[Note: A*big* thank you to the people who have reviewed this story. I appreciate your comments and suggestions, and it's good to know someone is reading this. ^^ Sorry the updates are coming a little slow – Hopefully the pace will pick up, as I think I might be approaching the second half of the story. Thanks again! –C]
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Chapter 8 - Starry, Starry Night
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It was that time of day.
Every street was neat and quiet as the sun slowly crept along the sidewalk,
spilled into gutters and alleys, and ran across the pavement in golden streaks.
The silver city-buildings slept, their many eyes closed and reluctant to open
to the calm morning. Two trees waved gently outside of the private mansearching
firm on Fifth and Green, dropping red and orange leaves like a silent rainfall
to collect in the recessed entryway. Every place was matte muted autumn, and
hardly a soul stirred in Sumaru City.
Inside the mansearcher office, Baofu was proving to be no different. He slept
with his head on the desk, one long arm in his lap and the other shielding his
face from the morning sun. A nearly empty bottle of sweet alcohol had attracted
a few flies, and one of them occupied its slightly tipsy self by playing in his
nose hair. He sniffed.
Although later the fly in his nose and the one still lingering at the bottle
would try to reconstruct the chaotic events of the next few moments, no one was
or ever would be sure of exactly what happened. By some accounts, the fly in
his nose got a little too daring, and being uninhibited as it was, set about
crawling further into that dark chasm than it perhaps should have. A misstep on
its part tickled Baofu beyond any tolerance and he sat up, jerked his head
back, and after a small pause for suspense, sneezed.
Now, there's no need to worry. The fly survived due to luck or providence, and
now resides with his family on an old slice of pizza that fell behind the file
cabinet. Sometimes his children gather round and he tells them the story of the
Cavern of Evil, always making sure to end with a lecture on the evils of
alcohol.
Such a lecture to Baofu would have fallen on deaf ears; not for any
philosophical reason, but because of the suddenly more pressing noise of twelve
angry elephants stomping and trumpeting across his brain. Twenty-nine gazelles
followed quickly behind, who were of course pursued by three cheetahs and a
tractor. Two boys carrying pails of sea urchins and sand shovels pattered
around and asked each other meaningful yet innocent questions about the nature
of life and the universe; a single star flashed bright red and began spelling
Pink Lady lyrics in Morse code; four cats and five dogs arranged for a rumble,
with knives, in the old quarry at sundown. A handful of pleasant memories
picked up and took off for the hills, complaining as they left that they were
tired of all the noise the neighbors were making.
Imagine all this crammed into a single, fragile human skull, and you might
understand what it meant to be Baofu at this moment. His whole body sagged and
he placed his head in his hands as though it could fly off at any moment.
As if by cruel, divine ordination, his phone hiccupped and started to ring.
"Go away," he snarled at it as it bebopped playfully in the cradle.
It ignored him, and after three intensely unbearable rings he reached over and
snatched up the receiver.
"Go away," he said again, pressing the phone against his face.
Someone coughed at the other end.
"Ah, Baofu?" It was Katsuya.
"Suou, if this isn't important, I will hunt you down and eat your
children."
There was a long pause and Baofu could almost hear the sound of blinking. "Er,
yes... well, yesterday I got a chance to talk to Kisho Ito, one of the boys
from the attack at the school. I think you might find this interesting. Are you
looking for a girl named Mai?"
He sat straight up and immediately regretted it. "Ow. Yes. Did you find
something?"
"She knew both of the boys. More than that, they've been harassing her
for months, right up until she ran away."
Baofu cursed under his breath. Amazing how it all comes together.
"I see," he said simply.
"There's more. By Kisho's account, it was Mai who attacked them on top
on the school. What he described sounds very much like a persona attack, but I
can't see how any single one could be so powerful as to leave the marks we saw
on the pavement."
That was all the hint Baofu needed. "You think it was a fusion."
"You are looking for a missing boy as well, aren't you?"
He furrowed his brow and tried to clear his head. "Yeah, Ichirou
Otsuki." He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. "If you're right, all
the sooner we need to hunt him down. Did you talk to the second boy who was
attacked?"
Katsuya cleared his throat. "I'm afraid he ended his own life
yesterday, in the early morning. I didn't get a chance to speak with him
before... well, it was Maya who found out." They were both silent for
a long moment before he spoke again. "It may interest you to know that
the wound he suffered at the attack was actually self-inflicted. It must have
caused the puddles of blood we saw, but I don't get it." His voice
sounded tired and strained. "I can't figure it out."
Baofu shook his head, closed his still reeling mind against a sudden rush of
visions and emotions. "He was trying to kill himself," he found
himself saying. "That must have been her plan all along. Whatever she did
to them, it made this kid fall to his knees and hack at his own arm in a
desperate attempt to end his own life."
"But he was interrupted," Katsuya said, picking up where Baofu
left off. "By the people that found them. And as soon as he was
alone..." he trailed off.
"He finished the job." Baofu pursed his lips and hissed. "Jesus.
It's sick."
"I would have to agree. Find Ichirou. Figure out if he's connected to
Mai, and if so where they're hiding."
He nodded. "And you?"
"I'm going to the Velvet Room with Maya this afternoon. We need to figure
out which personae these kids are using and how they got their hands on
them."
They talked for a few minutes more, arranging to meet the following morning to
compare notes. When at last he was able to hang up, Baofu felt both much better
and much worse. The hordes of trumpeting elephants had receded for the moment,
but in their place were terrible intuitions looping in constant playback. He
pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long breath.
I wonder where Serizawa is, he thought, before stiffly getting up to
start the day.
* * *
Ulala Serizawa was sitting across from her roommate in a sticky vinyl
restaurant booth, and she was picking at an omelet. Maya looked over at the
redhead as she shoveled a forkful of chocolate chip pancake into her mouth.
"Are you going to eat that, or just prod it to death?" she finally
said.
Ulala gave her a weak smile. "I'm just not too hungry. I'm still full from
all that ice cream last night."
"That was sugar and cream. This," Maya pointed to the eggs. "is
real food. You need some of it. So eat." She demonstrated with another
piece of pancake.
Ulala sighed and nodded, and a waitress in a pink collared uniform came by to
fill their coffee cups. Maya dumped two packets of sugar into hers and drained
half of it in one swallow. "What's bothering you?" she asked after
another long silence.
"I've got a lot on my mind, I guess. Not just about him, but about
the kids too." Ulala put her fork down. "I still can't believe that
one of them killed himself. It's so unnatural, you know? So sad when it happens
to someone that young."
Maya nodded. "It's rough, isn't it? All of us took it a little hard."
She took a sip of her coffee. "And Mai, too. I wonder what she's feeling
right now. If she's feeling anything."
Ulala screwed up her face. "I just don't know what to think. Did those
boys deserve what happened to them? Sure, what they did to her is unforgivable,
but one of them is dead now." She looked down. Really, I know all too
well what Mai is feeling. What if my story had ended like that?
"No one ever deserves to die," Maya said, then added, "Which
isn't to say I don't think they had it coming. Part of me is secretly glad she
stood up for herself." She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. "Of
course, I don't usually prescribe personae for women's empowerment, you
know?"
Ulala couldn't help but smile. "You're right. We can both understand what
drove this girl to do what she did, but that doesn't make it any less
wrong." Her expression grew serious. "She was playing with something
really powerful, wasn't she?"
Maya hesitated, then nodded somberly. "According to Katsuya, yes. We're
going to the Velvet Room this afternoon to try to figure out exactly
what."
They were silent for a while as they finished off their breakfast. Maya
signaled the waitress for the check and Ulala took out a mirror to fiddle with
her hair. She looked thoughtfully at her reflection. "Hey, how do you
think the Kasu High boy is involved with her? Are they a couple?" She
looked over at her roommate and grinned. "That'd be kind of
romantic!"
Maya laughed. "I'm not sure romantic is the word you want. Creepy, maybe.
Besides," she said teasingly, getting up. "Finding Mai and Ichirou is
your and Baofu's problem."
"But Ma-ya," Ulala pouted, hurrying behind her as they picked their
way through the other tables. "I don't want to see him today! I'm still
mad at him, remember?"
They got out to the street and Maya turned to her. "Well, would you rather
come to the Velvet Room with me and Katsuya?"
Ulala stood and thought for a while. "I don't think so," she finally
said. "I'm going to go look for Mai on my own." She silenced Maya's
objection. "I'll be careful, I promise. I know she's dangerous. But,"
she looked down. "I think I know what she's going through. I've been
wrapped up in revenge too, you know."
Maya looked at her for a long time, then reached out and touched her roommate's
shoulder. "Alright, Ulala," she said, and smiled. "I trust you.
You know where to find me."
Ulala looked up and smiled back; then the two friends parted and went their
separate ways.
* * *
Morning bled into afternoon as Ulala made her way around downtown. She visited
three coffee shops, a shady day bar, a mall, and both local extensions of the
Peace Diner. She got distracted in Pachinko Silver for a while and made up for
it by trekking out west to visit a couple of popular internet cafés. Every
place was buzzing with people, kids especially, but they were all packed into
impenetrable groups of friends and classmates. She had to admit that she hadn't
found a place where you would expect to find two kids who were running from
society.
After fighting her way through yet another crowded coffee house, she decided to
take a break and turned north to walk along the river. The air grew humid and
she stopped under a bright orange tree to watch the leaves fall into the water.
Two fat ducks waddled up and looked at her expectantly.
"What do you want?" she asked, irritated. The one on the right turned
his head and quacked.
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. "I can't believe I'm talking to
waterfowl." She sank to the ground and leaned back onto her elbows.
"Not that I have better prospects right now," she said dejectedly.
The ducks poked around at her feet for a minute, then caught sight of a family
throwing bread some ways down the river. The talkative one quacked and waddled off
in their direction, but the other one held back and gave Ulala a friendly nudge
before following suit.
She watched them leave and then turned her gaze back to the water. The
afternoon sun sparkled on its surface, and morose as she was, she couldn't deny
that it was a beautiful day. I should be at a picnic, she thought
bitterly. Not looking for a vengeful high school girl and her delinquent boy
toy. She brushed a lock of hair out of her face. Who am I kidding? They
could be anywhere.
Across the river, a young couple walked hand in hand by the bank. Something in
her eyes changed as she watched them. They stopped and turned towards the
water, and the girl smiled as the boy tentatively put her arm around her. For a
moment there was a kind of balance: the boy, the girl, and the woman silently
regarding them. A breeze tousled Ulala's hair and stirred the leaves in the
treetops, but she hardly noticed it pass.
A commotion in her purse jerked her out of her reverie. She scrambled to open
it and pull out her phone. Maybe... "Hello?" she said
hopefully.
"Miss Serizawa?" It was Katsuya.
Her face fell. "Oh. Hi, Big Suou." She settled back on her haunches
with a little huff.
"I'm here at the Velvet Room with Maya, and we discovered something
interesting about your runaways."
"Oh?" She propped the phone between her ear and shoulder as she dug
in her purse for a pen. "What is it?"
"Well, they do know the boy, Ichirou - he's visited several times. But
here's the strange thing: according to Igor, he's never summoned a persona for
the kid."
Ulala squinted. "What sense does that make? Why does he go to the Velvet
Room at all, then?"
"He comes to see the Demon Artist. Turns out he's a card fanatic,
though no one knows how he figured out about the place. He does use personae -
otherwise he couldn't come here - but we find it likely that his awareness of
it was actually dormant until recently."
"Ohh.." she exhaled. "I see. Seems like you've found more
questions than answers."
"Yes, well," he sighed, sounding slightly exasperated. "Talking
to the people in this place is like swimming through warm peanut butter. It's
pleasant enough, but you never get very far."
She laughed. "Okay, so the boy is way into cards. Any news about Mai?"
She wrote CARDS in block letters on her hand.
"Not even a little. They've never heard of her, and Ichirou never
mentioned her." She heard him sigh. "I can't prove that
they're connected at all. Maybe we're just chasing rainbows here."
She smiled. "No, Big Suou, I think you're on the right track. Don't get
discouraged, okay? I'll keep looking."
"Thank you, Miss Serizawa. Let me know what you and Baofu find."
Ulala hesitated. "Um," she said with an awkward laugh. "Yeah.
I'll tell him that. Goodbye," she clicked her phone off and stuffed it
back into her purse.
She looked at the word on her hand for a while, trying to think of any possible
leads that it could give her. Unfortunately, she had no way of knowing whether
or not Ichirou shared his hobby. If he had been involved with friends, that
would be something, but as far as they could tell he'd been a loner like Mai.
Not to mention that the best place for a card fanatic was the Velvet Room, and
they obviously couldn't be staying there. She shook her head. This doesn't
help me, she thought.
Ulala sighed and turned her attention back to the couple across the river. What's
that like? she thought. Oddly enough, she found that she wasn't bitter or
angry - just curious, as she watched them turn and head back up the path away
from the river. They seem so easy together. I never feel that comfortable.
A cottony seed landed on her shirt and she brushed it off idly. Well, except
for when I'm home or at Baofu's office. But those aren't really *my* places,
are they? "No," she said out loud. "I don't have a place,
that's why I'm sitting in the dirt beside a river."
Ulala couldn't help but grin at that. Now I'm talking to myself. I'm dusty
and I'm talking to myself. "Well, where else can I go?" she asked
herself. "I don't have a clue where Mai or Ichirou could be, Maya's not
home, and I'll be damned if I'm going go back to the office." She climbed
to her feet, kicking up a cloud of dust where she had been sitting.
I wonder if Mai feels that way too, she thought as she brushed herself
off. We're not that different, are we?
At that point, she straightened up and the knot in her mind finally came
undone. She knew where the girl who didn't belong anywhere would be, and more
importantly, she knew where to find the boy that she would undoubtedly be with.
She stared down at her hand for a long moment, her eyes tracing the word CARDS.
"Ulala!" she shouted with a mad little laugh. "You're brilliant,
you know that?" She collected her purse and took off for the road at a
brisk trot. Behind her, a group of chickadees tittered nervously, and two
fat ducks waddled back and forth on the dusty riverbank.
* * *
Meanwhile, Katsuya and Maya were still in the dark Velvet Room, and the young
detective was rapidly reaching the end of his rope.
"Alright," Katsuya said, gritting his teeth. "You say that you
don't know of a persona that fits this description, is that right?"
Igor looked at him with a blank expression. "It's not one that I have ever
summoned," he said deliberately, as if he were talking to a small child.
Katsuya blinked, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, you never summoned it. We got
that." He looked pleadingly at Maya, who was sitting at the piano with
Nameless. She grinned and gave him a look that said, Don't look at me, this
is your job isn't it?
He glowered at her and turned back to Igor. "But if you didn't summon it,
how did he get it? And which one is it?"
The old man took a deep breath and rolled his eyes back. "Everything has a
persona. Sometimes you choose it, and sometimes it chooses you. Sometimes it
comes from the outside, and sometimes it comes from the inside. Get it? There
are many ways someone can grow into a persona. This room is just one means to
that end." He sat back, apparently satisfied with this explanation.
"As for which one the boy is using, who can say? Each thing can be
a persona just as much as it can have a persona. It's all relative, you
know."
There was a brief pause. "So," Katsuya said slowly. "He could
have gotten it anywhere, and it could be anything."
Igor nodded vigorously. "You got it!" he exclaimed in a proud voice.
He looked as though he might burst into applause.
Katsuya looked at him dumbly for several minutes, then shook his head and
stalked off. "I give up," he said over his shoulder to Maya, who was
still practicing duets with the blindfolded piano man. She gave him a concerned
look as he passed.
Nameless carried the song to a close and looked over at her. "He'll be
alright," he said warmly. "Our world is a little hard on his mind,
and he isn't used to thinking with anything else."
"Hmm? Oh, I suppose you're right. I don't understand it, though," she
said, turning to face him. "I always feel so comfortable here."
The handsome musician smiled. "We are all destined to grow into more than
we are. In more ways than one, you're a very special young lady." He
nodded to Katsuya, who was standing alone. "And he's a very special man,
too, in a different way. You see, you enhance each other."
Maya took her hands off the keys and smiled up at him. "Thanks, Dad,"
she teased, and he chuckled softly. "But I don't worry too much about
Katsuya. I feel like he can always take care of himself."
"Of course he can," he said, his fingers moving to start another
song. It was a solo this time, and to Maya the sound was both haunting and
oddly familiar. "But that's not the issue in question here," he
added.
She nodded and sat in silence for a while, her thoughts straying into the dark
and dreamlike melody. Over the piano, she could see Katsuya leaning against the
wall by the door. His arms were crossed and his head was turned half to the
side, so that the line of his jaw stood out even in the dim light. Maybe it was
the music, or the drowsy atmosphere of the Velvet Room, but in that moment he
seemed to her like a statue of perfect stillness and beauty. She shook her head
slowly and tried to stop herself from staring, but something in her eyes
wouldn't let him go.
Somewhere inside the song, Belladonna began to sing. Her voice fell into a
descant like rain that seems to come from nowhere, and it hovered above the
melody in wordless grace. Maya held her breath as the shapeless music descended
into a language she could understand.
You know the sun will rise today,
The same as it has ever been.
No other way,
Not today,
That it could ever be.
She felt herself rise from the piano bench. Nameless smiled and nodded goodbye
to her, and she walked around to where Katsuya was standing. She touched his
shoulder lightly, startling him away from his thoughts.
You know the rain will fall today,
The rain that washed away your sin.
The lyre won't play,
Not today,
And you can't come to me.
"I want to go now," she said voicelessly, mouthing the words to him.
He gave her an odd look, then nodded and pushed himself away from the wall.
Together they opened the door and made their way through gossamer curtains back
to reality. Behind them the sound of Belladonna's song grew faint and thin in
the air, but did not fade from their awareness until the last word had reached
them.
You know the world will end today,
The sickness biting from within.
I cannot stay,
Not today,
But tomorrow we shall see.
