Thanks so much everyone who reviewed!
I don't have to much else to say other then HERE IS CHAPTER TWO!
Chapter Two: The White Haired Midget
"Wow Honoka, if I didn't have you as a friend, life would be so boring!" Hikari exclaimed after we finished discussing my latest case up on the school roof. The roof was the safest place to talk about things like that, because technically no one was allowed up here, but the teachers and principal let it slide for me.
"Ha-ha, if you didn't have me as your friend you would be having lunch with the rest of the class instead of hanging out up here in lonerville with me."
"Oh lay off it! You know I love you." Hikari said, dragging out the 'you'.
"Second to none?" I teased.
"Second to one." She said with a wink.
"Oh god. Don't start." I rolled my eyes; I would never understand this girl.
"Ok, so yesterday I made an awesome discovery!" She started.
"Oh really?" I asked, humoring her.
"Yes! While following Toushiro-kun home yesterday –"
"Stalker!'
"I over heard him talking on his cell phone!"
"So?"
"So that means he does have friends from his old school and stuff that he talks too!"
"No it doesn't, it means his mom called and wanted him to pick something up on the way home from school."
"Trust me it wasn't his mom."
"How do you know?"
"Well for one he called her Mastsumomo, or something like that."
"Oh ok, then maybe it's his girlfriend from his old school." I pointed out, suppressing a grin. I loved bugging her like that.
… Silence followed that comment. Hikari obviously never thought of that possibility.
"This Mastsumomo person must be vanquished…"
"Ok, while you do that I am going to be starting on my new case. Do you think it would be ironic if I suddenly threw myself off one of the nearby buildings during this case?" I joked.
"That's not funny Honoka!" Hikari wailed, punching me in the arm.
"Ow."
"Ow to you too. Now eat something damn it!"
"That was a fast change in topic."
"Damn right it was! Now eat your carrots!" She said trying to force one down my throat.
"I don't like carrots"
"I don't care. Eat them." Hikari demanded.
I started nibbling on one to shut her up. Luckily for me at that time she announced she had to leave a bit early today.
"Where are you going?"
"Toushiro-kun has been leaving at lunch everyday recently. If he is going again today I must find out where he is going! He might be meeting with that Matsumoto person!"
I coughed something that sounded something like "stalker".
"Yes and you would know all about stalkers right?" She asked sarcastically.
"Yes I would, it is my job to be one." I laughed.
"So, how do you know what's a normal suicide case and what's one of these suspicious ones?
"Most of the time, nearly all of the time, a suicidal person will leave signs of their intentions in advance. But in these cases there were none of those signs."
"I see. Well, good luck with that! What are you doing first?"
"Investigating some houses."
"Cool."
"Not really."
"I will leave now. I need to go follow my heart."
"Ok Hikari. Just don't get hit by a car again." She stalked guys like this before, and a few guys ago she tried to rush across the road so she wouldn't lose the guy. She ended up getting hit by a car, sort of, more like the car slammed on its breaks and the bumper bumped against her side, causing her to fall over.
"I won't." She shouted over her shoulder as she ran away.
***
I hated my job.
I arrived at the fourth house. As my aunt suggested, I started with investigating the first ten people who died on the first day. I was trying to look for any connections between the ten.
The first house was fruitless. It was clear when I looked that the person actually was planning their suicide for months already. The victim was a 48 year old woman who lost two kids and husband in a plane crash months before. She hid her suicidal thoughts from everyone, and didn't even bother writing a note. I guess she didn't think there was a point seeing as there was no one to receive it. She lost everyone she loved in the plane crash.
While that was sad and all, it proved that this suicide was not linked to the others. The next few houses were defiantly strange.
First weird thing, the victims did not have any suicidal thoughts at all until just moments before they killed themselves. Each one of them had a reason to be upset, like financial problems or a death in the family or something, but none of them appeared to being thinking of going to that extreme…
I found all this out, just from entering the room and sitting on the persons couch or something. That was my ability. I had the ability to know things that happened by touching the object in question. For example, if I touched a baseball bat that was used for a murder, I would be able to know it was the murder weapon. However my power was limited to things that happened just to that one object (I can't just touch the door handle of a murder scene and know everything that has happened, I would just know who used the doorknob and when). This is why it took a good half hour per house. I needed to go around and pretty much touch everything to find out what has been going on the past few weeks. It was very time consuming.
Another thing about my ability was it's not like in the movies where all of a sudden I see a scene flash before my eyes like a movie. I don't actually see anything. I just know it, like the information was implanted into my brain.
I spent about a half hour in the fourth victim's apartment. He was a 26 year old male who's "motive" was that he was up to his eyeballs in student loans. But not once did he show any signs of wanting to end his life; yeah sure when the bills came in he looked miserable, but who doesn't?
The report said he ended up hanging himself.
One of the clear signs that this was one of the special incidences I was looking for, rather then another case like the first house was that the man returned home from doing the weeks grocery shopping an hour or so before he killed himself. Who would go grocery shopping if they were planning to end their life in an hour? The lady who lived in the first house didn't buy any sort of provisions for a good week before she died.
That man also looked like he was preparing to make a cake for his girlfriend's birthday which was in a few days.
In my early days of working for JNBCI, these sorts of things completely terrified me, and they still did in a way. These people had all these things they were planning on doing, but then all of a sudden they died. Like, you truly don't know what day is going to be your last…
Just then the door opened. A woman walked in; she looked to be in her twenties, I would guess. She was about 5'9" and had long black hair that reached past her elbows. She had huge bags under her eyes and a slouch in her walk. The moment she walked into the room her eyes filled with tears.
"I am sorry you cannot be here. This place is still under investigation. I am…"
"I know who you are." The woman interrupted. "I was hoping to speak to the person investigating this case. I am happy to see it's you… with a reputation like yours… I hope you can find out who killed Yuuto…"
"I am sorry but who are you?"
"I am his girlfriend. Mao Ai"
Ahh, his girlfriend. I might be able to learn a thing or two from her.
"Nice to meet you Mao-chan." I said sweetly, holding out my hand to shake hers.
The moment our skin connected, I realized she had nothing to tell me I didn't already know. She had been dating Saburo Yuuto for three years after meeting him at a friend's party. He worked a lot, as I already knew, to pay off his loans. He never showed any signs that he was planning on ending his life.
This lady however, it felt like she might need some therapy to get over this. I don't want to have her house be the next one I'm investigating.
I also had some power when it came to living people as well, although it was much more limited then with non-living objects. When I touched a person I could feel emotions and even get a glimpse into the persons past. That sounded all dandy and all but the stuff I saw was very random, and I usually get random, useless, bits of information like what they had for breakfast. However, if the person I was in contact with was thinking hard about something, I am much more likely to see that. Plus I can only see things a person remembers. So if a person couldn't remember what someone looked like, I couldn't get that piece of information out of them. Also, if they thought they remembered something that's how I would see it. So let's say someone remembered a car to be black when it was actually silver. I would see the car as black as well.
The whole reading emotions thing was just plain annoying.
The thing was though, the judges wont take "this little psychic girl saw this man in her visions!" as evidence. So that means we had to still do investigations to find evidence against the perpetrator. At least when we knew for sure who it was, it's easy to focus on just investigating that one person so evidence is usually found rather quickly.
It's all rather confusing; especially for me.
She talked for a good fifteen minutes about Yuuto. What kind of guy he was and stuff. She was trying to do whatever she could to prove to me that he was not the kind of person who would commit suicide.
"There is absolutely no way Yuuto would kill himself. No way! Especially with my birthday so near… we promised to spend it together…" And with that she burst into tears.
After I calmed her down and gave her my word I would do whatever I could to find out the truth behind what happened, I sent her on her way.
I went to the window, and hesitantly put my hand on the glass. I took my hand away again. It was the same as the last two houses…
There was a second thing that all the rooms, save the first, had in common.
It seemed that a familiar white haired brat has been visiting all the locations just a few hours or so before me, and as strange as it sounds, he always came through the window, no matter what floor the place was on. He also wore a traditional style black outfit and carried a sword with him.
This was defiantly worth looking into. This is must be where he was going after lunch today. I wondered if Hikari was successful in stalking him. I sure hoped so.
I saw the sun setting outside. I decided I should head home if I wanted to get any of my homework done.
* * *
I took the bus from the train station to a bus stop a ten minute walk away from my house.
My home is a yellow farmhouse-styled house with two floors, three bedrooms and three washrooms. There were beautiful gardens surrounding the house. My aunt claims she did the amazing garden on her own, but I knew she hired a gardener to make it and maintain it for her.
When I got inside my aunt was waiting for me in the kitchen. There was a small plate with piece of bread and a slice of ham beside it. She slid the plate towards me when I sat down at the table.
"Here, you must be hungry."
I wasn't, but I started nibbling on the bread anyways. She looked at me with searching eyes. She wanted to know what I found out.
"There wasn't much. The first person on the list is a normal suicide case, but the others are strange." I told ever everything I saw, excluding the part where I saw Hitsugaya Toushiro investigating the houses as well. That was something I wanted to look into myself before sharing with my aunt.
"Are you going to the rest of the houses tomorrow?" She asked.
"Maybe. There is something I want to check into first, before worrying about the rest of the houses." I explained.
She took the hint. I did that sometimes on cases, looked into something on my own before consulting her. She didn't complain about it anymore.
"You look pale, Honoka. Have you been eating ok?"
Why does everyone have to ask me that!?
"Yes."
"What did you have for lunch today?"
"An apple and some carrots." Well, actually a slice of apple and one baby carrot.
She stayed silent and watched me until I finished most of the bread and half the slice of ham.
"Is that good?" I asked, desperate to be free of this table.
She grumbled, but let me run upstairs to get started on my homework.
Reaching the top of the stairs, I started feeling fatigued from the effort. I felt dizzy too. I ate too much today.
All of a sudden a wave of nausea hit me and I rushed to the washroom.
After I was finished throwing my guts out, I returned to my room, exhausted. Feeling dizzy and at the verge of collapsing I crawled in bed, without even bothering to change into pyjamas, and immediately fell asleep.
* * *
"Why do you care what I learned when following Toushiro yesterday?"
"Because… uh… I think he might be connected with the case I am working on right now." I whispered as we were in the middle of the hallway.
"No way! Why would you think that?"
"I can't say here!"
"Then let's go!" She dragged me by the arm towards the roof.
"We are going to miss first period!" I freaked.
"Yeah so? You are absent so often I don't think it matters anymore."
"What about you?"
"Pah, math was never my thing anyways." She said, still dragging me.
When we got to the roof, I made sure to lock the door before I explained how I saw him investigating the rooms before I arrived.
"So you are saying you saw him in going into these rooms right after he left school?"
"Yes."
"And that he was dressed in some black traditional outfit and had a sword with him."
"…Yes" I said, starting to feel stupid.
"But that is impossible."
"That's what I saw!" I exclaimed.
"He did his grocery shopping and then went to a movie. Then after the movie he went home."
"What? That doesn't make sense…. I have never been wrong with one of my visions I don't believe…"
"Maybe you saw someone else." Hikari said, even though she knew it couldn't be true.
"Oh really? I wasn't aware that there was a sudden increase in the white haired midget population recently…" I started laughing at my own joke.
I was surprised when Hikari didn't join me. I looked at her and saw her, white faced, looking at something over my shoulder…. Oh no…
I slowly turned around, and of course, there stood the murderous form of Hitsugaya.
"Oh! Hi Hitsugaya –san!" I said; my voice unnaturally squeaky. "I was just talking about... Uh… my cousin! Who is visiting from Canada! Ha-ha… you know how those Canadians are…"
He didn't buy it; he still looked like he was going to punch my nose in. Instead, he said in a perfectly controlled voice…
"Shouldn't you be getting to class? It would be such a pity for you to fall further into the realm of stupidity."
I was going to shout some snappy retort when Hikari put her hand over my mouth. No amount of struggling or hand-licking would get her to let go.
"Oh you are so right, Hitsugaya-kun! She just insisted that she had to tell me about her cousin straight away! I shall get her back to class immediately." She dragged me away, again.
It wasn't until we were at the bottom the stairs that she let go of my mouth.
"Are you crazy Hikari!" I gasped.
"No are you crazy! You keep this up and you are totally going to ruin my chances with him!"
I ignored her. Not wanting to go for the last half hour off math, we decided to hide in the girl's bathroom until the end of first period.
"How did he get on the roof?" I asked suddenly.
"What?"
"I locked the door! I know I did!"
"Well maybe you didn't lock it right." Hikari pointed out.
"No, I heard the lock click."
"Oh ok, in that case he must have materialized through the door. Because he is some sort of ghost man who can do that right?" Hikari said, sarcastically.
"Yes yes Hikari you are so clever. So… what are you doing tonight?"
"Following Toushiro again, I want to find out what kinds of foods he likes. You know… in case I wanted to make him lunch or something one time…." She trailed off.
"Would you mind if I joined you?"
. . . . . . . . . .
Well there you have it.
I hope I didn't confuse everyone with the bit explaining Honoka's … special gift. I was thinking whether I should say it all in one go, like I did, or to explain it bit by bit over the next few chapters. I decided all at once because I know I would end up forgetting to mention parts of it or repeating myself.
I hope you guys had a few laughs during this chapter :P I sure did – because I am a loser who laughs at her own jokes-
Please review!!!
This chapters QUESTIONS:
Do you think Honoka is too Mary Sue?
French toast or Pancakes?