He couldn't believe that he had been reduced to being the laundry boy. It
was bad enough that he wasn't sent out on missions anymore, but being the
person sent to have the laundry done was downright degrading. 'It's fairly
obvious that he doesn't really know who I am, and if he does then he
doesn't know what it means that I am who I am.' He was a killer. Clean,
methodical, and thorough; a dyed-in-the-wool killer. NOT a laundry boy.
He sighed as he pulled the door to the dry cleaners open. A door chime went off. The sound of it was annoying and grated against his nerves. He stood, waiting for the counter attendant. It didn't take her long to appear.
She appeared to be around 18. She wasn't very tall, maybe around 5'1", 5'2" at the most. She had long, lustrous black locks that set off the pale tone of her skin. They lent the perfect background for her stunningly clear blue eyes. When she first came out he could tell that her smile wasn't genuine. For some reason he felt as if he could relate, although he didn't know why. She didn't really have the face of a liar, but then again, neither did he. He understood what it was like to have to put on a face for the rest of the world to see; a face that belied the person hiding behind it.
"Hello," she said cheerily. Her voice sounded happy, but there was a somewhat hollow look to her eyes that told him otherwise. It was very subtle, and most people probably wouldn't have seen it, but the Battoussai had a very critical eye when it came to observing others.
She pulled out of piece of paper and asked, "Name?"
For a split second he wanted to say "Battoussai" but that wouldn't work. "Mr. B." He cringed inwardly. 'Mr. B.? What kind of a stupid name is that? I'm such a moron!' He had tried to school his voice so he didn't sound strange, but for some reason he had the feeling he had failed. The girl looked up at him with a questioning look, but then shrugged her shoulders as if she didn't really care.
"Phone number?"
This question he was prepared for. "Don't have one. Don't worry about it." He knew better than to leave any sort of trail. Besides, only amateurs would give out that kind of information when the police could follow the paper trail without any problem. He was by no means an amateur. Far from it.
"OK." The 'K' was drawn out, revealing that she questioned whether he was being honest or not. But once again it seemed as if she decided she didn't care and moved on to the next question she apparently had to ask.
"Would you like starch?"
"No. No starch." Starch would make the clothes noisier. You could hear the fabric whenever you moved. If noise could be avoided then it should and would be; that was paramount in his line of work.
"Okay then, your clothes will be ready tomorrow . . . " He never heard the end of what she said. For some reason it made him nervous to be there. He left as quickly as possible. There was something weird about that dry cleaner girl. What it was he didn't know. He shrugged his shoulders and let it go. It would come to him at some point. Everything always did.
Kaoru settled down to the task of tagging all the clothes. 'So many stupid shirts!' she moaned in her head. 'Twenty. Wonderful. Thank-you, Mr. Creepy.' For each shirt she had to make sure that the collar wasn't buttoned down, that the cuffs weren't buttoned and that there wasn't anything in the breast pocket. Every last one of the twenty shirts had the collars and cuffs buttoned. Today just wasn't her day.
As she stood there, mindlessly unbuttoning things, her thoughts returned to the enigmatic man that had brought them in. What was he like? What kind of work did he do that he needed so many business shirts? He almost certainly didn't work for an advertising company, that's for sure. He seemed like he wouldn't be able to sell anything. Not a whole lot of charisma. Not a whole lot of warmth. Not a whole lot of anything, come to think of it. He seemed empty.
'Mmm, his clothes smell good . . .' she thought lazily. 'What?! What am I thinking?! What kind of a weirdo goes around smelling other peoples' clothes? Neurotic ones, that's what kind!' She shook her head. She sure seemed to be having a lot of weird thoughts today. Strange.
By the time she finished tagging all the shirts in, it was time for her to close up shop. She was out by 7:05 PM. Just like she always was. It took her five minutes to drive home. Just like it always did. She pulled out a frozen TV dinner and put it in the microwave. Just like she always did. She'd go to night school from about 8:00 PM to 10:30 PM. Just like she always did. Day in and day out it seemed like she never did anything different. Maybe that was the reason the world didn't seem to have any color anymore. Nothing different ever happened in her life. It was always work, school and sleep. She realized that she was starting to get really apathetic towards life in general. That wasn't good, she'd have to do something about that.
She didn't have class that night, and after she finished eating her dinner, she thought about the homework she should probably do. She didn't really feel like doing it, so she decided that, in the meantime, sleep would be a wonderful activity. Maybe she would dream of a mysterious short, redheaded and handsome man she had seen for the first time that very day. That might not be bad . . .
The next day when Kaoru went in to take over for her afternoon shift, Misao, her cousin, told her an interesting story about some weird customer that came in. A strange man with red hair and a scar on his cheek. He had asked when his clothes would be ready.
"He wasn't very happy. I don't understand that. How can people not be happy? It's impossible!"
"Only for you, Misao," Kaoru muttered quietly, but loud enough that Misao could hear it.
"Whatever," Misao said airily, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand. "He might have been a sourpuss, but he was really hot!"
Kaoru rolled her eyes. Her cousin seemed to have a penchant for falling for the quiet, serious guys. She'd never understand her cousin. But that was just Misao for you: loud, sometimes obnoxious, and possibly slightly insane.
"I know," Kaoru said. "I was the one who took his clothes in."
A tiny flickering light bulb appeared above Misao's head. If she hadn't taken the guy's clothes in, then it must have been Kaoru, seeing as how they were the only two people that worked there. 'Duh.'
"I hope he comes in during my shift again sometime. I have a million questions I'd absolutely love to ask him."
"I don't doubt it," Kaoru answered in a knowing tone while rolling her eyes.
"Well, since you're here I guess I'm off! See you tomorrow Kaoru!" Misao yelled over her shoulder as she headed out the back door, waving maniacally.
"Yeah. Later."
Sighing she settled herself on the old stool and turned her attention to the old TV. She highly doubted that the rabbit ears were even connected to the dumb thing since the reception was always crappy. The color on it was messed up, too. Everything was heavily tinted yellow. Kaoru was just thankful for the noise and the occasional amusement. So what if those teeth whitening ads didn't make the product look like it worked all that well. It wasn't like she cared anyway.
~
She didn't know how long she had been zoned out, but her brain seemed to have just shut off. It was the accursed door chime that had raised her out of her stupor. 'Another day, another dollar. I wonder who the idiot that said that was. I'd like to ring his annoying little neck! Oh well, whatever.'
She came from behind the wall that separated the back of the store from the front and was somewhat surprised to see the man from the day before. She forgot to greet the guy she was so startled. He didn't say anything.
"Mr. B., right?" she asked after what felt like minutes upon minutes when in truth it was only a second or two.
The man only nodded in reply.
'He's just too weird for words. I'm glad Misao got to see him for herself, otherwise she would have pestered me into an early grave until she could be certain that I had told her every little thing I could possibly know about him . . .'. Kaoru absently wondered if anyone had ever truly been pestered to death. With Misao around, it was a distinct possibility.
Kaoru was able to find his clothes on the rack fairly quickly and took them out to him. "Your total is $25."
'Mr. B.' simply held out a twenty and a five, offering no verbal communication. He was speaking loads with his body language, though. He seemed a little tense to Kaoru, somewhat nervous and edgy. Sometimes she intimidated people a little, but this was just odd. She wondered if he was always prone to such a taciturn disposition. She had some trouble deciding if that's exactly the kind of person that she could really get along with or exactly the kind of person she'd love to shove off a cliff.
She punched the total in the cash register and put the bills in the drawer. "Thank you and have a nice day!" she said, her 'Barbie' smile firmly in place as she handed him his receipt. The only clue she had that he had even heard her was an almost imperceptible nod of his head.
Only after the door had closed after him did Kaoru notice that the atmosphere became less taut. For some reason it was easier for her to breathe. 'How bizarre.'
~@~
As soon as he was out the door the chill wind nipped fiercely at his cheeks and nose, making them a cheery pink. But cheery was most likely the only thing the young man was not. His scar was probably more pronounced when his cheeks were read, which annoyed him greatly. And it didn't help that weather like this always reminded him. It hurt to remember. But it was best to just try and forget about it, push it to the back of his mind to be left, hopefully for good.
He shoved his hand deep into his coat pockets, seeking for any possible warmth but finding none. It didn't really matter, since he reached his car within mere minutes from having left the dry cleaners.
His car was fairly nondescript. It almost screamed "You don't need to pay any attention to me. I'm not suspicious in any way." Battoussai was slightly amused by the idea that perhaps his car stood out because it didn't stand out. But that was just foolishness. It was a simple black car; the body shape could have come from any carmaker. It was modest, too. It didn't have any of those new useless added on features that people seemed to like so much these days. He was truly a minimalist at heart, and his car reflected it. And besides, you don't want a car that would draw attention when you have the job that he did.
It appeared that a ritual had been created from the very first day they met. Battoussai would come to the cleaners, act cold and unforgiving, and speak in short clipped sentences (if any talking was truly necessary) while he dropped his clothes off. Kaoru would display her 'plastic smile,' act fakely polite and cheerful, and wonder what the heck was up with this weird guy. It became a sort of rhythm, one that Kaoru had come to rely on although she didn't realize it. It was exactly like clockwork. Mr. B would come in on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 3:00 PM to drop his clothes off and would return again that day to pick them up at 6:00 PM. His coming and going was constant, and subconsciously Kaoru was lulled by it, almost comforted. But he still made her nervous.
He had this look about his eyes that she couldn't quite explain. It made her uncomfortable that she couldn't. And it wasn't just the look he had in his eyes, there was just something unsettling about the way he would just stare at her. Kaoru wasn't sure if his stare made her feel like a field mouse being hunted by a hawk, or a horse being judged at a competition for breeding. Either explanation carried imagery with it that she didn't really care for.
Anyway, it had been four weeks now that Mr. B had been coming. It was a Thursday. Kaoru didn't even really notice. A day was a day, and the only thing that separated one day from another was the intolerably lonely nights that seemed to drag on infinitely. But this day was going to be a day that she would remember for the rest of her life; a day that would stand out, clearly defined as it stood out against the blur of every other day. It started out normally enough. Misao had been her usual bubbly self and Kaoru had been her usual depressed self. Nothing new. Then Mr. B came to drop off his clothes.
There wasn't anything special about the fact that he dropped his clothes off, he did every Thursday, but this time there was something different. When Kaoru was undoing buttons she found a folded up piece of paper in one of the pockets.
'I really shouldn't pry, but I hardly know anything about him. Why would anyone want to be so secretive about everything?' she thought. After battling with herself she made her decision and carefully unfolded the paper.
It was office stationery from the desk of someone called Kanryu Takeda. Kaoru shrugged her shoulders; she thought the name was somewhat familiar, but didn't think that she knew of anyone named that. She looked further down on the paper. There was writing, but Kaoru couldn't make it out at all. It literally looked like chicken scratches. She sighed, setting the paper aside to be put with Mr. B's clothes after they were cleaned and to return it to him. The rest of the day was pretty normal. Except for one thing. Kaoru couldn't shake the feeling that the name Kanryu Takeda was really familiar. It bothered her that she couldn't think of why.
He sighed as he pulled the door to the dry cleaners open. A door chime went off. The sound of it was annoying and grated against his nerves. He stood, waiting for the counter attendant. It didn't take her long to appear.
She appeared to be around 18. She wasn't very tall, maybe around 5'1", 5'2" at the most. She had long, lustrous black locks that set off the pale tone of her skin. They lent the perfect background for her stunningly clear blue eyes. When she first came out he could tell that her smile wasn't genuine. For some reason he felt as if he could relate, although he didn't know why. She didn't really have the face of a liar, but then again, neither did he. He understood what it was like to have to put on a face for the rest of the world to see; a face that belied the person hiding behind it.
"Hello," she said cheerily. Her voice sounded happy, but there was a somewhat hollow look to her eyes that told him otherwise. It was very subtle, and most people probably wouldn't have seen it, but the Battoussai had a very critical eye when it came to observing others.
She pulled out of piece of paper and asked, "Name?"
For a split second he wanted to say "Battoussai" but that wouldn't work. "Mr. B." He cringed inwardly. 'Mr. B.? What kind of a stupid name is that? I'm such a moron!' He had tried to school his voice so he didn't sound strange, but for some reason he had the feeling he had failed. The girl looked up at him with a questioning look, but then shrugged her shoulders as if she didn't really care.
"Phone number?"
This question he was prepared for. "Don't have one. Don't worry about it." He knew better than to leave any sort of trail. Besides, only amateurs would give out that kind of information when the police could follow the paper trail without any problem. He was by no means an amateur. Far from it.
"OK." The 'K' was drawn out, revealing that she questioned whether he was being honest or not. But once again it seemed as if she decided she didn't care and moved on to the next question she apparently had to ask.
"Would you like starch?"
"No. No starch." Starch would make the clothes noisier. You could hear the fabric whenever you moved. If noise could be avoided then it should and would be; that was paramount in his line of work.
"Okay then, your clothes will be ready tomorrow . . . " He never heard the end of what she said. For some reason it made him nervous to be there. He left as quickly as possible. There was something weird about that dry cleaner girl. What it was he didn't know. He shrugged his shoulders and let it go. It would come to him at some point. Everything always did.
Kaoru settled down to the task of tagging all the clothes. 'So many stupid shirts!' she moaned in her head. 'Twenty. Wonderful. Thank-you, Mr. Creepy.' For each shirt she had to make sure that the collar wasn't buttoned down, that the cuffs weren't buttoned and that there wasn't anything in the breast pocket. Every last one of the twenty shirts had the collars and cuffs buttoned. Today just wasn't her day.
As she stood there, mindlessly unbuttoning things, her thoughts returned to the enigmatic man that had brought them in. What was he like? What kind of work did he do that he needed so many business shirts? He almost certainly didn't work for an advertising company, that's for sure. He seemed like he wouldn't be able to sell anything. Not a whole lot of charisma. Not a whole lot of warmth. Not a whole lot of anything, come to think of it. He seemed empty.
'Mmm, his clothes smell good . . .' she thought lazily. 'What?! What am I thinking?! What kind of a weirdo goes around smelling other peoples' clothes? Neurotic ones, that's what kind!' She shook her head. She sure seemed to be having a lot of weird thoughts today. Strange.
By the time she finished tagging all the shirts in, it was time for her to close up shop. She was out by 7:05 PM. Just like she always was. It took her five minutes to drive home. Just like it always did. She pulled out a frozen TV dinner and put it in the microwave. Just like she always did. She'd go to night school from about 8:00 PM to 10:30 PM. Just like she always did. Day in and day out it seemed like she never did anything different. Maybe that was the reason the world didn't seem to have any color anymore. Nothing different ever happened in her life. It was always work, school and sleep. She realized that she was starting to get really apathetic towards life in general. That wasn't good, she'd have to do something about that.
She didn't have class that night, and after she finished eating her dinner, she thought about the homework she should probably do. She didn't really feel like doing it, so she decided that, in the meantime, sleep would be a wonderful activity. Maybe she would dream of a mysterious short, redheaded and handsome man she had seen for the first time that very day. That might not be bad . . .
The next day when Kaoru went in to take over for her afternoon shift, Misao, her cousin, told her an interesting story about some weird customer that came in. A strange man with red hair and a scar on his cheek. He had asked when his clothes would be ready.
"He wasn't very happy. I don't understand that. How can people not be happy? It's impossible!"
"Only for you, Misao," Kaoru muttered quietly, but loud enough that Misao could hear it.
"Whatever," Misao said airily, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand. "He might have been a sourpuss, but he was really hot!"
Kaoru rolled her eyes. Her cousin seemed to have a penchant for falling for the quiet, serious guys. She'd never understand her cousin. But that was just Misao for you: loud, sometimes obnoxious, and possibly slightly insane.
"I know," Kaoru said. "I was the one who took his clothes in."
A tiny flickering light bulb appeared above Misao's head. If she hadn't taken the guy's clothes in, then it must have been Kaoru, seeing as how they were the only two people that worked there. 'Duh.'
"I hope he comes in during my shift again sometime. I have a million questions I'd absolutely love to ask him."
"I don't doubt it," Kaoru answered in a knowing tone while rolling her eyes.
"Well, since you're here I guess I'm off! See you tomorrow Kaoru!" Misao yelled over her shoulder as she headed out the back door, waving maniacally.
"Yeah. Later."
Sighing she settled herself on the old stool and turned her attention to the old TV. She highly doubted that the rabbit ears were even connected to the dumb thing since the reception was always crappy. The color on it was messed up, too. Everything was heavily tinted yellow. Kaoru was just thankful for the noise and the occasional amusement. So what if those teeth whitening ads didn't make the product look like it worked all that well. It wasn't like she cared anyway.
~
She didn't know how long she had been zoned out, but her brain seemed to have just shut off. It was the accursed door chime that had raised her out of her stupor. 'Another day, another dollar. I wonder who the idiot that said that was. I'd like to ring his annoying little neck! Oh well, whatever.'
She came from behind the wall that separated the back of the store from the front and was somewhat surprised to see the man from the day before. She forgot to greet the guy she was so startled. He didn't say anything.
"Mr. B., right?" she asked after what felt like minutes upon minutes when in truth it was only a second or two.
The man only nodded in reply.
'He's just too weird for words. I'm glad Misao got to see him for herself, otherwise she would have pestered me into an early grave until she could be certain that I had told her every little thing I could possibly know about him . . .'. Kaoru absently wondered if anyone had ever truly been pestered to death. With Misao around, it was a distinct possibility.
Kaoru was able to find his clothes on the rack fairly quickly and took them out to him. "Your total is $25."
'Mr. B.' simply held out a twenty and a five, offering no verbal communication. He was speaking loads with his body language, though. He seemed a little tense to Kaoru, somewhat nervous and edgy. Sometimes she intimidated people a little, but this was just odd. She wondered if he was always prone to such a taciturn disposition. She had some trouble deciding if that's exactly the kind of person that she could really get along with or exactly the kind of person she'd love to shove off a cliff.
She punched the total in the cash register and put the bills in the drawer. "Thank you and have a nice day!" she said, her 'Barbie' smile firmly in place as she handed him his receipt. The only clue she had that he had even heard her was an almost imperceptible nod of his head.
Only after the door had closed after him did Kaoru notice that the atmosphere became less taut. For some reason it was easier for her to breathe. 'How bizarre.'
~@~
As soon as he was out the door the chill wind nipped fiercely at his cheeks and nose, making them a cheery pink. But cheery was most likely the only thing the young man was not. His scar was probably more pronounced when his cheeks were read, which annoyed him greatly. And it didn't help that weather like this always reminded him. It hurt to remember. But it was best to just try and forget about it, push it to the back of his mind to be left, hopefully for good.
He shoved his hand deep into his coat pockets, seeking for any possible warmth but finding none. It didn't really matter, since he reached his car within mere minutes from having left the dry cleaners.
His car was fairly nondescript. It almost screamed "You don't need to pay any attention to me. I'm not suspicious in any way." Battoussai was slightly amused by the idea that perhaps his car stood out because it didn't stand out. But that was just foolishness. It was a simple black car; the body shape could have come from any carmaker. It was modest, too. It didn't have any of those new useless added on features that people seemed to like so much these days. He was truly a minimalist at heart, and his car reflected it. And besides, you don't want a car that would draw attention when you have the job that he did.
It appeared that a ritual had been created from the very first day they met. Battoussai would come to the cleaners, act cold and unforgiving, and speak in short clipped sentences (if any talking was truly necessary) while he dropped his clothes off. Kaoru would display her 'plastic smile,' act fakely polite and cheerful, and wonder what the heck was up with this weird guy. It became a sort of rhythm, one that Kaoru had come to rely on although she didn't realize it. It was exactly like clockwork. Mr. B would come in on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 3:00 PM to drop his clothes off and would return again that day to pick them up at 6:00 PM. His coming and going was constant, and subconsciously Kaoru was lulled by it, almost comforted. But he still made her nervous.
He had this look about his eyes that she couldn't quite explain. It made her uncomfortable that she couldn't. And it wasn't just the look he had in his eyes, there was just something unsettling about the way he would just stare at her. Kaoru wasn't sure if his stare made her feel like a field mouse being hunted by a hawk, or a horse being judged at a competition for breeding. Either explanation carried imagery with it that she didn't really care for.
Anyway, it had been four weeks now that Mr. B had been coming. It was a Thursday. Kaoru didn't even really notice. A day was a day, and the only thing that separated one day from another was the intolerably lonely nights that seemed to drag on infinitely. But this day was going to be a day that she would remember for the rest of her life; a day that would stand out, clearly defined as it stood out against the blur of every other day. It started out normally enough. Misao had been her usual bubbly self and Kaoru had been her usual depressed self. Nothing new. Then Mr. B came to drop off his clothes.
There wasn't anything special about the fact that he dropped his clothes off, he did every Thursday, but this time there was something different. When Kaoru was undoing buttons she found a folded up piece of paper in one of the pockets.
'I really shouldn't pry, but I hardly know anything about him. Why would anyone want to be so secretive about everything?' she thought. After battling with herself she made her decision and carefully unfolded the paper.
It was office stationery from the desk of someone called Kanryu Takeda. Kaoru shrugged her shoulders; she thought the name was somewhat familiar, but didn't think that she knew of anyone named that. She looked further down on the paper. There was writing, but Kaoru couldn't make it out at all. It literally looked like chicken scratches. She sighed, setting the paper aside to be put with Mr. B's clothes after they were cleaned and to return it to him. The rest of the day was pretty normal. Except for one thing. Kaoru couldn't shake the feeling that the name Kanryu Takeda was really familiar. It bothered her that she couldn't think of why.