"Why do they hate us so much?"
"Huh?" I looked up at my little brother. I'd been sitting, cleaning my blade, when he asked a question out of the blue. This happened often enough, but I'll probably never get used to it.
"Mother and Father," he continued. "Well, mostly Father. Mother just looks guilty and turns away. Sometimes I think I can hear her cry."
He looked down at me, probably expecting me to say something. There was nothing to say. He was exactly right about everything, and I couldn't find some way to comfort him about it if I tried. Not that I would try to make him feel any better, but still…
"Miku! Miku, get up! We're gonna be late again!"
Rin sighed loudly. Every single day she had to make sure Miku got up sometime before eight in the morning so they could get to school on time, but it was a wasted effort. Miku slept like the dead. The only hope of making her get past half-awake was to drag her out of bed, and even then it sometimes wasn't successful. Clearly, the two were going to be late. Again.
"Come on!" Rin whined, tugging at the arm of the older girl. Miku grunted and turned over, successfully dislodging Rin from her arm.
"It's too early to get up. Can't school start in the afternoon?" Miku yawned through the second sentence, but Rin understood it anyway.
"No, it can't!" Rin yelled back. "And if we don't leave now, we're gonna be late for the 30th time this month, and then Kiyoteru-sensei will give us detention. Like the last 5 months, I might add."
The fourteen-year-old sighed again.
"Maybe you just want to sleep, but I have better things to do than sit in that classroom at the end of the month wondering if Sensei blinks during detention. I mean, seriously, he watches all of us like a hawk eyeing some plump field mice or something. Or maybe he was a hawk in a past life and now the spirit is channeling its energy through his human form when we're all sitting there like unsuspecting mice or something."
She didn't notice Miku slip quietly out of bed and head into the bathroom.
"But if Kiyoteru-sensei really is watching us like a hungry bird, that's kind of a creepy thought, isn't it? But I'm pretty sure he's not that kind of a person, 'cause he blatantly rejects all the girls who try to propose to him! Like, he's even colder than Len in rejecting fangirls, and Len is downright mean to begin with. So if Len is cold as ice and Sensei's colder than ice, then Sensei must be Pluto! That sounds about right, doesn't it, Miku? Miku?"
"Right here, Rin," Miku answered from the doorway to Rin's left. "I can't stand the sound of your random nonsense in the morning, so I decided I would rather go to school, which really should start later."
"You know," argued Rin, "if you went to sleep earlier we wouldn't have this problem every single morning."
"I sleep plenty!" Miku retorted as the two started down the stairs directly in front of the room.
"Yeah, you go to bed at three in the morning every day, yet you still think you sleep enough. No wonder I can't get you up."
Miku loudly cleared her throat. "You sleep at the same time I do, Rin. So how come you never have problems waking up?"
Smiling, Rin looked at Miku. "Because I'm magical like that."
Taking deep breaths, Miku resisted the urge to hit Rin. After five minutes, she figured she was calm enough to talk to Rin without giving her a piece of her mind for her ambiguous answers and random rants.
"Hey, Rin?" she asked, as they started the three-mile walk to the academy, "What happened to Len?"
"He probably left without us," Rin replied, rolling her eyes. "He does everything too early. I mean, really, what kind of person gets up at five in the morning all seven days of the week, does all their projects the first day they get it, actually reads in his free time, and stays up late to do extra credit when he already has perfect grades?"
"Umm, Len?" Miku guessed, trying to mess with Rin's head.
"Why you-" Rin tried to strangle Miku, and the two ended up wrestling on the side of the road instead of going to school. By the time they had given up play fighting and were simply laughing their heads off over the things they argued over, they were beyond late for class.
Thirty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds later, the girls stumbled into second period math, panting and sweaty. Kiyoteru didn't turn to look at them from the problem he was writing on the board, but the rest of the students were now giving their full attention to the front of the room.
"Detention for the next month," Kiyoteru stated, stopping to look down at the book in his hand.
"But-!" the girls began to protest, only to be interrupted by the teacher.
"Two months."
"You can't-" started Rin.
"Three months."
"We live-" Miku squeaked.
"Four months. Would you like me to include physical labor?"
"Isn't that illegal?" Rin asked, tilting her head.
Kiyoteru paused in his writing.
"Only my kind of work," he said. The class could hear the smirk in his voice.
Rin and Miku sighed as they took their seats.
Luka growled as she walked down the white halls of the hospital. What had she been thinking when she decided to become Len and Rin's legal guardian? Those two were more trouble than they were worth. Rin didn't know the definition of quiet, and Len had to be the sneakiest, most observant, two-faced person on the planet. Not only did he charm her into believing he was just a poor street urchin with problems, he also beat her at poker, found a way around every single thing she told him, and could spot a loophole, contradiction, or error in anything.
So how…? How! How did he manage to need a cast on his leg? Surely, if the boy was as clever as he acted, he could have avoided something like injuring himself badly enough to get into the hospital. Luka shook her head. He was only 14, but sometimes she forgot he was so young. Len could pass as her age with the way he acted, and if his voice wasn't so high, he'd probably scam people into thinking he was older instead of younger…
She stopped in front of the door to his room and was about to open it when she heard someone call her name.
"Excuse me! Are you Megurine-san?"
Luka turned to look at a boy who could pass as Miku's twin. Even his voice was like Miku's!
Taken aback, Luka blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Are you old enough to work here? Shouldn't you be in school or something?"
The boy laughed as he scratched the back of his head.
"Yeah, I should be in school, shouldn't I? I'm a volunteer from the high school in the next town over, and since I've decided to become a doctor, they just decided to have me work here, since they're always understaffed and stuff. It's a kind of hands-on training, I guess? I still have to learn for my regular classes, so I don't have a lot of free time, but it's worth it. I'm Mikuo, by the way. Oh, and Len-kun's doctor, but I guess you figured that out already…"
Luka was still shocked about his similarity to Miku. Everything about the two was extremely similar, except for the whole boy/girl thing, but really, it couldn't be a coincidence, could it?
"But there's something strange about how he got his injury, and that's what worries me."
Mikuo's voice broke into Luka's musings.
"According to him, he got hit by a car on his way to school and fell down a small cliff, hitting his leg on some rocks at the bottom. Then, a while later, someone he knows, Gumi-san, I think, saw him as she was driving and took him here."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Luka, though she had a bad feeling about where this was going.
"His story is believable, but there are a lot of errors in it when you go over it carefully. The bruising on his back and abdomen would fit with being hit by a car and rolling down a rocky cliff, except for the bruises being too old for only a few hours ago. They were there last night, at the earliest. The same goes for his cracked tibia. There's no way it was broken this morning. There was no sign of a concussion, so we either missed something or he's trying to get me to believe his story…"
Mikuo trailed off, unsure of how Luka would take the news.
"There's something else, isn't there?" Luka prodded. "Tell me what it is."
"Last night, one of the old apartment building collapsed. The construction workers said it should have been stable enough as long as no one disturbed the building, and Len-kun, he was admitted with two others, who were also covered in bruises. I think that the three were at the abandoned complex, up on the roof, when the building collapsed on them. If that is what happened, everything fits together perfectly, but they'd have to be arrested for trespassing and possibly destruction of property…"
Luka look through the little window that let her gaze into Len's room. He was facing the window on the opposite side, but there was nothing visible other than the gray sky. The pink-haired woman wondered what he was thinking about. Sure, he cheated people out of things and contradicted everyone for his own personal benefit, but Len wasn't a rule breaker. If anything, he followed rules and laws better than Luka, and she had been an officer on the force. Len wasn't a criminal, was he?
"Thank you, Mikuo-sensei. I'll think about it." Breathing in deeply, Luka clutched the door handle and softly pushed open the surprisingly heavy door. Mikuo followed her as she stepped into the room. Hearing the click of the door opening and the footsteps that followed, Len turned to look at the newcomers. His face briefly showed panic when he saw Luka, and she didn't miss it.
Damn, she thought. I still look like I did when Mikuo gave me his theory…But if I change expressions now, Len will definitely know something's up. Better look like a grim sister.
"Good morning, Luka-nee, Mikuo-sensei." Len greeted the two warmly, as though he appreciated the visitors.
Fine. I'll play along.
"Len!" Luka exclaimed. "How many times have I told you to stop walking in the middle of the middle of the road? You were bound to get run over someday. I hope you learned something important from this."
"Oh, I did learn something important," Len replied mockingly. "If I do get run over by another car, I'll make sure I can't remember our phone number."
"Well, that's okay," Luka said, smiling, "Because we're going to the tattoo shop when your leg is healed to get our information permanently branded on your arm."
Mikuo watched the banter between the two in a mix of confusion and amusement. What exactly was going on here? Did Luka not believe him? Or was this some sort of code that only made sense to them? He shook his head and took a seat in the visitors' chair by the window, waiting for the room's other two occupants to finish their conversation.
Carrying a body across town was not something Kaito had planned on doing again. Yet here he was, dragging himself back home, taking an unconscious woman that he couldn't quite remember with him. Gakupo would not be pleased. (Not that he was ever happy over anything, but this was a questionable truth.)
Finally, after what seemed to be hours of walking down the (not-so-strangely) deserted streets, Kaito reached the front door to his apartment building. He kicked open the old wooden door that no longer closed properly and headed up the twelve flights of stairs that lead to the actual apartment. Halfway up, Kaito considered the ease of elevators a blessing, but there was no way he was going to take the death trap of an elevator in this building. Someone had actually managed to prove that walking across the highway was safer than taking the elevator in this apartment, and even the skeptical Gakupo agreed. That was a good enough reason for the blue-haired man to not even consider the other way to get up to their floor.
Two burning arms and tired legs later, Kaito stood at the front door to his shared living space, only to realize that he had no way to get in. He'd forgotten his key inside the cuckoo clock and since Gakupo couldn't have been back from his "late-night errands",
Kaito was locked outside the only home he remembered. Despairing at his horrible luck, he set Meiko against the wall beside the door and caught sight of a bobby pin in her hair. Not understanding why he was doing it, he pulled the pin out gently and inserted it into the keyhole. Then he jiggled it around a bit, feeling for how he should shape the pin to fit the lock. A short time later, the door clicked open, and Kaito half-carried, half-dragged Meiko inside to the living room/bedroom, then to the bathroom, where he leaned her against the side of the bathtub and went to close the front door, which had been rebuilt by the previous owners so that it actually served its purpose. For this, Kaito was grateful, because in Darkness, the things that go bump in the night are real, very real.
Fighting his sleepiness, Kaito leaned down in front of the sink to open the doors of the cabinet beneath it. The new white paint seemed out of place in the otherwise faded colors of the tiny bathroom. Not stopping to think about it, Kaito pulled open the doors and dug through the bottles of cleaning solvents, soap boxes, and other assorted things, trying to find Gakupo's medicine stash. Surely, if he had a weapons stash, there'd be a medicine stash as well, right? Kaito hoped so, and finally, he found what he was looking for. Hidden behind a jumbo container of conditioner was a first aid kit surrounded by other odds and ends that would come in useful for treating injuries.
He grabbed the first-aid kit, a roll of gauze, adhesive tape, and a tube of ointment and set then carefully on the floor next to him. Standing up, he reached for the metal shelf above the toilet as he shut the doors of the cabinet with his left foot. From the cabinet, he grabbed a washcloth and then he turned his attention back to the sink. Kaito turned the hot water tap and let it run for a bit before he turned the cold water tap. When he stuck a hand under the faucet to see if it was warm, his skin was greeted only by freezing water. The water heater had broken down again. Great.
Ignoring the minor setback in the plans he had that he didn't quite know how he got, Kaito grabbed the unscented bar of soap on the sink top and washed his hands. He then ran the washcloth under the water, wringing it out once it was completely soaked through so that it was not dripping wet. Turning around, he kneeled down so that he was once again level with Meiko and turned her over so he could properly see the wound on her back. It seemed that although Meiko's brother had had the perfect opportunity to stab her in a vulnerable place, he missed all the vital organs on purpose. The knife left a deep wound, but the cut itself was very narrow. Meiko had been struck with a kitchen knife of sorts, and by the look of things it was a butter knife.
No, Meiko's brother had never set out to hurt his sister at all. Although the dull blade of a butter knife would lead to more damage compared to a pointed, sharp, paring knife, there was no way that the boy had even planned on hitting a vital organ.
Smiling slightly, Kaito set to work patching up Meiko.
Ripping the lower half of her shirt off, Kaito cleaned the blood off Meiko using the washcloth. Now that he could better see the wound, he found it wasn't even half as bad as what he'd thought it would be. Sure, the knife had gone it pretty deep; the pain would probably be terrible, and it would leave a scar, but Meiko wasn't dead. Knowing it was wiser not to peel the thin layer of skin that had started to form over the wound, even if the skin had torn after being jostled around too much, Kaito opened the tube of ointment and applied some to the injury. Then, slowly and carefully, he took the role of bandages and wrapped up Meiko's abdomen.
Satisfied with his work, Kaito carried Meiko back to the living room turned bedroom and set her down on his futon. He covered her with his blanket and exhausted, curled up beside her.
"So, what do you think? Will they be prosecuted?" Luka asked her questions to the taller person walking beside her as they climbed the stairs to his apartment.
Gakupo was silent for a moment as he contemplated the question. As he slid the key into the lock, he gave Luka his answer.
"Considering the circumstances, if this is even cared about at all, probably-" he started, only to cut himself off. There in front of him was something he had expected (and secretly hoped) would never happen again.
Meiko was straddling Kaito, growling and trying to punch him. Kaito was watching her with a blank expression on his face, holding back her fist with his left hand, his other arm pinned to his side by Meiko's left hand. After a few moments, the two turned to look in the direction of the door, their brains finally catching up with their ears.
Luka looked up at Gakupo through the corners of her eyes.
Dammit, this is bad…she thought. Shifting slightly, she got into a position that allowed her to spring, but it was too late. Katana in hand, Gakupo lunged for Meiko.
I really hate how the ending is...my inspiration died on me...on the bright side, we're one step closer to reaching the actual plot!