The boy's name was Kimie. It didn't really suit him, if you asked Koji. It didn't matter. Koji had called him 'kid'. Izumi didn't call him anything. They hadn't known him for more than a few hours and they wouldn't know him for much longer, so was there any real problem if they called him by the correct name or not?
Kimie lay in the bath in a few inches of water, his head resting on the side, one hand hanging over the edge, blood running off his fingers and down the side of the tub. His eyes were closed, his breathing laboured and shallow. The water he lay in was bloody; there were bloodstains - handprints - on the tiled walls, the sides of the bath. Most were Koji's. Kimie hadn't been possessed of the strength to fight him off, though he'd tried. Twice the boy had grabbed at the blade of Koji's knife and had succeeded only in cutting his fingers almost to the bone.
It had been easy enough to get him back to the flat. Koji had got him drunk. After a short discussion with Izumi a couple of days previous, Koji had come to the conclusion that it might be easier this way. As suspected, the neighbours had wondered who had been screaming the night Koji had brought Katsumi home. What were you two doing last night? Killing someone? He'd made too much noise. They could get away with it once, not again.
Koji, dressed in a bathrobe and kneeling near the unconscious boy, looked up questioningly at Izumi, who frowned slightly. Things weren't progressing quite as planned. At first, everything had advanced without a single problem. It had been easy enough to get Kimie talking. A few loaded questions revealed that he had no idea of what had happened to Katsumi - it turned out that tonight was only the second time he'd been to the bar. He'd heard the cautionary tales, sure, but he had no idea that anything untoward had happened to anyone who came in this bar in the last few weeks. He'd turned out to have a fairly low tolerance to alcohol and had ended up very drunk very quickly. He'd been having difficulty keeping his eyes open when he'd made his excuses, probably realising he'd drunk a fair bit more than he'd intended to and wondering what he'd say to his parents. Koji had let him go, leaving the bar a few minutes later and meeting up with him outside. He hadn't got very far - he was practically asleep on his feet and had put up no protest when Koji got him to his car, where Izumi had met them. He'd slept through the journey and hadn't thought to question what was happening.
So far, so good.
Once back at the flat Koji had raped him. Izumi hadn't been too happy about it but had let it slide as long as it got Koji in the right mood. Kimie had been too drunk to put up any real resistance but he'd known what was happening and hadn't wanted any of it, he hadn't been too happy about it either. That wasn't too surprising. Like Katsumi, he'd been a virgin before going home with Koji.
It had been much the same as it had with Katsumi. Again, Koji hadn't thought he'd be able to do it and again he'd surprised himself. He'd wondered if it had perhaps been a one-off, more to do with Katsumi than to do with the situation, but he'd felt the same exhilaration, the same feeling of total power, had experienced the same loss of control, though it hadn't shown itself in frenzy this time. He'd stayed calm.
And once again he hadn't killed the boy.
"You're not cutting the right places." Izumi said clinically. He leant against the basin holding the bloodied kitchen knife that he had, a few minutes previously, picked off the bathroom floor, between thumb and forefinger and looking critically at Kimie. "You're missing the arteries. Didn't you pay any attention in biology lessons?"
Once the rage had passed, Koji didn't know if he could kill this boy either.
"You what? Don't tell me you don't want to do it now." Izumi looked scornful. "He's just some kid. You don't even know him this time. He doesn't matter."
Izumi snorted. "Move." Still holding the kitchen knife between thumb and forefinger. In a mild daze, Koji got to his feet, watching as Izumi knelt next to the bath and looked down at the boy, now tightly gripping the knife, holding it to his throat. Hesitating.
Izumi dropped the knife on the floor.
"It's not safe," he said after a beat. "You were right, you know. We can't kill him any more than we could your Kazumi. We don't know what we'd do next. Why don't you ever think things through? Get him out of here."
***
"Oniichan, are you sure about this? After everything that's happened!"
Katsumi had been out of hospital for two and a half weeks when he decided to leave home. The atmosphere at home had been bad enough before Koji, and if anything, it had soured since then. There had been an argument waiting to happen for weeks and after days of barely talking at all, his father had finally broken the tension. Arguments weren't unusual, but this time it had been somehow worse. There had been too much said. They'd both been too… too honest with each other.
"Didn't I warn you? Didn't I say it was dangerous to carry on the way you were? I don't know where I went wrong with you, Katsumi, I really don't."
No way out. Nothing more to say.
"Oh. Hi, Madoka." Katsumi said distractedly. No, he didn't think he would take the stuffed toy cat. Madoka could keep it and give it to any kid she might feel like having. She'd always liked it better than he had anyway.
College fees, at least, were one thing he didn't have to worry about. Katsumi's maternal grandfather had died when he was fifteen, leaving him a fairly sizeable sum of money that had been put aside for precisely that purpose. Katsumi had always found his family's wealth mildly embarrassing but now it was a comfort as well as a promise of freedom.
"Madoka, I'm an adult. And you are not my mother. I'll get another part-time job or something."
"Oniichan, you're an idiot." Madoka said. "Yeah. I know." Katsumi gave her a small, tight smile then turned away with a sigh.
"So, why'd you go? Did your father kick you out or something? That's a bit harsh, even for him. You're still sick."
Takafumi looked at Katsumi in mild amazement. His friend was tired, clearly in no state to be doing something like leaving home. In no state to be doing anything much, really. He should still really have been taking things very slowly. But this was Katsumi. Katsumi, whose first question to the doctors after coming round had been 'when can I go home?'. Katsumi, who had pestered him into going out less than a week after he'd been discharged. Who didn't seem to know the meaning of the phrase 'take things slowly'. He'd already been back at college for four days - totally ignoring doctors' orders.
Katsumi hadn't wanted to go out alone, though. He hadn't been able to drink because of the painkillers he had still been taking. Halfway through the evening he'd spent a few minutes in the toilets changing a bandage. He'd nearly fallen asleep on two occasions. And he'd been unable to properly relax.
"No. I left." Katsumi replied. "We had an argument. He as good as said it was my fault that…" He broke off.
Takafumi hadn't spoken to his own parents since he was Katsumi's age himself, when his mother had finally become aware of the neighbourhood gossip about her son and his so-called best friend and had told him, with the full approval of her husband and daughter, that she no longer wanted him at home, that she no longer had a son. Of course, she hadn't just said that. Both she and his father had spent over three hours yelling at him. During the course of the argument he had been called a pervert at least fourteen times, they had both asked him where they'd gone wrong and his repeated claims that he wasn't sick had been met with considerable scepticism. All things considered, Takafumi thought he was better off out of it.
"Families." Katsumi agreed, then sobered, suddenly anxious. "I'm won't be in the way or anything will I? I mean, if it's inconvenient…"
Katsumi had been about to make a comment about night visits when Keisuke opened the door and abruptly killed that line of conversation. Or would have done. Takafumi, however, said something about threesomes and made both Keisuke and Katsumi blush.
***
Sat on the sofa, Koji twisted a strand of wet hair round his finger and frowned, staring at the slightly discoloured spot on the carpet. They hadn't ultimately been able to move the sofa over the stain, as it was too obvious that it had been moved. It aggravated him and Izumi considered it a potentially fatal sticking point in their claims to know nothing whatsoever about what had happened to Katsumi: not that anyone had actually asked them so far. There was nothing to connect them to Kimie at all. Under Izumi's directions, they'd dumped him in a side street where he had been found by a salaryman ten minutes later. Like Katsumi he'd refused to die, something that Izumi seemed to be taking personally.
How come either of them was still alive was a mystery. Katsumi was alive enough for Koji to have seen him on a station platform frowning over a difficult passage in some kind of medical textbook. He hadn't even known that the boy was out of hospital, let alone back at college. Admittedly, he had looked pretty pale and sick. Kimie had been conscious for days. He'd been less badly hurt than Katsumi had been, though he was still heavily sedated for the pain. More importantly, to Izumi's mind, he claimed to be unable to remember what the men he had gone home with had looked like. Though Koji didn't know it, he was lying: like Katsumi he was afraid to tell anyone what he knew.
"It's no surprise they're both alive." Koji said in an attempt to stop Izumi from shouting. "They were both young and healthy."
"We'll work something out," said Izumi. "And we'll do it soon."
And they would, that much was obvious just from his tone.
***
The only reason Hisaya had managed to trace Katsumi at all was that his father had been out when he called to ask how he was, and therefore it had been Madoka who'd picked the phone up on him. His father would have denied all knowledge of Katsumi's whereabouts. Madoka had given him Takafumi's phone number.
"Who was that who picked the phone up?" he asked when he finally managed to get through to Katsumi.
Hisaya had found that the atmosphere of the bar had grown on him. He may have found it mildly intimidating at first, but one night a few days after Katsumi had been admitted to hospital, he had gone back there with Eri - totally by chance they had been in the area and Eri had wanted to see what it was like, she'd heard so much about it from him. Hisaya had agreed, if it made her happy, fully expecting her to hate the place. To his surprise, Eri had loved it and insisted that they came back there. After an initial feeling of unease, Hisaya had found he liked it too.
"…Sure. Sounds fine to me," Katsumi heard himself say.
Part 6