Killing Time, Part 6

Katsumi didn't want to be back in that dingy bar where it had all began, and his body language showed it. Why he had ever agreed to come back was quite beyond him, but for some reason Hisaya seemed to have grown to like the bar as much as Katsumi had come to hate it and had wanted to meet him there. There, of all places. To Katsumi it seemed worse than insensitive, but maybe Hisaya just hadn't realised what it meant to him now. Maybe Hisaya hadn't even realised it had been Koji who'd tried to kill him, not just some prowling maniac who'd picked him up the evening it all happened. It was just as crowded as he remembered it being and made him feel claustrophobic. When he'd met up with Hisaya, he was never going to set foot in this place again.

He looked around the room edgily, much as he had done the first time he came there. It hadn't changed much. The posters, for all that they now advertised different events, still promised the same low-rent thrills, it still hurt if you sat on the chairs for longer than five minutes, the clientele still gave him a feeling of vague, inexplicable menace which now alarmed rather than intrigued him. The only thing that seemed to have changed was Katsumi himself. The minute Hisaya showed up, they were leaving. If he wanted to come here so badly, he could come back later. It wasn't as if Katsumi wanted to be out long, he didn't want to worry Keisuke. Poor Keisuke. He'd looked so anxious when Katsumi had told him where he was going… almost as anxious as Katsumi had felt. Unconsciously, he bit one of his fingernails, something he normally only did when feeling extremely nervous. Maybe he should have dyed his hair back to black, it was far less distinctive, but the blonde had grown on him. On the other hand, if he was worried about being distinctive, why the hell was he wearing shorts? Because you're perverse, he thought, and you like the attention. He looked at his watch for the third time in almost as many minutes. Maybe Hisaya wasn't going to show. Maybe he should just go…

He didn't spot Koji until the man was practically next to him, by which point it was rather too late to do anything about it.

"Katsumi?" Koji sounded almost as shocked as Katsumi felt. "What are you doing here?"

It was crowded here, it was a public place. Surely Koji wouldn't dare do anything. "I…" Katsumi began, hating the way his voice trembled slightly. "I'm waiting for a friend."

"Like you were the first time we met?" Koji's voice was quiet.
"It's the same friend. He always stands me up." Katsumi said, and giggled slightly hysterically. He had a craft knife in his jacket pocket that he'd taken from Keisuke's worryingly tidy desk and he closed his hand round it. Its presence reassured him. He'd expected to find himself terrified of knives when he got out of hospital, but strangely it hadn't happened.
"You're frightened," Koji said in the same tone of voice.
"You tried to kill me, of course I'm frightened!" This sounded so ridiculous that Katsumi began to laugh again, the same edge of hysteria painfully noticeable.
"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you." Half-wanting to tell Katsumi that he'd never really wished to hurt him. That's right, blame Izumi, he mentally rebuked himself. You got a kick out of it too, admit it. You fantasised about raping this kid the night you met him.
"If you want to talk, let's get out of here." Katsumi said. He still held the knife in his pocket, so tightly it dug into the palm of his hand.
"What about your drink?" Koji asked. He wasn't surprised Katsumi wanted to get out. The place had too many unpleasant associations, as Koji himself did.
Katsumi shrugged. "It's tap water. I wasn't intending on getting drunk tonight. Not here. I… well, I really don't like the idea of getting drunk in here."

A statement Kimie Mori would have readily agreed to had he been able.

***

Koji had wanted to go to a hotel, but Katsumi had refused. He felt safer in public. Again, Koji was unsurprised that Katsumi was unwilling to be properly alone with him. They had ended up standing on a bridge between two office buildings. Katsumi leant on the parapet and looked out at the cars in the twilight. He thought dusk was probably his favourite time of day when the streetlights were on but you didn't really need them, when everything had a slightly ghostly aura, even Koji. He didn't want to meet Koji's eyes - killers' eyes, as he now thought of them. Narrow. Emotionless. Impossible to read. He had once found them fascinating, but now they scared him. Maybe that had always been the reason why Koji had fascinated him - precisely because something about him was frightening, although at the time he'd had no idea what it was.

"You've lost weight." Koji said inconsequentially. "You're too thin."

"Hospital food." A glimpse of the old Katsumi, gone almost before Koji realised it had even surfaced. "You tried to kill him, didn't you?" He looked away so Koji wouldn't see his expression, which he felt sure was one of confusion. "It was you and Izumi hurt that boy Mori." To Koji he suddenly looked very young, a slender, delicate child leaning on the parapet of a bridge with his back to him, wearing a coat a couple of sizes too large for him - and practically the twin of the one Koji had wrapped round him on that night in mid July - his hair hanging in front of his face, unconsciously defensive. Too fragile. Like he'd break if you touched him.
"How do you know about Mori?" Koji asked, a dangerous tone in his voice.
"The police told me about it a few days after I'd been discharged because it was so similar to what happened to me. They wanted me to press charges but they didn't tell me that much. I asked Takafumi about it later and after he'd finished talking I straightaway thought 'Koji'." Katsumi laughed and it sounded wrong. "No one else knows. I only know because I worked it out, though that hardly needed an Einstein. Why didn't you kill him?" Katsumi paused for a moment. "Why didn't you kill me?" It was a question that had nagged at him ever since he'd regained consciousness.
Koji smiled sadly. "I liked you. Maybe loved you a bit. You were scared. I couldn't do it. And Kimie… Kimie was just a kid. He reminded me of you."
Katsumi frowned, and turned to face him. "Then why try?" He was surprised by the anger in his own voice. "If you can't go through with killing people, then why bother?" Unconsciously, he placed one hand in his coat pocket again and felt reassured by the craft knife.
Koji, however, had other things on his mind. "Who is Takafumi?"
"Who is who?"
"Takafumi. You mentioned him just now."
"A friend." Katsumi said bluntly. He didn't want Koji knowing anything more about Takafumi and Keisuke. He didn't want Koji to ruin two more lives.

The news made Koji feel a faint stab of curiosity. Katsumi's friend Takafumi. He'd never thought of Katsumi having friends or any kind of social life when he wasn't with him. The realisation that Katsumi had a life of his own, that the boy had been able to put what had happened behind him, or at least was attempting to, and moving on, made him feel slighted. Maybe killing him would have been the right thing to do. At least then he could have ensured that he never made him and his actions seem like a drop in the ocean. For a brief moment he considered pushing him off the parapet of the bridge, but realised it would have been no more possible to kill Katsumi now than it had been on that humid July night that now felt so long ago.

Maybe Katsumi was right. Maybe he wasn't a killer. But in that case why had he felt a satisfaction, first with Katsumi then with Kimie? It seemed to Koji that he'd gone the wrong way about things. His finer feelings had complicated things - the fact that he actually liked the people he had tried to kill. Although he hadn't known Kimie long, he'd seemed a nice kid. If he met someone for whom he had no feelings whatsoever, someone who had no meaning for him except as a potential victim, then maybe it would be different. Maybe if he met someone who seemed to be asking for it. Neither Katsumi or Kimie had asked. They'd found something they hadn't even been looking for. But to do what he did to someone who had genuinely been playing with fire, rather than anxiously considering it…

The thought excited him.

Katsumi turned round again. "I'm going home," he said suddenly. "I won't see you again." He found it a colossal relief to say something so definite out loud, and Koji found he was relieved too. There had been something different about Katsumi tonight, something Koji didn't really like. His tension, maybe. Whilst Katsumi the person was still alive, it was as if Koji had managed to kill the boy he'd known and there was something insubstantial about what had been left behind.

***

'Why try? If you can't go through with killing people, then why bother?'

As he walked back into the bar - Izumi would be there by now - Koji couldn't help but think of what Katsumi had said to him. He'd never thought of himself as that kind of person, but the high he got, the power he felt, when he had someone completely at his mercy, was addictive. Even if he wasn't a killer yet, he had power. He could change people. He'd changed Katsumi - the Katsumi he'd met that evening had been a stranger to him. He'd probably changed Kimie. Me, he thought. I did it.

The more he thought of it, the more he found he wanted to do it again. As soon as possible, this week, tonight, now.

Izumi, he knew, was totally dispassionate about what they did, though he wasn't the one who'd found both their victims to date, and he stayed detached during the actual process.

That was about to change.

Looking across the room from the steps which led down into the bar, Koji spotted Izumi almost immediately. It wasn't hard. Izumi was a tall young man, not to mention that Koji would have recognised him anywhere. He was, at present, standing by the bar with a young couple Koji got the vaguest feeling that he had seen before. A young man of about his age, and a strident blonde girl who was obviously flirting with Izumi, to the displeasure of her male companion who was presumably her boyfriend. Normally, he would have gone across and taught her some manners, preferably with a beer glass, but something told him to hold back - for now. The girl herself was a little the worse for wear but the young man was quite disgustingly sober and rather aggrieved, to go by his expression. It surely wouldn't be long before he cut out on the business and indeed, as Koji watched, the young man made a last-ditch attempt to get the drunken girl to pay him some attention, but to no avail. Eventually he pulled a disgusted face and left the girl with Izumi. Judging by the young man's behaviour, this sort of thing had happened many times before.

Koji realised, after a beat, that the man had reached the steps and was looking at him as if trying to work out where he had seen him before. He was almost as tall as Koji himself was, which came as a bit of a surprise to him. He was used to looking down on people, not at them.

"Excuse me." The man was talking to him. "Aren't you Koji Nanjo?"

"Yes, I am. What do you want?" Koji asked. Politely, he hoped. No need to be rude. Yet.
"I was meant to be meeting a friend here…" he began, hesitantly. "I was wondering if you'd seen him." Koji realised his looks were deceptive - he was quite a bit younger than he appeared. A boy, not really a man at all.
"What does he look like?" Koji asked, out of curiosity. His companion paused. "He looks about sixteen, dyes his hair blonde, dresses strangely… he's probably a bit too pale. He just got out of hospital. His name's Shibuya, he used to meet you here."
Koji had to resist the impulse to smile. So this was the friend who never showed up. Koji had begun to suspect he'd been a figment of Katsumi's imagination, but clearly he was real enough to talk. "You mean Katsumi Shibuya? Oh, he was here, but I saw him leave about an hour ago. Sorry." Koji did smile now, apologetically. He hadn't known he was such a convincing liar, not that he'd really been lying, but still… move over Izumi.
The young man smiled back at him. "Thanks. I think I'll go too. This evening's been a bit of a waste of time." He looked back into the bar. "First Shibuya doesn't show, them my girlfriend starts putting the moves on some brown-haired guy. Thought I'd leave her to it."
"Aren't you worried about her?"
He shrugged. "Eri can look after herself," he replied, then walked quickly up the stairs.

Could she now?

"It's scary!" the girl was saying as Koji walked up to Izumi and smiled at him. The girl grinned sloppily back, clearly thinking he was smiling at her. "But I feel safer with you!" She gazed intently at Koji, her eyes slightly glassy. Behind her back, Izumi rolled his eyes whilst Koji only just managed to stop himself from laughing in the stupid girl's face.

"What is?" he finally managed to ask.
"Eri's been telling me about those two kids who got hurt. Apparently her boyfriend knew one of them from school." Izumi said, quickly affecting an air of boredom. "You know. The blonde one. Eri here thinks he had it coming for a long time."
"The only connection between them is that they both went to this bar!" Eri squealed. "Do you reckon there's, like, some kind of serial killer coming here?" Izumi gave Koji a discreet glance which as much as said 'don't you dare open your mouth'. "I told her it was hardly likely."
"Maybe he doesn't like gay teenagers or something?" Eri continued, blithely ignoring Izumi. "Or maybe he's, like, totally maladjusted!"

Izumi looked at Koji and smiled slightly ferally, then turned back to the drunken blonde girl, who was giggling inanely at him. Playing with fire and she had to know it. For Izumi and he, third time lucky. Two dry runs - an abortive crime of passion, an equally abortive attempt at homicide. As soon as possible, this week, tonight, now.

***

Hisaya knew it wasn't really any of his business what Eri did. She was his girlfriend, not his prisoner, and if she wanted to play around that was her affair. It had been his suggestion that they have an open relationship, after all, and it was hardly like it was unusual for her to want to take off home with another guy. But something about Izumi had worried him. He couldn't say what it was but he worried him.

He stood a few feet away on the other side of the pavement, half-hidden by shadow, watching the people who milled around the entrance to the bar. None of them looked that dangerous but he knew… one of them at least had to be. Katsumi had gone to this bar the night he was stabbed. Then there'd been that boy Mori. He'd gone to the bar as well and had endured the same treatment Katsumi had. Either a copycat, or the same person: sometimes they come back. Both had been young, new to this kind of thing and kind of cute. True, they'd both been boys, but still he felt anxious for Eri. He knew what she was like… she'd go home with that Izumi, but he wanted to make sure she was safe before he went home.

Here. He'd been waiting for over an hour when she finally walked out. Alone. That was unusual. He was about to call out to her when he saw a man walk up to her and she grabbed drunkenly at his arm for support. He caught a few snatches of their conversation. Eri… get the car… certainly… it didn't make much sense until he saw a car pull up and a third figure join them, tall, strangely familiar for all that he couldn't see him clearly, half-hidden by shadow as he was. He held the car door open for Eri, an exaggerated gesture of courtesy, then walked to the front, the first man grabbing his sleeve.

"… anyone see you leave, Izumi?"

They'd walked closer to him. He could hear them more clearly now if he concentrated hard. The second spoke more quietly, he couldn't catch much.

"No… see any… than you, Koji."

Koji. Katsumi's Koji. That was why he'd looked familiar. Their conversation only served to worry him further. He considered phoning his friend, asking where Koji had lived but how? He had to do something… he turned away, wondering if there was a phone box. But was there time for that?

"You like to listen in on other people's conversations, huh?"

They'd seen him but did he mind? He hadn't heard them walk up to him and he turned to face the pair, more angry than sensible. These two had Eri. "You like to play around with other people's girlfriends?"
Koji laughed. "Cute. She's your girlfriend, huh? Tell her to keep her hands off other people's boyfriends in future. She could get into trouble that way." He slipped one arm around Izumi's waist and the smaller man smiled at him, an unexpected softening, but when he turned to Hisaya there was only naked hostility visible in his cold, angry eyes.
"She wanted to come home with us, Mr White Knight." Izumi added. "You want to come with us too? Make sure she doesn't get into any trouble? Or do you just want to apologise for intruding and run off home?"
"She's my girlfriend." Hisaya said stubbornly.
Koji grabbed his upper arm the way he had grabbed Katsumi's. His grip hurt Hisaya but he refused to show that it had.
"Good, then you'll come with us." Izumi said.

There was no danger for them, the street had been practically deserted. They had not been seen. If anything, the discussion had seemed more like a drunken confrontation than anything serious. Far safer, too, to take the boyfriend home with them too than have him poking around, asking where his stupid little girlfriend was. Asking them if they'd seen her: 'She was with you last, what happened to her?' Let him come too. This added a dimension, a new twist to an already familiar story. Eri can look after herself… but can her boyfriend? If Katsumi had it coming, Eri certainly did as well.

"I wonder what Hisaya's doing," said Katsumi Shibuya.

Part 7