Beta: EternalAngel
A/N: It has been over a year since I posted the first chapter of this story. So this is a kind of anniversary post, with the exception that unlike other anniversaries, this isn't a happy one.
Over a year, and only 18 chapters? I should be ashamed of myself.
Comments and critique very much welcomed, even flames, since this is a celebratory post.
"Here we are!" Oishi grinned at the school buildings and the tennis club's locker room. When his gaze found the tennis court filled with boys in the midst of morning practice, his smile grew fonder.
"Seigaku," Inui said, reading the name form the large sign by the school gates. "What were the chances that we would ever return here because of work?"
"You're asking me about probabilities, Inui?" Oishi chuckled warmly. "But not very high, I think."
"One doesn't expect a murder investigation to lead you back to your old school," Inui agreed.
"You think we should go see sensei first?" Oishi asked, and Inui looked at his watch.
"If she still keeps up with her old routine and is still coaching the tennis team, she should be there now."
Oishi's smiled nervously at the thought of meeting their old coach, who he'd last seen as a kid. "I guess we're going then," he said, heaving in a deep breath.
The still familiar sounds of the tennis courts soon reached their ears, as they walked towards the courts, and amongst the many voices they recognized a female one that rang with authority that came from years of dealing with teen-aged boys.
Oishi felt nostalgic when he saw coach Ryuzaki speaking with a young boy who bowed respectfully at her and then ran to the court to join his friends. Ryuzaki-sensei's frown soon turned into a smile as she gazed at the boys, sighed and shook her head in exasperation.
"Ryuzaki-sensei!" Oishi shouted the greeting when they were close enough to be heard over the chatter.
"Oishi-kun! Inui!" she yelled back, smiling widely. "What are you boys doing here? Checking out the club for your own boys?"
Oishi blushed and Inui coughed in his fist, then dug out his ever present notebook as if he could hide his embarrassment by holding it. "We are not yet old enough to have children that could attend here," Inui told her.
"Bullocks!" Ryuzaki-sensei yelled, grinning widely. "You're old enough, just too useless! You Inui are married to your job, and Oishi probably still worries so much for everyone, that no woman could stand it without violent fits of jealous rage."
Disregarding his two embarrassed former students, she turned to the courts and pointed at the boy she had just spoken to. "That there's Arai's boy." She looked proud. "He's got quite a bit of talent. Reminds me of you two. We haven't gotten a kid that talented in this club for almost three years."
"Are you referring to Echizen-san?" Inui asked after sharing a glance with Oishi.
"How do you know Ryoma?" Ryuzaki-sensei asked. "But yes, that's who I mean. Haven't seen a kid with that much raw talent since his father. Too bad he got injured. The high-school team's pretty good, but without Ryoma I doubt they'll be able to win any tournaments."
"Have you seen him lately?" Inui continued and Ryuzaki-sensei's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Now why are you boys so interested in Ryoma?"
"Work," Oishi said simply.
"The kid's not in any trouble, is he? I heard he's not been himself lately, but I wouldn't think he'd get himself into anything so serious that they'd have to call you two. Don't you investigate murders?"
"Violent crimes," Oishi corrected. "And he's not in trouble, we're just trying to cover everything."
"Ah ha." Ryuzaki crossed her arms, not looking very convinced.
"So have you seen him lately?" Inui repeated the question.
"No, but I have heard of him," she answered, her arms still folded and her forehead creased. "He hooked up with Sakuno, my granddaughter, and then broke it off a few days later. Standard teen stuff, with all the excessive drama. So if he's well enough to break a girl's heart, there can't be that much wrong with him."
"You don't sound very bitter," Inui commented.
Ryuzaki-sensei shrugged. "Might have been a good thing in the long run. Sakuno's had a crush on the kid for years, maybe this'll make her grow."
"How long had they been going out?" Oishi asked and Ryuzaki-sensei frowned, trying to remember the exact dates.
"Let's see… They were on a date on Sunday, and then they were supposed to go to the movies on Tuesday, but he never showed up."
"On Tuesday?" Inui took out his notebook to check what he already knew. Tuesday had been the day they had taken the boy to Kawamura's.
When he saw Oishi's worried look, he knew his partner had realized it as well. The man they had glimpsed briefly that day, speaking with the boy, must have been the reason he had not crossed the street to the movie theatre.
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Oshitari had just let his class go and was heading to the teacher's lounge, when he passed the office and saw two strange men in there, speaking with Amada-san, the principal's receptionist.
"Do you have any records of a student named Fuji?" the taller of the two men asked from Amada-san.
"Just a moment," she said and turned to her computer. "Yes, over six hundred."
"Male students."
"Three hundred and eighty four," she smiled. "I'm afraid you will have to be a little more precise, Inui-san."
"Have any of them attended this school in the past three years?"
"Just a moment," she answered and began clicking at the keyboard again. "Eight of them have been students in the past three years, three of them still are."
"You can exclude those three, but we will need to see the files on the remaining five."
"Certainly Inui-san."
"Excuse me," Oshitari said, stepping inside the office. "What is going on in here? Why are you allowing these men access to the student records Amada-san?"
"Ah, Oshitari-san!" she greeted him with a cheerful smile that brightened up her round and common face. "These men are from the police and they have all the appropriate documents, and I've checked it with the principal, no need to worry."
"Why is the police interested in our students?" Oshitari asked, looking at the two men.
"We are trying to confirm the existence of a certain student," the man Amada-san had referred to as Inui, answered.
"You could help these men, Oshitari-san. I see from the records that you've taught all of the five boys."
"I have?" Oshitari asked, correcting the position of his glasses.
"Yes," she smiled again and brushed a lock of brown hair behind her ear. "Just a second, I'll give you the files and you can go through them with these gentlemen." She reached out to her left and opened a drawer in a filing cabinet, searched through it, picked up a stack of files and handed them to Oshitari. "You can use the guidance counsellor's office. He's on leave this week."
"Thank you Amada-san." Oshitari took the files and nodded to her. He turned to the two men and said, "If you'll follow me?" and led them to the guidance counsellor's office, right behind the two men. Oshitari opened the office door, and waited for the men to step inside before following them and closing it, giving Amada-san one final smile.
He took his time looking around the office. He'd only been there a few times and it had been at least a year since his last visit, yet the office hadn't changed at all in that time. There were still the same posters of different youth projects on the walls, and the same plastic plant on the desk, along with an old, large monitor that took up most of the space on the desk, leaving almost no room for him to set down the files.
Oshitari went behind the desk and gestured for the other men to sit on the chairs across him. "Amada-san did not mention your partner's, name, Inui-san," Oshitari said.
"Oh, yes, I'm Oishi Shuichiro," the shorter of the men introduced himself and bowed.
"Oshitari Yuushi," Oshitari said and returned the bow. "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise," Oishi answered with a smile.
Oshitari sat down and leaned back on the chair, turning it so he could rest his arm on top of the table and tap his fingers against the files. He was aware that the silence now ruling was uncomfortable, but was in no hurry to end it. The two men, Oishi and Inui did not look like they were out to cause trouble for anyone, but even still he wasn't ready to just let the police get their hands on student records – records that he believed should have been confidential.
Inui was the one who broke the silence. "Amada-san assured us that everything is in order. But if you need to see our-"
"No, it's fine," Oshitari stopped the man before he could take out his papers. Despite his personal misgivings, he knew Amada-san would never have given the men any information if she had not been absolutely certain that everything was in order. "But before we go over these," He tapped his fingers against the files again. "I must ask why you need them. You must understand my position. As a teacher I am naturally worried when the police comes asking questions about my students."
Both men shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and Oishi looked at his partner questioningly. It answered Oshitari's unasked question about who was the one that made the decisions in this partnership, and was not surprised when it was Inui who spoke.
"You might already know this, but a boy that goes to this school was attacked roughly a week ago. My partner and I are simply trying to find out everything we can about what happened, in order to keep the boy safe."
"Echizen-kun?" Oshitari asked, attentive suddenly. "But why are you asking about other students? If he had been attacked by students of Seigaku he would have recognized them, wouldn't he?"
"We already know who attacked him, and they aren't students here," Oishi hurried to assure him. "We met someone who claims to be a student here, and we are trying to verify his statement."
"How is he connected to Echizen-kun?"
"If you would please just let us look at those-" Inui made a gesture to take the files and Oshitari reached out to pull them closer.
"Anything else you can tell me about him besides the name?" he asked and opened the first folder.
"He is older than Echizen-san," Inui said and leaned back against his seat with a displeased frown. "Blue eyes, light brown hair, slender build. He has a habit of constantly smiling."
"So a happy boy?" Oshitari asked and set the first file down. This Fuji-kun had been a boy who never smiled.
"No, not happy, more like…" Inui paused, trying to search for the right word.
"Mocking," Oishi finished for him. "Like he knows the biggest, funniest joke in the world and is never going to tell you."
"Oh?" Oshitari felt the beginnings of a mocking smile of his own, but managed to suppress it. "Well I can tell you even without looking at the rest, that none of my students match that description."
"Are you certain?" Inui asked.
"Yes," Oshitari answered, but looked through them anyway. "None of them have blue eyes, that I can tell you. It's not very common, after all. How certain are you that he told you his correct name, or that he even is a student here?"
"Not very," Inui admitted. "He could have given us a false name. In fact, it is most likely that he did. And I doubt anything he said was truthful."
"Then I don't see how I could be of any more use to you," Oshitari stood up and picked up the files. "Let me show you out."
Oishi seemed shocked at the suggestion that they needed an escort and was about to protest, but Inui spoke before his partner could. "If you insist," he said dryly, only amused that Oshitari did not trust them to wander around the school by themselves.
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Ryoma squinted, looking up at the sun. It made his eyes water and head hurt, and turned him almost blind for a few moments, and when he closed his eyes he could still see the image of the sun against his lids, a blazing inferno of white and yellow gold.
The bright spot that followed everywhere he looked, and was there even when he closed his eyes, made Ryoma think of Atobe. Even after hours, nearly two days without speaking with him, with no contact other than a distant glimpse of the man, the man's image was still vivid in his mind.
And it wasn't fair. The day should have belonged to him, to the living. It should have been a time Ryoma was free to think of something other than the dead, of his friends and family, school, tennis, Karupin. But nothing that was illuminated by the sun could tear his mind from the creatures that had claimed the night as theirs, and dragged Ryoma into their world.
It was easy to blame them for it all, even if it had been Ryoma who had gone chasing them, and found a world full of temptations. He had only seen a glimpse of it through the eyes of a terrified child, from the view of a victim, but being a part of that world, to wield that much strength, was what he desired now more than anything else.
"Ryoma-kun, you alright?" Kachirou asked, placing his hand on Ryoma's shoulder and shaking him.
"What do you mean?" Ryoma snapped, stepping back, away from Kachirou. "I'm fine."
"You've been standing here with your eyes closed for at least five minutes, and the captain's starting to notice," Kachirou told him, and Ryoma looked at where he'd last seen the captain. He was staring at Ryoma with a frown, and he wasn't the only one. Almost everyone on the team was looking at him.
"Maybe you should go home," Kachirou suggested, worriedly.
"What?" Ryoma snarled, angry. The only normal thing he had left was tennis practice, and now Kachirou wanted him to go home.
"Calm down," Kachirou hissed, looking over his shoulder at the tennis courts. "I'm just saying it might be better if you went home. Everyone can see you're not exactly paying attention, and it's only been a week since you got out of the hospital."
"There's nothing wrong with my concentration," Ryoma argued. "I'm fine."
"After what happened with Sakuno, I-"
"She's got nothing to do with this, just shut up!" Ryoma screamed, not caring anymore that everyone was staring at him.
"You don't have to bite my head off just because she dumped you! You're the one that screwed it up!" Kachirou yelled back and Ryoma snapped. He threw down his racquet and fisted his hand on the front of Kachirou's shirt.
"Echizen!" the captain yelled and walked over to them. "Why don't you take a break and cool off?" he suggested.
Ryoma's mouth twisted and he let go off Kachirou. "I don't need a break," he told the captain and Kachirou snorted. "And fuck you," he growled at Kachirou who stepped back at Ryoma's hostility.
"That's it Echizen, you're out," the captain said.
"What?" Ryoma screamed.
"You're only disturbing practice acting like this. Why the hell the coach even let you come back before you can play I don't know, and I would've been fine with it, I was fine with it, but I won't let you just cause trouble and pick fights because you're frustrated," the captain said and crossed his arms. "Come back next week, or after you've cooled down. I don't want to see you here before you can behave."
Ryoma glared at both of them before turning and going to the locker room. He was more angry with himself than either of them. Kachirou hadn't even said anything that bad and didn't deserve Ryoma snapping at him. And he'd been right, it was Ryoma's fault for screwing it up with Sakuno, and he shouldn't have come to practice when he couldn't play. It only frustrated him to see others doing what he wanted to.
He changed quickly, gathered his things and got out. When he glanced back at the courts he felt a twinge of jealousy seeing his team mates playing, smiling, laughing, sweating and grunting, having fun. There wasn't anything left for him anymore. Normal life was now just as far from his reach as immortality was.
Ryoma turned a corner and stopped when he came face to face with his father. "What are you doing here? I told you, you can't come!" he yelled.
"You think you can tell you're old man what he can do?" Nanjiroh asked, lifting his eyebrows. "Did practice end already? It's a bit early, isn't it?"
Ryoma bit his lip and avoided looking at his father.
"You skipping practice now?"
"No!" Ryoma yelled. "I- They-" he huffed and clenched his jaw.
"You got thrown out?" Nanjiroh asked. "Kid, you-" Nanjiroh took in a deep breath and pressed his palm against his forehead. "Let's just go home, okay. Maybe we can have at least one day without any drama." Nanjiroh turned and Ryoma followed him, dragging his feet.
"Echizen-san, what a surprise to see you here," Oshitari, who had just stepped out of the school building, greeted them.
"Ah, Oshitari-san, right?" Nanjiroh asked. "I just came by to pick the brat from school, and-" he stopped talking when two other people stepped through the door Oshitari had just stepped out of. "Haven't the two you of you caused enough trouble for my family?" he asked, frowning at Inui and Oishi.
Oshitari looked back at the two police men, surprised by Nanjiroh's hostile reaction.
"Please Echizen-san, we are only trying to help," Oishi pleaded.
"He's already told you everything. There's no need for you to come poking around his school," Nanjiroh said. "I want both of you to stay clear of my son and my family."
"We can't do that Echizen-san, your son could still be in danger," Inui said. "The man he was with last night-"
"Doesn't matter anymore because we are leaving this country," Nanjiroh told them.
"You can't do that!" Ryoma screamed. "You said we'd talk about it!"
"We did," Nanjiroh turned back to his son. "Your mother and I decided it's for the best. You're not concentrating on school or tennis. We can't wait for you to step up, so we're putting you someplace where there won't be any distractions and you can concentrate on what's important."
"Perhaps we should discuss this, Echizen-san, taking your son away at this state of the school year might not be the best possible solution," Oshitari said. "I could speak with all of you, and we could look at other options."
"There is nothing to talk about," Nanjiroh told Oshitari. "We have been thinking about this for the past three years, and after everything that has happened, Rinko and I have agreed that the best thing for Ryoma is to attend a private boarding school."
"You haven't even asked me what I want!" Ryoma yelled.
"You lost the privilege of getting to choose when you stopped thinking with your head!" Nanjiroh yelled back. "No son of mine is going to throw away his future because he can only think with his dick! And just when I thought things were starting go so well, you had Ryuzaki, and then you! You!" Nanjiroh repeated the final word in a scream. "You go and get fucking mixed up with some boy!" he screamed with so much disgust Ryoma took a step back as if he'd been hit.
To Ryoma his father's hostile reaction was a shock. Despite all their fighting he had always thought that his father would accept him for who he was, and would always support his choices. That he seemed to be on a verge of a seizure because he thought Ryoma was gay, talked about it like it was something wrong, almost criminal, made him sick to his stomach.
"You're one to talk, you fucking pervert!" Ryoma screamed, the anger boiling inside him, wanting to get away. He didn't know why he wasn't denying it, because it wasn't exactly true, was it? "You never use your brain!" And if it was, if he was gay, his father had no right to talk about it like that. "And I'm not leaving anywhere!" He screamed and started running away from his dad, from everyone.
"Ryoma, get back here!" Nanjiroh yelled after him, but Ryoma just kept running. When he heard footsteps behind him, without turning around he threw his tennis and schoolbags at them, and wanted to laugh when he heard swearing and the sound of someone falling on the ground. He hoped his dad had cracked his skull.
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Yagyuu nodded to the uniformed officer as he walked past him, and lifted his hand up at a greeting to Tachibana, another detective already on the crime scene. They'd worked together before, most recently on a serial killer that had been prowling Tokyo's streets for young women he could cut open. The fact that they'd successfully gotten the man convicted was probably why they'd both been assigned to this case. Yagyuu had been told it was a double murder, but not a conventional one.
"Tachibana-san," Yagyuu said. "What do we have?"
"See for yourself," Tachibana answered and gestured to the bodies that were on a heap on the ground. "The one wearing a T-shirt and jeans is a torture victim that's probably been held captive for at least a month. No ID, European, and probably a foreigner. The other victim on the other hand doesn't seem to have any other wounds besides the fatal one. We already know he's a janitor of a building not too far from here."
"Maybe he saw the other murder and was killed because of that?" Yagyuu suggested.
"That's possible," Tachibana agreed. "But what's strange is the murder weapon. Not something you'd expect a cold blooded killer to use."
"What is it, then?"
"A silver pen with an engraving on it," Tachibana answered. "We can't read all of it, because the pen is pretty deep inside the neck, but it start's with 'To my son', and it probably ends with the name. We'll know who's the idiot after the coroner removes it."
"A silver pen with an engraving?" Yagyuu asked, feeling a little faint. He brought his hand up to his breast pocket, to feel the comforting bulge of his own silver pen that his mother had bought him under his coat. His heart began to beat louder when he did not feel it. "How odd."
"I remember you have one. A gift from your mother for getting a promotion, wasn't it?" Tachibana asked, smiling.
"Yes, it is very important to me," Yagyuu said, slowly lowering his hand, fear slithering down his spine like cold water. He looked back at the bodies, hoping there was some other explanation. But now that he looked, and remembered, the bodies looked familiar.
The betrayal stung bitterly, and left a foul taste in his mouth. He had felt so good, so light after last night, that he had shown Niou the extent of his trust in the man, made himself so vulnerable. It had been a rush he wished there would not have been such a devastating end for.