Disclaimer: Yami no Matsuei belongs to Yoko Matsushita. Though I wouldn't mind owning Muraki and Tsuzuki myself.
Promptus Silentium
Tsuzuki looked around, nervous. It was close to midnight and the silence was overwhelming. The slightest noise made him jump, but then he never had been good alone. Perhaps some of the trust he shared with his young companion stemmed from that – neither liked being alone and yet they strove to put themselves in just such a position.
A rose bush rustled to his right, next to the stairs, and he scanned the area around him, searching for something, someone. Nothing came towards him and Tsuzuki closed his vibrant eyes, taking a deep breath and trying to calm down. He looked for a bench and spotted one near said bush. He sat down on it and covered his face with his hands.
When he had come out of the shop, Hisoka wasn't across the street anymore. Tsuzuki had immediately gone back to Meifu, but he had no luck. That's when he had gotten the letter. Opening it had been a challenge; his fingers had been shaking so much. He had the sinking feeling that something was very wrong and then he saw the bloodied sakura and knew. He didn't need to read the letter, but he still did. He chuckled dryly, remembering how quickly those same fingers had become nerveless upon finishing the contents of an otherwise plain envelope. It was from the perverted doctor, saying to meet him in front of the church in Nagasaki if he wished to ever have Hisoka back.
He knew that he shouldn't have left the empath alone while he went into the confectioner's, but the emerald-eyed boy had seemed especially irritated that morning and Tsuzuki couldn't get him to talk about it. They had become closer in the months since Kyoto, but there were still moments when nothing he did got through to him. He'd just shut down, like he had in the beginning. Even after being a Shinigami for close to a century, he still couldn't understand young people, and yet again it had endangered him.
Tsuzuki knew better than to blame himself for what had happened. He could imagine what Konoe and Tatsumi would say. Especially Tatsumi, whom he knew saw him as a fragile child. Maybe he was one. That didn't change the fact that he couldn't stop hating his carelessness, his thoughtlessness. In the midst of his mental berating, a hand grabbed his chin. His head was tilted back and he looked into eyes he knew intimately, eyes with vertical pupils.
