Learn to Live Again
Chapter Two: But a Circle Goes On Forever
By Kaen
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
What a strange feeling it is, to breathe a final breath and know that the simple action of respiration is no longer necessary. There was no reason to open your eyes, no reason to speak a word. Reaching out for help was trivial, so why bother to lift a finger? No one would answer you anyway. Your heart stops pounding, you can feel it. It's like it knows that its labors are as trivial as any other attempt you might make to live. And when you expect the angels to rush out and embrace you, sweeping you to heaven's gate in gentle arms, you are greeted with darkness; a frigid sort of darkness, the type you feel on a damp winter night when the moon hides its face behind a mask of clouds and even the stars are reluctant to shine.
The low-drifting fogs cling to your body fervently, piercing your skin with its unseen needles of ice while it, at the same time, whispers, "It is all right. I've come to you because you've called to me. Dry your tears, for you are not lonely. I am now here, and I will always be here to strangle your happiness and crush your hope. So it's all right, dry your tears."
And you don't cry. You don't even blink. All you can do is stare into the nothingness, frozen in time, as the wicked dark wretches your naked body, twisting your limbs and clenching your neck in its hands of ice. If you needed to breathe, you surely wouldn't be able to.
But you don't need to breathe, do you?
No, but if you did, the malicious emotions coursing through your body would be enough to freeze the air in you lungs. A rampant river rages through the flesh, flooding every sense and exposing every wound. Every sin, every heartbreak, every day spent alone was given new life as it rose from a grave that it had been violently shoved into.
'What a frightening child. It's like he can see into our thoughts.'
No.
'He is not my son!'
Please, God, no.
'Monster! Demon!'
Please, stop.
//I will not stop," replies the being that is tearing your soul away. "I shall ravage you mind and heart until it no longer entices, and when your body is left cracked and broken, I will abandon you. And you will miss me, because when I am gone, you will never know greater suffering. Suffering that comes from solitude, alone in a frozen world trapped in a perpetual midnight of utter silence. You will cry out, but no sound shall come forth. Nothing can shatter the depth of the moment, not even your cold blood that strikes the ground as you search for a way to escape, taking your inexistent life over and over again.//
I don't understand.
//You are one of those selfish souls that cling desperately to what little humanity you may have left, refusing to accept what you might become. You will never know greater shame or pain. And when you wish to end this life of misery, you will find that you cannot. Though a dagger may slice your thin neck and cut away your heart, you shall not cease to live. But you shall never live, so how can you kill something that was never there?//
I don't understand you, and I am afraid. What am I becoming?
//Why do you wish to become him?//
Who? I don't understand. What are you asking me?
//Why do you grasp so firmly the life of your desolation? Why do you desire to exist as a shadow in a world that is a mere reflection to the world you once knew?//
I don't know and I don't understand! Aren't I dead? Who are you? Why am I here?
Silence answered. He felt the choking encirclement loosen, fading away into the darkness. He found himself reaching to the cold, but it fell just beyond his fingertips. He wanted it back. Whatever it was had manipulated his lonely heart in ways that fell nothing short of sinister, and Hisoka desired nothing more to hear those harsh words and revel in those cold arms once again. But now he was alone, silence's impending weight falling heavily over his ears. The more he strained them to become aware of any noise, the desolate the realm became.
I'm alone. You left me alone. You lied to me. Please, come back and break me.
"I am. an angel of death."
Where did that come from? Who am I? Is it true?
"Shinigami."
The word echoed in his mind, screaming and at the same time not being heard. It was then that whatever strand on consciousness still existed thinned and frayed, snapping violently as the boy plummeted helplessly to a world that was as foreign to him as a feeling of belonging.
_________________________________________________________________
A tall man in an orderly brown suit stood impassively at the front of the room, his piercing cobalt eyes narrowed dangerously behind the frames of his glasses. His arms were folded across his chest as the fingers of his right hand drummed across left arm slowly, his aura transmitting a chillingly calm patience as his mouth was drawn into a thin line. His eyes were boring a hole through the door as if daring it to open, revealing the guilty face of a man who was either habitually late or failing to even show up.
"Eh. Tatsumi-san, I think we should just start without Tsuzuki-san. We've been waiting for nearly half an hour," a man with disheveled wavy blonde hair suggested, his brown eyes glinting with nervousness behind his own rounded frames.
"Tsuzuki-san is. truly remarkable. Watari, have you met anyone so absentminded? Honestly, that man-"
"Let's just begin, Tatsumi-san," Kanoe interrupted, his annoyance even more apparent than Tatsumi's by the way that his left eye would twitch every once in a while and the sharp tone that his gruff voice carried. "I'm sure that Tsuzuki will eventually be informed of what was discussed."
Tatsumi sighed and nodded, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the middle finger of his right hand. Leaning over to open a manila-colored folder, he began shuffling through a few papers before settling on the order to begin with. The younger Gushoushin hovered quietly behind him as he peered curiously over Tatsumi's broad shoulders while pondering how quiet the room seemed with only the three of them. Actually, he was almost certain that more Shinigami had been requested to attend this meeting, but the lack of Tsuzuki's whining and energy left a hallow spot on the conference room.
Clearing his throat to regain the attention of everyone present, Tatsumi announced, "As you all may or may not be aware of, Tsuzuki is in need of a new partner. Asuka/Himura Masaki had failed to cut all his ties with the human world and has interfered with the live of his cousin, whom he had initially given his life for six years before. While he is repeating his training, we are forced to locate another partner who can tolera- eh, work well with Tsuzuki."
A faint snicker rose from Watari's side of the table, telling Tatsumi that his slip of words hadn't gone unnoticed by the self-declared chemist.
"In conclusion," Tatsumi attempted to amend, casting a weary glance at Watari. "I will personally set to work trying to locate a new person, but I would prefer to not do so independently. Kanoe-Kachou, I would appreciate it if you would mention this situation to the Earl at you next meeting and ask him if he has noticed anything unusual in his mansion recently that could work to our advantage."
Kanoe-Kachou nodded in approval, his eyes lowered and his mouth firmly shut as he sat in the office chair. He was apparently still brooding over the fact that Tsuzuki had failed to make an appearance at the meeting that resolved only around his present circumstances regarding a partner. The sweets that often accompanied Tsuzuki to meetings absence also grated on his nerves.
Tatsumi's lecture droned on, finally ending about ten minutes later. Watari leapt up out of his chair, 003 giving a hoot of protest when her perch on the energetic man's shoulder suddenly became very difficult to balance upon. She hopped off his shoulder and took to flight, darting after her owner out the door and down the hall. Tatsumi watched the scientist go, his lab coat and hair fluttering haphazardly behind him as he practically skipped back to his lab. The secretary stared, wide-eyed, but profanely refused to allow himself to ponder the motives that Watari had possessed was for returning to his "work" so. happily.
A firm hand clamped on his shoulder brought Tatsumi out of his reverie. He glanced at Kanoe-Kachou's equally disapproving face and was reassured to know that wasn't the only one who found Watari to be quite eccentric at times. Returning Tatsumi's gaze after Watari had turned the corner, Kanoe nodded slightly, released his grip, and began the walk back to his office at the end of the hall, followed by the hovering chicken deity, leaving Tatsumi alone in the frame of the doorway. He remained there for a minute, lost in quiet contemplation, before he traversed the length of the conference table to collect his report. Stacking the documents neatly within the folder again, he closed it and settled it loosely in the palm of his right hand. Straightening his back, he took in a deep breath and released it a few seconds later, allowing his thoughts to drift to memories of Tsuzuki no that he was alone in the room.
It was true that he and Tsuzuki had shared more than a partnership in business for a little while. But it'd been three years since the man who presently served as the secretary of EnmaCho's Shokan division had ended his alliance with Tsuzuki on circumstances that neither may have understood at the time. When you distance yourself from a person, however, it becomes much more obvious the reason that you couldn't stand to be with them. It never comes down to the pretense of a lack of affection, it comes down to the inability to handle the guilt. It's too much of a strain, and it tears at your soul. Never before Tsuzuki had Tatsumi even imagined that such darkness could exist in a person's heart, let alone one so generally cheerful.
But scars don't lie. The feeling of drowning in guilt can't be mistaken. Love wasn't supposed to be the iron ball chained around your ankles that dragged you to the bottom of a blackened pool of blood, where even the light of the surface couldn't be distinguished from the misery. Love was supposed to heal old wounds, not rip them open anew and smoother them with salt. That's why it could never work. Tsuzuki couldn't even live with himself or be brave enough to battle the shame plaguing with soul. How could Tatsumi love a person who hated themselves? Was it supposed to be Tatsumi's job to protect him from the demons in his mind? If it was, then he certainly wasn't strong enough to do it. The person who could save Tsuzuki would have to be a person with no heart to be crushed and if such a person even existed, how could they be able love?
It really was such a trivial game, love was; a silly, trying and pointless game that went round and round in a circle, never getting anywhere, no matter how frantically you try to break the circle. Tatsumi had heard an old saying once that told you that if you truly loved someone, you should draw their name in a circle instead of a heart because hearts can be broken but a circle goes on forever. Wasn't it ironic how this circle of true love was the one thing you suddenly began trying to break, something that you desired to shatter above everything else? You try to escape it, but the force of the affection is maddening. You feel your mind on the brink of collapse and what you cannot fill with passion you fill with pain.
The soul will harbor these suffocating feelings and they will thrive within you, forcing out every bit of logic and every humane thought you ever possessed. All that exists is a galling need for the pleasure or the pain, but the line between the two becomes blurred and eventually ceases to exist. You fall into sleep at night and awake in a cold sweat with your breath coming to you raggedly, but the nightmare means nothing to you. The reality of your life has become crueler, so why should a mere dream affect you? And when you're finally at the brink of insanity and all you feel like doing is smiling at the remorse that plagues you, something snaps within and you realize that it's /his/ fault. /He/ is the one who drags you through hell and back. You love him, but you hate him. You want to help him, but can't escape becoming him.
And the last thing that you can do to save yourself. is to abandon him. No, a lack of affection certainly wasn't the problem, to use an understatement. But if that's the only thing that other people could handle, let them think that. They've never drowned like you have and you pray that they never would. After all, only a heartless person like you could even begin to recover from the shock. Yes, heartless is what you become. Your soul is so devastated by the darkness that it felt than ran deeper than anything you could ever fathom so it could never open to anyone again. You know that they all are not him, but you're terrified that you might feel that same pull again. Oh, that's strange. How he had gotten back to his office without realizing that he left the conference room? Well, no bother. He was there and no one had been injured in the process, so he assumed that it was all right.
Sighing heavily, he closed the door to his office behind him as he entered and crossed the small room, settling into the swivel chair as he laid his folder on top of a neatly organized pile of papers. Wait, what was the paper on top of the others? Tatsumi slid the folder to the left and picked up what appeared to be a report. Upon closer inspection, he assumed that it was probably a new case. Paper-clipped on top of the rest of the papers was a four inch by four inch photo of a young boy, maybe in his early teens, with large green eyes and sandy-blonde bangs that hung messily over his brow. He had a small build, making him look rather feminine. If it weren't for the suit he wore, Tatsumi would've probably guessed the person in the picture was a girl.
He curiously angled the picture to the side and glanced at the text. The boys name was Kurosaki Hisoka, born October 18th, blah, blah, blah. So where's the case report? Flipping to the next page, he began skimming the text looking for some indicator of what the Shinigami would be investigating and who would be doing it. No such data appeared, until he reached the third page and a particular line caught his attention. ".died July 7th of this year of an incurable disease at age sixteen." Ah, so they were supposed to look into what killed the boy, find his spirit, and bring him to Meifu, right? Oh? What now? ".possesses a high level of spiritual energy, empathetic abilities, and is trained is traditional Japanese fighting arts."?
The present tense? But isn't Kurosaki dead? His brow creasing in bewilderment, Tatsumi flipped back to the first page and read the first couple of lines. According to this, Kurosaki was to become. a Shinigami? How'd this information get to him so quickly? It didn't matter at the moment, Tatsumi decided, as he pushed himself out his chair and exited his office quickly, making his way down the hall to his boss's office with long quick strides, the report clenched tightly in hand. And so it came to pass that Watari had for some reason felt the urge to spring out of his lab in a flustered mess, colliding into Tatsumi and taking him to the floor with him.
"Hit the deck!" Watari cried, squirming off Tatsumi, grabbing the other man's arm, and dragging him away from the doorway.
Tatsumi's eyes were wide with confusion that was tinted by the fear that Watari would blow the Shokan division building to smithereens. It's not like it was improbable. True to his warning, however, a violent poof of grayish-green smoke emerged from the lab, accompanied by a loud boom that signaled the downfall of what was likely to be all of Watari's laboratory equipment. Smoke continued to vent out of the door and into the hallway as both Watari and Tatsumi looked on wide-eyed. Somehow, Watari had managed to crawl in Tatsumi's lap and had thrown his arms around his neck much like a damsel in distress would've done. Tatsumi's thought proceeded in this order: explosion, smoke, lost money, people staring, Watari sitting on me, my suit is dirty.
"Get off me," Tatsumi prompted, attempting to distance himself from the shell-shocked scientist.
Watari compliantly stood up, offering a hand down to help Tatsumi up as 003 flews laps around her master's head. She was evidently about as pleased about the situation as Tatsumi was and her loud hoots were berating Watari with her own special words. Usually the penny-pinching secretary would have been quite distressed over the situation (since lab equipment wasn't exactly cheap and the chemist went through a lot of it), but these were not normal circumstances. He needed to go talk to Kanoe-Kachou quickly, and- Oh shit, where did the folder go? He wearily looked to the fumes, which were considerably dense.
"What happened now?" an irritated voice penetrated the silence that had fallen over the workers of EnmaCho. "Watari, were you working on that damned gender-changing potion again?"
"No." the blonde man looked away, directing his eyes to the ceiling.
"Kanoe-Kachou!" Tatsumi approached his boss, hundreds of questions weighting down his mind. He began by simply asking, "Why wasn't I informed in advance about Kurosaki-san?"
"Who?" Kanoe looked at Tatsumi like he'd just sprouted antennas.
"Kurosaki Hisoka! The report left on my desk!" Tatsumi tried to clarify, his anxiety rising.
"I don't know who you're talking about."
"He's a boy with big green eyes and blonde hair! There was a report with a photo left on my desk when I returned from the meeting. Who is he?" Tatsumi stated, his voice staying surprisingly calm.
"Oh, that new case? I got it in yesterday right before I left for home. I just put it on your desk to review. Is there some problem with it?" Kanoe- Kachou answered now that he had the slightest clue what his coworker was talking about.
"Yes, there is something interesting about it. This isn't a new case, the boy is to become a Shinigami!"
"What?!" Both Kanoe and Watari squawked in unison. Tatsumi looked at Watari quizzically, wondering why the matter involved the ash-dusted scientist.
"Watari-san?" Tatsumi questioned.
"I just saw that kid! A teenage girly boy with blonde hair, right? Kind of small?" Watari sputtered as he barely contained his excitement. "I saw someone new in the infirmary a couple of minutes before when I was getting some coffee. I just assumed he was a victim or something, but-"
"-He's already here?!" It was the shadow master's turn to gape. Watari nodded solemnly. Well, it looks like it's off to the infirmary. Why was Tatsumi always left out of the loop?
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Oh, a cliffhanger! Not really, but hey! I'm not very fond of this chapter. It was so technical with the business meeting, but I suppose it does have some parts I enjoyed writing. I'm sure you'll be able to tell which. ^^ Anyway, since you made it this far, I would really appreciate it if you'd review! Reviews are so encouraging for me as an author, so if you like the story so far, please let me know! Thanks so much for reading!
-Kaen ^^
Chapter Two: But a Circle Goes On Forever
By Kaen
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
What a strange feeling it is, to breathe a final breath and know that the simple action of respiration is no longer necessary. There was no reason to open your eyes, no reason to speak a word. Reaching out for help was trivial, so why bother to lift a finger? No one would answer you anyway. Your heart stops pounding, you can feel it. It's like it knows that its labors are as trivial as any other attempt you might make to live. And when you expect the angels to rush out and embrace you, sweeping you to heaven's gate in gentle arms, you are greeted with darkness; a frigid sort of darkness, the type you feel on a damp winter night when the moon hides its face behind a mask of clouds and even the stars are reluctant to shine.
The low-drifting fogs cling to your body fervently, piercing your skin with its unseen needles of ice while it, at the same time, whispers, "It is all right. I've come to you because you've called to me. Dry your tears, for you are not lonely. I am now here, and I will always be here to strangle your happiness and crush your hope. So it's all right, dry your tears."
And you don't cry. You don't even blink. All you can do is stare into the nothingness, frozen in time, as the wicked dark wretches your naked body, twisting your limbs and clenching your neck in its hands of ice. If you needed to breathe, you surely wouldn't be able to.
But you don't need to breathe, do you?
No, but if you did, the malicious emotions coursing through your body would be enough to freeze the air in you lungs. A rampant river rages through the flesh, flooding every sense and exposing every wound. Every sin, every heartbreak, every day spent alone was given new life as it rose from a grave that it had been violently shoved into.
'What a frightening child. It's like he can see into our thoughts.'
No.
'He is not my son!'
Please, God, no.
'Monster! Demon!'
Please, stop.
//I will not stop," replies the being that is tearing your soul away. "I shall ravage you mind and heart until it no longer entices, and when your body is left cracked and broken, I will abandon you. And you will miss me, because when I am gone, you will never know greater suffering. Suffering that comes from solitude, alone in a frozen world trapped in a perpetual midnight of utter silence. You will cry out, but no sound shall come forth. Nothing can shatter the depth of the moment, not even your cold blood that strikes the ground as you search for a way to escape, taking your inexistent life over and over again.//
I don't understand.
//You are one of those selfish souls that cling desperately to what little humanity you may have left, refusing to accept what you might become. You will never know greater shame or pain. And when you wish to end this life of misery, you will find that you cannot. Though a dagger may slice your thin neck and cut away your heart, you shall not cease to live. But you shall never live, so how can you kill something that was never there?//
I don't understand you, and I am afraid. What am I becoming?
//Why do you wish to become him?//
Who? I don't understand. What are you asking me?
//Why do you grasp so firmly the life of your desolation? Why do you desire to exist as a shadow in a world that is a mere reflection to the world you once knew?//
I don't know and I don't understand! Aren't I dead? Who are you? Why am I here?
Silence answered. He felt the choking encirclement loosen, fading away into the darkness. He found himself reaching to the cold, but it fell just beyond his fingertips. He wanted it back. Whatever it was had manipulated his lonely heart in ways that fell nothing short of sinister, and Hisoka desired nothing more to hear those harsh words and revel in those cold arms once again. But now he was alone, silence's impending weight falling heavily over his ears. The more he strained them to become aware of any noise, the desolate the realm became.
I'm alone. You left me alone. You lied to me. Please, come back and break me.
"I am. an angel of death."
Where did that come from? Who am I? Is it true?
"Shinigami."
The word echoed in his mind, screaming and at the same time not being heard. It was then that whatever strand on consciousness still existed thinned and frayed, snapping violently as the boy plummeted helplessly to a world that was as foreign to him as a feeling of belonging.
_________________________________________________________________
A tall man in an orderly brown suit stood impassively at the front of the room, his piercing cobalt eyes narrowed dangerously behind the frames of his glasses. His arms were folded across his chest as the fingers of his right hand drummed across left arm slowly, his aura transmitting a chillingly calm patience as his mouth was drawn into a thin line. His eyes were boring a hole through the door as if daring it to open, revealing the guilty face of a man who was either habitually late or failing to even show up.
"Eh. Tatsumi-san, I think we should just start without Tsuzuki-san. We've been waiting for nearly half an hour," a man with disheveled wavy blonde hair suggested, his brown eyes glinting with nervousness behind his own rounded frames.
"Tsuzuki-san is. truly remarkable. Watari, have you met anyone so absentminded? Honestly, that man-"
"Let's just begin, Tatsumi-san," Kanoe interrupted, his annoyance even more apparent than Tatsumi's by the way that his left eye would twitch every once in a while and the sharp tone that his gruff voice carried. "I'm sure that Tsuzuki will eventually be informed of what was discussed."
Tatsumi sighed and nodded, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with the middle finger of his right hand. Leaning over to open a manila-colored folder, he began shuffling through a few papers before settling on the order to begin with. The younger Gushoushin hovered quietly behind him as he peered curiously over Tatsumi's broad shoulders while pondering how quiet the room seemed with only the three of them. Actually, he was almost certain that more Shinigami had been requested to attend this meeting, but the lack of Tsuzuki's whining and energy left a hallow spot on the conference room.
Clearing his throat to regain the attention of everyone present, Tatsumi announced, "As you all may or may not be aware of, Tsuzuki is in need of a new partner. Asuka/Himura Masaki had failed to cut all his ties with the human world and has interfered with the live of his cousin, whom he had initially given his life for six years before. While he is repeating his training, we are forced to locate another partner who can tolera- eh, work well with Tsuzuki."
A faint snicker rose from Watari's side of the table, telling Tatsumi that his slip of words hadn't gone unnoticed by the self-declared chemist.
"In conclusion," Tatsumi attempted to amend, casting a weary glance at Watari. "I will personally set to work trying to locate a new person, but I would prefer to not do so independently. Kanoe-Kachou, I would appreciate it if you would mention this situation to the Earl at you next meeting and ask him if he has noticed anything unusual in his mansion recently that could work to our advantage."
Kanoe-Kachou nodded in approval, his eyes lowered and his mouth firmly shut as he sat in the office chair. He was apparently still brooding over the fact that Tsuzuki had failed to make an appearance at the meeting that resolved only around his present circumstances regarding a partner. The sweets that often accompanied Tsuzuki to meetings absence also grated on his nerves.
Tatsumi's lecture droned on, finally ending about ten minutes later. Watari leapt up out of his chair, 003 giving a hoot of protest when her perch on the energetic man's shoulder suddenly became very difficult to balance upon. She hopped off his shoulder and took to flight, darting after her owner out the door and down the hall. Tatsumi watched the scientist go, his lab coat and hair fluttering haphazardly behind him as he practically skipped back to his lab. The secretary stared, wide-eyed, but profanely refused to allow himself to ponder the motives that Watari had possessed was for returning to his "work" so. happily.
A firm hand clamped on his shoulder brought Tatsumi out of his reverie. He glanced at Kanoe-Kachou's equally disapproving face and was reassured to know that wasn't the only one who found Watari to be quite eccentric at times. Returning Tatsumi's gaze after Watari had turned the corner, Kanoe nodded slightly, released his grip, and began the walk back to his office at the end of the hall, followed by the hovering chicken deity, leaving Tatsumi alone in the frame of the doorway. He remained there for a minute, lost in quiet contemplation, before he traversed the length of the conference table to collect his report. Stacking the documents neatly within the folder again, he closed it and settled it loosely in the palm of his right hand. Straightening his back, he took in a deep breath and released it a few seconds later, allowing his thoughts to drift to memories of Tsuzuki no that he was alone in the room.
It was true that he and Tsuzuki had shared more than a partnership in business for a little while. But it'd been three years since the man who presently served as the secretary of EnmaCho's Shokan division had ended his alliance with Tsuzuki on circumstances that neither may have understood at the time. When you distance yourself from a person, however, it becomes much more obvious the reason that you couldn't stand to be with them. It never comes down to the pretense of a lack of affection, it comes down to the inability to handle the guilt. It's too much of a strain, and it tears at your soul. Never before Tsuzuki had Tatsumi even imagined that such darkness could exist in a person's heart, let alone one so generally cheerful.
But scars don't lie. The feeling of drowning in guilt can't be mistaken. Love wasn't supposed to be the iron ball chained around your ankles that dragged you to the bottom of a blackened pool of blood, where even the light of the surface couldn't be distinguished from the misery. Love was supposed to heal old wounds, not rip them open anew and smoother them with salt. That's why it could never work. Tsuzuki couldn't even live with himself or be brave enough to battle the shame plaguing with soul. How could Tatsumi love a person who hated themselves? Was it supposed to be Tatsumi's job to protect him from the demons in his mind? If it was, then he certainly wasn't strong enough to do it. The person who could save Tsuzuki would have to be a person with no heart to be crushed and if such a person even existed, how could they be able love?
It really was such a trivial game, love was; a silly, trying and pointless game that went round and round in a circle, never getting anywhere, no matter how frantically you try to break the circle. Tatsumi had heard an old saying once that told you that if you truly loved someone, you should draw their name in a circle instead of a heart because hearts can be broken but a circle goes on forever. Wasn't it ironic how this circle of true love was the one thing you suddenly began trying to break, something that you desired to shatter above everything else? You try to escape it, but the force of the affection is maddening. You feel your mind on the brink of collapse and what you cannot fill with passion you fill with pain.
The soul will harbor these suffocating feelings and they will thrive within you, forcing out every bit of logic and every humane thought you ever possessed. All that exists is a galling need for the pleasure or the pain, but the line between the two becomes blurred and eventually ceases to exist. You fall into sleep at night and awake in a cold sweat with your breath coming to you raggedly, but the nightmare means nothing to you. The reality of your life has become crueler, so why should a mere dream affect you? And when you're finally at the brink of insanity and all you feel like doing is smiling at the remorse that plagues you, something snaps within and you realize that it's /his/ fault. /He/ is the one who drags you through hell and back. You love him, but you hate him. You want to help him, but can't escape becoming him.
And the last thing that you can do to save yourself. is to abandon him. No, a lack of affection certainly wasn't the problem, to use an understatement. But if that's the only thing that other people could handle, let them think that. They've never drowned like you have and you pray that they never would. After all, only a heartless person like you could even begin to recover from the shock. Yes, heartless is what you become. Your soul is so devastated by the darkness that it felt than ran deeper than anything you could ever fathom so it could never open to anyone again. You know that they all are not him, but you're terrified that you might feel that same pull again. Oh, that's strange. How he had gotten back to his office without realizing that he left the conference room? Well, no bother. He was there and no one had been injured in the process, so he assumed that it was all right.
Sighing heavily, he closed the door to his office behind him as he entered and crossed the small room, settling into the swivel chair as he laid his folder on top of a neatly organized pile of papers. Wait, what was the paper on top of the others? Tatsumi slid the folder to the left and picked up what appeared to be a report. Upon closer inspection, he assumed that it was probably a new case. Paper-clipped on top of the rest of the papers was a four inch by four inch photo of a young boy, maybe in his early teens, with large green eyes and sandy-blonde bangs that hung messily over his brow. He had a small build, making him look rather feminine. If it weren't for the suit he wore, Tatsumi would've probably guessed the person in the picture was a girl.
He curiously angled the picture to the side and glanced at the text. The boys name was Kurosaki Hisoka, born October 18th, blah, blah, blah. So where's the case report? Flipping to the next page, he began skimming the text looking for some indicator of what the Shinigami would be investigating and who would be doing it. No such data appeared, until he reached the third page and a particular line caught his attention. ".died July 7th of this year of an incurable disease at age sixteen." Ah, so they were supposed to look into what killed the boy, find his spirit, and bring him to Meifu, right? Oh? What now? ".possesses a high level of spiritual energy, empathetic abilities, and is trained is traditional Japanese fighting arts."?
The present tense? But isn't Kurosaki dead? His brow creasing in bewilderment, Tatsumi flipped back to the first page and read the first couple of lines. According to this, Kurosaki was to become. a Shinigami? How'd this information get to him so quickly? It didn't matter at the moment, Tatsumi decided, as he pushed himself out his chair and exited his office quickly, making his way down the hall to his boss's office with long quick strides, the report clenched tightly in hand. And so it came to pass that Watari had for some reason felt the urge to spring out of his lab in a flustered mess, colliding into Tatsumi and taking him to the floor with him.
"Hit the deck!" Watari cried, squirming off Tatsumi, grabbing the other man's arm, and dragging him away from the doorway.
Tatsumi's eyes were wide with confusion that was tinted by the fear that Watari would blow the Shokan division building to smithereens. It's not like it was improbable. True to his warning, however, a violent poof of grayish-green smoke emerged from the lab, accompanied by a loud boom that signaled the downfall of what was likely to be all of Watari's laboratory equipment. Smoke continued to vent out of the door and into the hallway as both Watari and Tatsumi looked on wide-eyed. Somehow, Watari had managed to crawl in Tatsumi's lap and had thrown his arms around his neck much like a damsel in distress would've done. Tatsumi's thought proceeded in this order: explosion, smoke, lost money, people staring, Watari sitting on me, my suit is dirty.
"Get off me," Tatsumi prompted, attempting to distance himself from the shell-shocked scientist.
Watari compliantly stood up, offering a hand down to help Tatsumi up as 003 flews laps around her master's head. She was evidently about as pleased about the situation as Tatsumi was and her loud hoots were berating Watari with her own special words. Usually the penny-pinching secretary would have been quite distressed over the situation (since lab equipment wasn't exactly cheap and the chemist went through a lot of it), but these were not normal circumstances. He needed to go talk to Kanoe-Kachou quickly, and- Oh shit, where did the folder go? He wearily looked to the fumes, which were considerably dense.
"What happened now?" an irritated voice penetrated the silence that had fallen over the workers of EnmaCho. "Watari, were you working on that damned gender-changing potion again?"
"No." the blonde man looked away, directing his eyes to the ceiling.
"Kanoe-Kachou!" Tatsumi approached his boss, hundreds of questions weighting down his mind. He began by simply asking, "Why wasn't I informed in advance about Kurosaki-san?"
"Who?" Kanoe looked at Tatsumi like he'd just sprouted antennas.
"Kurosaki Hisoka! The report left on my desk!" Tatsumi tried to clarify, his anxiety rising.
"I don't know who you're talking about."
"He's a boy with big green eyes and blonde hair! There was a report with a photo left on my desk when I returned from the meeting. Who is he?" Tatsumi stated, his voice staying surprisingly calm.
"Oh, that new case? I got it in yesterday right before I left for home. I just put it on your desk to review. Is there some problem with it?" Kanoe- Kachou answered now that he had the slightest clue what his coworker was talking about.
"Yes, there is something interesting about it. This isn't a new case, the boy is to become a Shinigami!"
"What?!" Both Kanoe and Watari squawked in unison. Tatsumi looked at Watari quizzically, wondering why the matter involved the ash-dusted scientist.
"Watari-san?" Tatsumi questioned.
"I just saw that kid! A teenage girly boy with blonde hair, right? Kind of small?" Watari sputtered as he barely contained his excitement. "I saw someone new in the infirmary a couple of minutes before when I was getting some coffee. I just assumed he was a victim or something, but-"
"-He's already here?!" It was the shadow master's turn to gape. Watari nodded solemnly. Well, it looks like it's off to the infirmary. Why was Tatsumi always left out of the loop?
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Oh, a cliffhanger! Not really, but hey! I'm not very fond of this chapter. It was so technical with the business meeting, but I suppose it does have some parts I enjoyed writing. I'm sure you'll be able to tell which. ^^ Anyway, since you made it this far, I would really appreciate it if you'd review! Reviews are so encouraging for me as an author, so if you like the story so far, please let me know! Thanks so much for reading!
-Kaen ^^