Optimal Balance
Chapter 3/?
By: Lazuli
Again, another chapter! Wow, and now we're finally at the part that I have written down. At least half of this chapter. J Lots of edits were made as it got typed up. Again, Yami no Matsuei does not belong to me, but I do take full credit for this story. Thanks to all that reviewed on this, both on the yamifics list, and on ff.net. Just a note, there are some spoilers for the manga, mainly the latest translations from Hana to Yume. Nothing big, just little remarks that are made.
The world seemed to shimmer for a few moments before everything steadied. Hisoka opened his eyes slowly at first, unsure of what he was going to see—if he was going to see anything different from the graveyard or something mundane. He made a startled sound and opened his eyes more quickly when he saw the orchard of sakura trees. There was no other way to describe it—the trees were everywhere…and completely out of season. Sakura trees do not bloom in the middle of winter.
Tsuzuki was watching him carefully, his emotions fluctuating slightly. "You…do you like the sakura trees?" He asked hesitantly. "I know there's quite a lot of them…" His lips turned up briefly at that. It was a veritable sea of them.
"I thought you said this was the world of the dead." Hisoka said shakily. "So why do you have living plants in the afterlife? Isn't that kind of… strange?"
Tsuzuki's brows lifted in surprise as he turned to give Hisoka a more careful look. "I thought you more than anyone would remember what sakura trees signify. Even I knew what they meant, and I was an uneducated rustic when I was alive."
"If you're as old as you say you are…" Hisoka bit out, nettled at the slight to his intelligence. "Then you grew up in a more superstitious time. People always thought there was a double meaning to everything, seeing demons everywhere and scared of the sky itself."
Tsuzuki snorted, looking amused. "I'm not that old!" He protested, but there was a hint of pain underlying the words. "I grew up in the Meiji era. But it's quite simple really… in some respects, the sakura represent death." He tilted his head to the side. "So, quite appropriate for them to be in Meifu." There was another, longer pause. "And…and you're buried underneath a sakura tree." His voice was almost too quiet to hear.
Hisoka stared at him in shock, brows drawing in. "Then what was that in the graveyard?" He demanded. "Or was that a trick?" He shook his head. "Not that I doubt that I'm dead now, but if that wasn't my grave…"
Tsuzuki looked away for a moment, sighing. "That's your grave marker—but your father buried you underneath the sakura tree near your house. It was where… well, it seemed appropriate to him, I guess."
"He never would have cared for anything like that." Hisoka said bitterly. "I was their monster child, nothing more than that." He crossed his arms over his chest, but he shivered slightly at how casually Tsuzuki spoke of the place that he was buried. He supposed that the man would be slightly desensitized by now, but he wasn't able to think of it so simply yet.
"It's difficult to explain." Tsuzuki said slowly. "But there's a lot that you don't know or remember of what happened or what goes on now. But your father did love you, Hisoka. He still visits your grave, you know."
Hisoka took in that piece of information with shock, trying to find the lie behind the words, but there was nothing but absolute sincerity with Tsuzuki. Tsuzuki offered him a smile and then rested his hand on his shoulder gently.
"Hisoka—I need to take you inside to see Tatsumi and Konoe now." Tsuzuki interrupted his train of thought, tone apologetic. "Then they'll decide if you have to see Enma-sama or not." He winced slightly.
"I thought the newly dead went straight…" He stopped. "Oh… I'm not newly dead, am I?" He asked, half to himself. "I guess I have no choice." He shrugged off the coat, not needing it now in the warmer weather of this 'Meifu', and handing it back to Tsuzuki.
Tsuzuki winced again. "It will all make sense… we're going to figure out what to do…" He set off quickly towards the large building in the distance, looking suspiciously like the Diet Building in Tokyo. He blinked for a few moments, wondering if it was all an elaborate trick again, then turned back to the grove of sakura trees. Some things are pretty hard to counterfeit.
~
They were barely down the hallway when another person skidded out of a side room, nearly crashing into them. "Tsuzuki! You're back!" He paused and Hisoka got a close up look of amber eyes gleaming behind a pair of large, wire-framed glasses. "And you brought Bon, too." His relief was visible. "We were so worried …" He arched an eyebrow. "Not that he wasn't going to come back, but that you were going to wallow in your misery and let him stay down in Chijou."
Hisoka backed away, feeling uncomfortable at the press of emotions. It was strange, he hardly felt Tsuzuki's at all, but with everyone else, and there was this pressing, vaguely uncomfortable feeling. "Do I know you?" He asked finally, eyeing the man.
Tsuzuki bit hip lip at the other man's incredulous look. "He doesn't remember, Watari." He said urgently. "Anything." He gave the man a direct stare, as if trying to impress the importance of those words.
Watari's brows shot up, and Hisoka got the same wash of sympathy at that as he did with Hijiri. "Oh, this isn't going to be good—" He said slowly, chewing on a strand of hair as he examined Hisoka closer. "Tatsumi's going to be muttering inane things about vacation pay and we're going to have to find you…" Tsuzuki clapped a hand over his mouth, muffling the rest of the statement.
"Hisoka—I'd like for you to meet Watari—" He removed his hand from the other man's mouth and gestured to him. "He's our resident scientist and doctor—" His lips turned up briefly. "Although I wouldn't allow myself to accept anything to eat or drink from him. It can have adverse effects."
"The dead need doctors?" He questioned in disbelief. Nothing about this Meifu was making sense, nothing Tsuzuki said or did—doctors? Why would someone already dead need a doctor?
"The doctors aren't just for the dead, Bon." Watari gave him a smile that was as open as Tsuzuki's had been. "I'm the unofficial doctor for the shinigami—we live kind of a dangerous life and it's best to have some type of qualified person here to patch up the worst of the mistakes that we don't heal ourselves."
Tsuzuki snorted. "And you are so qualified." He said dryly. "Tell me again what you were qualified to be before you died?" He asked. Hisoka sensed an underlying good humor in it all, old jokes and banter that was developed over years.
"That's because I wasn't allowed to go to my true calling!" Watari's eyes gleamed. "I was always destined to find out the secrets of science, develop potions that no man has ever been able to come up with before—"
"Yes, yes…" Tsuzuki laughed. "At any rate…" He turned to Hisoka. "I would like Watari to look you over and make sure that you're in full working order." He winked.
Hisoka blushed and turned his nose up slightly. "I'm dead." He pointed out. "As you are, obviously and everyone else that is here. There shouldn't be anything wrong with me like that, and I don't want to be examined by someone that doesn't have a medical license and is liable to blow me up in the next few minutes."
Watari looked even more offended, putting on hand on his heart. "Now, Bon—you know I haven't blown up anything in the lab in a long time, the last one was just an accident. Tsuzuki and Terazuma inflict more damage on this building than I do."
Hisoka's brows drew in. "No, I don't know how many times or when was the last time you blew something up. I don't know you or Tsuzuki or anyone else that he's mentioned." His look was stubborn. "I just want to get on with my afterlife or whatever this is."
Tsuzuki bit his lip. "Watari is good for a doctor, Hisoka." He said carefully. "He's very good at research and I'm sure there is something he can do to see what made you forget. You have been here for three years, and you don't remember anything. I want to see if there's anything Watari can do to fix that."
"Fine." Hisoka sighed, rolling his eyes. "If it will get you to leave me alone about all of this for long enough for me to get used to being dead, then do it."
Watari looked faintly uneasy, but gestured towards his lab on the right. "Then right in here, Bon. It won't take very long, I promise—and then Tsuzuki will take you to your house and get you settled in again. We'll keep everyone else off your back for at least the rest of today, but this does take precedence."
"House?" He blinked. He let himself be momentarily distracted by that thought, Watari leading him to a beat up looking chair in a small office. "I have a house here?" He didn't want to say that it wasn't normal, that things didn't make sense. That line of thought was getting redundant, his mind trailing along the same disbelief as before. Apparently being dead was much different from what he was led to believe. Not that there was much authority on the afterlife…
Tsuzuki leaned against a wall of the office, expertly avoiding the penguin waddling across the floor, one hand absently petting the small owl that was on the table next to him. "All the comforts of home." He chirped. "With a few fringe benefits." He sounded entirely too cheerful, his outward moods an odd contrast to the man he felt before. Hisoka probed cautiously for the real emotions, but whatever was there was well hidden.
"I see." Hisoka shook his head and looked out the tiny window at the view of the sakura trees outside. Watari was fiddling with an ancient computer, typing in some type of code rapidly. His brow was furrowed as he put in the information, turning to give Hisoka some puzzled looks before turning back to the computer.
"Bon—can you tell me everything you remember of the past few years?" Watari questioned, not looking up from his computer. "I want to add in the data and see if there are any clues that I can find as to what happened. And Tsuzuki—you said the last thing that happened was that you finally managed to haul that sorry spirit of Muraki's up to Enma-sama where it belonged?"
Tsuzuki nodded, serious again. "Aa…we finally managed to kill him—and after that…" Tsuzuki sighed. "Well, you know what happened after that."
Hisoka didn't, but obviously Watari did, as the other man nodded in response to that. "I know…" He looked at Hisoka again and sighed.
"I wish there was something I could do for that, Tsuzuki, but I'll spend my time trying to cross examine Bon and see what he comes up with." He gave him a reassuring smile. "Now, shoo—go talk to Tatsumi and the Chief. I'll take care of matters here."
Tsuzuki obviously was reluctant to leave Hisoka alone, which puzzled him. Tsuzuki did his job; he picked up Hisoka and delivered him to Meifu. He didn't have any responsibility to him beyond that.
Just as the man was about to exit completely, a thought occurred to him. "Tsuzuki—did you ever find your partner?" He asked.
Tsuzuki froze, emotions running too quick for him to catch, and shielded immediately after so he didn't have a chance to examine them. Watari was still as well, eyes looking away as he busied himself with something else in the lab. "I did." He said softly.
"And?" Hisoka pressed. He frowned slightly. It wasn't like him to be intrusive like this, but after the man had intruded into his private life, he felt that he deserved to return the favor slightly.
"And…" Tsuzuki shrugged. "It doesn't matter." His voice was carefully controlled. "I'll come by after my meeting with Tatsumi and Konoe." He turned to smile the emotions that accompanying it ringing false. "Trust Watari, he knows what he's doing." Then he was gone, leaving Hisoka to try and figure out what was going on, his mind working around what he picked up while Watari fiddled with him.
Watari was already taking a sample of blood, a feat that Hisoka never would have thought possible for a dead person, but apparently things worked differently if you resided in Meifu. He chatted amiably, eyes sparkling behind the glasses.
"I bet that Tsuzuki surprised you, Bon—showing up the way he did, with no real explanation of what was going on." He shook his head. "Of course, I don't think he really expected you to follow him, either—" Watari put the sample in a small tube, and already the small puncture was healing. "But who really knows Tsuzuki? He may have planned it that way all along so that you would be able to come and accept more easily."
Hisoka rolled his eyes. "I thought he was some type of pervert, the way he was watching the school like that." He muttered. "He was just there, day after day and not saying anything. When I confronted him, he said that he was looking for his partner." He sighed and looked away. "That was just a lie, wasn't it? He wasn't looking for his partner at all, he was looking for me."
Watari pushed his glasses up on his face and sat down across from Hisoka, expression thoughtful. "It wasn't precisely a lie, Hisoka. He was looking for you, but he was looking for his partner as well. He found both of you at the same time, really."
Hisoka looked puzzled for a moment, then started to piece some things together. Like how Tsuzuki said he was 'special', how the doctor was for the shinigami—how sad Tsuzuki looked when he said that he found his partner—
"I…you don't mean me…" He said, startled at the thought. "I…I can't be some type of shinigami—I mean…" Hisoka shook his head in negation. "I would have remembered something like that, I'm sure. And wouldn't Tsuzuki have said something when he found me?" A nagging thought was that Tsuzuki didn't want him as his partner, and that's why he didn't say anything. Nobody in his family had ever wanted him, why would this be any different?
"No, because you told Tsuzuki that you were happier were you where." Watari shrugged. "And Tsuzuki will put anyone's happiness above his own—especially yours, Hisoka. He didn't want to make you live a life that you never wanted—and he wanted to give you the happy childhood that you never had." Watari rolled his eyes. "In short, Tsuzuki was being an idiot denying you to be where you belonged, denying himself a partner and generally making himself slip into more of a miserable slump than usual."
Hisoka was startled. "He… cared that much?" He asked, bewildered. No one ever bothered to care about what he felt, and Tsuzuki certainly didn't seem any different as he followed Hisoka around everywhere and told him what had to be done.
Wait, that's not quite fair. Tsuzuki said he was sorry that it was that way, that he wanted me to be alive. He felt vaguely uncomfortable, not knowing how to deal with the emotion that was associated with those actions, not sure how to reply to someone that seemed so selfless as to give up what was obviously important to him in the face of Hisoka's stubborn refusal to see the truth.
Watari noticed his silence and smiled to himself. Bon hadn't changed a bit in his way of thinking. He was reverting back to form, of how he acted whenever Tsuzuki was kind to him. He treated it with suspicion at first, always demanding 'Why' of Tsuzuki. He slowly began to accept that it was just the way Tsuzuki was.
"He cared that much, Bon. You were his partner—are his partner, I should say. You've been his partner for the past three years; ever since you came to the Shokan Division. Tsuzuki has never kept a partner for more than three months before you. You're very important to him because you never gave up."
Hisoka pondered this for a few moments, expression inward as Watari got up and took a few more tests, humming to himself and generally leaving Hisoka to his own thoughts as he entered in his information. When Tsuzuki came back, he would have a lot of questions for him.
~
Tsuzuki sat across from Tatsumi and Konoe, expression guarded. "Well, Hisoka is back." He said unnecessarily. Anything to fill the silence that was rapidly growing more uncomfortable. "He still doesn't remember anything, but Watari will run some tests to see if he can figure anything out…"
Konoe sighed, hands clasped together as he leaned forward. "Tsuzuki, did Kurosaki-san tell you anything of what he knows yet?" He raised an eyebrow. "Any bit of information will help speed this along. He may remember something that will bring his memories back, restore your partner to you—"
Tsuzuki shook his head. "We haven't grilled him for information yet, Kaichou. Watari will try and get something out of him, but for the most part, we're going to give him a day to adjust. He just found out that he's been dead for the past three years, with no memory of how it happened besides what he managed to glean from the newspapers." His expression darkened. "And you know how much is in there."
Tatsumi sighed and rubbed his temples. "What has happened to Kurosaki-san is unfortunate, all of us agree with that, Tsuzuki-san. But do you realize that this has never happened before? We never had a shinigami forget what he became. We need to find out as soon as possible what caused this."
Tsuzuki glared at him. "And I said we'll find out soon enough." He snapped, temper fraying. He hadn't slept well for the past few weeks, had been hanging on a thread to sanity, and all he wanted to do was sleep for a day and try to get his nerves under control. Hisoka being back was wonderful, but a Hisoka who didn't even know who he really was hurt. "He's still my partner, and I'm going to take care of him. That means letting him rest and get used to everything."
Tatsumi looked startled at the unusual outburst from Tsuzuki. He hardly ever got that vocal, but then again, anything that involved Kurosaki-san was bound to set off the wrong triggers wit him. "Fine." He said shortly. "You take care of him tonight, but we will be talking to him in the morning."
Tsuzuki made a face at Tatsumi's tone, but then shrugged. "I said I would do that, didn't I?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'll take care of it." He stood up, brushing a hand through his hair and offering an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry… I'm a little… out of sorts." He said softly. "Just give me a day or so as well." It was the closest Tsuzuki ever came to admitting that the situation was bothering him, one of the few times he let anyone see any of his real moods.
Konoe nodded, smiling at Tsuzuki, but there was real urgency in his eyes as well. "We understand, Tsuzuki. We'll give you two days, but no more than that. If what happened to Kurosaki-san is repeatable, we have to find out the cause of it so it doesn't happen again."
Tsuzuki nodded his agreement, one hand already on the door and poised to leave. "I'll keep that in mind." His smile grew brighter again, and Tatsumi groaned inwardly at the mask that Tsuzuki was once again donning, hiding his real emotions from the real world.
After he was gone, Tatsumi turned to Konoe with a worried expression on his face. "I hope that this all goes well." He muttered. "I don't care to have Tsuzuki lose his mind again, and if Kurosaki-san doesn't remember soon, that may just happen." He prayed that it wouldn't happen.
~
"So, Bon—" Watari perched at the edge of the table, grinning broadly at Hisoka. "Care to tell me a bit about yourself? Like how you got to be away from home and away from that charming family of yours?"
Hisoka stiffened instinctively. He was still nervous, unsure of all of what was going on. All he wanted to do was get away from everybody and just try to sort through all the junk in his head. He didn't want to answer questions about his family. He didn't want to think about his family…but—Watari raised a very good question, and one that he couldn't answer.
"I…I don't remember." He said truthfully. "That part of my life is kind of a blur to me. I don't recall exactly how I got out, except that I remember being scared of being around my family—of what they would say or do to me when they knew I was taking advantage of the walks that they allowed me…" He swallowed convulsively. Somehow the thought of those walks made him slightly uneasy, a queasy feeling building up in the bottom of his stomach. "They would let me go down to the village near our estates—fresh air so that it wasn't obvious to everyone what they did to their son." His voice was bitter.
Watari was about to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder, but thought better of it as he watched him, eyes sad. "I know it couldn't have been easy for you." He said gently. "Your family was never very warm to you." He exhaled heavily, not looking at Hisoka for a moment. "But, go on. You said that you were taking advantage of their walks--?"
Hisoka nodded. "I would sneak away for longer distances, trying to plan out something to get me out of there. That's all I really remember. It's rather fuzzy. It just seems that one moment I was home, the next I was in a completely different place, free from my parents and a life to hide behind. They never searched for me…" his voice trailed off, as he realized why they never searched for him.
"I see…" Watari tilted his head to the side. "Any place in particular that you ended up?" He asked casually. "You must have been pretty far from your families estates to have felt safe enough to move around."
Frowning slightly, Hisoka tried to remember. "I was in…Nagasaki, I think." He said finally. "I had an apartment, everything was taken care of, and it seemed that it had been for quite some time."
Watari looked confused at that, brows drawing in as he tried to put the pieces together. "The only thing that makes sense is Nagasaki… in a way." He murmured. "That's one city that you were assigned to as a shinigami, that's where you and Tsuzuki first met—and the first time you saw Muraki since…" He broke off abruptly, gaze lightning as he came to some internal conclusion. He immediately jumped off the table and moved over to his computer, typing rapidly.
"Met who?" Hisoka asked, confused by Watari's abrupt change in behavior. One moment the scientist was completely calm, just questioning Hisoka about little facts, and then the next moment it was like someone lit a fire underneath him and he was moving at hyper speed.
Watari swung around in his chair to face Hisoka, a wide, satisfied smiled on his face. "I think I may have found the connection, Bon."
