: All I Wanted... :
by
- GlazedAndConfused -
"..." - denotes speech.
"(...)" - denotes whispering.
Italics denote thoughts and Japanese dialogue.
Chapter Two : Making The Headlines
The walk back home, although no less than two or three minutes away, felt like it took a lifetime for Keitaro, who was struggling to acknowledge the fact that he had just killed somebody without any provocation. The Urashima man's face was frozen in an expression of horror, as the chain of events that led to his stabbing of the Chinese shopkeeper kept replaying in his head, as if to rub his actions in his face.
I did not just do that... his thoughts went, in a perpetual mantra. I did not just do that... I did not just kill the shopkeeper with a bayonet...
No matter how much he tried convincing himself, the images of the old man's body slumping to the floor lifelessly - his shirt stained in blood pouring from the entry wound - would not leave his head. It was as if he was staring at a painting that was dangled in front of him as he walked back home. Pulling out the keys from his trousers, it took him a few moments to gather up enough sense to actually open the door. Stumbling through the front door, kicking it closed behind him, he walked over to the draw in the living room, and pulled it open, removing an object that looked like a matchstick holder.
A box of matches soon followed, as he slowly opened the box and took a match out. Striking the tip of the match against the brown, scarcely-used sandpaper, Keitaro stared in slight fascination at the flame as it slowly burnt, the air around him fueling the tiny ember as it ate away at the wood. Placing the match in a spare slot on the brass holder, he stared at the flame a few seconds longer before blowing it out, smirking as he stared at the now-black remnants of the match; any previous traces of shock and anxiety now gone.
One down, more to go.
Within an hour of the stabbing, the area surrounding the shop was closed off by the police. Local residents crowded and scrambled around the line they were to stay behind, all trying to get a good view of the police investigations. A blue Renault Alpine pulled up outside police lines, as Misato and an older, grey-haired man both got out. Slowly, both made their way over to the front door of the shop where the killing took place. A young local resident was being questioned by an unshaven, ponytailed man who the violet-haired woman knew was Kaji; a pen and notebook in his hand.
"Daisuke-san, this is Fuyutsuki Kouzo and Katsuragi Misato," Kaji spoke, turning to face the two who had just arrived. "He was the one who found the body, and he said he bumped into a skinhead on the way down here."
"Did he say anything to you?" Fuyutsuki asked.
"He was dead." Daisuke replied.
The elder man sighed. "...no, I mean the skinhead."
"Oh, sorry. No, he didn't."
"Would you recognise him if you saw him again?" Misato asked.
Daisuke shrugged. "Hey, he was a skinhead... they all look alike."
"Have you mentioned this to anybody else?"
"No, just the police."
"Well, we'd rather you kept it that way, if that's okay?"
"Sure, no problem."
As Kaji, Misato and Fuyutsuki walked into the shop, the dimmed surroundings were briefly lit up in their entirety by the strobing flash of a camera, giving everyone in there a better view of the scene in front of them. The shop was relatively untouched, the newspaper and the tea leaves still in their resting place on the counter, alongside the 10 Yen. Misato had to stop herself from grimacing as the camera flashed once again, trying to force herself to focus on anything other than the body that lay in front of her.
"Leave it, Shigeru," Fuyutsuki spoke to one of the younger officers at the scene, who had long black hair, attempting to swat the flies that were flying around the room.
"The flies won't stay away from the body, though," the man named Shigeru replied, taking another swing with the rolled-up newspaper in his hand.
"Don't worry about that, just go out there and see to the crowd... they're encroaching."
Shigeru dropped the newspaper. "I'm alright here, though."
Fuyutsuki smirked. "I know you are, but just see to the crowd, okay?"
As Shigeru walked out of the front door, another of the officers walked into the room, approaching Fuyutsuki and Misato. He had short black hair, and fairly thick-framed glasses. "Fuyutsuki-san."
"Hyuuga-san." Fuyutsuki replied, not taking his eyes off the body. "Where's the family?"
"Upstairs. I haven't spoken to them yet, though, I was, well... waiting..."
Both men turned to face Misato, who sighed. "You mean, you want me to do the talking?"
"If you wouldn't mind," Hyuuga said, letting loose a breath he didn't know he had been holding.
Misato sighed again as she walked around the back of the counter and through the door that led upstairs. Fuyutsuki walked closer to the body and crouched beside it, looking over his shoulder at one of the forensic detectives taking photos of the scene and body. "Have you gotten the tea leaves and newspaper on film?"
"Yes."
Fuyutsuki walked behind the counter, examining the 10 Yen that had fallen to the floor, then checking the counters to see if any money had been taken. "Well, it's definitely not a robbery... no money has been taken." He looked up to face Kaji, Hyuuga and Shigeru, who had just walked back in. "Nor is there anything to indicate any racial motives, nothing whatsoever... that's our line, okay?"
The silence in the family living room above the shop was almost unbearable for Misato. The neutral look on the violet-haired woman's face completely betrayed the uneasiness she was feeling deep inside her. She licked her lips, trying to moisten them as she thought of a question to ask.
"Can you think of anyone who would want to kill your father?" she asked the eldest of the deceased man's daughters.
The young woman turned to face Misato with a look of grief and anger on her face, her eyes revealing that she was trying her best to hold back her unshed tears. "Not just one, but several million people..." Her eyes narrowed. "...and all of them are Japanese."
Misato had no answer for that.
Not unlike Misato, Ritsuko was not a morning person. So when she was woken up by the sound of a hacksaw cutting through copper piping emanating from the flat next door, it came as no surprise that she was feeling, for lack of a better word, very annoyed. With her beauty sleep ever so rudely interrupted, she walked through to the living room and turned on the TV, picking up her cigarettes and lighter as she did so. It was the sound of Fuyutsuki's voice coming from the TV that attracted her attention.
"...in the past, this area has seen a great deal of tension between different ethnic minorities and backgrounds. It is for this reason that I want to make it clear that there is no evidence of any racist intentions behind this killing; none at all. We are understandably anxious to speak to everybody who may have visited Zhiyi-san's shop this morning. Whether or not you saw anything, or whether or not you think that you might be of any help at all to us, it is vital that you step forwards so we can eliminate you from our enquries..."
She never did light that cigarette.
The loud cacophonyof sound that was the lyrics of racialsupremacy and separatism resounded through the local concert hall, as a large number of right-wing extremist skinheads gathered together in the name of music and extreme nationalist politics. The hall was dimmed and the curtains closed, but there was still enough light for one to see the large number of far-right banners and memorabilia that were placed there. Banners about fascism adorned the walls, as well as portraits of the said ideology's leaders and politicians from the past and anti left-wing rhetoric. The skinheads were all raptured by the music, starting a movement akin to a punk mosh pit, implementing fascist salutes at the same time.
Their idea of fun was soon ruined by the door downstairs being smashed off it's hinges, followed by the chorus of heavy footsteps making their way up the stairs to break up the gathering. Kaji, who was at the front of this line of police officers, made his way onto the stage as Misato approached the man she assumed to be the head of the skinhead group, trying to ask him to turn the music down - to no avail.
Seeing this, Kaji unplugged the speakers and turned them off. "Okay, all of you sit down and shut up!" He yelled down the microphone, able to get the attention of the crowd who were slowly becoming agitated. "We have a warrant to search this premises, and the longer you lot take to shut up, the longer we'll be!" This was met with a chorus of catcalling and jeering, coupled with more fascist salutes in unison.
Within minutes, a number of the skinhead extremists were taken out of the building after making racist comments towards the non-Japanese police officers...
"Right," Fuyutsuki spoke, "we now have the names and addresses of sixty far-right extremist party members. We'll be checking them all out for any previous offences."
Misato cut in. "Forty-five of them have previous; thirty-two of them violent."
"So, those thirty-two are at the top of our list. Make sure that you are all plain-clothed. We don't adhere to our usual uniform standards, because the skinheads will notice something. Unracial motive is still our official line. We start this early tomorrow morning." During this speech, Kaji's eyes had wandered around the room, settling on Misato's cleavage, the fact of which was unknown to the violet-haired woman.
Unfortunately for him, he was caught. "Kaji, am I boring you?" Fuyutsuki asked.
"Sorry?"
"Am I boring you?"
The pony-tailed man shook his head. "No, sir."
"Then listen." The grey-haired man unfolded the newspaper in his hand. His eyebrows furrowed in anger as he noticed the headline of the top story.
"MINDLESS RACIST MURDER: SKINHEAD SOUGHT"
"Misato, come with me!"
The violet-haired woman sighed; this was going to be a long day.
"A Chinese shopkeeper is murdered in a racially-sensitive area, and you come out and print a story like this!" Fuyutsuki fumed at the woman who wrote the story. This was all he needed on top of having to lead the case, without having a headline that could easily provoke the boiling over of feelings between the ethnic minorities in the town.
"It's the truth, isn't it?" the young woman replied. Her hair was a sandy shade of blonde, and her eyes closed in the same manner of a fox.
"So that makes it all okay to write this crap, does it?"
"Yes."
"No, it doesn't. Who gave you this information?"
The young woman shrugged, her eyes not leaving the computer monitor as she continued to type. "I can't tell you."
Fuyutsuki snorted. "Don't hide behind journalistic integrity, because you haven't got any. Now tell me who gave you this information."
The fox-eyed journalist merely turned to face the grey-haired man, a look of passiveness on her face. "I've already told you once, I can't tell you."
"Was it one of my officers?"
No reply.
"It wasn't the man who found the body, because we've already spoken to him."
"No."
"So who was it then?"
Again, no reply.
"Look, I can have you arrested for witholding such information. Now was it one of my officers, or not?"
"Yes."
"Which one?"
The woman smirked. "I'm not telling you."
Asking each officer individually proved to be harder than Fuyutsuki thought, judging by the reaction that Kaji had given him for asking it. The normally calm and unshaven man was fuming for the first time in a long while, not liking the fact that the older man was pointing the finger at him for something he hadn't done.
"Kaji, did you give the woman that information or not?" Fuyutsuki asked, running a hand through his hair.
"What does it show, asking me a question like that?" Kaji yelled, whirling on the older man.
"I have no time for this... did you tell that woman or not?"
Kaji stood in front of Fuyutsuki so he was more or less face to face with his superior. "That shows you have no faith in me at all! God, five years of service and this is how you repay me?"
"Well somebody told her, but was it you?"
"NO!"
"Thank you! That's all I wanted to know!"
"The fact of the matter is that you had the nerve to accuse me of it!"
Fuyutsuki sighed. "It's a process of elimination Kaji, and you're eliminated... now send Hyuuga in."
"How do you think this makes me feel?" the ponytailed man asked.
"I get the picture... you feel betrayed, fine; understandable, noted. Now send Hyuuga in."
"After five years of service, you'd think I'd have a little more trust put in m --"
"SEND HYUUGA IN!"
Holding his hands up in resignation and defeat as he walked out of the room, Kaji made his way over to his desk and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it and taking a long drag. After the nicotine had calmed his nerves somewhat, he looked towards the bespectacled, younger man and sighed. "The boss wants to see you."
Hyuuga shuddered; this wasn't going to be good.
"Was this down to you?"
Hyuuga shuffled on his feet, the young subordinate focusing on anything other than the face of his boss. "Yes sir... it was me."
Fuyutsuki slammed the newspaper down onto the desk, his face adopting an even more angered expression than before as he took a few deep breaths to stop himself from ranting again. "Why?"
"...I don't know." Hyuuga honestly replied.
"Did she pay you? Because if you took money for this, your career is finished."
"No!"
"Well, she's quite a fine specimen of femininity, isn't she?"
"It wasn't that either..."
Fuyutsuki's eyes narrowed, his patience dropping by the second. "...well, what was it then?"
"Well, you sent me out of the shop, and..." He paused, taking a breath as he considered where to carry on. "...I don't know. I guess I just wanted to prove that I was involved in this, y'know?"
"Ah... the whole 'knowledge of power' theory... show people that you're in the know, and then gain yourself a little bit of respect. Am I right?"
"Yes."
The older man shookg his head. "No. That woman just thinks you're nothing more than a clown."
"I know."
An uncomfortable pause passed between the two.
"What will you do?"
"...nothing. Now get out before I change my mind."
Blissfully taking in all of the attention given to his actions, Keitaro smirked as he sat in his chair, reading through the main headlines. The Urashima man would never have thought that he would have gained such popularity - or, in this case, notoriety - for a single thing he did; after all, the things he had done during his tenure as Hinata Sou's kanrinin did not seem to go noticed. And what was his reward for the good things he did? Being on the receiving end of Naru and Motoko's repressed anger for events construed as perverted. The thought of this made him briefly scowl, but it didn't matter... it was only a matter of time before they became his next victims; a matter of time before he became what he wanted to be. One thought ran throughout his mind as he continued to read.
All I wanted was to be noticed and congratulated. All I wanted... was to be somebody.
His eyes widened slightly as he saw the name of the person who had written the article in the first place.
Konno Mitsune.
: END CHAPTER TWO :
: AUTHOR'S NOTES :
Nothing to say this time around. Except this is definitely a crossover with NGE if you hadn't noticed by now... hence the inclusions of more characters from the anime in this chapter.
