Last night when I went to bed I hoped that sleep would come quickly and take away the guilt for a few hours. But I was wrong. I didn't sleep much, feels like I didn't sleep at all. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. As pale and as cold as I last remembered him. It was hot, I threw the covers off, but then I just got cold and it was an endless cycle of tossing and turning. When I checked and counted back the time, I slept for four hours. I got out of bed drained but didn't waste any time going down to the warehouse to meet up with Renji and Grimmjow.
"His parents…they're home. They don't know where Uryu is. Looked everywhere, and when they couldn't find him, they filled him missing." This is what I've been dreading to hear. Since Renji's parents and Uryu's have known each other for a long time, Renji has the heads up in hearing conversations between the two parents. But it ended up stressing him out. I wouldn't be surprised if they called my dad to ask me about it.
"They've been pestering me man," Renji's voice shakes towards the end of his sentence. "Asking me if I know where he is."
I shake my head, "now what?"
"Fuck sake," Grimmjow growls, lapping his tongue against his cigarette paper and sticking it together.
"Keep saying we don't know where he is?" Renji says sitting on a red crate. Red reminds me of blood. The blood reminds me of death. And death, well it reminds me of this whole ordeal. I still can't believe we killed him.
"Yeah," Grimmjow says in a gruff voice, sitting on a red crate himself.
"You forgot about the cops?" I ask, irritated.
Grimmjow shakes his head.
Renji pulls his bandana off, "I'm not going to prison."
A whiff of Grimmjow's smoke fills my nostrils.
"If Uyu's been filed missing, then we all know what that means." I announce.
"Yep, cops start investigating." Renji's right.
"They're gonna start asking us about him."
"Just act like we haven't seen em," Grimmjow pushes his spent cigarette into the concrete floor.
"Yeah, that's easy said than done. What if they're detectives? They won't even believe that. We're his closest friends so we are the main suspects." Renji sighs.
"Yeah, well… I haven't seen him, and neither have you two."
I'm looking between the both of them, and as I listen I start to get frustrated myself. What are we supposed to say to these detectives if they do interview us? And I know they will come to us three first. Everyone would be pointing their fingers at us, expecting us to know just what happened to him. And, we do know.
I look at Grimmjow frustrated. "This is so wrong, so fucked up. We're the ones that killed him in the first place, cause of this stupid prank."
"Have fun in prison then," Grimmjow retorts.
"Fuck off!" I yell, aggravated. Lack of sleep wasn't doing me any good right now.
"It's not like I'm saying we should turn ourselves in. I don't wanna go to prison either."
"Then we have to lie." Renji says. I nod, and remember how Renji wanted to turn ourselves in the first place. "I thought you said we should turn ourselves in last time we were here." I remind him.
Renji's silent. I look at him then back at Grimmjow.
"You're scared."
Grimmjow looks annoyed at me, "and yer not? Look, I'm not going to turn myself in. I don't give a fuck how many times I have ta lie."
I guess, to be honest, we were all scared. Scared of what would become of us and scared of going to prison. We're all screwed anyway. But there's no other choice. If we tell then we're done for and we don't want that.
So it's slightly settled when we agree to lying to anybody that asks us the question of Uryu. If any detectives were to interview us, we decided to use stories that didn't involve each other. So, on the morning of Uryu's death, I haven't seen Renji or Grimmjow, and the same goes with them. That way we have no connection with Uryu or each other, and so all of us won't be suspected of committing manslaughter. Whoa. Sounds fucked up, but could it possibly get any worse?
It's been a week and they're muttering. People at school talked about how 'strange' it was that Uryu suddenly dropped off the face of this earth; literally if you believe we have spirits and his left, leaving a lifeless body behind. It's sooner than what I thought and hoped though. I knew this was going to happen because I expected people to realise Uryu just wasn't turning up anymore. And every day it just started to feel worse, gut wrenching making me want to hurl my guts all over the floor. It was like each day that passed, the guilt continued to build up. I don't know how long we can go like this, or what we're going to do when shit starts to get real worse than what it already is.
A chill runs down my back when I eavesdrop on a group of students sitting behind me in home room. I hear a girl speaking softly, "Wonder where he is?"
"Yeah, he's usually always at school…"
"Hope he's alright."
Talking about Uryu, obviously and I keep hearing them too. I wish I could just block it all out.
Instead I'm just sitting here staring at the round clock on the wall in front of me.
They don't know the truth.
Well, not yet that is.
I kept contemplating the fact that sooner or later, we will be those that people want information from.
"Hey, Ichigo?"
I look up and Orihime's standing by my desk. A look of upmost concern sprawled over her face.
"Have you seen Uryu around lately?"
"Mmm?" I'm hardly paying any attention to her. She repeats herself, brushing a tangerine lock of hair behind her ear.
"No. No I haven't," I lie just like what the boys and I agreed to say if anyone asked. But shit, as if anyone would really believe me. Do I expect Orihime to drop the question so easily, to stop wondering about Uryu? Nope, because she's his damn girlfriend.
She's dating a corpse.
She doesn't know what's happened. No one does. It feels bad, but I have to assure myself somehow that nobody's going to find out.
Yeah, right.
"Oh. I've just been worried. He hasn't replied to any of my texts or answered my calls, and he's not at school…"
My eyes go wide and it feels like a bucket of freezing cold water has been tipped over my head. Orihime has been texting Uryu's phone. But we have no idea where it is. It could be in his room, which means it would be found by the police, or it could even be on him. And if it is on him, I'm not getting it out of his pocket. Forget it.
I watch Orihime and she does look worried, genuinely scared for him. I do feel bad, but there's nothing I can tell her. Nothing I can do. I guess I'm protecting her now, but what will happen later? I have no clue. All I know is that Orihime, along with everyone else is going to hate me for it.
"Sorry, I don't know."
I don't believe myself.
Orihime stand by my desk for a moment as if trying to soak it all up. If I was in her position I wouldn't have let it go so easily.
From the corner of my eye I see a flash of blue. I stray away from looking at Orihime to my left and see Grimmjow walking down the hall on the other side of the window. He doesn't see us but Orihime does and her eyes light up.
"I…I think I might ask Grimmjow, then." She takes a few steps away and getting out of my seat, I grab onto her arm and stop her from going any further.
"I don't think you should."
She looks at me surprised, "but why? He knows Uryu, he might know."
"You serious, Orihime? You think he's gonna want to talk to you?"
A look of hurt crosses her face.
"Sorry," I didn't mean to sound so harsh. "Grimmjow's not in a good mood. Besides, he looks busy," I elaborate, hoping she'd just get the point already. By the time I finished speaking Grimmjow was already gone out of sight. Orihime looks at me and slowly starts to walk away. I don't worry about Orihime as much as I do about Grimmjow. The look on his face spilled annoyance and paranoia. Something is obviously going on but I don't know what exactly but I'm not too sure if I want to find out either. The heavy feeling inside my chest wasn't getting any better. It was like a burden I had put myself and my friends into. We screwed up, and now we're screwing up more by lying and trying to get away from something that sooner or later has a dead end.
As I left the class room at the end of the day, Renji caught up with me as I was walking home. He was wheezing, glad that he had found me, but the look of terror was plastered all over his features. His eyes were the worst. The fear in them was enough to make me break down and have a panic attack. It sure looked like Renji was going to have one, but he regained his breath, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me as if to make sure that I was listening to him.
"Grimmjow's pissed. And the cops, they're sending investigators. They already looked through his room…"
"Who's room?" I ask like a freaking idiot. I'm starting to freak out.
"Uryu's! They found us in his list of close mates on his phone."
My mouth gaped open like a fish out of water. I was getting the hinge of what was coming next.
"They want to interview us."
A/N: A little cliff hanger there :o
Okay, so I should apologise for not updating. Real life has caught up with me and I've got some things I'm sorting out at the moment. There's a lot of idea's I'm getting for this fic and future fic's though! Thank you for reading/following/ favourite. I hope you enjoyed this chap and please leave a review. Review's motivate me greatly!