He breathed into the shell of her ear, knowing full well the effect it was having on her.
He chuckled, low and sinister.
"Gotcha'."
The bright, mid-morning, sunlight shone through the window and lit up the white hospital room as though it were a sun catcher. Dell squinted as he pulled on his jeans, not yet adjusted to the light and too lazy to change out of his hospital gown in the bathroom. The staff had washed his original clothing for him, and he was grateful to them for their kindness, even if he was secretly wondering if they charged him extra for that.
As he tugged his head through the top of his shirt and fought with the fabric to find the sleeves, Dell thought of Meito, who had not yet woken up since falling asleep the day before. Mikuo had been slightly worried about that, but remained firm in his belief that Meito was fine and would awaken soon.
"See how he moves every so often?" Mikuo had said to Dell last night. "While he is sleeping for quite a bit longer than what's considered safe, he's still going through a normal sleep pattern."
Since he had actually been paying attention that time, Dell gave a small hum of agreement, and shut off the light once Mikuo had left to sleep.
Now that it was morning, Dell watched as Meito's eyelids twitched and flickered in his sleep. Was he dreaming? The silver haired man vaguely remembered reading somewhere that when people reached the deepest (and last) stage of sleep, they dreamed, and that when people dreamed, their eyes moved behind their eyelids. Soon after, they would wake up.
Biting his lip to hold back an exasperated sigh, Dell ran his fingers through Meito's hair, attempting to comb the disheveled mess. Knowing that he wasn't yet conscious enough to remember anything, Dell spoke aloud.
"I'm not doing this for you, you know. It's just that, having grown up with my long-haired sister, I feel a compelling urge to make sure people keep their hair neat."
After a few minutes, Dell was satisfied with his handiwork and walked to the door. With his right hand on the handle, he said,
"Dear boy, may you wake up to the noonday sun in your eyes."
Snickering, Dell opened the door and walked into the hallway, making sure to close the door behind him as softly as possible.
"Tadaima!" Dell called into the apartment, taking off his shoes by the door. "Haku, are you here?"
Not hearing a response, Dell became worried. He walked into the kitchen space that was only separated from the dining room with a counter, expecting to find a note of some kind. There was none, and that alone threw the silver haired man into a panic. No matter what kind of crazy job he had managed to get himself into, he could always count on the fact that his half-sister would be waiting for him at home, or that she had gone out and would be home soon.
But for her to just disappear…it wasn't something Haku did. She hated making Dell worry. Well, White Haku hated making Dell worry. Black Haku took joy in his pain, and Grey Haku was an enigma that only came out every so often. Thinking about the different personalities of his sister made Dell release the sigh he had been holding in earlier. He'd forgotten about them since Haku had mostly stayed as White Haku, or WH, for the last few months, and he'd been hoping that the other two had somehow ceased to exist. So much for that idea.
Running a hand through his hair, Dell reached for his cell phone on the counter next to him, wanting to see if he had any new messages. Once he flipped it on, he was greeted with the familiar screen telling him that he had one new text message from the last person he wanted to think about right now: Akita Neru.
'Meet me,' the message read simply. Dell growled. The only reason why he'd been at the hospital in the first place was because of Neru and the higher ups, and he was in no mood to deal with Voyakiloid while Haku was missing. Then again, it wasn't as if he had a choice.
Slipping his cell into his pocket, Dell headed back to the front door and stuffed his feet back into his sneakers, wanting to get everything over and done with as quickly as possible. Making sure to lock the door behind him, Dell headed out into the street with a scowl on his face and his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his sweater. Not only did he have to deal with a whole new set of problems this early in the day, he'd forgotten to grab a pack of cigarettes on his way out of the kitchen. Now he couldn't even annoy Neru with his favorite habit.
As he walked down the road, Dell tossed his cell phone into the air and caught it in different ways that didn't involve actually looking at it. Despite being perceived as a workaholic, Dell was actually just a very time-efficient procrastinator who barely made deadlines and found that he always had both too much time and too many things to do at once. People just happened to see him at that crucial last moment when he was cramming everything together and trying to make sure it would get past the scrutiny of whoever he was giving it to. Thus, his reputation as a workaholic was born.
But the fact that he had become a master at catching things without looking was beside the point. Right now, walking up the steps to the remarkably clean and not-in-a-state of disrepair, Dell growled. He really didn't want to see Neru at that moment. Hanging his head in defeat, Dell knocked on the wooden door to Neru's office, hoping that maybe she wouldn't be in.
"Come in," came the curt reply. So much for being out, Dell thought.
He entered the room with a blank expression on his face, not wanting Neru to decipher anything that had been going on in his head since he woke up. For a minute Dell stood in front of Neru in silence, staring at her as she sat behind her desk with her chin resting atop her folded hands and stared back at him, an equally blank expression on her face. She raised an eyebrow at him, clearly expecting Dell to already know what he wished to hear.
Not one to give in to pressure easily, Dell recounted his adventures of the last two days without a single flicker of a change in his expression. When he was finished, Neru stared at her hands for a moment.
So I can't figure out what she's thinking, as always, Dell thought bitterly.
"Will Meito be fit to work anytime soon?" she asked, a small dusting of concern lacing her words.
"No," said Dell, shaking his head. "He needs to rest for a few weeks, at the very least."
Neru sighed. "No matter how you look at it, this was a complete failure in every way."
Dell cringed a bit on the inside, even if he did agree with Neru for once. Not only had they failed their mission, two out of the three in the trio were incapacitated for a number of months, and after that Len would still need to rehabilitate his leg and Meito would have to be careful about hitting his head. It was a complete humiliation.
"I'll send you a text later with your new instructions," Neru continued.
"And you can't tell me them now?" Dell asked, beginning to get irked.
"I don't know them yet," Neru replied simply. The beginnings of a smirk were on her face, and Dell repressed the urge to hurt her.
Instead, he nodded to her and headed across the industrial blue carpet and out the door, closing it behind him with barely a sound, a habit he had picked up from years of sneaking around at night. He was just about to leave the building when he heard Neru's voice through the door.
"Yes, he's alright," she said.
A pause.
"No. It was a complete failure."
Another pause. Dell realized then that she must be taking to her boss about how his mission went, which meant that she must have been using the office building phone, which in turn meant that he could listen to their conversation through the phone in the hallway.
"What do you want to do about it?" Neru asked.
"We'll have to take more drastic measures if we want to come out of this successful," said an unfamiliar voice. Is that the leader? Dell asked himself. I can't tell whether or not that voice is female or male.
"Have him burn it down," The voice continued. "Without a home to return to, it'll become easier to flush out the pest and his new company."
"But what about-" Neru began to ask, only to be cut off.
"Sacrifices must be made in the path to righteousness."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, and Dell," the voice said after a pause.
"Improve your eavesdropping skills."
Dell slammed the phone down on the receiver and sped away.
Meito's eyelids twitched as he woke up from his long sleep. Blinking a few times, he opened his eyes to their fullest, only to shut them from the agitating bright light. Tentatively, thinking that it was only a natural reflex of waking up from sleeping, Meito tried to adjust his eyes to the light but soon found that he couldn't. All he was getting in exchange for his efforts was a headache. Giving up on trying to see, Meito pulled a pillow out from beneath his head and hid beneath it. With the shade granted by the pillow, Meito was finally able to see what was going on around him.
With the pure whiteness of it all, Meito could tell he was in a hospital, yet he couldn't figure out why or how he had gotten there. All he remembered was spending the day with Dell and Len, but after that, nothing. Hadn't he been looking for someone? Wait…was he looking for someone, or was it something? Had he been looking for anything at all? Meito closed his eyes and was about to go back to sleep when he had a sudden urge to open his eyes again and found himself staring into a pair of green-tinted, Jay's wing blue eyes.
"Hello, I'm Mikuo, your doctor," said the eyes. "Can you hear me?"
A mouth and lips came into view and Meito found himself looking at the face of a teenage boy that couldn't be much older than Len. He had seen a lot of surprising things in his short life, but if this was true it certainly topped the rest.
"Yes," croaked Meito from his position beneath his pillow. "Could you turn off the light, please?"
The boy stood up fully and Meito only caught a glimpse of him before his disappeared and the bright sunlight that had assaulted him earlier finally started to dim.
"Is that better?" asked Mikuo from across the room.
Meito removed the pillow covering his head and noticed that with the windows covered and the lights off, it was about as bright as a thick forest at twilight. In other words, the light was just bright enough for Meito to be comfortable. He started to nod in response to Mikuo's question, but the motion made him feel nauseous, so he had to cut it off awkwardly and lift his head back up slowly.
Mikuo's face gave nothing away, but Meito was sure that the boy had noticed and taken note of everything that Meito had done in the last few minutes. Tilting his head slowly, Meito finally realized that his head was wrapped quite tightly in bandages. Concerned, he reached up to touch them.
"What happened to me?"
"Man!" complained Rin. "Kiyoteru-sensei gave us detention until the end of the year! Again!"
"It could be worse," countered Miku. "I mean, at least this year we're only going to clean two floors of the main building since it's almost halfway through the school year. Last time we had to go through all four of the school's buildings…"
"But that doesn't make it any less work!" Rin argued. "It just means that he's gonna make us thoroughly clean everything until it sparkles like polished diamonds!"
Miku couldn't think of a comeback for that, so she kept her mouth shut and looked at the road ahead. She could just faintly see their house in the distance. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Rin stomp on anthills and crush the insects under her shoes as they crossed the city limits sign which marked the halfway point of their journey. It was a full four miles from the last public bus stop to the house, and since Ted, the overly-friendly bus driver, was running extra rounds in the next town over he couldn't drop them off at their front door.
On top of all of that, Len had mysteriously disappeared. Was he skipping class? Was he kidnapped on his way to school? Had he finally pissed off the yakuza enough to make them howl for his head? Miku snickered at that last one. Rin would like it.
"Hey, Rin," she called out. "Stop tormenting the innocent insects for a minute and help me figure out what happened to Len today."
"Innocent!" Rin exclaimed. "Those little pests are not innocent! They crawled into my shoes once and ran up my leg while we were in the middle of class. Do you know how weird it is to just have a random feeling that something is crawling up your leg and look down to find out that it's true! I'm telling ya, he was killed by the yakuza on his way home."
"You're clearly not getting the point of telling people what questions of theirs you're answering," Miku stated flatly. "If it wasn't someone close to you, they'd be lost by now."
"What?" answered Rin. "I'm talking to you, and you get it, so it shouldn't matter what I say, right? Besides, you know he's involved with someone he's not supposed to be. I just can't prove it to Luka yet. But I will, and then the glorious day will come when Len is the one in trouble and not us!"
Miku smiled. That was a pretty decent plan if you factored out the one thing that completely destroyed it. Len knew how to cover his tracks or get someone to unknowingly do it for him. He was like a fox that just never got caught by an angry farmer. It annoyed Rin and Miku to no end.
The two girls walked side by side into the setting sun, not bothering to speed up or slow down since they'd get home eventually, and no matter when they got there, Luka was going to be the responsible one and ask why they were home so late. Then Miku, being the one who could actually say something without getting excited and going on and on and on about it, would answer that they had gotten detention for the umpteenth time. Luka would ask why, and Miku would give her one of various reasons that had accumulated over the years. Then Luka would sigh and ask how long it was this time and Miku would tell her and then Rin would try and get Luka to do their homework for them since they were so tired from the general boredom and the long trip home. This time was no different. Well, almost.
"Luka-nee," Rin asked, "where's Len?"
"Hospital," Luka said, chopping leeks.
"Why?"
"He cracked his tibia."
"How?"
"He fell."
"Why did he fall?"
"He got hit by a car."
"Why?"
"Because he walks in the middle of the road with his headphones in."
"Why?"
"Because he has a blatant disregard for most rules."
"Why?"
"We are talking about Len."
Luka lifted her cutting board and used her knife to slide the chopped vegetable into the stew she was making, once again displaying her fabulous ability to end a conversation in her favor. Rin steamed silently as she slinked out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the room she shared with Miku, slamming the door behind her.
"Miku, don't you have homework to do?" asked Luka. Miku had been standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room for a while, not doing anything other than staring straight ahead. She blinked twice, and the distant look faded from her face.
"Hmm? Oh, I finished it at school. We didn't have a lot to do today because half of our teachers were out at a workshop."
Luka gave a small hum of agreement as she stirred whatever it was she had bubbling in her pot.
"Okay. Why don't you go help Rin? Or you could help me down here, if you prefer."
"I'll go stay with Rin."
As she turned to follow Rin's path up the stairs, Miku asked Luka about something that Rin had forgotten to get to before Luka cut her off.
"When will Len be back?"
"Tomorrow, most likely," answered Luka. "I'll be staying home to tutor him."
She looked up from her cooking so she was on eye-level with Miku.
"Anything else?"
"No, Nee-chan."
Luka smiled softly.
"Alright, then. Off with you, or you'll be the one doing the cooking."
For the first time that day, Miku couldn't help but laugh.
A/N: Well, we're finally catching up with the different time periods the characters are in. My original plan was to have this go on for a few more scenes, but I preferred to end it here. On another note, after the next chapter the Intro is over and we'll be starting on the main plot! (I hope/think.)
Anyone bold enough to take a wild guess at what happens next?
Also, thank you all for your wonderful reviews! (And for the hits, which I check just to see if people are reading this...)