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A/N: This chapter is OFFICIALLY, and SINCERELY dedicated to PD98THREAD over on AO3. This beautiful human being - a total stranger from halfway around the world - single-handedly picked up the pieces of my broken ego and inspired me to keep writing this fic. If not for her, months or years could have gone by before I found the passion to continue writing again.
This one's for you, PixieDust 3
* The number 4 is considered very bad luck in Japan, because it's sometimes pronounced shi, which is the Japanese word for death. Some buildings skip the fourth floor entirely.
* A genkan is the entrance area of a Japanese home, where visitors typically remove their shoes.
Chapter 4 – Playdate: Part 1
Izaya woke from his alarm with a jolt, and hissed from the resulting pain shooting down his spine. He wasn't sure at what point he'd fallen asleep in his wheelchair. He'd been sitting in his apartment, mulling over his encounter with his new human and counting down the seconds until it was time to see her again. Somehow, he'd actually dozed off, slumped over his desk and drooling slightly.
He wiped his mouth a turned off his alarm.
A smile spread across his face, like the sun breaking through dark clouds.
Izaya used to be a morning person. He used to wake up every day filled with excitement and enthusiasm, and the absolute certainty that something fun and interesting would happen to him, or he'd at the very least make boring progress towards a really fun goal.
Now that his PTSD had ruined everything fun in his life, Izaya tended to find mornings were the worst part of his day. After just waking up, he'd always be more vulnerable and emotionally volatile. He tended to open his eyes and scowl immediately, resenting the fact that he was no longer sleeping.
Resenting everything about his new life, really.
This time, he wasn't at all annoyed to have his unplanned nap disturbed.
It was time to visit her apartment.
Hanabi-san.
An hour ago, his newly discovered neighbor had banished him so she could 'freshen up', and bossily instructed him to set a timer on his phone so he wouldn't be late for their scheduled 'hang-out'.
'So, this is my door. You come knocking in exactly an hour, not a minute before...but you've got half an hour to be late. If you still haven't shown up after that, I will go to sleep and ignore you if your knocking wakes me up. Deal?'
Izaya had never had a problem handing over the illusion of control for his own benefit. If she wanted to take charge and facilitate this meeting, Izaya would eagerly comply. He'd obediently followed her orders, giving his precious new plaything time to pretty herself up for him.
'Woah, hold up wheelchair guy, before you leave. I just realized I don't know your name!'
And yet, she'd invited him to her home, rather than making the responsible decision to go to bed and review her life choices. As if she were afraid she'd change her mind after a healthy dose of sleep. What a strange woman.
Izaya rolled into his bathroom, taking a few minutes to relieve himself, brush his teeth and wash his face. Outside, the sky was just beginning to turn a dusky violet – the sun would be up soon.
'It's Izaya,' he'd told her with a sincere smile, 'Pleasure to meet you.'
And he'd meant it.
He couldn't wait to see this new day.
His hunger and exhaustion were far from his mind, being highly irrelevant issues
Izaya hummed to himself as he made his way into the elevator and down to Hanabi's apartment. She was two floors below his penthouse suite, behind a handsome wooden door.
He stared up at the silver numbers '10-04' and grinned to himself at the irony.
Figures she'd live in a cursed abode. Poor girl.
He raised his hand and knocked smartly.
Some time went by with no response, so he knocked a little harder.
Still nothing.
Izaya scowled at the door, feeling an embarrassing amount of disappointment growing in his heart.
"Don't tell me you fell asleep," Izaya seethed under his breath, "I'd have to cook up something really awful if you dared to let me down like that."
He glanced around the dimly lit corridor and considered his options.
Then he shrugged, and gave an evil grin.
He'd been banging obscenely on her door for about fifteen seconds when he finally heard a muffled scream of acknowledgment from inside. He couldn't tell what she was saying, but her pitch was gratifyingly shrill. Izaya sniggered, and would have continued knocking, just to be obnoxious, had it not been so damn early. As playful as he was feeling, he didn't want to draw any more attention than he already had from the neighbors on this floor.
There was a brief commotion, like doors opening and banging shut from within, then the sound of footsteps running towards him.
He'd just tensed in glorious anticipation of seeing her again – preferably in some form of emotional upset – when there came a short, girlish scream of surprise, followed soon after by a hard bang as something impacted violently with the door in front of him. Izaya jumped at the unexpectedly loud noise, and leaned away from the door on instinct, with his brows furrowed in alarm. There came another thud, and a low groan of pain on the other side.
What the…?
His nerves were instantly on edge, his heartrate spiking to an uncomfortable level.
Scenarios too insane to contemplate began playing through his head – stuff like hilariously timed home invasions, and surprise hitmen with sniper rifles. Izaya almost said something stupid, like, 'Are you okay in there?' in a fit of paranoid concern. He was torn between the ludicrous desire to kick her door down to assess the potential threat, and the far more realistic impulse to turn tail and make use of his wheelchair's escape feature.
He was stopped by a harshly whispered, "Shit!" from the other side of the door. Then some shuffling movement and, "Oh my God, that was so bad."
She just…came running, tripped and faceplanted into her door, didn't she?
Izaya's nerves melted. He covered his mouth to hide the smile that suddenly couldn't contain itself, feeling something like hysterical laughter claw its way up his throat.
There was no threat, everything was fine.
He felt positively giddy – his precious toy just couldn't help herself. She literally couldn't even open a door without surprising him in some way.
There was the sound of a latch being undone, before the door swung open with dramatic ferocity. His new human stared down at him with a flustered blush and startled eyes, features cast in soft shadow and backlit by the entrance light behind her. She didn't skip a beat before venting to him breathlessly, "Okay, this has got to be some sort of omen. I almost just died tryna open the door for you. I shudder to think what might happen if I actually invite you in."
Izaya understood immediately why she'd taken so long to hear him, and couldn't help the involuntary snort of laughter that escaped him at the sight of her. His eyes slanted into crescents of pure amusement and his shoulders shook. A teeth-baring smile was hidden behind his hand. Hanabi stood before him in nothing but two towels – fresh out of the shower, and dripping water all over the floor. He tilted his head to stare past her legs. He was sure he could make out wet skid marks on her polished wooden genkan, marking the beginning of her unexpected crash-course with her front door.
He glanced back up at her flushed face and dropped his hand, no longer bothering to hide his enjoyment. "Yo, Hana-chan!" he greeted, way too cheerfully. "You know, if you believe in bad omens, you probably shouldn't be running around with wet feet in an apartment numbered 'four'."
She sucked in a deep breath, then began to scream at him in a strangled whisper, "You were banging on my door like some sort of deranged wife-beater, you crazy motherf – hang on." She cut herself off suddenly and cocked her head down at him, "What did you just call me?"
Izaya was a bit distracted and didn't register the question at first. He'd decided to purposefully ignore her tirade the moment she did that big, telegraphed inhale. Instead, he took a moment to enjoy the creamy thighs and delicate collar bones on display. She jiggled a lot, while screaming at him in a strangled whisper. It stirred his imagination to picture what an unfortunate slip of her towel might look like. He followed a cheeky little droplet on its path from under the towel wrapped around her head, all the way down her slender throat. A few locks of dark, wet hair clung to her skin.
Well now, he thought approvingly, what a welcoming reception this turned out to be.
When he noticed the sudden silence and made eye contact again, she had her eyebrows raised and an unimpressed expression on her face. "You called me 'Hana-chan'?" she asked flatly, "Now that's nostalgic. My parents call me that."
Oops, did I offend you just now?
Izaya had an infamous and irritating tendency to nickname people long before such a thing could be considered appropriate, and he couldn't tell if Hana-chan was annoyed or pleased by her new moniker. Nicknames created a subconscious predisposition towards trust – after all, they were usually given by close friends and family members – but they chafed coming from those who hadn't earned the right to use them.
Izaya greatly enjoyed abusing that particular faux pas, but for once he wasn't aiming to offend. It just sort of…slipped out.
Unlike with Shizu-chan, it was basically an accident. Force of habit.
He pictured a scowling face with purple sunglasses, and heard the echo of a voice roaring his name in rage. Izaya's smile crystalized a little. His eyes flashed with annoyance at the unwelcome reminder of Shizu-chan's existence – he'd seriously expected it to take longer before something triggered a memory of that man.
To make it less than a minute was pathetic.
He forced himself to relax and focus on the pretty little water nymph right in front of him, who had yet to step back and invite him inside.
Hana-chan…yes, I think that's you from now on. I may not have earned it, but you certainly have!
It was a little too forward of him considering they'd just met, and yet they'd clearly blasted through most of the typical boundaries held between strangers
Be reasonable, Hana-chan.
You did just answer the door in a towel.
"Was I too familiar?" he taunted carelessly, "Ah, my bad. Maybe I got confused when you appeared before me half-naked and figured we must be getting close already!" Hana-chan continued to stare at him and folded her arms in silence. It was either a self-conscious action or as a show of annoyance – he still couldn't tell what she was thinking with that frank, assessing expression.
You're just standing there. Are you perhaps having second thoughts about this whole thing?
"I'd apologize for being early," he continued in a smarmy tone, "But since you forced me to set an alarm…" he trailed off and made a show of eyeing her up and down, hoping to stir some sort of response that he could read. Something on her shin caught his attention and he smirked up at her knowingly. "Let me guess, you underestimated how long it would take to shave your legs?"
Hana-chan's composure broke spectacularly. She jumped, spluttered and uncrossed her arms in shock – turning a deeper, fetching shade of red while gaping at him in astonishment. Izaya snickered in delight.
There you are – that's good. Stop trying to hide what you're thinking from me.
"What? What the hell?" she blurted, "How did you know? Are you some kind of psychic or something?"
He waved his hands in the negative, closing his eyes and beaming up at her innocently. "No, no, no, just observant. You clean up good, Hana-chan! I can see it was time well-spent. Only, you might want to be more careful with the blade next time – you're bleeding a little." He indicated something small with his thumb and index finger, before pointing to her leg.
A thin crimson trail snaked down to her ankle, stemming from a tiny cut on the side of her shin-bone. She bent down to look, then made a tsk sound. "Well shoot, that's a dead giveaway, huh? At least you didn't astral project into my bathroom."
"Regrettably, I possess no such ability," he confessed with a sad little sigh. "I'm just a regular old human being. You'd be better off worrying about hidden cameras."
She made a face of exaggerated disgust at him, then gave in with a small laugh. "Oh, shut up. Just get your ass in here, Izaaya-kuun."
She turned away and stepped back before she could notice the way his whole body stiffened, his left eye twitching a little.
While Izaya appreciated the fact that she would try to beat him at his own game, he highly resented that it had worked.
Nobody had called him that since Shizu-chan, and somehow her taunting drawl refreshed his memory of what that was like. The animalistic roar he heard this time was less like an echo, and more like an ear-splitting assault.
Izaaayaaa-kuuun!
He covered one ear instinctively, gritting his teeth and grimacing. Cold sweat began to bead on his brow as the pressure built in his head.
"Hey – are you okay?"
As if his ears had popped, blessed silence returned to his mindscape, Shizu-chan's voice fading into the distant void. Hana-chan stood to one side of the genkan, looking down at him with big, worried eyes. He gave her a somewhat flat smile and dropped his hand. "Just a small headache," he said dismissively, "Nothing to be concerned about."
He rolled himself past her, over the threshold of her home – catching a pleasant whiff of womanly scents on the way past. Hana-chan smelled good, like something soft and flowery, and feminine. It soothed him a little.
"I can get you an aspirin, if you like?" she told him as she closed the front door.
"So hospitable, Hana-chan," he responded vaguely, staring around her entrance hall with interest. There was a framed sketch on the cream-colored wall that caught his attention – a gnarled, naked and ugly tree, with branches hunching threateningly over a shadowy, abstract figure walking below it. He cocked his head at the ominous image, finding it interesting that she'd choose this piece to be the first thing a visitor might see. "Tell me, are you this generous with all the men you invite over?"
"Just the ones with headaches, I guess."
Izaya chuckled softly and glanced over his shoulder at her. She was watching him view the sketch with interest – he had a feeling she was waiting for him to comment on it. Following the impulse to be needlessly contrarian, he instead gave her a suggestive once-over and purred, "That's not really what I was referring to. Not that I mind the view, but you are planning to put on some clothes, right? Or has there been some sort of terrible miscommunication here?"
Hoping to get her flustered and ranting again about how he'd been banging on her door, he was surprised when she merely rolled her eyes and made her way past him, holding onto the wall for support on the wet floor. "Relax, pretty boy. I didn't lure you here to ravish you. I'll get dressed in a second." Izaya's gaze dropped to her ass swaying in front of him, the edges of her towel brushing over the back of plump, shapely thighs as she awkwardly shuffled away.
Too bad, he thought.
"No? What a relief!" he said, "Now we can both be spared the awkwardness of me rejecting you."
Hana-chan shot him the dark frown of a woman scorned and said drily, "Yeah, cool. So awesome. Bullet dodged. Awkwardness averted – is this step gonna be a problem for you?"
She pointed down at where a small step indicated it was time for visitors to take off their shoes. Izaya pushed himself forward and rolled smoothly off the edge, dropping confidently onto the floor below. He stared at her expectantly.
She placed one hand on her hip, the other securing her towel above her chest. "Right. I guess curbs don't stop you either." She sighed theatrically, and tilted her be-toweled head to stare wistfully at the ceiling. "What a world that would've been, huh? If ditching you was as easy as crossing the street." She twirled away before he could respond with anything more than a smirk, fluttering her hand behind her and saying airily, "Come on, I guess I'll give you the abridged tour."
Hana-chan's living room was a large, sprawling area divided into three distinct spaces. She seemed to have a disdain for overhead lighting, favoring the soft glow of multiple strategically positioned lamps. There was a creamy, patterned rug to his left, where she'd placed the standard couches, coffee table and television combo. One of the couches was mismatched – chestnut colored and missing an emerald green throw-cover like the others.
Hana-chan made a small detour to pick up a pair of cushions that had fallen to the floor in front of it – she did have a hilarious amount of throw cushions – and Izaya glanced around curiously.
He spotted the missing couch-throw quickly, in the darkest area of the room. It had been spread mysteriously over a table in the corner on his right – no doubt to hide whatever contents lay beneath. On either side of the desk were towering bookshelves, filled to the brim with books.
"So, kitchen's through that door," Hana-chan said suddenly, seizing his attention. She was pointing to a door on his right. She then pointed to his left, next to the TV area. "That corridor leads to the bathroom and some other rooms that are none of your business, and this is where we'll be sitting."
She led him past the couches, towards the wall made almost entirely of windows, overlooking the city. On the left was a sliding door to a balcony, with snazzy outdoor furniture – and a jacuzzi.
How luxurious, Hana-chan.
"I'd sit out there, but our voices would travel far too easily and it's a bit early for that…not that you'd care, Mr. Almost-Broke-My-Door-Down. I'll be lucky if I don't get a complaint."
He smirked behind her back as Hana-chan directed him to a small round table with two chairs, in the far-right corner of the room. It sat closest to the kitchen, in front of a big open window with a stunning view of the cityscape.
"Guess you won't be needing this," she said, pulling one of the chairs aside to make space for him. "Have the corner spot, it's got the better view. Good. Now stay there and don't move," she pointed at him to emphasize her seriousness. "I mean it. I'll be back in time to catch you if you do."
He gave her his most innocent smile. "Hai, hai, I'll behave! You have nothing to worry about, Hana-chan, I know how to conduct myself as a guest in another's home."
She gave him a look that expressed her extreme doubt for this concept, before disappearing into the corridor. He wondered what she'd change into, and if she'd feel pressured to doll herself up to impress him. She'd gone the extra mile by shaving – if she came out in some sort of skirt, or applied any make-up, he'd have no choice but to mock her.
Izaya glanced around the room until his eyes fell on the conspicuously lumpy, throw-covered table in the unlit corner. He pondered the mystery of its contents – it was either a bunch of dirty dishes she'd been embarrassed to display, or Hana-chan was hiding something from him.
Her home didn't smell like dirty dishes.
No, it smelled like secrets.
And that table, with a comfortable chair tucked into it, looked like a work station.
Izaya predictably ignored instructions, and left his post to wander around the room and stare. To his credit, he avoided snooping where he most wanted to snoop, and didn't make to touch anything.
Izaya really did respect the sanctity of another's home – provided he had been invited inside, and hadn't broken in for the express purpose of violating said sanctity.
He was a gentleman in that way.
Hana-chan's apartment was a warm, feminine space, with an…interesting style of decor. Like some unholy union between a witch's cabin in the woods, a judge's chambers and a fairy garden. With a dash of Otaku thrown in, going by the volume of anime and comic book characters sprinkled throughout. If he had to guess, he'd also say that Hana-chan had no idea how to look after plants, since all her flower arrangements were either dried or fake.
It was far too cluttered for his tastes, but more or less clean and tidy – dramatic puddles of water notwithstanding. It was full of rich wooden furniture and she had an abundance of knick-knacks on shelves and surfaces, all over the place. He saw everything from figurines, to crystals, to elaborate and disturbing ornaments of mythical creatures. Everywhere his eyes went, there was something interesting to look at. It should have been overwhelming, but there was a method to the madness and the overall effect was…artistic and pretty, if not a tiny bit creepy.
There were many more framed works of art, all of them with a somewhat magical or eerie theme to them. He spotted three dreamcatchers of different sizes, all beautifully weaved in intricate styles.
He shuddered slightly at the sight – that was three dreamcatchers too many, in his opinion. He found them tacky and disturbing.
Very scary, Hana-chan…
As if to capitalize on the moment, something brushed against his leg.
Izaya nearly jumped out his skin, letting out an audible gasp, and looked to the floor.
The culprit stared up at him with piercing green eyes – a black cat, with a single white ear. It blinked at him lazily, then began rubbing its head against his shoe.
Izaya was not an animal person.
This wasn't due to any sort of psychopathic lack of empathy towards them, but rather due to a tally of embarrassing and traumatic experiences. There were many people who viewed Izaya as a cold-blooded monster, but he'd never taken pleasure in tormenting animals. Rather, animals seemed to take great pleasure in tormenting Izaya, and he did his best to avoid them.
But he didn't mind cats. He found them to be the least egregious choice on the list of animal companions humans deemed 'viable pets'.
No cat had ever shat on his shoulder, bitten him, or chased him up a telephone poll.
He leaned down to examine the creature curiously. He'd never gone out of his way to pet a cat, or any animal, since he'd been a small child. But much like every other non-human creature he'd had the misfortune to encounter, cats appeared to be drawn to him.
Hana-chan's cat was no exception. It gnawed on his shoe for a brief second, before putting its paws up on his footrest, and peering at his lap with interest.
Izaya thought it might be interesting too, to see what kind of reaction Hana-chan would have if the cat curled up on top of him. He imagined she'd find it quite endearing, and began calculating the potential brownie points a woman might afford a stranger who'd instantly and effortlessly won over her pet – some humans put a superstitious level of faith in their animal's opinions of others.
But Hana-chan really did have a habit of subverting Izaya's expectations.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Her voice exclaimed unexpectedly from the shadows of the corridor. The cat got spooked at the sound and disappeared between the couches.
Not particularly mourning the loss, Izaya turned to look at her with an easy-going smile. She wore an outraged expression, which he erroneously assumed was due to him moving from his spot in the corner. "Ma, ma, Hana-chan, I assure you I didn't touch anything. I was just admiring your décor – "
"I don't care about that!" she cried, marching into the room and glaring in the direction the cat had disappeared to. "Jo Jo was about to sit in your lap – your shitty lap – and I haven't even seen that bitch in over a week! Come out, you traitor! Explain yourself at once! What kind of whore cat sits on some random assholes lap, but won't even acknowledge the human that feeds them!"
Izaya watched her look around for the cat, in what appeared to be a genuine state of outraged betrayal, and felt somewhat bemused.
This was not the reaction he'd been calculating for.
It was just a cat; he couldn't fathom why she'd be so worked up.
He perched his chin on his knuckles, and took the moment to analyze her appearance, having been curious as to how she'd choose to present herself to him. Her hair was still visibly damp, and messily tangled over her shoulders – as if she hadn't taken the time to comb her hair at all. But Izaya was certain that she had teased and smoothed it with her fingers, to achieve that perfectly tousled look. She'd changed into grey tracksuit pants and a flatteringly tight, maroon sweater, with a pair of fuzzy yellow socks on her feet. It was the sort of look that was carefully selected to seem casual and comfy, while also doing everything to show off her curves. Izaya applauded her efforts – it was almost a better site than the dripping wet towel, yet it showed not an inch of excess skin.
She'd obviously approached the matter strategically.
He grew bored of staring a few moments later, when Hana-chan showed no sign of stopping her search for the wayward feline. Izaya sighed loudly and shook his head. "I don't think I really grasp the significance of what just happened, but I can see you're upset. Why don't I just go back to my corner, and you can keep yelling derogatory names at your pet forever and ever?"
He moved to the table by the window, as threatened, and Hana-chan predictably abandoned her quest to follow him. She was wringing her hands in distress and shifting her weight from foot to foot. "You don't understand, he never sits in my lap anymore! And you're a total stranger, and like…the worst! This is emotional warfare, Izaya-kun, he's doing it on purpose to taunt me!"
"He wasn't going to sit in my lap," Izaya lied calmly, in an attempt to move on from this topic. He hadn't been prepared for this level of irrational emotion, directed towards a random factor he hadn't accounted for. "Also," he added, for good measure, "It's a cat, and you're obviously insane. Maybe he can smell the desperation on you."
Hana-chan's response was not the dry, quick-witted rebuttal he'd grown to expect.
"Nooo," she cried in horrified denial, clutching her hair. "It's not truue!" Then she immediately contradicted herself with; "He made me this way! Everything was fine and we loved each other like best bros, then one day he started withholding affection for no reason, and giving it to other people right in front of me! I'm being cucked by my own cat, Izaya-kun, do you not get how hurtful that is?"
Izaya was convinced she was taking the piss and being overly theatrical, until he spotted the tears glimmering in her eyes.
His own eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little.
What?
Huh?
"Are – are you seriously crying right now?"
What is happening?
Her lip quivered, and a tear actually spilled over her cheek. Izaya blinked in astonishment, and became aware that the situation had somehow escalated into territory he was not equipped to deal with.
He added, firmly and hastily; "Because your cat wasn't going to sit on my lap. I wouldn't have let him, even if he tried."
Hana-chan sniffled and hugged herself with hunched shoulders, staring at him with big watery eyes. "You promise?"
"Yes!"
"You promise you won't let him sit on your lap? Not even to screw with me?"
"Not even to screw with you," he conceded immediately, filled with exasperation, "I honestly have no idea what's going on right now, and I'd rather not revisit this experience."
"Okay," she wiped her eyes with a watery smile. "So long as we're clear on that."
Izaya nodded slowly, completely thrown by the Cat Incident and unsure how to proceed.
This isn't normal behavior, right? She really is insane.
"I'm not crazy, by the way," she declared, as if reading his mind.
Yes. Yes, you are.
He pursed his lips dubiously, but kept nodding. "Right."
"Right."
They stared at each other in awkward silence.
Hana-chan jolted and raised her hands suddenly. He almost saw the proverbial lightbulb flash above her head. "Would you like some coffee?" she gasped, as if she'd just found a big sign marked ESCAPE FROM THIS SITUATION, and was eager to share this exciting discovery.
"Yes, please," he answered politely. "Black, no sugar."
Hana-chan wrinkled her nose – and just like that she was back to normal. "Ew," she said happily, turning and making her way towards the kitchen. "I mean I guess I should have seen that coming, but seriously. Gross. There's something wrong with you if you like things that bitter. Wait here, I'll be right back."
Izaya snorted, and elected to follow after her instead. "Yes, on the list of things wrong with me, my drink preferences are certainly the biggest cause for concern. But, you know, at least I've never cried over a cat. It's the small victories in life that keep me going…" Izaya trailed off as he was confronted with the state of her kitchen. "Oya, oya… Hana-chan, watch where you step. I'm pretty sure it's against the law to disturb a crime scene."
"Har-har, very funny. I told you to wait for me out there."
Hana-chan had a fancy, modern kitchen with hand carved-wooden cupboards – and she'd absolutely destroyed it.
There were old dishes, spiced and bloodied countertops, and the questionable remnants of vegetables, egg-shells, rice and grated cheese – among other things he couldn't identify. The mess was indeterminately old, and impossibly widespread. The first thing he'd spotted looked like a spattering of blood on the wall – the last thing that caught his eye was an overflowing trash bin, with a bloodied article of clothing stuffed inside.
"Yes, you did tell me to do that. And now I wish I had." He watched her pull two mugs from the cupboard. "I can't believe you were just wrinkling your nose at me, when you've got a budding health hazard on your hands."
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, it's hardly that bad." Hana-chan set about preparing the coffee filter, navigating her disastrous kitchen with practiced ease.
"It's not? I shudder to imagine what you'd consider 'bad' then."
"Art requires sacrifice, Izaya-kun," she drawled carelessly, as if not at all ashamed of her mess.
Izaya, being more or less at eye-level with her counters, got a closer look at a particularly bloodied surface than was ideal. He grimaced. "It wasn't a human sacrifice, was it?"
She turned around to face him, leaning back against the cupboard with a smirk. She quipped back, "Nah, I only make long pig on the weekends. That blood is from a gorgeous cut of beef that made a mess while I was tenderizing it. It ruined my apron, actually…But trust me, the mess is worth it. I'm a damn good chef."
Don't care – this is disgusting.
"I'll take your word for it," he murmured contemptuously, "But personally, my appetite could never survive a process like this."
Hana-chan sighed and shook her head. "And that's just it - nobody wants to know how the sausage is made."
"Didn't I catch you buying instant ramen earlier?"
"What, you expect me to cook something more complex when the place looks like this? No way, I've gotta clean it up first."
Izaya rolled his eyes, "Oh, so you do know how bad it is. I was planning to send you a list of food code violations to prove it, but I'm glad we can settle this matter." Izaya gave the kitchen one last, offended once-over, and bid it adieu. "In fact, I think I've reached my limit in this room. I'll just wait for you out there."
"Yeah, like I told you to."
"Oh, believe me, I've learned my lesson," he snarked on his way out.
Izaya had been sitting alone at the table for less than a minute, when he was startled by another cat, poking its head through the window next to him. This one was grey with pointed lynx ears - bigger and fluffier than the other cat. They stared at each other for a few seconds, before the cat began climbing through the window, and Izaya became aware that he was dealing with a potential crisis.
"Shoo cat," he whispered harshly, waving his arms at the feline that had dropped onto the table, "Go away before that crazy cat woman comes back and goes berserk all over again…no, don't come closer you fool – leave me be!" He pushed the cat away, not sure if it was appropriate to knock it off the table, but highly tempted. The cat seemed to interpret his shove as some sort of signal, because it flopped onto its belly and began contorting its spine into an implausible shape. It stared up at him with big, vacuous eyes, devoid of logic or reason.
"How and why are you even doing that to yourself?" he asked the cat, cursing once again his inability to communicate anything meaningful to such stupid creatures.
This right here was why Izaya disliked animals – they never listened to him.
Still, there was something weirdly hypnotizing about the way its fur shone in the soft light. The cat was squirming around on its back with its legs flopping around in the air, and its paws curled to its chest, giving Izaya its best 'come-hither' look.
Despite himself, Izaya cracked a small smile at the creature's antics. "You look like an idiot. What sort of cat behaves so wantonly? Have a little dignity – your ancestors were worshipped, you know."
Izaya heard a stifled snort from his left and looked up to see Hana-chan approaching with their coffee. He tensed up automatically – feeling absurdly caught out for some reason, and unable to decipher if it was because he'd been caught talking to a cat, or because he'd been caught talking to this woman's cat and feared the consequences. Even though he hadn't even touched the thing and the woman was borderline giggling at him. "Before you lose your cool, know that I did nothing to solicit this behavior and I made it perfectly clear that I'm not interested."
"Aw, that's okay," Hana-chan cooed in a grating baby-voice, as she set down their mugs. She began giving the cat a rather violent belly-rub, "This one's my perfect little angel who loves everybody equally, isn't she? Oh yes she is! No malicious favoritism from this kitty, no, no, no!"
Izaya's lip curled in disdain at the display. Meanwhile, the cat seemed to be enjoying the attention, before apparently changing its mind and seizing her arm with all its paws. It nipped her thumb and Hana-chan squeaked in surprise, before giving another little coo of affection. "Awww, see how gentle she is? She never breaks skin."
She finally looked up from the cat, to witness the unguarded scorn on Izaya's face.
She snorted again, as if finding his contemptuous expression hilarious, and switched back to a normal tone of voice. "I mean, look at this." She picked the cat up and began rocking it in her arms like a baby. The creature went limp, purring like an engine. "See how special she is?"
Somehow, it was even worse when she spoke about it with hushed sincerity.
Izaya began to wonder if Hana-chan wasn't using her cats as some sort of crutch – a convenient distraction to break the ice, so she wouldn't feel so awkward around the stranger in her home.
It was his most rational, and forgiving explanation, for Hana-chan's weird and off-putting, pet-related antics.
"I'm…not really a cat-person, to be honest," he said, in the hopes of getting her to stop.
She chuckled, setting the cat down on the floor and watching it disappear into the kitchen. "Believe it or not, I could kinda tell."
She settled into the chair across from him, dragging the spare chair beside her and propping her feet on top of it. She leaned back against the window and cocked her head playfully. "Which is surprising – I can't really picture you as a dog person."
"I'm not," he confirmed, taking a sip of his coffee – it was bitter, and tasted satisfyingly expensive. "Is it a law that you must like one of them?"
"There should be a law. Dogs are like, the best thing ever. I can understand not liking cats – they're self-involved and most of them only love you when it suits them. They don't actually need humans to be happy. But dogs definitely do – their love is the purest, most unconditional love in the world. In fact, how dare you not like them. That's almost as suspicious as drinking black coffee."
Izaya narrowed his eyes at her over his mug. "Please don't tell me you've got a dog in here."
"Hah, I wish! Like I said, dogs need humans, and they'd get very, very sad if left alone all day – especially if they're stuck in an apartment all by themselves. My dogs live with my parents."
"Oh good," he chirped, and took a cheerful sip of his coffee. That was the end of the matter, as far as he was concerned.
Hana-chan eyed him with contemplative interest, tapping her finger on the table. "So, not a dog person, not a cat person…there's gotta be some animal you like. Horses?"
"Nope."
"Birds?"
"I'm afraid not."
"What about a really obnoxious parrot, that you could teach to insult people?"
"I prefer to do my own insulting, actually."
"Right, right…I can totally see that, now that you mention it. Fish?"
"If they're not in my sushi, I don't really see the point."
"Hamsters? Or no – rats. Rats are smart."
"I don't associate with vermin, unless it's business related."
"Hah – nice wordplay! Okay, what about the more exotic animals? Y'know, lions and tigers and stuff?"
"I'm sure the world is a more interesting place for their existence, but no. I don't have a place in my heart for any of those creatures."
"Not even dolphins? You've never had the 'swim with the dolphins' fantasy?"
Izaya sighed and placed down his mug with a little more force than necessary. He was willing to indulge in this line of questioning, which Hana-chan had latched onto like some kind of lifeline, because he suspected she was desperately trying to stave off a wave of awkward silence between them. Out of consideration for her, he'd let her keep at it until she relaxed – but it was growing tiresome when he didn't care about the subject matter at all. "I'm sorry, what? Who in their right mind would want to swim with dolphins?"
Hana-chan dropped her jaw and grinned at him incredulously, like he'd just expressed a patently absurd opinion. "Are you serious right now? Who wants to swim with dolphins? Um, only like, literally everybody! Pretty sure that's one of the Make-A-Wish Foundation's most popular requests!"
Izaya stared into the bottom of his mug and shook his head sadly. "Ah, now that's one tragedy on top of another. What a terrible way to squander your last wish."
Hana-chan began laughing at him, as if she thought he was joking. "You're so weird! What kind of freak doesn't like any animals?"
Izaya suddenly foresaw a promising turn in the conversation approaching. "Now that's not true – there is one, singular mammal that I truly adore with all my heart."
Hana-chan leaned towards him with wide, curious eyes. "What? What is it?"
He took a taunting, imaginary sip of coffee from his empty mug, just to leave her hanging in suspense. Then he met her eager gaze and said softly, "Homo sapien, of course."
She blinked at him, her face growing slack with surprise. "Humans? Humans are your favorite animal?"
There was some sort of glint in her eyes that Izaya couldn't decipher. He was anticipating a rigorous debate from this ridiculous, cat-obsessed lunatic, and he highly looked forward to it.
"Oh, most definitely!"
But Hana-chan had no intention to debate him on this issue.
"Fucking finally, somebody who gets it!" she declared, slapping her knee in emphatic agreement, while her eyes shone with approval. "Everybody's all 'blah blah blah, the animals are going extinct! Humans are destroying the planet!' Like, I'm sorry, but I've never fucking met a polar bear, and I'm probably never going to, and if I did it wouldn't have a single interesting thing to say besides 'roar'!"
Izaya was highly taken aback by this response, having pegged her for one of those animal lovers who'd forget to consider humans as candidates for their list of favourites.
So, he had something in common with the cat-obsessed lunatic, after all.
He was pleasantly surprised, but he wasn't about to let Hana-chan cheat him out of an interesting debate.
Izaya really didn't need to disagree with people, to debate them.
He chuckled at her, resting his brow on his knuckles. "How callous. Do you judge the value of all lives by how interesting they are to you, personally?"
"Doesn't everyone?" she shrugged with a grin, not looking at all ashamed to admit it.
He smirked at her. What a good answer. "Deep down inside? Yes, I suspect they all do. I am curious though. Don't cats fall into the category of creatures with nothing interesting to say…besides perhaps 'nyaa'? Or have you anthropomorphized them to the point that you think they're really talking to you?"
"Pffff, no. But a picture communicates a thousand words, and I'm telling you Jo Jo knows what he's doing to me, the little shit – but forget him, he doesn't deserve me sparing him a second thought."
Within the privacy of his own head, Izaya had begun whistling the cuck-coo tune.
"But to answer your actual question…Look, don't get me wrong, I love animals too – they're awesome and have great personalities. Obviously, I hate the thought of them being hurt because they're just so stupid and innocent and cute, and they need to be protected," she said this with four waves of her hands, and a growing parody of a sad pout on her face. Then she slashed an arm to the side and the mocking pout turned into a genuine scowl, "But to compare their value to humans is absurd!"
Izaya pretty much felt the same way, with the exception that he didn't love any animals aside from humans. Izaya was indifferent to them at best, but likewise took no pleasure in their pain. Some of them might have nasty little things they could do to hurt, or kill humans...but by and large they were defenceless in the face of human aggression. There was no sport, in torturing such helpless creatures.
Izaya smiled at her, indulgently – more or less in total agreement that to compare the value of humans to other animals was absurd.
Giving none of that away, Izaya asked, "Is it really, now. And what makes you say that?"
Hana-chan's whole face lit up, like she was very glad he'd asked.
"Are you kidding?" She leaned towards him suddenly, over the table, her eyes wide and excited and a big smile on her face. "Don't you already know? We're the most wonderful, complicated creatures to have ever existed on this planet! If we don't die of extinction by using up too many natural resources before our technology develops in time, we could probably spread out into space and take over the universe!" Hana-chan leaned back as she said this, throwing her arms up into the air and crying dramatically, "We could probably figure out how to become basically immortal through nano-technology and maybe even terraform thousands of planets! We have the legitimate potential to leave a permanent mark on existence!"
Izaya, over the course of this, grew very still in his wheelchair as his smile hardened.
Hanabi's words brought up a shit-load of baggage, and it all flashed through his head in an instant – as he tried not to have his attention totally derailed by his own issues.
Izaya was good at paying attention to many things at once, on account of his powerful brain. But sometimes – that power turned against him and delivered an evil and unnecessary amount of information to his conscious mind, in a sudden, surprise sneak attack of memories.
It was a challenge not to dissociate from reality when this happened, but over the last six months Izaya had become adept at managing those moments when he suddenly remembered far too many things, far too quickly. He could process it all, while still being capable of seeing and hearing the real world going on around him – and without his own mood being too drastically influenced in the aftermath.
Izaya had done his research into nano-technology, and the singularity – the idea that human invention would reach a point of sudden, paradigm-shifting advancement. A hypothetical future where everything about human life would change, including the concept of old age and sickness. Estimates placed it at around 2045, but Izaya was never comforted. That estimate could be off by a century, or he could be murdered before the year was up. If anything, the idea that he could miss the invention of immortality by less than a single human lifetime made Izaya's skin crawl, and a feeling quite like hatred to erupt within him. It was all just so seethingly unfair, not that he resented the humans who would become eternal someday…but to be born just in time to miss it felt like some sick, cosmic joke.
Hana-chan obviously hadn't given that prospect much thought, judging by how excited she was.
Izaya had thought about it a lot, and had determined that putting his eggs all in one basket and relying on humanity to cure death was too idealistic and naïve. Even if he loved his humans and believed they'd get there one day, they had a tendency to get adorably side-tracked by random nonsense instead of focusing their considerable resources on solving the big existential threats. Izaya also knew he wasn't living the lifestyle of a man who survived to old age – and he didn't intend to start, either. That ship sailed after Nakura-kun stabbed Shinra.
Thus, once Izaya had figured out what Shinra's beloved Celty really was, he'd pretty quickly changed his whole goal in life – to the hands-on pursuit of immortality. Much better than leaving it up to the scientists, in Izaya's opinion.
Shinra had vaguely referred to Celty as a 'zombie' back in Middle School, while having weird hypothetical discussions with Izaya about what sort of creature it was okay to love and asking stuff like, 'If it's normal to love humans, and abnormal to love everything else, then where do you draw the line, I wonder?'.
Izaya, pretty damn confused about what the hell he was on about, had told Shinra he didn't see what it mattered. 'As long as you don't hurt others, you can love whoever you'd like,' he'd answered Shinra, reasonably. Like the morally upstanding citizen he had been once upon a time.
Then Shinra had smiled like a total fucking creep and said, "The thing is, even if I hurt others, I still want to love her."
Izaya, still pretty young and naïve, had been rather blown away by what a sinister individual his new friend was turning out to be. Also, he had been very confused by the fact that they had been talking about a hypothetical non-rotting zombie whose heart couldn't beat, but could still joke around and communicate – and then Shinra had come out with that last line as if the zombie, a creature which didn't fucking exist, was a real girl he'd happily turn sadist for.
Izaya had initially assumed that Shinra was either totally cracked in the head, or he was referring to a girl with some sort of tragic disability he was explaining through very confusing metaphors.
A few years later, when Izaya had found out that Shinra's hypothetical zombie love was real, and some sort of fallen angel of mythological origin he'd dissected as a four-year-old, Shinra's condition had made a lot more sense.
Izaya had become obsessed with becoming chosen as Celty's warrior - like the Valkyries chose the Vikings of old. Or alternatively, to just become her plaything to torture for all eternity. Izaya wasn't religious, didn't really believe in a 'God' on account of how he didn't have a fixed form. But Celty came from Ireland, literally had shadowy steam instead of a head, wielded a shadowy scythe and other random shadowy powers, and rode a semi-sentient, shadow-made motorcycle named Shooter, that whinnied like a horse. She regenerated from all her wounds, and probably couldn't die no matter what – clearly, there was something more going on in the world with the whole 'death' thing.
There was a realm of existence, beyond the mortal plane.
Some sort of afterlife.
Izaya had believed in that world less than anyone, feared death more than anyone, and revered Heaven more than anyone…but after he'd researched Celty for long enough, he'd became sure of it.
That world did exist.
The only problem was guaranteeing his access to it.
Izaya had ignored the crushingly, frustratingly, devastatingly slow technological advancements of humans – and had turned to mythology for the solution to his mortality problem instead. That's what you do when you run into a type of fae, from Irish folklore, and start putting together all the dots from random cultures all around the world about what the hell she might be.
A creature that could be awoken by a great battle, to escort her chosen soldier to Valhalla.
The key to some sort of afterlife.
Well, it had just been a theory, but Izaya had spent years amassing his power and had done his best to put on a good show for Celty, six months ago – on account of how there had been a huge chance Shizu-chan would end his life that night.
Celty had saved his life by covering the knife Vorona stabbed him with, with some kind of sticky, black, shadowy substance that had stopped Izaya from bleeding out. Izaya, having pretty much refused to talk about the whole incident with Manami-san and Kine, wasn't sure at what point Celty had done this.
After losing to Shizu-chan, Izaya had been too sensitive to even be reminded of Ikkebukuro or anything that had gone on there. Kine and Manami-san had picked up on that pretty quickly, on account of the way Izaya would space out and then randomly start screaming. They'd left before he'd recovered enough from his trauma to start asking questions about what had happened, and Izaya was too stubborn to pick up the phone and open up the subject of his epic fall from grace…with the people who'd seen him in such a humiliating state.
So, there were a lot of details he still didn't know, and probably never would.
When he'd woken up in Kine's car, Celty's web of shadow's had just been there, clinging to his body, and Izaya hadn't even questioned it. It had lost its solid form and evaporated into wisps of black smoke the moment it was parted from Izaya's flesh – scaring the shit out of the people who'd been about to perform surgery on him, from what Kine had told him.
Celty had kept him alive, instead of letting Izaya die and carrying away his soul to do who knows what.
Seemed Celty still just wanted to play human with Shinra.
From what Izaya had learned via online stalking Ikkebukuro, they were still dating. Even after Celty was reunited with her head and remembered what she was. Izaya had no idea how Shinra had pulled that off, but he wasn't too surprised.
Maybe Izaya and Celty had more in common than he had thought – maybe they were both cursed to love Shinra forever. Maybe Shinra was the one with indeterminate power, corrupting both of their lives, tryna bend them to his will so hard he broke reality for both of them.
Ruining us in an irreversible way. Turning the human into a monster and the monster into a human.
Hana-chan continued her rant on why humans were better than other animals, without skipping a beat, or pausing to notice the dark look in Izaya's eyes after how she'd just casually dropped immortality into the conversation. It was kind of a loaded subject for Izaya, and he struggled to concentrate on what she was babbling about next. Also, the way she was throwing her hands up into the air and talking loudly and excitedly was reminding him of Shinra way too much, in a very unpleasant way.
"But what, I'm supposed to be crying my eyes out and get all full of self-hatred about the fact that we get a little too greedy sometimes in a bit of a self-destructive way? Oh, humans are the worst, the planet would be better off without us, we're ruining the environment!" Hana-chan mocked, obnoxiously, in the back of Izaya's mind.
Barely listening to her any more, Izaya was reminded of that time after Shizu-chan had almost killed him, that first time back in High School. That time when Shinra had tracked Izaya down to tell him to try to get along with Shizuo, or there might be casualties one day – not that Shinra really cared.
Before excitedly declaring that Shizuo would become a 'genuine superhuman entity' after death. Throwing his hands up in the air in excitement, just like Hana-chan did! Ignoring the fact that Izaya – the guy Shizuo almost killed yesterday – would die an average human with no discernible afterlife as an urban legend. Shinra had been gushing about Shizuo's inevitable legacy as a human, and all Izaya had been able to feel was bitter, and left out, and very, very judgey towards Shizu-chan for his monstrous strength and indestructability.
That's kind of how it felt, thinking about the technological advancements of humanity that undoubtedly lay in their future, as Hana-chan gestured wildly and excitedly – ignoring the fact that they'd both probably be dead before they ever reaped the benefits of all that. Izaya felt bitter, and left out, and annoyed by Hana-chan's ignorance or insensitivity to that fact.
Was she seriously deluded enough to believe she was going to be one of those humans who left a permanent mark on existence, or did she just not care if she wasn't one of them?
People who didn't seem to appreciate the awfulness of not existing annoyed him.
"Fuck the environment!" Hana-chan shouted suddenly, leaning forward and shoving a finger into Izaya's face – again! Izaya jumped a little, having gotten lost in thought and being genuinely taken off guard by that arbitrary, highly politically incorrect declaration. He leaned back in his chair and furrowed his eyebrows in surprise, as Hana-chan randomly explained to him the true worth of planet earth, "It's only value is to be useful to us and be a beautiful thing to stare at and make us happy! We should love it and take care of it because it's ours, we shouldn't be devaluing ourselves by putting it above us!"
Izaya frowned at her, still a little taken aback by her outburst and sudden intrusion into his space. "Ho? What an interesting thing to say," he glared pointedly at her finger, "Mind getting that out of my face?"
It was about time he said something about the fucking finger pointing.
Hana-chan made an expression of great amusement. "Ho, so he's got personal space issues, does he? How cute. Yes, fingers shoved where they're not wanted can be pretty annoying, huh?" she twirled her finger closer and closer to his face, then booped him very softly on the nose. Izaya didn't even flinch. Hana-chan lowered her finger. She leaned back with a challenging smile, as Izaya stared at her blankly. "Oh, don't look at me like that, I get in everybody's personal space when I get comfortable with them. Take it as a compliment. It's fifty-percent revenge, fifty-percent the genuine me." She batted her eye-lashes while gesturing to her chest daintily.
Izaya continued to stare at her blankly.
"What?" she asked, dropping her hands into her knees and cocking her head. "Are you upset?"
"No. I'm thinking about what you said about the environment."
Hana-chan lifted her head and laughed, "Oh good, so you just brushed past the other thing I said because it was inconvenient to address. Okay, cool. That's fine. The 'genuine you', totally not at all motivated by revenge, lifts peoples' clothes and pokes them in deeply personal places because you're 'bored'. But you can't handle a finger pointed at you in emphasis. No, I totally see why you want to talk about the environment some more instead. Ne, Izaya-kun?" she smiled at him sweetly, but Izaya was pretty much ignoring her. She raised her eyebrows and asked, "Still thinking about trees and stuff, huh? Well, do you agree with me?"
Yes, and no.
Izaya was hardly an environmentalist, and he had the occasional tendency to litter – because it was a chaotic neutral thing to do, and he enjoyed that kinda stuff. But he did have a deep love for their planet earth, and hated the thought of anything truly bad ever happening to it, or some kind of nuclear holocaust wiping out the entire human race. Or volcanoes spontaneously erupting and covering the sky with ash, so the whole world turned dark and died. Or the oceans going insane and deciding to come onto land for a party and drowning everyone and destroying all their beautiful cities. Or God forbid, a meteorite. Or that fucking time scientists pushed a button when they were fully aware that there was an infinitesimal chance it could spawn a black hole and suck the whole planet through the event horizon into oblivion!
What arrogance! Izaya had genuinely wanted to order a hit on those motherfuckers when he first heard about the Large Hadron Collider, because no way in hell was Izaya allowing that risk to be taken again. But he'd done his research into the science, before bothering to do research into the scientists, and figured out it was too damn safe to just kill them off. The actual risk of a devastating black hole was truly ludicrous, and they were making important discoveries…still, Izaya kept half an eye on science news for any humans that needed to be put in their place, lest they erase the whole fucking planet from existence in an instant. Izaya had always assumed he'd be indifferent to the temptation of a Death Note, even for Shizu-chan. The very concept of a book that could kill people anywhere in the world with only a name and a face, offended and unsettled him deeply.
But sometimes, even knowing it would be a damn slippery slope – Izaya would wish he had one on hand, just for special apocalyptic science emergencies. Good thing Death Notes weren't real! Izaya would absolutely have to have one, if they were, and then he'd probably use it one day to try to save the world.
That would break the seal – like when you've been holding in your bladder forever and ever, and after you finally let go, you find yourself peeing every ten minutes after that.
Before you knew it, he might be provoking people into trying to destroy the world, just so he'd have an excuse to Death Note them.
Izaya had always been very suspicious of his own ability to stay sane, in the face of too much power. Even before he'd legitimately lost his mind. Now he knew he had a tendency to turn people into threats in his own head, so he could orchestrate grand, murderous vengeance against them.
Izaya didn't want to become a true calamity.
He didn't want to face any true calamities either.
Epic disaster scenarios really, really weren't Izaya's kink – not when they got too out of hand and represented a real existential threat to their species. Izaya had, a handful of times in his life, suffered terrifying nightmares about a zombie apocalypse outbreak in Ikkebukuro. Like, with real zombies – all rotting flesh and cannibalism that spread like a plague and turned everyone into monsters. Not fun. He loved humans and all their crazy, but he didn't hate the fact that some groups of them were trying to check humanity before they fucked things up too badly. Izaya certainly wasn't about to champion the cause to preserve planet earth, he'd trust his humans to figure out how to handle that issue in their own time. If he had to guess, he'd say that the solution was simply to turn all the third world countries into first world countries – only educated, wealthy people gave a shit about anything beyond their immediate survival, so this would pretty much fix the problem in due course, in Izaya's opinion.
But he was no environmentalist, and for all he knew, it could be too late by that point.
Izaya, intrigued by Hana-chan's ironically callous devaluing of their entire planet to a mere plaything for humans, cocked his head and asked, "But isn't the fact that humans are even capable of thinking in such a selfish, entitled way, while possessing the power to do such terrible damage to the world and its habitats, a sign that we're a true disaster? Aren't the humans who attempt to elevate the planet, and its creatures, above ourselves…simply trying to minimise the damage done, and showing love for the planet in their own way? It is our home after all, and you agree we should be looking after it, right? So why yell 'fuck the environment'?"
Hana-chan apparently had a bit more experience with environmentalists than Izaya did, and she'd formed her own opinions on their attempts to champion the cause. She didn't skip a beat when he finally answered her, moving on from whatever personal shots she'd been tryna take at him, like a good girl. "Oh, bullshit, don't be naïve Izaya-kun!" she exclaimed with a shake of her head and a wave of her hand – not anywhere near his face this time. "The kinda activists I'm referring to never actually give a damn about the real issues; all they care about are brownie points! Like, think about it – animals have gone extinct all throughout time, environments have died and changed, the whole earth has been reset several times!" She gestured wildly throughout all of this, but kept to her side of the table. Izaya eyed her movements with interest.
She really was just an expressive talker – Izaya knew most of her infringements on his personal space had been incidental when they weren't driven by anger or fear. He'd just gotten sick of dealing with it, and had decided to say something about it on the off-chance that it might actually work and get her to back off. It wasn't his problem if she was nice enough to agree, when Izaya had no intention of doing the same for her should the urge to poke her ever come up again. Especially after the nose booping, that was practically an invitation to fuck with her in the future.
Hana-chan continued to rant, getting progressively louder and more cross, "But no, humans are the disaster, we're the ones that should go away so the planet can just chill and do the same thing to itself over a longer period of time anyway! Like we're not the most beautiful and complicated creatures to have ever have spawned on it! God it's just so stupid it pisses me off! But you try to point that out to someone and all they wanna talk about is recycling and fucking dead seagulls! Like, okay, sure - let's do our best to do better everyone!" She had placed her folded hands next to her head, smiling as she sweetly agreed they should all do better, before dropping the smile and curling her folded hands into fists, growling. "But that's so besides the damn point!"
Izaya sniggered at her passionate disgust. He was vaguely familiar with the phenomenon she referred to, but Izaya never got pissed off by other humans' opinions. "I'm getting the impression you've had this fight many times before!"
Hana-chan sighed, sitting back in her chair and tossing her red hair over her shoulder with her hand. She looked at Izaya with a very unhappy pout. "It was way worse in America. Have you ever met a hippy? God they're the worst!" she shook her head. "Their fashion sense is on point, but that's just about the only on-point thing about them! You try to have a conversation about one thing, and they just keep sidestepping the issue," she mimed moving an object aside in front of her, before suddenly looking up at Izaya and throwing an imaginary ball at him – in a way that almost made him flinch; she was begging him to fuck with her, "throwing bullshit in your face like 'have you ever seen a landfill?', as if that has anything to do with the intrinsic value of humans. And why? Because they wanna feel smug about being all self-aware about it, like thinking humans are a plague to the earth makes you a better person somehow. It's like they've all got some kind of self-flagellation fantasy or something! As if condemning your own species is inherently more noble than showing compassion towards it - it's an egotistical mass-delusion! Their short-sightedness and shallow thinking make me sick!" She tapped the sides of her forehead, before miming an explosion, with a look of wild indignation on her face.
Izaya raised his eyebrows.
Alright, maybe he could relate to her contempt on some level. He did lose respect for people, sometimes, when they didn't seem to comprehend the value of life, or the concept of death. Suicidal people where Izaya's 'environmentalists', and like Hana-chan, he tended to only be referring to the shallow-thinkers who were doing it for some kind of drama or attention. As if they could reap the benefits of punishing the world by killing themselves, and making a point that they are 'not to be treated that way!' Or 'the things you have done drove me to this, and I want to teach you a lesson to be better!'. As if they didn't understand at all that they would be gone after all that, that they would never know what impact their death had left. That if they bothered to consider seeing the world through more mature, understanding eyes, they could come up with some other kind of solution!
They could have suddenly had the epiphany that life wasn't so bad, but instead they go out with a tantrum!
Izaya sucked in his breath, realising that he had been deeply triggered by a topic that had nothing to do with suicide. And yet, he had just been reminded of his greatest hypocrisy - the fact that half of his attempt to murder Shizu-chan had been nothing but an attempt to punish everyone with his own death.
Don't tell me I'm too fragile for deep conversation. That's unacceptable.
Izaya licked his lips and cocked his head, smiling lazily at Hanabi with heavily hooded eyes. This was tough, but Izaya could handle it. He still didn't share Hana-chan's disgust for performative, human-hating environmentalists. At least they were doing something annoying with their lives, provoking people like Hana-chan for his belated amusement.
If anything, Izaya felt a sudden rush of fondness for whatever hippy had blown her mind so much back in America, she still got this worked up about it, all the way over in Japan.
Hanabi obviously shared Izaya's deep passion for human beings, but she seemed to possess none of Izaya's emotional tolerance when dealing with disappointment. Izaya never felt angry, about the humans that had bored him – not when the stakes were so damn low. He became…extremely callous and playful, then soon after disinterested forever more.
Izaya decided to play devil's advocate, to test the depths of her love and understanding for humanity.
He asked, "Ah, but only humans are capable of evil, aren't they? Animals are innocent of those crimes."
Animals were boring, because they were innocent, in Izaya's opinion. But when playing devil's advocate, it didn't matter if you detached from your own point of view, to test someone else's. It was like lying, but for once it was totally prohibited and non-sinister, in the context of a debate.
Hana-chan blinked at him, and stared for a few moments. As if surprised that Izaya had taken that long to answer, and when he did – it was to challenge her opinion with a smug smile. Izaya figured she was probably confused by him, since he had agreed that humans were his favourite animals too. And they were. He agreed with Hana-chan on most of the things she had said.
But Izaya was never interested in harmlessly relating to people.
If anything, Izaya was inherently wary of people he had things in common with. He wanted to prod them, and poke them, and find out what they really were.
Hana-chan had twisted her mouth to frown at him, but she didn't look upset. More bemused than anything else. She began to refute him energetically – with references. "Only because they're too stupid for us to give them any credit for it! Izaya-kun, did you know dolphins violently gangrape one another and intentionally cause miscarriages by hitting each other? Did you know entire tribes of monkeys sometimes just lose their shit and decide to start beating one of their own to death? Those are the instincts of an animal, which is exactly what we are! Oh, so sorry we're not totally incapable of separating ourselves from our natural instincts! But our society's try their hardest and have mostly figured out how to coexist peacefully, and build to a brighter future!" She pumped her fist and then flicked her hand towards him, without bringing her arm too close, as if showing him the brighter future in her palm. She grinned proudly, like she hadn't just been talking about some seriously dark, and brutal stuff.
Izaya stared down at her hand, his lip twitching up at the side into a crooked smirk.
Well now that's interesting…you're so very right, Hana-chan. But what about the human that stabbed you? Did you forgive him for his…animalistic nature, when it came out to play?
Izaya raised his eyes and met Hana-chan's warm gaze, with a sinister smile.
Izaya felt just tactful enough, not to come right out and enquire how she felt about the ex-boyfriend who stabbed her. But he wasn't tactful enough to avoid asking basically the same question, in a manner that was so obvious she'd no doubt pick up on his true meaning. "And what about those humans who will never be capable of peacefully coexisting? The murderers and the rapists and such? What would you do with them, if you had the power to decide?"
Hana-chan was quiet for a moment. Then she quirked an eyebrow at him and eyed him lazily. She looked down pointedly at her stomach, and back up at Izaya, as if to say – you mean what would I do with the guy who did that to me, right?
Izaya smiled innocently.
Hana-chan huffed through her nose. She gestured lazily into the air, then towards herself, answering him, drily, "Yeah, see, I'm not one of those people who believes in punishing people unnecessarily for things they can't help." She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. She waved her hands in circles as she explained, "If you're fucked enough to rape or murder someone, your brain chemistry is either a little off or you had a really shitty childhood, or it's for some other reason that you can't control." She looked back to Izaya with a sharp, serious look, dropping her hands into her knees. "In what way is that your fault? You should be locked away in a nice, safe environment where you can't ever hurt anybody with your impulses, but you shouldn't be castrated or murdered or tortured for it! People with violent natures and animal impulses are usually sick or broken in some way, and while I might despise one of them for hurting me, all I'd ask is to put them somewhere where they could never do it again. Well, unless they raped or killed someone I loved, then I think I could probably kill them and not even feel bad. It's only fair right? I have animal instincts too. But if it's just me that got hurt…I don't experience that impulse to make the person that did it suffer...not for long, anyway. Forgiving them feels a lot more satisfying."
Hana-chan suddenly lost her dry tone, as she averted her eyes and said more softly, and thoughtfully, "They wouldn't even have to repent - just exist somewhere where they can be themselves happily without messing up some other person's life. People are not animals to just be put down or mutilated by the government when they get a little unruly...they have value, no matter how fucking twisted they are..." She grinned sheepishly, and looked back up at him, "I mean, uh, not to get into politics or anything. Sorry. I mean, I don't even vote, so whatever right? It's just that…while I don't think people should have to forgive those that hurt them...I think they should try to understand the person that did that enough not to want revenge."
Izaya stared at her, largely unimpressed with her answer.
How typical.
Even the ones who thought they were enlightened, still didn't get it.
Izaya laughed. It was a mean little sound, before he looked up at her with a cruel, taunting smirk. "Hana-chan, you think locking humans away and stifling their inherent instincts isn't torture? You think that's not revenge?"
She frowned at him, looking unsettled, but Izaya didn't give her a chance to respond. He'd sat quietly and listened to her little speeches – now it was her turn to sit and listen. "You're not nearly as live-and-let-live as you think you are!" he condemned her cheerfully, "Hana-chan, human beings are what they are, for all the reasons you pointed out…brain chemistry, personal experiences… Every single one of them has a different idea of what's fun about life. They need others around them and freedom to be happy, how is it kind to lock them away? Do you consider yourself compassionate because your sentence isn't a violent one? Psychological violence can take just as much of a toll on a human, you know. Isolation makes humans go insane."
She sat up a little straighter in her chair, with a furrow in her brow and a little pout on her lips. She began to debate him, "Well, yeah, but you don't actually isolate them – "
Izaya cut her off, already knowing exactly where she was going with that argument. Solitary confinement was supposed to be a 'special cases' sort of thing, not that that made it any less a form of torture that happened in prisons all around the world. But Izaya's point was larger than that, and he wasn't about to let her derail him. "No, most of the time you let them hang around with some other violent humans because you don't care if they hurt each other. So long as no more innocent, law-abiding humans get hurt, right? You stick dangerous people afflicted with all kinds of evil together with only each other for company every day, and most of the time they just become more experienced criminals."
Izaya waved a hand and shook his head sadly, before smirking up at her again. "All they have is time to plot, and scheme, and try to survive." He raised both his arms into the air with his palms facing the ceiling, saying, "They form hierarchies, and gangs," he clapped his hands together suddenly, and pointed a pair of finger guns at her, with a wry smirk, "and send each other on missions to kill each other, and prison wardens for status and rank. They rape the smaller, prettier ones." He rested his elbow on the arm of his wheelchair, and his cheek on his knuckles, eyeing her with condescending levels of indulgence. "Those stories about violent people who went to prison and turned their lives around are the exception, not the rule. Locking all the dangerous humans away in a 'nice, safe environment where they can never hurt anybody with their impulses'…there is no way to achieve that without torturing them with isolation, or surrounding them with other deviant humans that force them to become worse versions of themselves."
Hana-chan shook her head, bouncing in her chair, and seemed to be convinced it was her turn again. Izaya allowed it, because he was basically done and her enthusiasm was pretty cute. She didn't look angry or offended, even though he had low-key been trying to insult her. She only looked passionate. She wagged a finger at him. "No, no – it is possible!" she insisted, "It just doesn't work out that way because society as a whole thinks people have free will, so they judge them for their actions and don't care to dedicate the tax money to rehabilitate them properly. Prison is the way it is because of a big societal misconception about how human behaviour should be taken personally. If everybody saw people as beautiful animals that couldn't help the way they are, prison would look very fucking different!" she had spread her arms out with wide eyes as she cried her last declaration. Then she winced, before biting her lip sheepishly and furrowing her brow – as if she realised how silly what she was saying was. Hana-chan dropped her hands to her knees with a helpless shrug and finished more calmly, "They'd be well funded, and the wardens would actually give a real damn about the prisoners wellbeing." She scratched her cheek and looked up to the left, murmuring, "Like, uh…like freaking zoo-keepers who love tigers or something, even after the tigers bite off their damn arms."
Yes, if only the world in your fantasies were real, hm?
Izaya nodded seriously, as if she'd really convinced him with that one. "Ah, I see. So, in a hypothetical reality where everybody thinks the way you do, your concept of justice and forgiveness would indeed be very merciful." He dropped the phony 'I'm convinced' act, and pulled out the phony 'Oh, you're so clever!' act. Izaya clapped his hands prissily, closing his eyes to purr at her with a sweet smile. "Well done, Hana-chan! I'm very impressed. Now if you can only figure out how to brainwash the entire human race, your philosophy could actually do some good for the world – instead of serving no purpose but to make you feel like a very special person with a very unique perspective." He had pointed a finger at her and begun twirling it in lazy circles, as he denigrated her concept of mercy with a narrow-eyed smile.
Hana-chan scowled at him, before tapping her own forehead and flicking her hand out in disbelief, like he'd blown her mind a little. "Oh my God. I swear, it's like I didn't just explain to you that I'm totally, ridiculously laid back and fair-minded. Dunno if you've met many people, but I literally am special, dumbass," she touched her own breast and nodded at him with a serious frown, as if to emphasise that this was a serious thing she was saying, meant to be taken seriously – Izaya couldn't tell if she was being facetious, or if her ego was just that big. She continued, cocking her head with that bemused look again, "You're aware this whole topic is vaguely hovering around a man that fucking stabbed me, right?" She twirled her finger, next to her face. "Like, that hasn't gone over your head somehow?"
What was she talking about – she had called him out for asking her about it immediately?
Hanabi cocked an eyebrow at the look on Izaya's face and stopped twirling her finger. She curled it delicately instead, holding her hand in the air with a dainty wrist and smiling vaguely. "No? Okay, well then, you're seriously nit-picking. Tell me what your grand solution is, since mine is apparently torture." She said this with a light-hearted, but longsuffering air.
Izaya raised his eyes to the ceiling and shrugged, as he said airily – in a way that he knew would be annoying, "Well, I'm not really interested in solutions. Humans are the way that they are, after all. If the innocent civilian masses can't help but despise the violent, or the deviant, and don't care to see to their safety and psychological wellbeing in prison…well, that's just humans being humans too, isn't it?" He lowered his gaze and gave Hana-chan a shit-eating grin. "They're all so very self-involved, even the ones who've figured out people have no free will, like you."
Hana-chan smirked, confidently. "Wow, nice drive-by. Well, you're right about that. Humans are self-involved, and I'd never pretend not to be. We can justify all sorts of things to ourselves, I guess. But people who like to point out all the flaws in every little thing and then claim they don't give a damn about solutions are pretty much the worst, just so you know. Don't tell me, you studied philosophy in university, right?"
Izaya chuckled. She really was laid-back, for such a paranoid and suspicious individual. Izaya actually felt compelled to answer honestly. "Cultural anthropology, actually. With minors in psychology and folklore."
Hanabi nodded with a grin, "Wow, you really do like humans, don't you? That's pretty cool. I'll still stick your ass in prison real good if you fuck with me though, even if you're totally, obviously salty about the whole concept."
Well now, how rude of her to point out.
Izaya tossed his head back with a very unthreatened, closed-eyed smile. He flapped his hand at her and drawled, "Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure. You won't at all renege on that promise like a total wuss, if I say uncle and make you feel all big and powerful."
"Hey! I am so not a wuss, and feeling big and powerful has nothing to do with it. You're just literally too pathetic to stay mad at!"
Izaya opened his eyes and smirked at her. "Ouch. Words hurt, you know, Hana-chan."
She was clutching her knees, shaking her head at him in exasperation. "Says the guy who just called me a coward who power-trips over beating up a person in a wheelchair. Now that's hurtful!"
"As the person who got beat up in said wheelchair, I stand by my observation." Izaya lowered his head and shrugged at her with a cheeky smile.
She blew up her cheeks, and then puffed out a bunch of air, making some kinda fart sound.
It was very immature.
"I feel like you've forgotten you basically admitted you deserved all of that," she accused, once she was done making the farting sound.
"Ho? When did I ever admit that?"
"Like…very subtextually. You obviously suck at apologising, but you owned your fuck-up and took your punishment like a big boy! I'm very proud of you!" She clapped her hands sarcastically, like he had done to her earlier and cooed, "Well done! You're pretty special and unique, too, you know. Only, I actually mean that, I'm not saying it facetiously to be a huge prick!"
Hana-chan literally did say it, like she was being facetious to be a prick. But Izaya took her meaning; that she had developed a genuine respect for him after their little elevator-hallway altercation. She just had no intention of saying it in a kind way, probably on account of how blatantly un-kind Izaya had been thus far.
Izaya was getting the impression that Hana-chan enjoyed playing with him, almost as much as he enjoyed playing with her.
How endearing.
Izaya already loved Hana-chan, in his own impure way. He had loved her from the very moment he recognized her as a human being, and that adoration had only grown stronger the longer he spoke with her. It wasn't affection in the way she would feel it, it was too selfish and unempathetic for that. After all, Izaya knew his impure love no doubt boded ill for her psychological wellbeing, and he didn't really care. He wasn't afraid of his sinister intentions towards Hana-chan – he was only afraid of the potential consequences that could come back to bite him in the ass, should he underestimate her.
He was genuinely concerned his whole relationship with her would blow up in his face, and ruin or end his life somehow. Why the hell would he be wasting time worrying about the consequences of all this on her side? Izaya was the one stuck with the awful condition of having to love people in such a convoluted way, and expressing it through Machiavellian mind games designed to break them to see how they evolved from it. It was quite the monkey on his back, but Izaya couldn't bring himself to be ashamed of the way he loved his humans, or the ways his love hurt them. He needed them, or he'd lose his mind.
It was just how his brain worked.
And frankly, compared to some people out there…even Izaya's impure love started to look like something beautiful. At least he wasn't a domestic or sexual abuser, who pretended to love people he actually scorned, and viewed as nothing but bodies to unleash his frustrations on.
At least his love wasn't totally and completely fake.
It was too genuine a feeling, for Izaya to ever reject as unnatural, or to reduce to a subconscious manipulation tactic. His love was impure, but it was real. And with Hana-chan, it was practically irresistible. It was warm, and fuzzy and the closest thing to a positive emotion Izaya could feel towards another human. Izaya didn't like them all the same, after all, even if he loved them all the same.
Some, rare humans were capable of making feel Izaya…happy.
In an innocent way.
For brief moments of time, before his personality rejected the peaceful atmosphere and his warm feelings of love turned colder, and more predatory.
Izaya had left all of those rare humans behind, in Ikkebukuro. And he hadn't felt these warm emotions in the six months since. Even if he could never truly return any of the pure, well-adjusted feelings Hana-chan developed for him, Izaya had a feeling he would grow to appreciate her existence a great deal.
No matter how it all turned out.
He softened his gaze, smiling at her gently. "Na, Hana-chan, if you keep praising me like that, I might just get attached to you."
This was a lie – Izaya had allowed himself to get attached to exactly one person in his life, and he wasn't about to repeat that mistake. But he did think Hana-chan was very cute, and he wanted to make that known.
And because Hana-chan was a very good girl, she blushed prettily and stiffened a little. It looked like she was trying very hard to maintain eye contact. Then, she relaxed and grinned cockily. "You, get attached to me? What must that feel like, I wonder…is it anything like being non-stop harassed for some inexplicable reason I can't begin to fathom?"
Izaya burst out laughing. "Ah, it's exactly like that. You hit the nail on the head!" He pantomimed hitting a nail, before slapping his knee a little.
Hana-chan laughed with him, which was a pretty weird experience that almost made Izaya stop laughing immediately. "You're a very proud weirdo, Izaya-kun. And if you're gonna be a weirdo, that's pretty much a requirement, ne?"
Izaya smiled at her, but stayed quiet.
An almost awkward silence descended as their banter came to a sudden halt.
Izaya never allowed moments like that to grow out of hand, he always pulled back first, and enjoyed watching his playmate flounder at his sudden abandonment of the game.
After the silence had lingered for a while, Hana-chan smiled crookedly, looking only a tiny bit flustered. "You're just gonna leave that hanging there, huh? Is the moment over? Let me guess, you're gonna say something seriously mean again in a second, right?"
So, you're starting to figure me out. Guess it was inevitable. Hana-chan is too clever.
Izaya narrowed his eyes at her. "Hana-chan, I would never say mean things to you. I'm sure you're just insecure."
She laughed at his audacity. "Yeah, your opportunity to gaslight me is seriously long gone at this point. Izaya-kun, you handed it over. Admitted it hadn't all been in my head, without even trying. That's what I like about you, you know."
What's this, what's this, another compliment so soon? It's not like I came clean for scrupulous reasons, Hana-chan.
Izaya smiled, sinisterly. "Now I feel like you're trying to suck up to me, because you're scared of the mean thing I might decide to say."
Hana-chan widened her eyes and nodded slowly. "Yes, I am very scared. Please have mercy. I'm not even joking, you're seriously a lot to handle sometimes, you know? I keep feeling like I've pissed you off by accident, but all your reactions are so fucking confusing I can't tell. So, if I am doing something to piss you off, just come out and ask me to stop like you did with the finger in your face, okay? No need to passive-aggressively rip me to shreds because I said something that triggered you."
Izaya frowned at her, very put off by her insinuation. He had enjoyed when she pleaded for mercy and called him a lot to handle, but then she accused him of feeling negative emotions and Izaya didn't have those, for Hana-chan. "I don't do that. When I rip you to shreds, it's because its fun. You haven't once pissed me off," he corrected her, as sincerely as Izaya was capable of being.
Hana-chan sucked in a deep breath of air, tossed her head back and then called to the ceiling, "Bull. Shit!" She looked back down at him with an offended frown. "You either lack self-awareness, or you're trying much harder with the gaslighting – I can't even tell. You think I didn't play back our whole first meeting while I was cleaning myself and this place up? I offended you, by shining a light on your fashion statement, so you did something worse to me. Whenever I reacted aggressively to you, you always did something worse." She was pointing a finger at him again, but holding it close to her chest. "I'm not taking any fucking blame for your issues; I'm pointing out that you seriously have issues. You pull these outrageous pranks, say these outrageous things. You freak me out until I'm rude to you, and then you use that as some sort of excuse to trick me into letting my guard down before you enact evil revenge! And I've got the sneaky little feeling you'd take the opportunity to take a shot at me the moment the atmosphere starts to feel relaxed and cozy, so maybe don't do that? How about you ask a question, or tell me something about yourself instead."
Izaya couldn't help the sour expression he wore on his face, by the time Hana-chan was done with her irritatingly accurate analysis of his character, and prediction of his future behavior. He wanted to laugh, and play it off with some witty comment, but all he could bring himself to do was glare at her a little.
Trying to figure out how to turn this all around on her, and finding himself frustratingly stumped.
Then he smirked, suddenly, as it came to him – like his brain had finally remembered what it was supposed to be doing. "Alright, Hana-chan, I'll ask a question then. Why the hell did you invite me into that elevator, and then into your apartment, if that's the sort of man you think I am? If I've got some serious issues, and you were once stabbed by a man who undoubtedly had serious issues of his own, why take the risk? Is it my good looks? The wheelchair? Or do you just have a thing for guys who say mean things to you?"
Hana-chan gave him a flat look and just stared for a little while.
Then she deadpanned, "You said 'a' question, that was like five."
Nice deflection.
Izaya waved a nonchalant hand, "Ah, they all fall under the same heading. Feel free to answer the gist of my inquiry."
Hana-chan folded her arms and frowned at him, looking a bit ridiculous with her knees pulled up to her chest. She didn't look upset, which Izaya now realized was due to an effort she was making to control her emotions around him.
To avoid escalating things.
How annoying.
She huffed and gestured to him with a toss of her arms. "I should have figured you'd straight up do exactly what I was telling you not to do, while pretending to do what I did tell you to do…well done. I guess I pretty much wrapped that noose around my neck for you, when I invited you to ask a question…" she wrapped her own hands around her throat and started making exaggerated gagging noises and convulsing, while staring at Izaya with dramatized horror.
She looked like an idiot.
Izaya pouted at her, "Oh dear. Now it seems like you don't really have such a high opinion of me, after all. Women are so confusing. My heart might just break. You shouldn't play around with the feelings of others, you know."
Hana-chan released her own throat and rolled her eyes. "This guy is too much for me!" she announced, but didn't sound all that put out. She leaned forward towards him again, almost too close for his tastes. She began to speak in a low tone, like they were at a restaurant and she didn't want the other patrons to hear them. "Okay, here's the deal. You're fucking fascinating and I figured out I could beat your ass into the ground if you ever tried to come at me with a knife. You know that, and I know it scares you. You wanna know why I invited you in, despite the fact that you're a red flag that can't walk? It's because you can't walk, and you're traumatized in some way, but you tried desperately to pick a fight with me in the wee hours of the morning anyway. And laughed so hard you fucking cried when you found out we share a building. Did you know you were actually crying?"
Izaya, having been the one to ask for all this and considering it hadn't been sprung on him, handled her continuing analysis of his feelings with grace this time. "So, you took those signs of instability and wrote them all off, because you think I couldn't stab you?" he raised his eyebrows, innocently.
Hana-chan pulled a quizzical face, and leaned back in her chair. She did it slowly, but Izaya still smirked at her and took the liberty of assuming she was scared again. Hana-chan considered him carefully, before asking, "Do you think you could stab me?"
Izaya shrugged, leaning into the golden opportunity to fuck with her and see where it led. "Sure. Inevitably you'd let your guard down, and all it would take was one good –" he pantomimed a sudden upwards thrust with a blade, "strike, when you're not paying attention. And bye-bye, Hana-chan!" he waved goodbye to her with a big smile.
Hana-chan nodded thoughtfully, processing all that with an interesting level of calm. "I see. Kinda wish I'd decided to record this conversation, now. Considering you just threatened to kill me."
Izaya cocked his head with a hostile grin.
Is that really what you think I just did, or are you pointing it out to me for the benefit of my social development? Hana-chan…are you still trying to fucking teach me things?!
Izaya dropped his evil smile and waved his hands suddenly, as if that was an absurd accusation and he was a very innocent man, "No, no, no! I was simply answering your question – yes, Hana-chan, I do believe I could stab you at some point, if I wanted to. You shouldn't let your guard down around people you think are threats, just because you assume they're your physical inferior."
If anyone had a lesson to teach in this room, it was Izaya.
She smirked, in that cocky, mean-girl way that Hana-chan did when she was trying to act like she had the upper hand. "Izaya-kun, I know you're my physical inferior. And if you ever try to stab me, you better make sure it's a killing blow or I will take great pleasure in demonstrating that to you."
As if. You nearly crapped your pants and turned into a possum when I gave you a dark look, for fuck's sake.
Izaya shivered dramatically, "Oooh, how scaaary! Or, at least it would be, if I hadn't already figured out; you're a pushover that despises causing others pain, who doesn't follow through on threats because you're too busy being scared!"
Hana-chan's smirk had dropped into a scowl.
Izaya grinned at her, feeling very proud of himself.
She growled at him, "See how far that takes you, after you've stabbed me, asshole."
Izaya burst out laughing, slapping his own chest over his heart in appreciation. "Hana-chan, I'm not going to stab you! I'm not a murderer, and stabbing women isn't my hobby. But your survival instincts are so presumptuous, it's too tempting to make fun of them." He smiled at her, fondly.
Hana-chan was still looking very unamused, which put Izaya in an excellent mood. "Oh, good for you, glad you're having the time of your life. So, your hobby is stabbing people with words, right? You've got a pretty sick idea of 'fun'."
Izaya smiled in delight. "Yes, but you knew that when you invited me over! That's my point. Also, why would you assume the only threat I could pose to you is one that involves a knife? You told me I have a 'demonic heart', and seem to think that if I put that heart into hurting someone, I'd get the job done right. So why risk it? Does the wheelchair, and a little fear and pain, really put you so at ease?"
Hana-chan widened her eyes at him, "No, right now what's putting me at ease is your devastating reverse psychology. It's like you're trying to get me to kick you out, and it's tricking me into wanting you to stay. Why would I risk it? Why are you risking a potential friendship by saying such creepy fucking shit, when you're so obviously lonely? What the hell is wrong with you that you'd even ask questions like that?"
His excellent mood did a one-eighty so fast, Izaya almost didn't know what hit him. All of the sudden he felt impossibly annoyed by her continuing insistence on analyzing him and asking questions – as if that would do anything to help her situation! Izaya finally did something very, very rare. He snapped, before he had the chance to stop himself, "What the hell is wrong with you that you'd put up with it?"
Izaya didn't raise his voice much, but he was obviously agitated.
It wasn't a good feeling.
It felt like being exposed, but he didn't know how to calm down again.
They glared at each other in cold silence, for many seconds.
Then Hana-chan cocked a little smirk. "Oi, oi, oi, Izaya-kun. You definitely just got pissed off with me, there. Allow me to point that out now, so I can log it as ammunition for the next time you try to act like you're so above all this. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen, right?" she laughed, cruelly.
Like a cartoon villain.
Izaya watched her display and thought; This might be my lowest moment of the day so far. Showing fear wasn't nearly as bad as this.
Izaya dropped his face into his hand and chuckled softly. "Ah, I've been defeated," he murmured. He heard Hana-chan's laughter trail of, and he smiled. Typical. He rubbed his brow tiredly. "Hana-chan, I wasn't lying when I said you hadn't once pissed me off. I'm…not a man who takes things personally. But I admit I may be in a…delicate state, at the current time."
Hana-chan was quiet for a while, and Izaya took a moment for himself to recover.
Then she said softly. "I know you don't take things personally. But that doesn't mean you can't feel overwhelmed." Izaya parted his fingers to get a look at her face. She looked sad again. He sighed and dropped his hand, letting it smack onto the arm of his wheelchair.
He pinned her with a tired look. "Hana-chan, when I say things that sound like they're designed to scare you off, it's because I find it devastatingly funny how they keep not doing that. Even if it all turns out fine for you, and I'm totally harmless, your survival instincts still leave much to be desired. You understand this, right?"
She rolled her eyes, "What are you, some sort of vigilante creep that runs around terrifying women to teach them a life-lesson? Boo. Go fight crime or something. Oh, wait," she gave him a regretful look, "You can't."
While it was pretty comical that she'd dismissed him with a very flattering description of his hobbies – it was the wheelchair joke that undid him. Izaya snorted involuntarily, before slapping a hand over his mouth like he was trying to reprimand himself for finding that hilariously funny. "You're terrible, Hana-chan. And it looks like you're just as bad at taking advice as I am."
She shook her head at him with a laugh, "There, you see? Now you're all cheered up? How could I ever be under the impression that you're the sort of man that takes things personally. You get a genuine kick out of that, don't you?"
Izaya stopped feeling amused.
She ruined it when she pointed it out.
He grinned, his eyes dark and cruel. "Ah, well it's rare to encounter such an audacious bitch, you know?"
Izaya very, very rarely insulted women in such a vulgar way. But Hana-chan had called him enough names for him to make the allowance, in an effort to spoil her obvious self-satisfaction
It didn't work. Hana-chan seemed as delighted by Izaya's attempt to insult her as he had been by hers. "Hah, yes, I really do know! I know exactly the feeling, Izaya-kun. You might just be the bitchiest person I've ever fucking met!" Then she started canning herself.
Izaya allowed himself to look puzzled, as she took obvious delight in this fact. "And that's a redeeming quality to you? Is that why you have such strong feelings for that old cashier?"
Hana-chan gave him a warning look, as if bringing up the cashier was taboo, but she could barely hold onto it for more than a few seconds before she started laughing again. "Yes? Maybe? I don't know Izaya-kun, why are you acting like you're the only person in the world who has issues?" she shook her head, her eyes sparkling at him, "You asked what's wrong with me, and it's that I'm lonely too. I haven't had a conversation with anyone as interesting as you in a very, very long time. I'm risking it because I feel for your pain, and I admire the ways you try to hide it…and because I don't want to be scared of the world, anymore." Her smile grew smaller, but her eyes were still warm as she asked gently, "Are you going to make me regret that, Izaya-kun? Is that what this is all about? Are you trying to warn me away?"
Izaya chuckled, but he wasn't feeling much humor anymore. "Hardly. I'm not nearly magnanimous enough to do something like that. I'm just enjoying your company in exactly the same way I've been enjoying it since the moment we met. And if you regret associating with me after going into things with your eyes wide open to the risks, it's not really my problem, is it?"
Hana-chan suddenly dropped her legs off the chair and onto the floor with a thud. The action made the chair scrape loudly over the tiles. Izaya's eyes widened and he jumped involuntarily, at the sudden movement and loud noise. Every hair on his neck stood on end as Hana-chan leaned right over the table. She had her elbows propped on the wood surface, and her face resting in her hand as she shuffled into place. Acting like she was getting real cozy, with a nasty smirk on her face that told him she'd either done that on purpose to scare him, or she considered it a neat bonus. "Okay, seriously, Izaya-kun…" she cooed, "What is your deal. Like, what do you do? Are you Yakuza? A former hitman? Why do you hate yourself so much?"
Izaya narrowed his eyes at her, but smiled flippantly like his heart wasn't still racing in fear. As if adrenaline hadn't just shot through him like a bolt of lightning. "Hate myself? You're being presumptuous again, Hana-chan. I'm incapable of hating myself. And my deal is unimportant. I already told you I'm not a murderer. I work currently as a private investigator, I have no ties to the Yakuza, and if I had any contact with a hitman it would be one that came to murder me."
Hana-chan raised her eyebrows, and whistled. "Oh, I see. So, you've got a dark, mysterious past, but that's all behind you now, is it? And you're scared it'll come back to haunt you some day."
Izaya frowned at her, "You're being awfully nonchalant about the prospect. What even made your mind jump to Yakuza, and hitmen? Was that the sort of man your ex was?"
The smile froze a little on her face. She was quiet for several moments too long.
Izaya's mouth actually popped open in surprise.
Hana-chan looked very put on the spot.
"No…seriously?" Izaya muttered, almost to himself.
Hana-chan closed her eyes and grimaced.
Izaya burst out laughing again, but that wasn't enough.
He grabbed the wheels of his chair and leaned back with a kick, balancing on the wheels and rolling himself back and forth in a display of energetic delight as he cackled – doing a much better impression of a self-satisfied villain than Hana-chan ever could. "No way! Hana-chan, who are you to accuse people of having a dark and mysterious past when you've got a juicy secret like that! Hahahahaha!"
Izaya barely even felt the pain in his arms, from his wheelie-trick.
He wanted his work chair back – the one that spun in circles!
Izaya heard a slapping sound and looked down to see Hana-chan had face-palmed herself and was shaking her head ruefully. "Oh man, this blew up in my face sooooo epically," she mumbled. "I have no fucking poker face, fuck!"
Izaya dropped his chair down, and settled into it with a huge grin on his face, like an excited little boy. "Ne, ne, Hana-chan. You know you have to give me the details, right?"
She dragged the hand down her face, pulling down her eyelids and lips along the way. "Oh, do I now. Or what? You gonna look into it yourself, like a fucking stalker?"
Izaya gasped like she'd just said something magical. "There's something to look into? Oya, oya, was this on public record?"
Hana-chan suddenly looked horrified. "Oh shit, you just said you were a private investigator, huh?" She laughed for a little while, like a madwoman. Then she roared, unexpectedly, "FUCK MY LIFE!"
Izaya's shoulders jumped and he cringed back a little. His eyes were wide, his ears were ringing.
Hana-chan looked at him with a little smirk, calming down very quickly. "Jumpy, huh? Not a fan of loud noises? Well, I'm not a fan of being threatened with investigation."
Izaya blinked. Accepted his fate. "Okay. You can make all the loud noises you want though; I'm still looking into it."
Hana-chan scowled, then leaned over the table and smacked her hands right in front of his face -seven times.
Izaya flinched at every single one.
When she stopped, he blinked at her some more. His heart had sped up considerably, but he wasn't exactly afraid. He licked his lips, eyes flickering to her hands warily. "Are you do –?"
She clapped them again, five more times, even more loudly and aggressively. Izaya just closed his eyes and grimaced, patiently, while his head jerked at the noise against his will – every single time.
When she stopped, and he opened his eyes again, Hana-chan was looking deeply conflicted. Izaya didn't say another word, out of fear that he'd provoke her to start clapping again.
Hana-chan breathed heavily through her nose, then withdrew her hands slowly. Izaya relaxed all the muscles that had grown tense, smiling at her indulgently. He still didn't dare say a word. His heartbeat began to slow down again.
She considered him with a brooding frown. "Loud noises bug the heck out of you, Izaya-kun. Are you really willing to put up with that, to get a little dirt on me?"
Izaya snickered. Oh, she really had no idea. "Hana-chan…getting dirt on people is pretty much all I care about. I'd put up with just about anything, in pursuit of information that interests me. Besides, I think the real question is, are you really willing to put me through all that to punish me for my actions? You don't seem to have the stomach for it."
Hana-chan pulled a face. "You're like, holding yourself hostage or something," she said resentfully, averting her eyes. She began to mutter in a sullen tone, almost as if to herself, "What, am I just supposed to ignore the fact that you're totally traumatized and take advantage of it to control you because you're an insufferable asshole? Should I do that? I don't know, it feels shitty. You're shitty too, but not to control me. It's different. You're just looking for any reaction, I'm tryna put you in your place because you're threatening me. No, Izaya-kun…you're wrong. I do have the stomach for it, but maybe I shouldn't let myself. Because I can't tell if you really deserve it, and philosophically I'm not sure if anyone really deserves to be controlled through fear…" Then she slumped her shoulders and hung her head in defeat. "Anything for information that interests you, huh? Heck of a passion, for a private investigator, I'll give you that."
She looked up at him with a grim smile. "Look, I really don't want you to look into it, okay? My ex was…Yakuza, yeah. And I was aware of it the whole time we were dating, but I didn't care until I found out about the human trafficking. I thought they were just…never mind, it doesn't matter what I thought they did, I knew they were criminals. But I drew the line at the whole sex-trade thing, you know?"
Izaya raised his eyebrows, "Sounds to me like you're a tragic victim with the obvious moral high ground, so why on earth don't you want me to look into it?"
She scowled, and proceeded to drop a litany of F-bombs, "Because it's personal, you fucking jackass. And also, because you can't fucking believe everything you read on the internet. Why don't you just act like a person for long enough, and I'll tell you all about it when I'm fucking good and ready. Let's keep this relationship offline, huh? I fucking despise social media; I don't even have any accounts."
Izaya clutched his heart through his shirt and groaned dramatically, "Hana-chan, that's the most outrageous and tragic thing you've said to me so far. No social media? No accounts at all? How do you keep up with current events?"
"Yeah, I don't give a shit about current events, Mr. Private Investigator. Not everyone is as nosy as you."
Izaya shook his head and stroked his chin, musing thoughtfully, "No, no – that can't be all it is. I think I've figured it out. You were a current event once, weren't you? And they all turned on you somehow, didn't they? Now why would they do that…"
Hana-chan slapped her hand over the table and shouted, "Enough!"
Izaya flinched again, his hand jumping away from his chin and clenching into a fist reflexively. He lowered his fist below the table, where she couldn't see his shaking and white knuckles. He scowled at her. "So much for nobody deserving to be controlled through fear."
She looked at him with wild eyes, "I don't care if you deserve it, right now this is about me. Shut the fuck up about this topic now, Izaya-kun. I'm done with it."
He looked at her sourly, and grumbled, "So, what, I'm supposed to believe you're not even going to try to research me? After all those curious questions about my dark, mysterious past?"
She threw up her hands, "How? I only know your first name, and it's fucking weird, I can't even tell if it's Japanese. Don't even bother telling me the rest of it, because no, I'm not researching you. Even if I find something awful, I'll have no way of knowing if it's true unless I confront you, and you're such a fuckwad I don't even trust you not to lie and say you did something you didn't, just to be a creep. So, nothing I find will ever possibly be verifiable, because I'm not a fucking private investigator, and I don't fucking want to be, and I don't trust you not to lie. I'll figure you out myself, without any outside interference to distract me and distort the picture of you I'm making. That's what it means to fucking respect someone's privacy, shitheel."
Frankly, Izaya's first name was all Hana-chan would need for her to figure out who he was, if she just tried a few combinations. It was an unusual one, after all, whereas his family name was all too common. He had given it to her without much thought, because Izaya didn't really care if she researched him and learned all about his sordid reputation, and because she would indeed have to put some thought into figuring out the spelling and kanji. Finding him online would be her reward for her effort, and her reaction to whatever she learned would be entertaining, no matter what it was.
Unless, of course, she decided to report him to someone in Ikkebukuro. But Izaya was willing to roll those dice. Hana-chan didn't seem like the vindictive type who would out his location, especially not now that she knew how seriously Izaya feared for his life. He'd already figured that out about her, based on her reaction to his confirmed paranoia, down in the lobby in front of Taneki-san. The impression had only grown stronger, since that reassuring speech on her disdain for punitive justice.
No, Izaya didn't care if she researched him. And he wasn't about to feel bad for looking into her either. There wasn't a single thing Hana-chan could say in this conversation, besides maybe something along the lines of 'I have Heiwajima Shizuo on speed-dial', that would ever, ever convince him not to look her up the moment he left her apartment.
Izaya was a very private man, who didn't give a single shit about his hypocrisy in disrespecting the privacy of others.
Izaya had literally made a career out of disrespecting the privacy of others.
He loved it so much it could probably be classified as a fucking kink, if only he weren't so sexually repressed.
But Izaya was tactical enough to understand that Hana-chan…would not be able to accept that knowledge about him, not just then. She was clearly very sensitive about the whole issue, and there was no good reason to upset her beyond her tolerance of him…so he'd just deflect, instead!
"It's pretty interesting to me that you chose to hypothetically postulate that you'd find something terrible, that it wouldn't be true, and that I'd lie that I had done it to scare you. What a convoluted thought process. Why not – you'd find something terrible I actually had done, you'd confront me about it, and I'd lie that I hadn't done it – to placate you?"
Hana-chan exclaimed in utmost exasperation, "Because the moment I asked you if you'd done something terrible on purpose, you fucking admitted it, with this sour look on your face – like a bitter little kid annoyed that he'd been caught out doing something naughty! But when I asked you what your angle was, open-endedly, you took the opportunity to make a vague death threat for the fun of it! I'm not the convoluted one, Izaya-kun! It's you!" she pointed dramatically at him, but interestingly still refrained from invading his space with her finger – Hana-chan was very consistent in her attempts to train him. "You're so convoluted it's like you actually warp my perception of reality! I'm one hundred percent convinced that whatever sort of legacy you have online, it's gonna be filled with madness, and I don't need all that extra shit to worry about! I'll just take you at your word that you're not a murderer, and you won't stab me, how's that? I seriously have my doubts you even know how to placate someone!"
Izaya grinned at her. He was amused by her frustration and the confession that, even if Hana-chan wasn't half-bad at figuring him out, the process was torturing her at least a little.
She'd also made a grave mis-step with that last thing she yelled.
Izaya tapped his chin. "Hmm…maybe that's it. Or maybe you're projecting your own situation onto me, a little bit. Are there heinously untrue things you're worried I might find about you, online? Since I won't be researching you, I'm allowed to make guesses, right?"
He lied to her face, shamelessly, and hopefully – convincingly.
Of course, Izaya knew how to placate someone. What a naïve little girl.
He just hadn't felt motivated to do that with her.
Until she came out and admitted she thought Izaya was some kind of autistic person who didn't know how to placate someone.
Hana-chan was seriously underestimating her opponent, but he could hardly blame her. Izaya must appear to her to be impulsive beyond control, which fooled her into believing he couldn't be calculating and manipulative in the long-term.
Ah…what a sweet, innocent misunderstanding – that Izaya would happily take advantage of. He had sort of assumed she'd never believe him if he tried to tell her he wouldn't look her up, so he'd expertly evaded the issue...and then she'd moved on to yelling about how inscrutable he was and how socially inept she apparently found him.
Hana-chan…really did seem to be convinced by his lie.
Just like that.
She didn't even question him.
A big smile broke out over her face, and she slumped back in her chair with obvious relief. She laughed happily. "Sure, you can make guesses! But fuck off, I'm not answering that right now. Izaya-kun, I'm so glad you came around to my point of view. Although it is pretty reassuring that you're basically taunting me to look you up. So, either it's not that bad, or it's hysterically bad, but somehow not in a way that would make me sick the cops on you? Well, whatever. It's fine to be curious, so long as we're not invasive, right?"
Izaya shrugged agreeably, all the while marveling internally at what a gullible idiot Hana-chan could be, for such a clever person. "I'll admit, it had never crossed my mind that you wouldn't look me up at some point. My name is pretty unusual, after all. Anyone who knows how to use a search engine properly could find me with enough time and effort, just by looking up 'Izaya'. Since you were so suspicious of me from the beginning, I assumed you'd inevitably try to dig into my past. But if you're really serious about not doing that, I could be tempted by the…experiment of keeping things offline." He smirked at her, "But please, do feel free to end said experiment at any time, if you ever develop a dire urge to know who I really am. I know I'll be ecstatic to get the go ahead to find out what really put you off social media."
Izaya was going to find that information out before the day was done, but he'd be sure to act very excited if Hana-chan ever gave him permission. If she wanted to cling to the disadvantage of knowing nothing about him, as if that put her in a stronger position rather than a weaker one, that was her own stupid strategy and she'd just have to reap the consequences of it until she came to her senses.
Hana-chan nodded, happily, "Hai, hai, I'm sure you will! But maybe you'll get to hear the story firsthand instead, who knows. Just be patient, Izaya-kun, all good things to those who wait, ne? Now hang on a sec, I let my coffee get cold and I need a fresh cup. Do you want one?"
Izaya smiled and said quietly, "Ah, that would be lovely, thank you."
"No problem!" she responded cheerily, getting to her feet with a genuine pep in her step. Izaya's smile fell off his face once she'd walked out of sight.
Hana-chan, are you seriously under the impression that I can't lie convincingly? Or are you swallowing this lie knowingly, and playing ignorant for some reason…No, I've got the terrible suspicion you legitimately just took me at my word without a second thought…poor girl. It's scary how much you trust me. But this was bound to happen to you eventually, you arrogant little thing.
If Hana-chan was going to make bold assumptions about Izaya's character, woe on her if she made the fuck up of getting it wrong and feeling too confident in her own opinion. Izaya was more complicated than she could possibly fathom, in time to save her fragile little mind from his claws.
She'd be better off looking him up and figuring that out through vile hearsay.
If she looked him up tonight, Hana-chan would be able to figure out that he had just lied to her face. She'd figure out there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell the wicked information dealer, Orihara Izaya, would ever 'not look into someone' he found interesting, out of 'respect for their privacy'.
Not even for a fucking experiment, he was way too freaking hyperactive for that. What, was he supposed to just go home after this and sit in his apartment and not spend every hour of the rest of his day obsessively uncovering her mysterious backstory? Like hell! The hyper-focus Izaya experienced when doing research and piecing together the puzzle of someone's life through the trails they'd left behind in the world…it made him think of that saying, about how if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life.
Izaya fucking love, love, loved researching people. It made his heart pound and sometimes he got all sweaty if whatever he found was too exciting to handle. He could go for hours without eating or sleeping, and not even feel the effects of deprivation because he was rushing too hard on his own magnificent surplus of dopamine.
It was like, Hana-chan had dangled a syringe full of heroin in front of an addict, handed it over, told him to take it home…and then just not take great pleasure in doing the drugs she'd just given him, because that would be 'invasive to her'.
Not doing it would be far more invasive to Izaya. He might chew his own fucking arm off if he tried to restrain himself. No way. It just couldn't be done. Even thinking about trying not to look her up was boggling Izaya's mind, and giving him anxiety at what his day would look like without that overwhelming pleasure. Ugh, he was disturbed he'd even bothered to seriously consider it. Was that out of respect for Hana-chan? Or pity for how tragically gullible she was?
Izaya didn't know, but whatever it was, he was only motivated to consider respecting her privacy for long enough to realize it would be impossible.
Izaya was tapping his finger against the table in agitation by the time Hana-chan returned with their second round of coffee.
"Hana-chan, did you seriously just take me at my word that I won't look you up?" Izaya couldn't help but sound a bit bemused as he blurted this out, impulsively.
She raised an eyebrow at him, placing their mugs down on the table. "Of course. Trust has to start somewhere. Why, Izaya-kun, are you a lying piece of shit or something?"
Izaya huffed at her and shook his head. "And if I am? You'd never know, would you? You'd have just handed over your faith to someone whose done nothing to earn it, for free, without a single guarantee."
She placed a hand on her hip and stared down at him, "Are you lecturing me about my survival instincts again? Okay, let me put your mind at ease." She rested her hands on her knees and leaned over suddenly, getting right in Izaya's face with a smirk. He ignored her cleavage in his peripheral, to hold her gaze with emotionless eyes. Hana-chan told him softly, "If you make a habit of lying to me, Izaya-kun…eventually, you'll slip up. And then I'll figure out what sort of person you really are. And then," she whispered, leaning in even closer, until their breaths were mingling. "I'll dump you over the fucking phone and never speak to you again," she finished flatly in a normal speaking volume. Which was way too loud, that close to his face. She pulled back a little and cocked her head, "Which reminds me – give me your number, so I can do that."
Izaya stared at her with a wooden expression and deadpanned, "You want my number, so you can dump me over the phone and never speak to me again?"
Hana-chan nodded, digging into her pocket and pulling out her phone, "Yes, exactly," she confirmed. When Izaya glared at her, unimpressed, she snapped her fingers impatiently. "Well?"
He rolled his eyes, and gave her the number to one of the burner phones he hadn't made any real use of yet. He had ten of them, and barely used four these days. Hana-chan would be lucky number five, until he slipped up in a lie and got dumped, apparently.
Hana-chan entered his number into her phone with a satisfied little hum, twisting on her feet and swaying her hips right in front of him. Was she doing that on purpose? Was she trying to hypnotize him? Izaya glanced up at her through his lashes, thinking she had a rather dopey expression on her face if this was supposed to be a seduction tactic. She locked eyes with him suddenly, and the dopey expression became a feral grin. "Right! Now I've got your number, so once I've got your number, I can call your number and reject you if I don't like your fucking number! Hah!"
Izaya scoffed at her in disgust. "What? I could barely even follow that, but if you're that happy at the thought of rejecting me, why go through the tedious process of 'getting my number'. Are you worried I'll try and stab you, if you do it right now?" Izaya leaned forward suddenly, striking like a snake – and poked her hard, right where he was pretty sure her scar was.
Hana-chan jumped with a cry, and raised a hand as if to smack him. Izaya stared up at her tauntingly, digging his finger into her belly as if daring her to do it. She breathed deeply, her nostrils flaring. Then she lowered her hand very slowly onto his head and ruffled his hair gently.
Izaya stiffened, not enjoying this turn of events at all.
And it only got worse.
Hana-chan started scratching his head – like she was petting a dog.
"There, there, Izaya-kun. It's alright," she cooed, reassuringly, "I'm not gonna reject you, okay? It was just a little joke, hm? No need to be all sensitive and self-destructive…yosh, yosh, there's a good boy…" She tousled his hair violently, before stepping back.
Izaya dropped his arm into his lap, as strands of dark hair fell haphazardly over his face in the wake of her attack.
Izaya felt…
Was this humiliation?
He'd always thought it would be worse, but then again, he never did experience emotions normally.
Izaya stared up at Hanabi in a mild daze, with his lips slightly parted.
She made an amused face. "Oh dear." She stepped forward into his personal space again, and started fixing his hair. Izaya's eyes widened in affront, and he grabbed her wrist in a tight grasp, scowling up at her.
"Enough, Hana-chan."
He threw her arm away, and she took a hasty step back, clutching her wrist with wide eyes. "Shiiiit," she whispered. "Sorry. I was just tryna fix the mess I made of your hair."
Izaya raised a hand with a very unimpressed look on his face, "Do me a favor, and don't apologize. Just abort immediately. I can tolerate it when you're mocking me, but don't mother me. You might think I act like a child, but I don't need your..." he gritted his teeth and shut himself up. Izaya never complained for this long, but she'd fucking tricked him into it by listening to him the last time he bitched at her. He sighed deeply, and dropped his hand. He closed his eyes with a shudder. "Just stop."
"Okay," she agreed quietly, "Do you think you could maybe stop poking my scar then? You've got some freaky good aim, and memory…and speed. Guess you weren't kidding about how you could stab me if I dropped my guard."
Izaya opened his eyes and stared up at her tiredly. "No, I wasn't kidding, if I wanted you stabbed, you'd be stabbed. As for whether I'll poke you again…not even I can predict my own behavior sometimes, Hana-chan. But to be honest, yes, I'll probably do it again at some point."
She frowned at him. "Well okay fine, but then you better buck up and get used to head scratches and baby talk. Jesus Christ, and I thought I demanded special treatment."
"Yes, do what you must to cope with it all," Izaya said impatiently, "Just desist with the aftercare. It's annoying."
She made a pfffff sound. "Nice. So, he's kinky enough to know about aftercare, but virgin enough he can't handle a girl fixing his hair. The mysteries just keep stacking up."
Izaya scowled up at her. "Will you quit hovering over me like a tyrant, and sit down already?"
She raised her hands in surrender and walked over to her seat, settling into it gracefully. When she was comfortable, she looked up at him with a bright grin. "Like a tyrant? Seriously?"
Izaya rolled his eyes. "Take it like a giant compliment you don't really deserve."
"Okay, I will!" She sang, "Thank you, Izaya-kun, for admitting how very threatened you are by me!"
Izaya dropped his head and covered his face with his palm. "Should I just go home?" he muttered resentfully.
"No don't!" she cheered, "Don't be a sore loser, Izaya-kun, I'm relating to your sadistic enthusiasm for spoiling my mood! Don't ruin such a beautiful moment of friendship by running away like a wuss, hahaha!"
Izaya actually started snickering. She was just having so much fun at his expense, it was contagious. He lifted his head from his hand and nodded at her, "Alright, but I will hold this against you if you ever try to judge me for my sadism in the future. You're not the only one who can hoard ammunition for the future, Hana-chan."
She smirked at him. "I only judged you for it because I hadn't figured out it was all just mind games. And I think I'm starting to discover I really like playing mind games, I just never allow myself to do it because it's kind of a fucked up and cruel thing to do to someone. But you're literally begging for it. It's like I can be my worst self with you, and it's liberating."
Izaya raised his eyebrows. "Your worst self, really? Your worst self is head scratches and baby talk?"
She nodded proudly. "And it was devastating, Izaya-kun, don't you ever forget that. More ammunition for me! Is it just me, or am I pulling ahead?"
Izaya tutted and shook his head regretfully. "Hana-chan, you're clearly very new to all this. As your senpai in psychological torture, it is my duty to inform you that gloating is reserved for veterans only. You're too green for that amount of smugness not to blow up in your face."
She shook her head excitedly and bounced some more in her chair, "Nu-uh, no way, I'm high on my beginners' luck and I'm gonna make the most of it while I've got you sweating. You haven't slept yet, huh? I've got a feeling you're gonna be a real pain in my ass when you're at full strength. But right now, I'd like to re-emphasize for the record, that you actually got upset because I tried to fix your hair." She started cackling again.
Izaya cocked an eyebrow at her sudden hyperactivity. "I'm getting the sense you haven't slept much either."
"Pffff, I slept…uh," she lifted her gaze and started mouthing something silently, like she was too dumb to do math in her head. "Wait…what day is it?"
Izaya raised the other eyebrow alongside its twin. "Thursday," he said, judgmentally.
"Right…uh…I slept…Tuesday at midnight? Till Wednesday morning at like the ass-crack of dawn. So, I've been up for…" she looked at Izaya, as if demanding he solve this riddle for her.
"Are you trying to phone a friend? You were just power-tripping on how pathetic I am, now you want my help because you can't do math?"
She threw a hand up helplessly. "Well screw you, you probably know how long I've been up for, even if you won't tell me. That's all I was really tryna communicate. But I thrive on lack of sleep, I get superbrain."
"Yes, superbrain…the kind of superbrain that can't figure out you last had between three to six hours sleep, depending on how you define the 'ass-crack of dawn', and that you've been up for roughly twenty-four hours since."
She scoffed. "Well, who cares about math, and numbers. That's what men and calculators are for."
Izaya sniggered. "Way to put down your whole gender! Not all women are bad at math, Hana-chan, just because you are!"
"Oh, and now he's a white knight for all the great female mathletes…awesome. I'm sure all three of them will be so very grateful to have you in their corner. If you don't make them run screaming immediately."
"Actually, Hana-chan," Izaya began rather smugly, brushing off her hilarious sexism against her own gender, "Women usually come screaming in my direction."
Hana-chan narrowed her eyes. "Is it to punch you?" she asked, shrewdly.
Izaya grinned and conceded with a tip of his head, "Only sometimes."
Her eyes narrowed even further, until they were tiny little slits. "Are the other times so they can kick you?"
"Hah, lucky guess! But not all of them are screaming my name in violence, Hana-chan, surely you know I'm not lying about that." He smirked at her, tilting his head to give her a good eyeful of his graceful neck and undoubtedly, endearingly tousled sex-hair.
She nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, see, I'm just tryna picture how that would go. So, these girls run up to you, super excited because you're totally hot…and then, what, you get all defensive and mean when they try to touch you?"
"Hana-chan…they wouldn't dare to touch me. For a woman who likes to lecture me about the crime of 'personal invasion', you greatly overestimate your own consideration for others."
She flinched back and blinked rapidly. "Um, no, I don't, but respect is a two-way street. You freaking stared at me like I was some freak show for your amusement, and then you lifted my shirt and poked my scar. Sorry if I wasn't aware of the fact that you'd have touch issues!"
"First of all, you stared at me first, for way too long," he pointed out, and waited for her to have some sort of reaction. She just frowned at him, so Izaya continued, "Second of all, I'm not only talking about me. What about that old cashier, who you're practically tormenting with your very existence? Or poor, sweet Taneki-san, who you wanted to summon as an attack dog without even giving the man an explanation for your behavior."
"What? What the hell!" she cried, throwing her hands up in incredulity, "I stared at you because you're beautiful, you stared at me because I was a mess! Kajiwara-san probably adores me deep down inside, you have no idea how long I've been working that sourpuss! And I didn't want to explain myself to Taneki-san, because that would have meant dragging him into our personal battle, which, ironically, I didn't want to do out of consideration for you!" She twirled her hand, and made a little bow towards him. "You're freaking welcome."
It was Izaya's turn to be incredulous. "What? You did drag him into it! You name-dropped him as a threat!"
Hana-chan slapped her forehead. "No, I said I would be the threat, and he'd have to come save you from me! Taneki-san would never just like…attack some guy in a wheelchair, are you nuts?" she threw the hand over her forehead away from her as she stared at him in bafflement.
Izaya, while simultaneously trying to replay the transcript of that encounter to verify her accounting of events, pointed out to her, "You're literally explaining to me that you were threatening to attack a guy in a wheelchair. Who's nuts, now? Hana-chan, your superbrain is more like an absentee brain."
Damn…she did say he would have to come save me.
"And you're seriously so paranoid, you thought I was tryna sick Taneki-san on you for violent purposes! I would never do that, that would traumatize him!"
Izaya scowled. "He's an armed security guard, he better be made of sterner stuff than that."
She pointed a finger at him from a respectful distance, with a strict look on her face. "Oh, quit being so judgey just because you've got PTSD. You better not lodge any complaints about him, you'd be fucking lucky if I summoned Taneki-san to deal with you." She frowned a little, and suddenly looked worried. Her tone became more placating, as she explained, "Izaya-kun, he would escort you very respectfully and sheepishly into some corner, and then he'd sit there tryna make awkward conversation with you to soothe the whole thing over. He's not some wimp, but he's a good man. I'd trust him to keep us both safe from each other, alright?"
Izaya turned away with a seething frown. "Fine, good to know. But he abandoned his post, when it was practically still the middle of the night, Hana-chan. That's something that could cost me dearly, I can't just not address the issue. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is."
She sighed deeply. "I seriously think he meant it, when he said it would never happen again. But, if you want, I can talk to the building managers about some sort of solution. I can solve the problem without getting poor Taneki-san in trouble. There are four guards who work here, and they rotate shifts every six hours…that's a ridiculous amount of time to hold your bladder. We're paying a shitload to live here; they need to hire more guard's, right? Or rearrange their shifts so they can work in pairs…something can be done to solve this problem. I won't even need to mention any specific incident, I can just raise enough of a stink that they feel motivated to do something…"
Izaya quirked an eyebrow at her. "You really think you have the power to get that done? And what exactly is it that you do, to afford living here and wielding so much influence, anyway?"
Hana-chan waved a hand nonchalantly. "Oh please, my earnings and influence have nothing to do with it. My father is stupidly wealthy, stupidly powerful, and totally ruthless and everybody knows it. All I have to do is call the building managers, and if they don't listen to me, I'll send my dad an email and he'll take care of it! I won't even bother to threaten them with his name if they blow me off, I'll let Papa be a surprise attack, haha!"
Well now isn't that a juicy little tidbit…
But learning about you this way is far too slow a process, and far too out of my control to be any real kind of rush…
Still, there is something satisfying about live-action research…
"You say that with such pride. Do you enjoy your privilege, Hana-chan? Living off the benefits of somebody else's hard work and hard-earned reputation?" Izaya asked, silkily.
Without an ounce of shame, Hana-chan laughed. "Are you kidding, it's the best thing in the world! Sorry, not sorry I was lucky enough to be born a veritable princess to a merciless dictator who gives me everything I could ever want out of life! Oh boo-hoo, I'm so sad and undeserving of all this, I guess I better humble myself and not use my daddy's money and influence to try to help people, huh?"
"And who exactly are you helping, again?" Izaya asked, with vague disinterest, his eyes wondering around the room.
"Uh – you and Taneki-san, duh. I'm gonna protect him from you getting him fired, and I'm gonna protect you from this building's dumb management of their security."
I don't give a damn about your savior-complex. Hana-chan, for some reason, I still feel the burning need to make that security guard pay somehow. And you're not going to be able to stop me just because your daddy gave you everything you ever wanted out of life, and made you feel like you could always just get your way. Unless, of course, you use your father's name to do more than just help people…
He turned to look at her and nodded, as if he'd thought as much. "Ah yes, a veritable heroine. And when did I give you the impression that I need your protection, or that there's anything you could possibly do to save Taneki-san's job?"
This might have seemed like a foolish thing for Izaya to say, when he could have lied and discretely fucked over Taneki-san in some other way. But Izaya wanted to know how Hana-chan would respond, if he refused to co-operate with her.
She slapped the table, but it didn't look like she'd done it to scare him that time. Izaya still flinched anyway. "I knew it! I knew you wanted him fired! Not cool, Izaya-kun, that's why I'm stepping in to handle this! If you go after Taneki-san, I'll sick Papa on you instead and get you kicked outta here!"
Izaya tensed in his chair, and narrowed his eyes at her. He smiled, very, very nastily. He'd pretty much seen this coming. "Yes, truly, you wield your power with the utmost respect and responsibility. I don't see why you should have to humble yourself at all. Unless, of course, you're put off by how quickly you go from helping people, to trying to control them through fear. Ne, Hana-chan?" He cocked his head and shot daggers at her with his eyes.
She crossed her arms and glared at him fiercely.
Then she looked away and started jiggling her leg in agitation.
Izaya watched her, feeling very dark on the inside after her threat to get him kicked out of his new home. That hadn't taken long at all – and it looked like it would be all too easy for her to accomplish!
When Hana-chan looked back at him, it was with big, puppy dog eyes and a beseeching tone of voice.
"Please, Izaya-kun? Can't we just compromise on this? We can both get what we want if you let me take care of this problem. If you don't want me to do that, fine, you can handle it yourself. But when you do, can't you at least promise not to let Taneki-san become collateral damage? I mean, if humans are really your favorite animals, and you were so on my case about having compassion and mercy…why can't you have compassion and mercy for his need to drink coffee and his bladder's inability to handle that for hours at a time? Can't you just forgive him?"
Is that the sort of face you make, to get your merciless dictator of a father to give you your way? Have those puppy dog eyes gotten you so, very far in life, Hana-chan?
Izaya literally didn't give a fuck about compassion and mercy in that moment, not even philosophically. But if she wanted to backpedal on the whole 'sicking her merciless dictator of a father on him' thing, Izaya was all too willing to compromise. She hadn't exactly left him a fucking choice.
But she'd also decimated whatever infinitesimal possibility that might or might not have existed, that Izaya would refrain from looking her up in service of a 'new experiment'. If Hana-chan was going to threaten him with a stupidly powerful, wealthy, ruthless man – he was going to find out who the fuck that man was, as if his fucking life depended on it. Because it just fucking might.
"Ah, Hana-chan…I suppose you've backed me into a corner and left me no choice. But if you don't mind, I'll be taking care of this issue myself. And I'll redact your precious Taneki-san's name from my complaints, since I don't fancy having to relocate a mere fortnight after moving in here." Izaya said this all, blandly, and matter-of-factly. Staring her down with empty, expressionless eyes.
Hana-chan was quiet for a moment, before she lowered her gaze and began to fidget. "Sorry," she mumbled in a small voice, "I shouldn't have threatened you like that, I didn't even mean it. I just really don't want Taneki-san to be fired for a totally innocent mistake. But I get why it upset you so much, I know what it's like to be a slave to paranoia…so I don't even blame you for wanting to punish him…I just…get protective sometimes…Sorry," she finished, looking up at him again with a worried brow.
Izaya pursed his lips at her. "Are you going to threaten me with your father again, the moment I want to do something you don't approve of? Because if that's the case, I'm going to demand you confirm something for me right now. Is your father Yakuza, or in any way connected to some criminal organization? Tell me yes or no, or forget about me not looking into you."
Izaya was one hundred percent looking into her, but she'd look back on this conversation at some point and find it suspicious if Izaya didn't confront her about what she'd just done to him. If he didn't act like he was a 'slave' to his paranoia, she'd figure out he was taking matters into his own hands and looking into her father for reassurance, himself.
Hana-chan sighed, looking away guiltily. "Yeah, okay, that's fair…I guess I should put your mind at ease, although I'm not really sure how telling you about Papa will really accomplish that…but I guess I owe you some details …"
Oh, well doesn't that just sound promising.
Hana-chan trailed off, before sighing and looking back at Izaya. "No," she said with the air of someone confessing something regrettable, "He's not Yakuza, but he might as freaking well be. He's just a disturbingly efficient and very well-connected businessman, with a shit-ton of assets and money in the bank. He's never done anything illegal, and he's very particular about that, but he's pretty much ruined lives and devastated other businesses all over the place. He tries to dress corporate espionage up as 'competitive intelligence'," she used finger quotes and rolled her eyes, "Because it's technically legal and above-board, and he sues people who don't have the money to challenge him in a prolonged court battle, to get them to back down. He's basically unapologetically lawful evil, only, to his wife and kids, he's a literal saint. And he helps assist in natural disasters and occasionally puts money back into the community, like he's secretly guilty and tryna balance out his sins or something. He does care about people, and the people in his city, just not the ones that get in his way. He's got a strong, convoluted code of honor, but he's…pretty much the worst if you make him your enemy, or if you have something he wants."
She said all this, with an interesting combination of exasperation and pride.
Oh dear, oh dear, now where have I heard that description before…besides from every gullible family member of a dangerous criminal who was trying his best to play the family man?
None of what she'd just told him had sounded very promising to Izaya. Alarm bells were ringing in his head – she had literally described her own father as evil and pretty much the worst, and that didn't even begin to cover all the other suspicious shit she'd mention.
"But he's not the sort to send an assassin after someone," Izaya pressed for her opinion.
Hana-chan's eyes widened.
"God, I hope not," she said, with some combination of awe and horror, "That would pretty much blow my mind and give me trust-issues worse than getting stabbed ever did. I mean, I could totally picture it, but no." She shook her head firmly, "He needs to believe he's operating at least arguably within the confines of the law, or he wouldn't be able to dismiss all the lives he's ruined as the natural consequence of perfectly healthy, Free-Market Capitalism."
Izaya nodded in acceptance of this, assuming she was being honest in her assessment of her father – with the insurance policy that he was actually going to make sure that was the case, the moment they were done here.
Izaya's survival instincts were not nearly as stunted as Hana-chan's, and he was beginning to understand why she found him so attractive.
Women were almost always attracted to the same traits they had suffered at the hands of their father figures – irrespective of whether those traits were ones they admired, or despised.
And from the sounds of things, Hana-chan's father was a real piece of work. She seemed to both admire him for it, while also gently scorning him for being dishonest with himself about how cruel his actions were.
Everything she'd just told Izaya about her father had sent red flags up all over the place.
To the point where, in Izaya's experienced opinion, there was a very strong, very plausible possibility that Hana-chan's father was fucking Yakuza. He wasn't going to bother being nosy and asking her what her father did for a living, Izaya didn't give a fuck about what she thought he did, and he'd played 'paranoid' for long enough.
Sure, ruthless businessmen who merely toed the line of breaking the law in their competitiveness did exist. Those highly motivated, highly successfully, highly industrious corporate psychopaths who blended in with society and cared for the ones they held close so well…no one ever figured out what they were.
But also, she had basically just described a secret member of the fucking ninkyodantai – those Yakuza groups who claimed to be civic organizations, giving aid to the needy and maintaining the peace in Japan, in place of the police. They did stuff like provide humanitarian aid after earthquakes, and Tsunamis, when the Japanese government was still tryna get it's shit together – and the people fucking loved them for it. Those groups were why the Yakuza were so celebrated in Japanese fictional media.
But those Yakuza types, at least the ones at the top of the pyramid…the ones who were fabulously wealthy and well-connected…those were the most evil ones of all.
Oh shit.
She could just be too gullible and full of respect and love for him, to have figured it out. Izaya had mingled with an awful lot of Yakuza types in his life, and the Awakusu-kai of Ikkebukuro were definitely his favorites. They had been his first clients, after all…quite a proud start to his job as an information dealer, in Izaya's opinion – not that he'd be getting any good references from them anymore…
Anyone who asked the Awakusu about him would hear some very unsavory things about Izaya's stability and trustworthiness.
And Izaya had a feeling that if Hana-chan's father was involved with a Yakuza group, it wasn't nearly as small-scale and charming as the Awakusu-kai.
Izaya downed his coffee, which had long grown cold, then shoved the empty mug at her. "Would you mind bringing me a refill, Hana-chan?"
He needed some goddamn space after all that.
TBC
A/N: The initial plan was for 'Playdate' to be a single chapter in Izayas POV, followed by Ch 5 in Hanabi's POV, but it grew way too long and I had to split it in two.
So the next chapter, 'Playdate: Part 2', is going to be a continuation of Izaya's perspective, and we should be back with Hanabi in chapter 6. I've already got 36 pages written for chapter 5, so it should be out fairly soon - probably within the next week or two.
I hope everyone is enjoying being in Izaya's head as much as I am. There's more Ikkebukuro flashback angst to come, which might not be everyone's cup of tea if you're only here for the witty banter, but should be a fun time for Izaya fanatics who enjoy getting glimpses into his psyche and a deeper understanding of his actions in the anime.
Big thanks again to PD98THREAD. You can find her on AO3, and she's got some Fairy Tail fics on her profile, so give her some love if you're interested. Anybody who read and enjoyed this chapter should direct their thanks to her - I'd still be in a depressive writers block if she hadn't taken the time to leave me such epic and passionate reviews.
Never underestimate the power of a SHIT LOAD of encouragement from a perfect stranger, with no ulterior motive to show their support besides getting you to write more.
I hope I could make some people smile with this one, because I've been smiling all day :)
