I know it's going to get confusing...just don't freak out on me. It will make sense as soon as I eat non-lazy pills and write the rest of it. Sorry for the shortness and horrible spacing, I didn't want to spend any more time screwing with the html Frontpage did than I had to and it was sorta passable.
Twilight
by calerica
Chapter 2
Wasting away.
That was all he could think about.
People, things, dreams, words.
Everyone spent his or her entire lives preparing for the next big thing in life. Living inside of your mother prepared you for birth. Birth prepared you for the unfair life outside. You first years prepared you for school. School prepared you for living on your own. Living on your own prepared you for old age. And old age prepared you for…
But in the ultimate end, everything died.
It all simply wasted away into nothing.
He felt numb, like there was no control over his limbs. There wasn't any ground below his feet. In fact, he couldn't even see his own hands. Hisoka would have thought himself blind if it hadn't been for the moving shadows on the ground.
The shadows were distinctly different than the darkness around him. It remotely resembled some thick syrupy liquid wavering in complete dimness. No matter what he told himself, Hisoka couldn't bring himself to touch it. The waves gave that dissimilar and bothersome buzz to his empathy.
If he touched it, he was almost certain he would drown.
After all, you never really needed water to drown—there were more dangerous things to smother you.
"Watashi…"
Hisoka spun around. Not literally, he couldn't do that, but rather he wanted to spin around and somehow did. The little red haired girl glanced up at him shyly—the brown of her eyes held a shallow guilt from what he could feel. Facial expressions always failed Hisoka when it came down to it—and from what he felt, he was soon to have no empathy to rely on at all.
"Gomen nasai Kurosaki-san," her voice trailed as she stared at her feet.
"I didn't mean to, but Akito told me to. And he is always right, isn't he?"
What bothered Hisoka about the situation wasn't that he was stuck in the middle of nowhere, but the fact that a confused little girl controlled that nowhere. She was rambling on about things he certainly didn't care much about at the moment.
With her big eyes, she gave him a pointed look.
"You will forgive me right?"
Hisoka found no words.
"I just can't let you take away okaasan."
As if habitual, she looked down at her feet again. The murky shadow gathered at her feet as if comforting her. Whatever power this was, Hisoka reminded himself to go research if he ever got out, it was certainly something they needed to keep in check.
Without warning, the ground seemed to begin encasing him. Not that he could see it, but there the girl was disappearing from feet up like something was covering her up. But she didn't even look surprised so Hisoka reasoned that it was himself who was the one being covered.
_ _ _
It was questionable whether Hisoka really "woke up" or not. As far as he was concerned, he blacked out, spent some time in lala land, and was now standing on the Tokyo Tower having a conversation with someone. He couldn't define who that someone was or what they had been talking about. After all, he had just opened his eyes and found himself there.
He turned to the girl who was speaking to him. She had suddenly stopped. Hisoka took a moment to study her. Her bright red hair was the first distinctive thing he saw. Some reasoning told him that this must be a grown up version of the little girl. Also, he couldn't use his empathy on her either.
This girl was different though, definitely depression. The school uniform looked overly large on her when she slouched. Her arms rested on the railing with her chin sitting on them. He couldn't tell if she was waiting for him to speak or waiting for herself.
"Could you say that again? The wind was blowing," he said thinking about how he could figure out what was really going on without offending her.
"She left me at the bottom," she whispered, "I got so mad when she didn't come back down then went home. There was this huge crowd on the street below, but I was so angry I didn't even go look."
The words caught up in her throat and wouldn't come out. She looked as if she was struggling not to cry.
"When I got home, I saw it on the news. Someone jumping from the Tokyo Tower—it seems like that's all the good this tower does. Then all these people called me saying they were sorry. It felt so awful because I knew why it happened. My mother was never good enough for herself, and neither was I. I was failing school and she wanted both of us to be successful, to actually be able to afford a real apartment. None of it was happening, so she…she wanted to be free."
The girl laid her head down on the rail and sighed. Her school uniform was getting wrinkled from being pressed against the cold metal. The metal was damp from the previous evening and Hisoka judged it to be sometime in the morning.
"Please, I don't think I can do this any longer. Please help me. I want to be free like her."
He wondered at how he could have winded up here. It seemed much too strange—just waking up and having a suicide attempt thrown in your face.
Hisoka looked at her uncertainly. He was a shinigami, he basically killed people so it wasn't that matter. But he knew in some part of him that she didn't actually want to die. Some people have strange minds; he'd give almost anything to be alive. If she wanted to jump off the tower, what the heck was he supposed to do for her?
Save her?
Not likely.
The girl closed her eyes and shuddered against the metal rail she leaned on.
"I…I don't have enough courage to kill myself. Please push me off, that way I can at least measure up to my mother. She had enough courage to die, and I don't have enough to live."
Her words were starting to run circles in Hisoka's mind—they were definitely not making any sense.
"I can't do that. If you don't have enough courage to die, that must mean you want to live," he said the first thing in his mind. It didn't make much sense to him either, but there was nothing else that fit. "You have problems, but could you tell me what am I doing here?" sounded incredibly rude.
She stared out into space for a minute. "I'm so weak, but I have the courage to live my useless life. I'm a waste on society, yet I can't find it in me to save everyone the trouble and kill myself. I tried to let my anger out but only ended up cutting my arms. That made even more trouble for everyone. I'm just that worthless."
"Why was I even born if I can't give anything to the world?" The girl's hands were turning white from gripping the bars so hard. If she held them any harder, her hands would have began to bleed.
"Maybe you were born to make someone else happy."
She sighed into the thin fabric of her uniform, "Then I probably don't have a reason for being alive. It's all my mother's fault for not having an abortion. Does that make me selfish? To want to live while condemning her?"
"I don't know," Hisoka answered, utterly confused.
Obviously unsatisfied with the answer, she asked, "Does it make you selfish to be dead and kill others?"
The question caught him off guard and made him rethink the bits and pieces of the situation again.
"That isn't a fair question."
Her face twisted into a bitter smile that stayed for a long time as she thought about his almost careless words.
"Then I must be the most selfish being alive."
He could have sworn the brown of her eyes flashed violet.
She shook her head then took a look down at the busy ground below. "You know, you never realize how tall this thing is until you're standing on it."
Silently, she leaned over the railing and gazed down below.
Then without another word, dipped into the air below with one hand still hanging on. Her entire body shivered against the morning chill. Hisoka rushed over to grab her hand, in some strange way he thought he could save this stranger. Instead, he felt his heart stop when her fingers barely brushed his and let go.
He didn't know why, but he found himself yelling Tsuzuki's name while trying to reach her with his hand outstretched.
It seemed like eternity watching her fall.
_ _ _
"Kurosaki-kun?"
A pair of concerned eyes stared at him from behind glasses when Hisoka turned around. Tatsumi gave him a look that froze him to the spot.
There was just that look in Tatsumi that made Hisoka's heart sink.
"Is there something wrong?"
The shadowed eyes on the shinigami yielded no answers. Empathy was out of the questions, there was absolutely nothing coming from him. Yet through the coldness, Hisoka could feel a pain so excruciating not even Tatsumi's shields could conceal.
"I don't think either of us are ready to discuss it." That was all he said—nothing less nothing more, just enough to kill Hisoka's curiosity.
Tatsumi left the blank infirmary room directly after he made sure Hisoka was fully conscious and feeling fine. The bed felt like a wax wall slowly enveloping him from below. Worried, Hisoka slipped outside quietly but stopped right before the door when he heard Watari speaking.
"I know this is hard on you. It's hard on all of us, but you can't expect him to want to remember what happened. You're not the only one Tsuzuki-san meant something to."
'That's not it. I feel angry that he won't remember it. It's like he's dishonoring the memory of…"
His green eyes widened at this. At this moment Hisoka pushed the door open in a hurry and urgently asked, "What happened? What happened to Tsuzuki?"
No one answered him. They were too stunned at his outburst.
"You have to tell me. I have to know. Where is he?"
Watari was fidgeting with the buttons of his lab coat uncomfortably and Tatsumi had put on the emotionless expression again. Everyone else quickly left the room in a rush of hastened murmurs.
"Why won't you tell me?!" Hisoka looked desperately at Tatsumi. Obviously something major had gone wrong. Tsuzuki—he didn't want to think about what could have happened.
"You will be receiving a new partner tomorrow."
"No. Please say what I'm thinking is too outrageous. He's just taking a break right?"
This time there was simply silence. He felt his heart tighten again like someone had pulled too hard on its strings—like someone he had his heartstrings tied around was trying to rip them.
He didn't know how the time passed until the next day. Hisoka ate nothing and slept none, all the hypothetical what if's were running through his head. When his new partner showed up, he almost had a heart attack.
"Ohayo Kurosaki-san!" A bright cheerful voice called out to him.
He could have sworn the world hated him. The same big brown eyes stared at him with the same red hair framing them. This time she was a bit older than the girl who fell off the tower but he could see the exact same face that looked at him pleading for him to push her. His empathy told him she was another blank spot.
"Why are you stalking me?"
She blinked in surprise. "I've never met you before. How can I be stalking you? You must not be in a good mood today; do you want to go out for some food? I absolutely love sweet things."
Hisoka shook his head, he just couldn't stop referring everything to Tsuzuki.
And they say stalkers aren't as scary as imagined.
"Who are you?" He didn't care if he sounded overly insensitive but right then he could have cared less how the girl felt.
She blinked several times again. "Oh! I get it—Tatsumi-san never introduced me! I'm Kazaki Kiri." She extended a hand and smiled brightly.
Hisoka immediately shrunk away from her hand and ended up with a hurt expression targeted towards him. It was the girl, the little red head that kept him prisoner. She dropped her hand to her side and sighed.
"Why don't you like me? We've never even met."
"What have you done with Tsuzuki?" He asked suddenly out of the blue. The accusation started the girl and eyes jerked to focus on his. There was the sinking suspicion this Kiri had something to do with it. Nobody else was telling him anything.
From that, she turned her attention absently to the window and looked outside. "It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?"
"Don't change the subject on me Kazaki-san."
The lack of sleep and extra thinking from the previous day taxed his patience already. Playing duck around the truth was definitely not helping his already short fuse. Hisoka looked at her intently waiting for his answer.
Kiri smiled softly then turned her brown eyes on him. "I really don't know."
"Then how come he just disappeared?"
"Things we love don't disappear Kurosaki-san. Someone always takes them away. Isn't that true?" she asked as if nothing was wrong. The entire anti-climatic feel of it drove Hisoka crazy.
"Why can't you just answer me? Why do you keep saying these stupid things that don't make a bit of sense?"
She remained extremely calm as he raised his voice.
"Why not?"
Hisoka stared—he was feeling like he did this way too often. The stupidity of this was making him want to just burst out laughing. "Because I am so confused. That's why."
"Okay then!" She said in her annoyingly cheerful manner as she latched on to his arm and pulled him toward the door. "You have to give me a tour. Can't have your partner getting lost now can you?"
He kept thinking about what Tsuzuki would do in this situation. He would be nice and pretend everything was all right. But that wasn't something Hisoka was about to do anytime soon.
The next few days were completely surreal. Kiri herself was surreal. She kept reminding Hisoka of Tsuzuki with every little thing she said and did. The loneliness was eating him away—it was like he had given away something that was vital to his connection to everything.
He had come to only one conclusion. He was hopeless dependent on Tsuzuki and would soon go crazy if he couldn't find him. Kiri shared all together too many characteristics with Tsuzuki but it just wasn't the same, he couldn't enjoy her cheerfulness. It was merely annoying.
If he had thought the first days awful, the next were even worse.
Not only had the loss of Tsuzuki been consuming him, but every time he was around, the other shinigami twitched. Yet no one would tell him what was wrong. They simply avoided him like the plague. Practically no one spoke to him—only the unwanted attentive words of his new partner.
Two weeks later of what seemed to be eternity, Hisoka stared out the twilight outside his window from bed and wondered where Tsuzuki was. His heart hurt worse than the jealousy he felt for the living.
Even before the sun fully set, Hisoka drifted to sleep.
He found himself dreaming about the twilight outside. He felt himself set with the sun.
When he woke up the next morning, Hisoka would realize he was no longer in his bed at home.