See! This fic isn't dead after all! XD But I'm sort of liberal with characterization from now on... Tsuzuki's especially. You'll see why. ^_~

Chapter Four

After what seemed like thousands of years, Kurosaki Hisoka blinked awake. His head was throbbing, and his back ached with stiffness. After a few seconds, he realized dazedly that he was curled on his side in the middle of a playground. He sat up and rubbed both hands over his face, looking around. He didn't recognize where he was.

There was a man lying on the ground beside him, also unconscious. Hisoka studied him for a few seconds, noting his dark trenchcoat and suit, and the pieces of paper clutched tightly in one hand. His soft brown hair was falling in his eyes.

Hisoka cradled his head in his hands. There was a faint buzzing in his ears that he could not stop. He wondered if it was a strange way of his empathy acting up. And why was he at a playground? Where was he? There were no playgrounds near his house that he knew of, and in any he wasn't allowed out of the cellar, and in any case, the last time he checked he had been in the hospital.

Dying.

His eyes widened.

The other man groaned slightly and sat up, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Unnh, where am I?" he asked. He scanned his surroundings uncertainly, and Hisoka was surprised to see that he had eyes the color of amethyst. Those eyes were now resting on him. "Who are you?"

"Kurosaki Hisoka," he answered, shifting uncomfortably. "You?"

"Tsuzuki Asato. Do you know how I got here?"

Hisoka thought about it, then shook his head. "No. I only woke up a few minutes ago. I don't know where we are or how either of us got here. Do you remember anything?"

Tsuzuki's face creased in a slight frown. "The last thing I remember . . . is . . ."

His breath hitched in his throat and one hand automatically went to clutch his wrist.

"What?" Hisoka asked. He was wracking his brain for a memory himself. Did he remember dying? He wasn't sure. He remembered the hospital, and a lot of pain. He wasn't sure if it was possible to remember dying after one was dead. Was this some version of Heaven or Hell? It seemed odd that the afterlife would consist of being tossed onto a playground with a complete stranger.

A choked, whistling sob was his only answer.

"Ano . . . Tsuzuki-san?" he asked hesitantly. "Are you all right?"

"I think I'm dead," the other man whispered.

Oddly enough, the primary emotion that greeted Hisoka at this statement was profound relief. If Tsuzuki thought he was dead, then maybe he, Hisoka, wasn't wrong about himself being dead. It was strangely comforting to know that he 'remembered' correctly.

Still, the grief and panic was flowing from Tsuzuki in waves, so Hisoka thought he might want to say something. "It's okay," he said, then reflected that it was a very strange thing to say. "I think I'm dead, too. So maybe . . ."

"This is Hell," Tsuzuki said, in a hollow voice. "I must have gone to Hell. I wouldn't have deserved anything else."

"Excuse me," Hisoka snapped, "I don't think I was about to go to Hell, so you can't be in Hell either." But even as he spoke the words, his stomach twisted. Maybe after everything, his parents were right. Maybe he was a monster. Maybe after sixteen years of torment, he was going somewhere even worse.

Maybe . . .

Hisoka swallowed hard. The memory of the pain the curse had caused was vivid in his mind.

"It must be," Tsuzuki said, crossing his arms over his chest and hugging himself. "It must be Hell."

"Shut up, stupid," Hisoka said. The butterflies in his stomach were turning to snakes. He thought he might throw up. Could dead people throw up? A hysterical giggle started to build up in his throat. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe and he was going to pass out any second now. Did dead people need to breathe?

Tsuzuki had curled up into a ball and was rocking himself back in forth, repeating "We're in Hell" over and over again, underneath his breath.

"SHUT UP!" Hisoka yelled, but his words had absolutely no effect. He couldn't breathe, and every time Tsuzuki repeated his mantra, he felt his throat grow tighter and even less air could get in.

He slapped Tsuzuki hard across the face.

There was a shocked pause. Tsuzuki took in a deep, shuddering breath.

"Sorry," Hisoka said. "Sorry. But you were freaking out and you were freaking me out and . . . I freaked out," he finished lamely. "But I don't think we're in Hell. Are you okay?"

There was a pause, then Tsuzuki nodded slightly. His eyes lost their unfocused look, and he began to look around. "But . . . everything looks different," he said uncertainly. He frowned at the buildings on the other side of the street from the playground. "The buildings are . . . taller and . . . harder, somehow." He frowned slightly, having trouble articulating what he was thinking.

Hisoka raised his hands in surrender, then climbed to his feet. "I'm out of ideas. Let's walk around and ask someone where we are."

Tsuzuki nodded and accepted the hand up that Hisoka offered.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, both lost in their thoughts. Tsuzuki's hand rubbed constantly at his watch and the scar underneath. Hisoka crossed his arms over his chest and shivered. The emotions of the people around him were flooding into his senses, making him disoriented.

"Excuse me." Hisoka stopped a young woman. "We were walking and we got a bit lost. Do you know exactly where we are?"

She blinked at him, then noticed she was talking to two handsome young men and blushed slightly. "Uh, yeah. You're on the north edge of town. If you take this road straight for a long ways, you'll get back to the main street."

Hisoka sighed a little. "What town?"

"Aomori," she said uncertainly.

"All right, thank you," Hisoka said, and started to walk again.

Tsuzuki called after her. "Ano . . . what's the date?"

She turned. "You two really are lost," she said, looking startled.

"Yes," Tsuzuki said, looking worried.

"It's August fifteenth," she said, and continued on her way. Tsuzuki and Hisoka walked in more silence until they reached town.

"I don't think this is Heaven or Hell," Hisoka finally said. "I think we must just be in Japan. I mean, she didn't seem confused or anything. And if dead people are in and out all the time, you'd think they'd be used to weird questions like that."

Tsuzuki had to admit that what Hisoka said made sense. "I suppose," he said. "But why would we . . ." He swallowed hard. "Why would we die but still be on earth?"

"I don't know," Hisoka said. "Were you from Aomori?"

Tsuzuki shook his head.

"Me neither . . . so why here, of all places?"

"I don't know." Tsuzuki stopped walking and was looking at a newspaper stand. "Hi . . . Hisoka . . ."

Hisoka stopped and glanced at what Tsuzuki was pointing at with a shaking finger. At first he thought it was something in the headlines of the newspaper, then his eyes landed on the date. It was indeed August fifteenth, but the year given was two years after he had died.

"What the hell?" he breathed out slowly.

Tsuzuki backed away slowly.

Hisoka turned to him. "What year . . . what year did you die?" he said, fortunately having enough thought to lower his voice so they didn't get funny looks.

"1926 . . ." Tsuzuki whispered.

Hisoka felt the hysterical giggle rising in his throat again. Funny, he didn't remember often getting hysterical. Was this something about being dead? Or was it just because he was very, very confused? "1926? But I died in 1996. There's something about that . . . that's just not right." The giggle escaped. "I guess we know why the buildings look different."

Tsuzuki just stared at him. Then he turned and started to push through the crowd.

"Hey, wait!" Hisoka tried to catch up, alarmed at the thought of losing the only person who was a link to what was going on. He groaned in frustration as Tsuzuki started to run, vanishing around a corner. "God damn it, wait!"

But when he rounded the corner, Tsuzuki was already gone.

~~~~

Hisoka settled on a bench. He had been chasing after Tsuzuki for half an hour, and had finally run out of energy. The other man had simply vanished into the crowd, and Hisoka had no idea how to find him.

He decided it was high time he sat down to consider the problem logically. He was never going to get anywhere running all over the city like a chicken with its head cut off. He had begun to wonder if he was really dead at all.

Days in the hospital had blurred together in a way that was almost frightening. He knew he had been there for about three years. One of the most recent, and most vivid memories was when his favorite nurse brought him a present for what she jokingly called their three-year anniversary.

Everything after that was a blur of pain, needles underneath his skin, the haze of new drugs or medicine. That was all he could remember.

But two years had passed since then. What if one of the drugs had worked? What if he was really alive?

For the first time since he had woken up, he found himself daring to hope. The other man had obviously been emotionally disturbed. He must have just been confused when he had said that he had died in 1926. He wasn't anywhere near that old.

As for his own age, well, he didn't look like he was eighteen, but maybe he was a late bloomer? That had to be it, that was all. He was alive; they'd come up with some cure, but amnesia had been a side effect of the drug and he'd forgotten some things, that was all. And he would figure out why he'd been on a playground in Aomori just as soon as he got in touch with his family.

That, however, was a bit of a sobering thought. He didn't think his parents would particularly want to see him.

But it had been two years. Things could have changed. Their attitudes could have changed. They had to have changed. Hisoka got off the bench in sudden, inexplicable excitement, and headed for a bus station.

He stopped abruptly when he realized that he didn't know where there was a train or bus station. He felt in his pockets and came out with a battered wallet. There was about three thousand yen folded up, and no forms of identification. He scowled and wondered if that was enough money to get to his house.

Hisoka wandered towards the nearest main street in search of a train station. It was crowded, and he flinched away involuntarily before realizing that the crowd wasn't really giving him trouble. Even from the first day his empathy had appeared, he'd had partial shields, but crowds had always bothered him. But now, although he could still feel the people on the periphery of his senses, it wasn't anywhere near the throbbing noise he would have expected.

Somewhere, in the past two years, he had learned the control his empathy.

This didn't tally so well with the thoughts of him being alive, and he sat down to consider it. His parents had been all for repressing and hiding his empathy. They wouldn't have taken well to his getting lessons on how to control it.

However, he had to take into consideration that he had been a child then. Now, although he still wasn't an adult, if he'd had two years without pain to learn control by himself . . . maybe he wouldn't have needed lessons. He tried to enforce the shields and found that it came naturally. What little he could sense from the crowd faded even more.

This was better than great. Maybe now he would finally have a chance at a life. He was over that strange

(curse)

disease, and could control his empathy . . . then just maybe . . .

He got directions to the train station and managed to find a fairly cheap ticket for a train that left in two hours. The crowd at the station was heavier and started to bother his empathy. The slight buzzing was now back in his ears, and he shook himself slightly. Probably nothing to worry about, just

(a moth caught in the flame)

some strange side effect of the control over his empathy, or something like that.

He sat and waited, and felt slightly bad about leaving the other man somewhere in Aomori. He thought that Tsuzuki probably had some reason to be acting the way he had; perhaps a life as traumatic as his own had been. But since he had run off, Hisoka didn't see much he could do. He hadn't been near him long enough to be able to sense his empathic presence with any reliability.

Hopefully, Tsuzuki would find whatever he was looking for. Hisoka decided that after he had been to see his family, and had gotten to the bottom of all this, he would come back to Aomori and look for the older man. It wouldn't be right to leave him wandering around in confusion.

So it was with only slight misgivings that, two hours later, Hisoka boarded a train to go home for the first time in years.

~~~~

Watari slept in. Tatsumi had given him the day off, which Watari thought was quite fair, given that he had just worked three days in a row. It was lucky that nothing ever happened in Kyoto; it kept him from having actual assignments very often. Since that was the territory of most of the spiritualists and onmyouji in Japan, they tended to keep a lid on things themselves.

The phone rang around noon, and he was still sprawled in bed, though he was awake. He was sprawled out over his blankets with his hair down, reading one of his many scientific journals. It always paid to keep up with the latest discoveries. 003 was perched on the phone, and jumped when it rang, her feathers ruffling as if she thought the phone was a personal insult.

Watari pressed the speaker phone button with his toe. "Moshi moshi, Watari desu!"

"It's Tatsumi."

"Mo~u, you gave me the day off," Watari protested. "There can't be anything you need that I didn't find in the past three days. What's up?"

"Tsuzuki-san and Kurosaki-kun didn't check in today."

Watari sat up slowly.

"Furthermore, a certain white-haired doctor was seen in Aomori."

"I'll be at the office in twenty minutes," Watari said, and pressed the button on the phone. He pulled on clothes hastily, tucking 003 into the pocket of his jacket. A sandwich was quickly made, and he ate it as he walked to work, drinking tea from a thermos.

Tatsumi was waiting when he got there, which he thought was a sign of how worried the secretary truly had to be.

"You're gonna wear a track in the floor," Watari said, watching him pace. "No word from Tsuzuki or Bon?"

"None," Tatsumi said. "Not even when I deliberately tried to get in touch with them. I sent Gushoshin Elder to go look for them nearly an hour ago, but Aomori is a large city and he still hasn't found anyone."

"What about Muraki?" Watari asked.

"As far as I know, he has nothing to do with this," Tatsumi said in a thin voice. "I've been keeping tabs on him since Kyoto -- " Watari nodded here; everyone had been aware of this except Tsuzuki -- "and he only came to Aomori this morning. He hasn't interacted with Tsuzuki-san or Kurosaki-kun that we know of."

"Well, that's good anyway," Watari said, relieved at this information. "But I guess we have no idea why they wouldn't have checked in, ne? Bon was usually pretty good about that, as scatter-brained as Tsuzuki was . . ."

"Normally I wouldn't worry quite this much," Tatsumi admitted. "I would think they had gotten sidetracked in the assignment somehow and not had time or reason to check in . . . but I'd like to tell Kurosaki-kun at least that Muraki is there. He would react better than Tsuzuki-san, I believe. And then I tried to contact them, and they didn't answer, and . . . I believe something's wrong."

Watari pushed his glasses up his nose and fished 003 out of his pocket. The owl was more than a little squashed; she let out an indignant hoot and nipped at Watari's fingers in a manner that was only partially affectionate before fluttering away. "You think this has something to do with the case?"

Tatsumi paused in his pacing and looked out the window for a very long minute. "What do you think would happen if this . . . whatever it is . . . discovered that Shinigami were after it?"

Watari shrugged. "It might move. You think Tsuzuki and Bon went after it? No," he said immediately, tossing aside his own theory. "You wouldn't be worried if that was it. What are you thinking?"

"This thing eats psychic energy," Tatsumi said, starting to sound impatient. "And what has more of that than a Shinigami?"

Watari's eyes widened.

"We need to find them," Tatsumi said, his voice strained. "Because if the worst has happened, we only have four days."

~~~~

Tsuzuki slumped down on the side of the road, trying to catch his breath. Everything was so damned loud and confusing. With every moment that passed, he became more and more convinced that he had to be in Hell. This didn't particularly surprise him, but it certainly didn't make him feel great, either.

He took off his watch and examined the scar on his wrist soberly. Apparently, it had finally been enough to kill him. No complaints there, but . . .

// "I don't think this is Heaven or Hell. I think we must just be in Japan." //

Tsuzuki shook his head, anxious to block out that voice. The younger man couldn't have been right. He had died and gone to Hell for his sins. There was no other explanation. All right, he had to admit that he didn't know why Hell looked like downtown Aomori, or why no one seemed confused except for him, but there just couldn't be another explanation.

He deserved to go to Hell, and he had.

Given this conclusion, it didn't really seem worth it to go anywhere. He sat slumped on the curb and didn't move. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. Just an eternity of nothing.

Scowling, he slammed his fist down on the pavement. The pain helped a little, bringing him back to his senses. He glanced down at his knuckles and at the trickle of blood that was sliding towards the tips of his fingers.

As he watched, the small wound closed and the bruise faded.

He stared at his hand in disbelief. He couldn't hurt himself.

Tsuzuki slammed his fist down harder, hard enough to break his knuckles. The throbbing lasted only seconds. The bones knit back into place and the skin healed over them.

His hands began to shake.

He got up and began to walk again, shoving his shaking and healed hands deep down into his pockets. He couldn't deny the pit of fear that had begun to grow in his stomach. He was dead; that was fine. He had wanted to die, wanted his life to end, wanted it so badly that his repeated attempts to suicide had finally worked.

Every time, I healed a bit slower, he thought dreamily, staring up at the sky as he walked.

But now, apparently, he was back at square one. He was in

(Japan)

Hell, and there didn't seem to be any way out. He didn't have the option of escape that life had supposedly given him. There would just be this endless emptiness, this lack of purpose, this wandering.

Suddenly, without reason, he wished that he hadn't run away from Hisoka. The younger boy had seemed to be calm and collected, if confused. He felt that he could use some calm right now. Some explanation, no matter what kind. He sat with a thud on the curb again, feeling like he might cry.

A shadow fell over him.

"Tsuzuki-san?"

Tsuzuki looked up to see a man with a white coat, with silver hair, with a slight smile that twisted around the corners of his mouth. He did not see a murderer or a rapist. He simply saw a man.

"It's a pleasure to see you, as always." The smile grew wider, more twisted, more predatory.

Tsuzuki was so glad to have found a friend that he didn't even notice.

~~~~

Woohoo! Three cliffhangers at once, a new record! Also, Muraki seems to show up at the end of my chapters a lot. Heehee, wonder why that could be... ^_~