Urghhh, I haven't updated in so long! I'm sowwy - I don't want to discard this story so I'll try and update as frequently as possible until this is finished :P
Chapter Thirteen
Nagisa had fallen asleep later than he had expected, leaving him to crash out on their living room apartment sofa until he woke up at two in the morning.
It was dark; the curtains in the room were a thick rouge velvet, while each room lingered with the nearly overpowering smell of several floral air fresheners. Unlike Nagisa's father's house, the place was quite cluttered, with a lot of furniture and not a lot of space, a lot of random, expensive delights rested on each of these surfaces, including oversized photo frames, faux diamond framed mirrors, stone ornaments and thick hardback books the woman had probably only brought because she thought they were pretty.
As he struggled to make his way through avoiding these, all the while assuring his footsteps weren't too loud against the shaggy mauve carpet, Karma thought to himself it was clear the woman had comforted herself with these material items to deal with her loneliness. This was understandable though, he could only see through nightmares what he would be like if he'd had Nagisa taken away from him.
By now, he was at their door. His hands were around the knob.
To his distaste, the woman's voice could still clearly be heard talking at a low volume to who he assumed would be a man.
"...I don't usually get to spend the day off work, today was good..."
He pulled back, gritting his teeth and yanked his hand away sharply, irritated that despite living alone the woman had hung a chime from the handles, declaring the room to be the 'bedroom'. Did she have frequent visitors or what? The item changed lightly against the door, freezing his heartbeat for a second. After her laugh died down, he realised that the timing had been on his side - she hadn't heard it.
Reluctantly, he leaned down against the lower part of the wall, listening intently until he received a clue that the woman had finished. Though this was several minutes later, and he felt his eyes stinging from tired fatigue.
Hiromi's eyes flickered towards her daughter, sleeping soundly just beside where she was. The final beep of her phone signalled that she was alone, allowing her to sight softly, running her hands over the girl's head.
She had grown up pretty, albeit, still smelling of the same baby shampoo her father had been purchasing for the last fourteen years and still looking every bit as similar to both of her parents.
Nagisa was finally back to her, finally right where she could protect her. She swore to do things right this time, to make sure her child didn't grow up without a mother like she had done.
Her eyes had crinkled as she smiled, for maybe the first time since she had last seen her, seven years ago. Almost as if she sensed this, the girl stirred and leaned into the touch, her lips curved dreamily a little. Hiromi turned away before she could wake her, falling into sleep easily, without listening to music, without slipping herself a pill or even reciting her yoga mantra.
Karma knocked lightly on the door experimentally. There was no reply. He knocked again, this time a nuance louder. Still no reply.
So he opened the door and peered inside. There were only sleeping figures to to be seen.
He stepped into the room.
Instantly, he noticed that the rug in the bedroom was white. That may prove to be a problem. The silk bed sheets also, were white. That was even more of a problem.
As a matter of fact, every thing in the room was either white or a very pale colour with the exception of the large black swirls on the wallpaper, reminding him of a room for insanity. This made the biggest mockery of his plan, his fists clenching until his pocket knife flicked back shut to be shoved back into his pocket.
Plan B then...
Gloves. He needed gloves. Aside from the impact on time, this may actually work out even better, since they as well as several pills were discovered easily in the kitchen.
Migrane pills, sleeping pills, an impressive assortment of depression pills that had barely been touched. He took it none of them could fill the void.
Grabbing a creative diversity of health drugs and a glass of water, he headed back to the woman lying soundly in her bed beside his girlfriend.
The worry line on her forehead from earlier was now invisible, she looked almost like she had magically regained the last ten years of her life.
Karma couldn't help but scowl at this, everything in the home he had seen o far told him the woman had suffered. She had tried to move on and tried to be strong, she had given up on Nagisa when she clearly still had the money to afford all of the useless junk surrounding her. But, somehow he couldn't hate her.
She looked like Nagisa. She made Nagisa smile. She had cried at seeing them together, she had welcomed a stranger into her house just because her own daughter had deemed him a good person.
He wasn't a good person, like many had called him before, he was a low, despicable scumbag. The rubber gloves he wore nearly snapped when he dug his nails into his palms. Hiromi... didn't need to die.
A pair of golden eyes flickered towards his girlfriend. She was facing away and her hair was a mess, he leaned over the bed, gently pulling her hand so she wasn't gripping her cushion as roughly, laying it down comfortably beside her as she nearly silently breathed.
"G-Gakushuu..no.."
Oh? With her hair brushed out of her face, he could read her distress easily. This was interesting.
The blunette reacted yet again in response to his second touch.
"You shouldn't!" She declared, rolling over slightly."But...but if feels...good." Her voice faded off into a whisper, her expression became more relaxed, her breathing evened out.
Yet rage swelled inside her lover so badly his eyes became too foggy to see any of this.
"Tch." He clicked his teeth violently and stalked to the other side of the bed. It wasn't over yet. Nagisa couldn't have her happy ending just yet. There was still something he didn't know, and still someone unpunished.
Unfortunately, to continue with his plans, that just meant the mother had to go.
"I'm sorry Nagisa, I really am." He drawled, his voice too soothing to wake up either of them. It was frightening how drastically this contradicted what he was truly feeling right as he took a fist full of pills, so many the woman wouldn't just throw up in her own throat and choke to death, but to kill her several times over before she could even realise what was wrong.
"Say ah~"
Tracing his fingers over her lips, he pulled them apart, his touches still ghost like while she breathed, dropping each pill carefully in one by one, before filling her mouth with water.
His fingers pinched her lips and her nostrils shut tightly, not pulling apart until he heard the heavy sound of swallowing.
He expected some kind of drop, some kind of instant grief to wash over him, but no, he felt nothing.
He left the container of sleeping pills beside her but dropped a few other pills in their to make it look like an accident, taking her by the wrist and rubbing her fingerprints onto the glass he had used.
He turned to leave, but before he did, he returned to his girlfriend's side. His expression collapsed into agony, him biting his lip and clenching his eyes shut, "I know you'll be devastated by morning," he paused to look at her, as if he really expected a reaction. "But one day you'll understand that this was necessary."
"..."
"I need to be the only one. That way you can trust me, you can smile at me, and live with me, and tell me everything. I did this for us." The boy pleaded.
".."
"If there was another way, I would have taken it. She was depressed Nagisa," his voice rose as if she was actually opposing him,"she'll be happier."
"..."
"We'll be happier," He soothed, tracing his fingers over her again,"I promise you."
He kissed her forehead before he closed the door behind him. His gloves had been flushed down the bathroom toilet, the evidence disappearing in a whirl of water before he turned back and slipped under the covers of the maroon faux fur blanket on the sofa. When sleep washed over him, it didn't seem to want to let him go.
Nagisa awoke to her phone ringing. It was surprisingly late for her, nearly eleven in fact, but despite the yellow brightened room, her mother was also sleeping. But when she found her dad's name written on her caller ID it made her frown, first thing in the morning she didn't want this, however, glancing back towards her parent's happily sleeping form, she decided it wouldn't be able to drag her down any more.
"Good morning Dad."
Thing had gone according to plan, yesterday, they'd had her mother call him and talk to the police to say that they'd been with her the whole time, and just like that his whole charade ended, making them untouchable by him.
Yet when her name was spoken in response, a feeling of uncanny dread still managed to sink into her.
"Nagisa," That wasn't her fathers voice.
"Who is this?"
"It's Mr Saito, from next door dear." His voice was the kind of soft you had with an ignorant child who didn't know a thing.
"Why are you calling me on my father's phone?" She inquired, sceptical as well as nervous.
"They thought it would be better for someone who knew you to tell you," This couldn't be good. Her heart seemed to know it even if her head didn't.
He kept the same tone of voice with the same sympathetic sweetness as he spoke,"Your father's passed away dear. Contrary to what you might think, he really did love you, enough to take away his own life, and in fact burn down the whole house after you had left. I'm sorry."
His words slurred in her ear. Her phone slipped from her grasp and fell down the long distance from the staged queen sized bed of her mothers until it clattered to the floor.