A\N: Thanks to METRO SKiiES for helping me with the Japanese family crest business. . m. that being said, I just assumed that the yazuka would use the head's crest. Forgive me if I'm wrong. + this chapter happens before the last.
Seishin had grown relatively accustomed to the isoteric ways of the underworld. When he completed what was asked of him, he received money. It was never the same amount. The last job had given him a paltry sum.
The job before that had paid handsomely.
The money always came in two days after the completion of his job. The same woman would hand him a blank envelope.
He worked for her because he had little choice in the matter. She had found him fairly quickly, just as Sunako had predicted. Jinrou were a valuable commodity, and she was not going to lose the opportunity to ally herself with one.
She had given him his tattoo. It was on his abdomen, as he had specified. His daughter had been spared, because she was too young. When she came of age. He snorted. That would never happen.
Sunako had chosen their home. He was not entirely unsatisfied. The hotel had a plethora of guests. And the room was large enough. He was listed simply as "Kirishiki." When he had picked the name, some part of him had hoped that someone would find him.
After three months, it had become apparent that such a thing was not going to happen.
The go center had been inside their territory. So, he'd gone. At first, it was because he had little else to do. As a consultant, he was expected to work with certain clients. He was rather adept at that, so it consumed little time. Extracting information wasn't too terribly difficult either—so he'd found himself idle for a few hours each day.
At first, he'd gone to the Go Center to introduce a routine to his life. He'd joined the Go Club in the second year of high school, because Toshio had asked him to. Toshio's girlfriend was the president… And the club was filled with women (which was rather uncharacteristic of the sport, Toshio said,) so Seishin was to keep him company.
And he'd hinted at a possibility of a romantic interest. You know, there are a lot of pretty girls, and… He'd thought he'd get to spend more time with Toshio. Discuss strategy. Share a hobby.
He hadn't forseen the romance. Perhaps he should have. Toshio was slammed against the board on a regular basis. He had walked in on them once. They were doing things that high-schoolers should not have been doing. He hadn't meant to see it. He had come back to the room to return the folding board and stones he'd borrowed over the weekend. He had entered in a tournament, so it was important to practice, wasn't it? He didn't know that they were using the room. He just wanted to put the board back. And possibly ask the teacher if he could see the scorecards from the last tournament.
He had found them there, tangled in each other. He squeezed his eyes shut. It was nauseating. The person he liked was… The boy had set the items down on the board gingerly, wanting to leave immediately. And then she had yelled at him. Toshio hadn't bothered defending him. Yes. It made so much sense. He was a pervert, because he did not have a girlfriend. No, he was too busy taking compromising photographs of females.
He hadn't defended himself then. He had just let her yell at him. Yell, yell, yell. Toshio's silence had done it. He walked out of the room with his bag tightly clutched to his chest. He had gone directly to the church, and lay on a pew. The book he had purchased a few months ago lay at his side. Would reading it put him on the same level as Toshio?
But wasn't desire a human emotion? Was it wrong to want Toshio? He didn't know. He curled up tightly, unwilling to let anyone in. He pulled the book to his chest, crying into it.
He was told that Toshio had come to see him. Presumably to apologize for what he'd done. He messily broke it off with the girl a few weeks later. He switched clubs, though Seishin did not.
His adverse reaction to the Go Parlour had probably been driven from that club, from a long history of being slammed against cheap folding boards. But he wasn't nearly as tasteless.
He laughed bitterly. And where had that gotten him? He was on the couch of a cheap hotel room, searching for possible clues about a seemingly made-up case.
When he was younger, he had slid the razor so neatly against his wrist. He was drunk. Utterly and thoroughly drunk. There was some half-formed idea in his brain, that maybe in death, there was some release. But he knew better now.
He came to, strapped to a hospital bed, forks and knives in his wrist. His mother was crying over him, his father consoling her. The doctor had told him that he would be fine.
Fine. Fine. It was a dull sound. How was he supposed to be fine, when Toshio hadn't even come to see him? He was too busy studying. It was probably nothing anyways.
The words swam around in his head. Until they had no meaning anymore. It had become relatively easy to tell people that it was going to be okay. He was fine.
Tsubara had been there though, had held his hand while he lay on that cold, cold bed. He had visited every day, and stayed until Seishin had fallen asleep. He had helped the priest and his wife with their grief.
They had moved in together after that. Or maybe it was before. Because Seishin couldn't be trusted alone. And Toshio had not cared enough then, either. And yet, he still loved the man. Loved him so much that it hurt.
It had taken him but a moment to snap back into the familiar routine. Watching Toshio's slender fingers pick up stones from the pot, lay them on the goban one by one. His mouth twisted into a characteristic frown, his eyes darting from Seishin to the board. He wanted Toshio. And that scared him.
He sighed, fingers to keys. One hundred and twenty days seemed like a broad enough time period. He had restricted the query to anemia, with insect bites on the epidermis. There were four hospitals in the vicinity. Toshio's was relatively easy to locate. And the files were unprotected. So he found the doctor's personal information with relative ease.
He saved a copy of it to his computer, though he did not know why.
He created a second folder for the results of the search, knowing that he would have to quickly delete it, when his presence in the mainframe of the hospital was compromised. The cases started filing in one by one.
The first report belonged to a young man, who'd died of anemia approximately ninety-three days prior to the search. He had no prior health conditions. Insect bites were found on the upper arm.
The second report seemed to be the same as the first. He skimmed through five more, briefly pausing when he reached the report for Mutou. Toshio had signed off on the death certificate. If he saw it, he would, predictably get mad. And Seishin did not fancy being yelled at.
Which meant that he would be less attracted to Toshio? It was worth a try, he supposed. Mutou's report was included. As were the next five.
Then, he had stumbled on something strange. There were two copies of the report, one found in the recycle bin, and the other marked as the official report. They were markedly different. The scrapped report had verified Toshio's hypothesis. The patient was described as having come in with no heartbeat. After a few rounds on the defibrillator, the doctors determined that there was nothing to be done. The eyes were faintly cloudy, and there were signs of rigor mortis setting in. (Though Seishin postulated that the corpse had been lying around for a while, before it was sent into the hospital.)
Complying with the wishes of the family, the body was not scheduled for autopsy. It was sent straight to the morgue. Later that evening, it had gone missing (according to the mortician.) It turned up in the lobby, from where it was escorted to a room.
The body seemed to reject solid food, and need a constant supply of transfusion packs. It was hooked up to an IV drip for good measure.
The report described the next morning as unusual. When a nurse was sent in to take the patient's blood pressure, she found her underneath the bed, seemingly afraid of the light. Her fingertips were burnt. There was no further documentation on the occurrence.
The official report had issued her a death certificate as soon as the rounds of defibrillation ended.
So, perhaps foul play was suspect after all.