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 TWO
*
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
***
Tatsumi Seiichiro arrived at the door of the secret lab the morning after the argument between Shun and
Akino to discover it locked. Even his tiny custom-made key whose presence only five people--four now--knew of--failed in his repeated attempts to twist the lock into submission. From behind the door came the sound of hydraulic hissing and then a child's wail.
*
He had emerged from the muffled space of his tank. The small cross-currents of air in the room tingled against his skin; their touch was similar to the feel of a breeze on an unhealed cut. It was not exactly uncomfortable, aside from the chill, until he reached out, tentatively exploring, and touched the nearby violence of a convulsing mind and shrank back. He tried to scream and produced only a puny squawking whine. The futility of it made him panic, and he balked against the heaviness of a body that was holding him and was filled with disgust at his struggle. It was so much like someone else he had known...someone who had done terrible things to him in some other time and place. He wanted to call for his private savior, but the name still eluded him, so he simply tried to call out for anyone, letting his mind rove in wider and wider circles, trying to find some benign presence nearby, and suddenly discovered a familiar coil of thought, only they were a little altered, as though Tatsumi--he felt sure that this was indeed the name that belonged to that restless mind--was in a different body.
Having detected an ally, he cried harder and thrashed, desperate for rescue, for the hands around him were lifting him as the horrible maddened mind that owned them cursed the small boy he held. Monster, said the madman's mind, spitting the brilliant magenta flame of unreasonable hatred, you terrible thing. The child in his arms shivered and the man laughed bitterly. Probably the little demon had actually heard his maledictions. Only the gods knew what kind of freakish powers the creature had. He wanted--longed--to smash its porcelain skin against the tiles and end its evil existence, and had brought it to the apex of its final descent into its deserved destruction when the door of the laboratory imploded with a resounding crack.
*
The two men stared at each other. Shun laughed finally, his jaw twitching. "Tatsumi. Come here. Help me."
"Help...?" Tatsumi could not think, could not move. He swallowed and a pang of sudden nausea welled up from the pit of his gut and oozed, slowly, up. The room had gone frigid, but under his clothes he sweated. "Help...?"
Shun's eyes were hidden under his lenses, and he started to raise the child he'd lowered again. "Help me kill this abomination, this thing that was never meant to be." The child, who'd stopped its crying when Tatsumi had burst in, resumed its frantics sobbing.
"I--no." Tatsumi stepped carefully to his left, mind already detached and calculating how fast he could get at Shun without risking damage to himself or to the child. He looked up at Shun's face only once, and the expression there made his throat close on the lump that was forming there."Give it--him to me. I'll...I'll put him somewhere." He could not bring himself to say "get rid of it", which was odd, for he knew that he hated the perfection of the boy just as much as Shun did. The other man, still clutching the child, gaped at him, and Tatsumi had snatched the boy away before his teacher could react and dashed out of the room. The child snuffled against his sweat-dampened shirtfront.
*
"He's still asleep."
"Poor Hisoka-chan." Watari put down an armful of various gadgetry, including several extension lines, an aged Bunsen burner, half a dozen beakers nestled inside one another like a babushka doll, and a large pair of crucible tong, and stuck the thermometer between Hisoka's dry, slightly parted lips and wiggled it gently under the tongue. "Perfectly normal," said Watari, perplexed, as he removed it. He wiped his glasses and scrutinized the line of red and the small black numbers printed beside it again and then shoved the thermometer in front of Tsuzuki. "See? He's just sleeping, now. No fever." But Tsuzuki had nodded off where he sat, face pressed against the edge of Hisoka's narrow mattress, the twilight Meifu sun a bar of gold on his back. Shaking his curled head, Watari left to fetch Tatsumi. It wasn't that easy to haul Tsuzuki any distance on one's own, and a sleeping Tsuzuki didn't help the situation.
*
He was set down somewhere after being jostled for a long while by Tatsumi, and was slowly falling asleep when a door opened behind him and a swoosh of warm air poured over him. The mind of the girl who was standing in the doorway was as warm as her house, although a spasm of surprise ran though her when she saw him, a disheveled child of maybe a year or so of age and shivering in someone's abandoned overcoat and otherwise naked. He was confused for a moment, because the girl was somehow connected to that someone whose name he still could not recall, the someone he had been trying to call all this time. She picked him up, murmuring soothing things while wondering what she would do with him, and took him inside her house.
*
Tsuzuki Ruka lived alone. She preferred it this way, having been raised by relatives who had later fallen into a deep disagreement with their orphaned charge and had summarily given her a sum of money and told her to go live somewhere. Somewhere far away. So she'd come here, this drowsy town where the bustle of Tokyo seemed thousands of miles away. The school where she taught was respectable enough, and her landlord was away for most of the year, leaving her alone in the large complex. Occasionally she'd venture from her room and wander through his gardens, admiring the fine plants and large plots of raked sand and the great care of the gardeners to feed the gorgeous koi every morning and the small red bridges that crossed the fishpond. It was rather dull, but peaceful enough.
The arrival of the child consternated her for a long time. Obviously he hadn't simply appeared on the premises one morning; the coat he'd been huddled in must have belonged to someone who cared for him. She spent an afternoon writing large notices for the owner to claim his coat, but not unexpectedly no one replied to them, and they peeled and faded in the months she deliberated over taking in the child. In reality, there was no such indecision in her mind. She knew that she could not give him away after she named him, and she'd named him the very morning she had picked him up and taken him into the kitchen for a little porridge. The name was supposed to have been her father's father's; it was unusual enough and she though it went rather nicely with hers.
The man at the Registry office had looked at her oddly when she had taken the boy there, probably because she looked far too young, also probably because she was unaccompanied by a husband. She could see his eyes flickering from her as she approached, the little boy's hand small in hers. Quietly she handed him her papers, and quietly the business of legalizing the name was finished. Most likely the man behind the desk thought she was a vulgar street woman, for she wasn't dressed in a fine kimono and silk socks with her hair piled and arranged like some of the rich geisha that walked about in the town. A geisha would have been handled delicately, with not one unconsidered word; she was stared at and she could almost hear the whispers. A single woman with child!
"It's nothing," she said confidingly to the boy as they walked home, reassuring herself. He watched her with large violet eyes, and her heart twinged wryly. It had been worth it. "You are Asato-chan now. Try saying it with me. 'Asato'."
"Asado."
"Close enough, Asato-chan." She straightened and continued home, marvelling at the child's precociousness. Where had he come from? Asato lagged a little behind her, and she turned and watched his entirely unchildish walk, the steadiness of his large eyes that understood everything. He was a wonderful child, she thought to herself, but he didn't like to smile. But maybe she'd teach him. They went into the garden and into the warm room.
*
They laid Tsuzuki on his bed as gently as they could and left him sleeping before it was fully dark outside. "That," said Watari as they sprang into the air, "was quite a flight."
"Indeed." Tatsumi made a quick calculation of how many bills he could have filed away in the half an hour it had taken to drop Tsuzuki off at his house and frowned. "This means I shall have to work later. That means wasting more of the lightbulbs. And that means no cake for a week." He smiled. Watari gulped and wisely said nothing.
*
Tsuzuki woke sometime late in the night; his fumbling hands caught the clock and turned it to the slanting moonlight. 1:05. Stretching, he sat up and started to reach for the light switch, and paused.His dreams had not been pleasant, and they were reforming in his memory. Dreams of death. Dreams of murder. He shivered and put his arms around himself, rubbing his upper arms that were still clothed in wrinkled shirt. He wanted someone else to be here, to sit warmly next to him, to watch over him, to be near. He hated loneliness almost as much as he hated the dark and the silent. It seemed to him that the shadowy places were always filled with hands that tried to seize him, whispering return to us, return to us. He shivered again, uncontrollably, and felt the beginnings of a sob rise into the back of his mouth. Somebody...anybody...he buried his face in his arms and rocked himself back and forth, not caring that the dislodged blankets that slipped onto the floor. He thought that he could hear a voice--his voice? It waas speaking, shouting, screaming a plea for someone to help. Somebody...anybody... he closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, and tried to shut it out. Abruptly the shouting turned into another's voice, and he sat up, startled. Hisoka?
Help! Somebody!...Anybody!...
Hisoka? Tsuzuki stood, looking wildly about. "Hisoka?" He said to the empty room. "Hisoka?"
Please!...
"Where...where are you?"
Only gasping sobs.
"Are you all right? Are you hurt? Where?--"
And then nothing. Tsuzuki stood, paralyzed, and then leapt to the ledge of his window and clicked the lock open and swung out, towards JuOhCho.
Note: Remember Hisoka's "doubling-up" capacity from Vol. 1? But he doesn't know that Tsuzuki heard him yelling(hee, what a convenient plot device). I think this one is somewhat less trippy than Chapter One, and clarifies what exactly is happening to Hisoka as he sleeps...but still...0_0 Please notify me if you're helplessly confused or just think it's wonderful/mediocre/the worst thing you've ever read in your life. Hopefully it won't be the latter. ~__~ -e.k.b-
