"H-here," Eunice stammered in heavily accented Japanese, and fished out money to pay for the taxi. The driver nodded and thanked her, opened the door for her, and suddenly she was standing on the sidewalk in front of the house that—possibly—belonged to Yumura Kirika. She was tense from the moment she stepped out of the car, knowing the whole situation might well be a trap. But there were passers-by walking up and down the street, so if she was going to be killed… well, it would probably be inside the house.
And yet, she had come.
Eunice set her teeth and again tried to call on instincts she had left behind her so long ago. Was she listening for every sound, catching ever dangerous movement? No, of course not. Time had dulled her senses, her reaction time. But she still had to take the chance, so she approached and rang the doorbell.
Suddenly, she was staring down the barrel of a gun in the peephole. She fought down her gut reaction of a scream, a jump away from the door—she wouldn't die here. She couldn't die, not yet, damnit!
A stream of muffled Japanese came through the door, and this, more than the gun, panicked Eunice. Oh, shit. How was she supposed to…
"I—I'm Eunice Tavillion," she replied in French, since she knew nothing but a phrase or two of Japanese she'd been able to memorize on the plane. "I received an e-mail from Yumura Kirika, and I'd like to speak to her, please." Again, she had to call on all her self-control to keep her voice calm… and to keep from adding, "and for the love of God, don't shoot."
The gun vanished, but there was a long, silent pause on both sides of the door. Eunice was just about convinced that Kirika, or this bodyguard friend of hers perhaps, couldn't understand French at all and was preparing to blow her away. But then the door edged open, just a little, and Eunice found herself staring down into a girl's thin, haunted face. It was hard not to stare, really with the extraordinary color of her eyes, but what held Eunice's gaze was not even her odd red eyes so much as her fear, her vulnerability. If not for the gun dangling loosely and familiarly from her hand, Eunice would have said that this girl needed to be protected.
They stood there for a moment, the girl hiding from the street behind the door and Eunice's body, until Eunice finally said quietly—in French, the Japanese equivalent completely gone from her head—"You're Yumura Kirika?"
The girl nodded, half-opened her mouth and hesitated, then finally murmured in French, "And… are you… Eunice Tavillion?"
"Yes," Eunice said, then made a conscious effort to soften her stare and added gently, "May I come in?"
"Ah! Y-yes, please do," Kirika stuttered, nodding rapidly and stepping back from the door. She muttered something quick and complicated in Japanese, then blushed and stopped in confusion as she realized Eunice couldn't understand it.
But she could, at least partially, and she'd stopped more out of confusion than incomprehension. "Does that mean, 'welcome home?'"
Kirika glanced quickly at Eunice's eyes, at the door behind her, then looked away and nodded before padding silently off down the hallway. Eunice stared after her for a moment, then suddenly remembered another tip from the 'Japanese Culture' section of the guidebook and hastily began to take her shoes off. Welcome home. What an odd girl.
-
Japanese houses were so much cleaner, Eunice mused as she walked down the hallway, heading towards the sound of what she guessed was Kirika preparing tea. The walls were painted an off-white that took the light they received and reflected it, almost, until they seemed to glow. The hardwood floor was spotless, and there was nothing else. Eunice frowned slightly. In some respects, it was a lovely house; in others… it was almost an antiseptic hospital.
She stepped into the large living room and took it in. Kirika was kneeling before a low table, pouring tea into two cups and now glancing up to invite her to sit on the opposite mat. But Eunice paused for a moment, looking around the room. It was strange; there were a couple pictures of family, but nothing really personal, no clutter, no magazines, nothing. They were apparently a very neat family.
Which brought her to the first point she intended to address, the one that was possibly even more important than asking why this Japanese girl who spoke flawless French had dragged her halfway across the world. "Ah, I don't mean to be rude, but—your parents, do they know I'm visiting? Is anyone home at the moment?"
She'd said the wrong thing, evidently. Kirika stared at her unblinking for a long, startled moment before turning her head abruptly away and stammering, "N-no… no. I… I live here… alone. My parents… moved to America."
"What?" Spluttered Eunice. It was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard of! Her parents had moved and simply left her here? What, had they forgotten her in all the business of packing?
And just like that, she knew. It was improbable, flimsy, a barely credible excuse. Of course; she'd been stupid, really, not to guess it before. And with her realization—they're still at it—a sudden wave of fury rose up in her, forcing her words almost to a whisper. "My god—they did it to you, too, didn't they?"
Kirika lifted her head, two faint creases wrinkling her forehead. "'Too?'"
-
How frightening is it, to have nothing in the world except a single piece of paper with a telephone number and some terse, scrawled instructions? She sat for a long moment, staring at the telephone before lifting the receiver and dialing.
Whoever was on the other line picked up amid static and loud background noise. "Sasha Darcan here."
She swallowed dryly and read verbatim from the paper. "I—I'm calling from 01, 44, 92, 52, 86…" Here, her script ran out, but it hardly mattered—the woman on the other end swore suddenly, so loudly that the sound was distended and unidentifiable, and hung up.
She didn't have long to wonder what that had been about, though. Not an hour later, the front door was blown away by a firestorm of bullets, and a tall woman with furious blue eyes and short blonde hair burst in, grabbing her and administering an incredibly painful headlock. "Who the hell are you?" The woman screamed. "What the fuck are you doing here!"
She was too petrified to do more than cling to the woman's muscular forearm, trying vainly to pull it away from her neck, and sob, "I don't know—I don't know—I don't—" Shaking, she offered up the piece of paper.
The woman kept her held tightly in one arm while she examined the paper with another. "Christ. Who gave you this? Who told you to call me? Why the fuck did you come here?"
"No one—" she whispered, running out of air. "I—just had it, when I woke up, I swear—I woke up here—I don't know where I am—I…" The room was starting to swim.
"Shit." Sasha finally loosened her headlock, though only slightly, and started towards the ruined door. "We'd better go somewhere else before we decide what to do with you."
-
"You know my name," Eunice began, taking a sip of the really quite excellent tea, "but what else do you know about me?"
Kirika stared at her a moment, then shook her head mutely.
"Do you even know why you were supposed to contact me?"
Another shake of the head.
Eunice tightened her lips grimly. "Well—I'm guessing you know more about that gun than just how to wave it around. But you don't know your own past, or what you're really doing here. Am I right?"
Kirika's head snapped up, her eyes wide. "How did you know?"
Eunice dropped her eyes, glaring bitterly at the polished surface of the table. "Because I woke up once, in a room I didn't remember, with no name or memories, and it wasn't half as pleasant as this."
-
She tried not to cry as she was thrown to a very cold and hard concrete floor.
"So," Sasha began, stepping into the room after her, "let's begin. Who the hell are you?"
"I don't know," the girl mumbled.
Sasha was at her side before she could blink, the gun cocked and kissing her temple. "Don't fucking PLAY with me! You've made this a very bad day for me; now tell me who you are!"
"I don't KNOW!" The girl screamed in terror, her restraint broken. "I swear I don't, I just woke up this morning and I don't know where I was, I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM, I don't remember, I swear it, please, please, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I don't know what I did, please don't kill me—" she was sobbing freely now, certain her death was at hand.
There was a long, chilling pause, and then she heard Sasha take a deep breath and say in a much quieter tone, "Start from the beginning. You didn't know where you were?"
"N-no, I—" a hysterical hiccup—"I woke up this morning and I didn't know where I was… I don't know my own name. I know it sounds crazy but it's true, I swear! But—but there were clothes in the closet that fit me, and that little paper on the dresser…"
Here, Sasha broke in, reading from the paper, "'Don't go to the hospital. Call the number below and tell the woman who answers that you're calling from this number: 01-44-92-52-86.' Shit. Fucking shits. I see now."
The girl wasn't sure if the fact that Sasha understood meant she would live or die, but at least she hadn't been killed yet. "S-see what?"
She was released and Sasha stood her up, keeping one hand on her shoulder and looking at her seriously—but no longer angrily, she noted to her intense relief. "Someone wanted you to come with me, and they picked just about the best way to make sure I'd take you. That apartment? That was where I lived with my adopted parents until they got shot by a mugger one night a couple years back. You were calling from my old home, see? Whoever it is really knows how to push my buttons." Her hand slipped from the girl's shoulder, and she tilted her head back, staring off into space. "Fuck."
"So… what will you do with me now?"
Sasha shrugged. "I'll take you in. It sounds crazy, but I have a feeling you'll be handy in my line of work."
She could have been lying and readying herself to blow the girl's head off, but at that moment the girl was more than happy to cling to the hope that Sasha was serious. "S-so you mean you b-believe me?"
Sasha nodded, still not looking at her. "I do."
"…W-why?"
Sasha frowned and brought her gaze down to rest on the gun in her hand, which she then shoved back into its holster on her leg. "Let's just say, I have a long, uh, memory for this kind of thing. Come on."
-
"Yes," Kirika breathed, eyes wide, "that's… almost exactly what happened to me…"
"You see? And that was more than twenty years ago," Eunice mused, "which means… god, it calls into question almost everything we did. We never got close to figuring out who had done this to us, but you—for it to have happened to you, that means something larger is at work. No lone sicko could have the time, the money, all the resources to set this up so perfectly and keep doing it for more than twenty years." Eunice put a hand to her head, overwhelmed. She, Sasha and Kirika were being manipulated, marched perfectly around a vast and unknowable board. And where, exactly, would they be led?
"'We?'"
Eunice's head jerked up to stare at Kirika for a long moment, then she set her jaw grimly. "I don't know about you, Kirika," she began, ignoring the girl's question, "but I'm pretty tired of being trifled with to this degree. You called me for a reason—so that we could work together. Fine, let's work together to pull this whole business down, and figure out who you really are. Will you work with me?"
She watched as astonishment washed over Kirika's face, before the girl's eyes softened and she actually, incredibly enough, smiled. "Yes. Please. I need to know what's been done to me."
"I thought so," Eunice nodded, satisfied. "Now—before we can plan what we'll do first, we need to know what our resources are and what we can do. So, do you have any money?"
Kirika shook her head, "Not… not very much…"
Eunice pursed her lips. "Hm. A problem. I have a bank account, but it's no great wealth. Well—you know what they say, any problem is just a challenge to be faced…" she eyed her companion and thought better of speaking to an amnesiac in such a way. "Well, maybe you don't know, but anyway, that's what they say."
Kirika nodded mutely, and Eunice suppressed the temptation to roll her eyes. She was getting the measure of her companion, and already she could tell that most of Kirika's responses would consist of nodding or shaking her head. Mutely. "It's crap, of course, but we'll go with it for now. Small challenges while we work up to the big one: who you are, and why someone wanted us to meet and work together."
And what really did happen to Sasha that night.
---