get me." With that and a small smile of Evil Scientist(TM) triumph at his extended lab time, Watari disappeared out the door with 003 on his shoulder.
Tsuzuki watched his partnet sleep and wanted to shake him, to wake him up. It had been almost three days--he corrected himself as his watch beeped midnight--it had been three days since he had discovered the boy sprawled on the floor of his apartment, moaning about his stomachache and moose. He reached out and patted the white forehead that was moist with sweat. Whatever Hisoka was dreaming about, it probably wasn't very pleasant.
*
He could sense presences; both were unfamiliar. The noise, filtered through the bubbling fluids of his tank and the heavy glass wall, was dull and rumbled like a distant storm. But he could read their thoughts, even half-asleep, and knew there was a conflict. The warmer clot of orangish red was infuriated by something, and the other was a dismal grey with flits of a guilty violet-blue. And then there was a sound that cut through the liquid protection of his tank, and he heard and felt the lunge (all raging red) the scream, the heaving breath, the sound of a body dragged until it passed beyond earshot. The room grew dark from the lack of human presences, and he pondered. What could it have been?
*
What could it be? Tsuzuki held his chin, sipping at the mug of jasmine tea Watari had so kindly brought over half an hour ago. That something bothering him--it nagged and nagged, even worse than Tatsumi--something to do with the sleeping boy before him. Something to do with his illness. He had a dim feeling it had something to do with the vial of serum he'd poured down his partner's throat a little while before, but he couldn't be sure of what the feeling tried to say. Sighing, he cupped his chin in his hands and tilted his head onto the back of his chair. He'd take a little nap, and then he'd be able to figure it out.
Sometime before three o'clock in the morning, Hisoka's conscious mind tried to plunge through the effects of the sleeping serum and failed again, due to certain of the serum's odd behavior with a bit of chocolate mousse in the blood stream. The serum, under normal circumstances, would have had no such reaction with any food, but, oddly, the spoonful of dessert had numerous granules of rock containing rare metals ores in it. The resulting mix of serum and mousse produced a potent hallucinogen, which returned Hisoka to the dreams.
*
Tatsumi Seiichiro lived alone in his small shack of a flat that was really the converted top storey of a private home. He was in all ways a very dilligent, resourceful, but somewhat miserly young man. Miserly because he constantly had trouble purchasing the most common necessities due to a lack of funds. The owners of the private home--owner, now (his ancient wife had died two years prior)--sympathized with the young scientist and provided as much as he could. After all, nobody was close to rich in their area, and Tatsumi was a student of the renowned researchers Akino and Shun (the exceptions of course), and could be expected to earn lots of money in a Tokyo office one day.So the old man was hospitable enough to his boarder.
Tonight Tatsumi arrived home late, and the old man invited him to take some food downstairs. "Are you all right, Tatsumi-san?" said the old man upon seeing his boarder's expression.
"Fine, sir." Tatsumi concentrated on his bowl. "A little argument between Akino-sensei and Shun-sensei, is all."
The old man's eyes brightened. Even in the thirty-second year of the Emperor Meiji, life had not changed so much in this small town that gossip about its prominent citizens who lived in new-fangled wealth wasn't welcomed. "Ah," said the old man, feigning indifference, "why's that?"
Tatsumi looked up from his food and bent the corners of his mouth down, and the old man swallowed. It was silent in the downstairs room until Tatsumi's socked feet disappeared into his own room. Then his landlord muttered under his breath about the ungrateful young people these days, just like all old people do. But mixed in with the indignation was a little fear; Akino and Shun-tachi were rumored to hold secret experiments for the Imperial government in a sealed lab, preparing weapons or monsters or endless crops, depending on who one talked to. Hence another reason for the old landlord's servility to his boarder. One wouldn't want a monster-maker taking revenge for slights, now would one?
*
Behind his door, Tatsumi panted, lying face-down on the worn tatami. It had been hard going keeping appearances up before the old man. Foolish people, he thought, pulling himself onto his unrolled futon and leaning his back against it. Nobody except Shun and the two other students would know how far the argument had really gone. Nobody would know about the body that had been "disposed of" in an incinerator.
*
"I'm his 'father', Shun! I ought to get the rights!"
"Akino, this is an Imperially funded project, remember? Not your project."
The purple-eyed child floating calm and white behind them.
"He ought to be given for reentry immediately! The child is physcially unable to kill!"
"You and I both know that's a lie, Akino! He can't just be given to some ignoramus to raise. He has the abilities that His Majesty ordered!"
"Shun, the child will be like an automaton! He won't follow orders!"
The shouting growing louder. The child starting to open its eyes, in the tank. It watched or heard or sensed the battle between its creators, possibly more clearly than the three young men who were watching did. But after the fall and the arc of blood, it went back to its sleeping, leaving Shun and the students to clean up the tiled floor. The blood was especially hard to rub from the cracks between each tile.
"Haaagh!" Tatsumi woke, damp with sweat again, and put on his glasses with fumbling hands.Akino had been a rather handsome man in his early fifties, kindly enough except for when he watched that terrible child. The child who left a path of deaths in its wake so that its perfection could live. Akino-sensei had been right. The child should have been removed from its artificial environment and given away to someone, like a lost kitten. It was too beautiful to be a proper assassin. Shun-sensei was so stubborn, so fixed on his money (Imperial money!). Tatsumi covered his face and brought his closed fist as hard as he could on the tatami, causing the rickety walls of the house to shudder. He hated that child. It had been what killed Akino-sensei; it had killed its own creator. Terrible child.
*
He opened the door of the hospice to find Tsuzuki still asleep, his chin high in the air, his mass of dark hair spilling down the back of the chair. The boy was still asleep. He put a hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder and shook. "Wake up."
"Eh? Meh-eh?" The purple eyes were so disconcerting. "Tatsumi-san! I didn't break it! It wasn't me! I was watching Hisoka the whole time!"
He couldn't help smiling. To make up for the lapse he put on his impassive expression as quickly as possible. "I came to get you for work."
"W-work?"
"Yes." The old exasperation was coming on. That was good; he could see the puppy-dog eyes already. He'd need an ample defense against those. "You remember you still have...two hundred and ninety-eight years of work before you pay off the debt for the library (and of course then get fired)?"
"Eh? Ta-tsu-miiiii-saaaan!" Oh no. Inu-Tsuzuki blinked enormous eyes at him. Purple. He could never know what purple eyes meant to his ex-partner. There had been a contract, after all, and Tatsumi Seiichiro had officially sworn not to reveal anything about the past. About the labs, about Akino or Shun. "Ah, stop that," he stammered, backing away, "you--you--just get to work before noon, okay?" A burst of returning courage as he distanced the wagging tail and the eyes. "Or else the cake'll be all gone." Unsurprisingly, he heard footsteps behind him (running) and had to gratuitously sweatdrop as Tsuzuki rushed past him for the lounge (and the cake, untouched).
*
Behind them, in the empty hospice that was slowly filling with midmorning sun like a cup into which was being poured a Bacchial amount of honey or cider, Hisoka's hair gleamed. And the hallucinogen, paired with his empathy, continued its work.
Note: ...0_o;;;
The trippy beginning of a trippy fic. *sweatdrops* And suddenly Muraki's past is looking like good fic material as well. Why couldn't Matsushita-sensei answer those lingering questions? (Answer: she wanted to sell her books. Evil woman.) Anyway, if there's anything that's confusing anyone, or if there's an annoying mechanics problem, feel free to tell me. I'll try to explain as best as I can (which isn't very good at all), or I'll go and fix it (I didn't proofread this at all. Not even a spellcheck). -e.k.b-
