Deeds
Yu Kanda
BaKanda.
That name… it was… irritating. Almost as bad as 'Yu-chan'.
On any normal day, I would've fired someone on the spot for calling me that. Or punched their lights out. Maybe both.
This was the first nickname I'd received that was so…degrading. And I'd been given a lot. Especially by my PAs.
It's just… none of them had ever spoken to me in that way before and expected to keep their job. Not one. Ever. It just didn't happen.
And now that he was done ranting, he looked at me with these big silver eyes, face sickly pale, the kid all upset with himself for having snapped like he did.
Aaaand now began the bowing and the profuse apologising and the… He was begging for his job.
That was a first.
Though, it was satisfying to know that I'd officially scared the shit out of the brat without having to say a single word.
Well, it was time to put an end to this.
Careful to keep the smirk from my face, I slowly made for the door, but not before throwing over my shoulder a short order of, "Be here early tomorrow," and leaving him as he was, my lips turning up at the corners when I heard the tell-tale sound of my PA slumping to the floor in what I figured was relief.
I paused halfway down the short corridor to the elevator, and then groaned, glancing back at the direction from which I'd just came from.
I didn't even know the brat's name.
…didn't he say it was 'Allen'… or something?
That wasn't good; it was unprofessional of me to not know something as simple as my own PA's name. There was also the matter of me not knowing his surname… Though, I hadn't ever bothered to learn the others' names, so why was this one any different? Then again, they'd been boring wastes of space who weren't worth my time of day.
This one had a bit of a bite to him, and a temper to top it off. Then there was that accent of his… British, maybe? And something even better was that this was different.
That tattoo of his looked a strange, as did the white hair and eyebrows, but other than that, he was as respectable as all the others had been, and the way he spoke was even more unbearably polite than what I was used to.
However, at least with him around, my days had the chance to no longer be so mind-numbingly monotonous.
I hated those days.
VWV
At first, I'd contemplated texting Lenalee, but I knew it would be much quicker to shove my discomfort to the side and simply call her. This also removed the chance of me making any possible spelling mistakes that, if found out by the Baka Usagi, would be held against me for the rest of my life.
Lenalee apparently had a British friend -whom I only knew of because she spoke of him at every given opportunity-, and since I'd only understood about half of the nonsense that'd come from the Moyashi's mouth, I figured she might as well able to rely on her as a human translator.
I dialled up her number, leaning against the stairway wall as I listened uninterestedly to the intermitted beeping of the device in my hand going through the sequence.
She picked up on the fifth ring.
{Hello?)
That was surprising. Her phone was normally left with her Manager while she was as work.
"Lenalee."
{Hey Kanda! This is rare.)
"Tosser. Daft. Pillock. What do they mean?" I asked, getting straight to the point; I never was one for small talk, and she knew that perfectly well.
There was a pregnant silence on the other end.
"Oi, are you even listening?"
Then there was laughter. {Oh god!) And giggling.
"What the hell?" I growled, glaring at the phone.
She was chucking, still. {Y-you made A-Allen angry, didn't you?)
This time it was I who grew silent. She knew the Moyashi. How…?
{Daft means 'stupid', pillock means 'stupid person', and tosser means 'jerk off'; they're all British insults.) she said, her words followed soon after by more laughter.
"That little shit…" My eyebrow twitched as I my mind processed this new information, storing it away for the next time the brat insulted me. Because it would happen. Then I'd get to watch the terror once again creep across his face and listen as he tried to re-ingratiate himself with me.
Or, in his case, re-re-ingratiate himself with me.
{It's not common for him to snap so easily. Then again, you've always had a gift for doing that to people, haven't you?)
That was true. Whenever I was around, people would either a) try their best to stay out of my line of sight, b) get upset or cry for no damn reason, or c) they wanted to kill me.
The people I knew personally were all exceptions; the only thing they all shared was that every single one of them was a weirdo with no sense of preservation whatsoever.
{Oh. Everyone always wonders, but he doesn't like it when people ask him about it, so I may as well tell you now that white is his real hair colour.)
What?
{Be gentle with him,) she murmured, before cutting the line.
I stared at the phone for a moment, rightfully confused. What she'd said at the end there had sounded close to a warning, nothing at all like the usual Lenalee I'd known since kindergarten.
And the Moyashi's white hair was real?
That got me thinking about how it was she knew something like that.
It also led me to realise that I could have asked her for the Moyashi's last name.
I sighed, running a hand through my ponytail to remove any knots that may have formed. According to Lavi, I did that a lot when I was tense. I dropped my hand.
I want Mugen.
Ignoring that thought and searching through my phone's list of contacts, I easily found the next number: Lenalee's doting older brother.
Unlike his sister, he picked up on the very first ring.
{My dearest Lenalee? Is that you?)
His voice was light and cheerful and I just knew that the slacker was taking this as another opportunity to get out of work.
"Do I fucking sound like your sister?"
A gasp. {You're not Lenalee!) He screeched accusingly, forcing me to pull the phone away from my ear with a wince.
"If you don't have my number saved by now, that's your own damn fault!"
{B-but I thought my dear sweet Lenalee was calling her l-loving big brother and I j-)
"Shut up," I snapped, then took a breath. I had to calm myself. This was important. "Komui, there's something we need to talk about."
{Sure. What'cha need?) His voice was all cheery again, nothing like it'd been only seconds earlier.
How he was able to do a complete one-eighty like that had always confounded me. This was what I meant by being surrounded by weirdos.
{I do have a favour to ask.)
"What?" Him asking for something was always a cause to be suspicious. I'd never forget the time he'd asked for a 3D printer and then the next day there were hundreds of mini-Lenalees all over the office. There's even been one in the exercise room above my office.
He didn't have clearance to that room. There was a pin number to gain access to it.
{Don't make your temp PA quit.)
"Che."
It was my choice as to what I did with my PAs.
I was about to tell him that when many muffled voices simultaneously screamed 'get back to work Komui' on his end of the line.
That, in truth, was normal. That man was infamous for slacking and leaving most of the work for his subordinates to do. The only reason he had yet to be fired was because he was a genius, and he was good at what he did. When he did anything.
{Anyway~! What is it you wanted?)
VWV
"Yu-chan~"
Lavi's voice stopped me in my tracks.
He, despite having just caught me in one off my rare good moods, one hand raised in greeting, froze the moment he set eyes -eye?- on my face. His expression soon became one of horror, and his hand relocated itself to cover his gaping mouth. "Yu-chan… wh-who'd you kill?"
Even his bothersome presence and questions couldn't bring me down. Not on this Friday that had me tingling with anticipation for what was to come.
"Yu-chan? Seriously man, you're freaking me out," Lavi said, trailing though the building after me . "Kanda?"
Hah. The Usagi was really worried now; him switching back to my preferred name was proof enough of that.
I continued to completely ignore him, walking straight to the elevator with a dark grin on my face.
Everyone who saw me stopped and stared. Some backed away. The receptionist dropped her bagel.
I pressed the button for the doors and then stepped back, watching the Usagi from the corner of my eye.
He was looking at me, sad and lost, like I'd ruined his game of Let's annoy Yu-chan today or something stupid like that.
"Lavi."
He straightened, probably hearing the hidden excitement in what I spoke.
"Not today."
The doors dinged open, and I stepped in, leaving him there to stand by himself as they then closed on his shocked face.
Again the doors opened.
I walked down the hallway at a steady pace, relief filling me when I saw that my PA's desk was still empty.
He wasn't here yet; that was good. I hadn't had the time to finalise things yet.
I ran my eyes over the area. It was tidy, with nothing out of place. It was like he'd never been here in the first place.
On the other hand, my office was just as I'd left it yesterday: papers covered the desk, filing cabinets bulging with years' worth of documents that couldn't be left in file storage for some reason or another, a bin filled with discarded projects and requests for partnerships…
All in all, it was an alright place, well suited to my tastes. I'd designed it myself, after all. It was the same for the exercise room, and the corridor, too. That was why this floor and the one above were all done in dark blues; lighter colours simply irritated my eyes.
I relaxed into the comfort of my office chair, and reached for the mouse, soon hearing the computer whir to life at my touch.
Typing in the password… Opening the Internet browser… Logging on to my email account…
I clicked through my emails, almost groaning at how many of them there were. I quickly found what I was looking for, and pulled up the electronic file that Komui had sent at my request, immediately seeing a straight-faced Moyashi staring back at me.
The same silver eyes, pale skin, tattoo, and soft features. It was him alright.
Name: Allen Walker.
Now I had a full name.
Gender: Male
I was already certain about that. Sorta.
Age: Twenty-One
… Okay, so… apparently he was in his early twenties. That made him a lot closer to my own age than I'd thought he'd be. That, in its own right, was a surprise. Seriously, the kid looked seventeen or something. I'd only recently turned twenty-five, which meant that he was barely four years my junior.
Four years.
There had to be limits on how young someone could look.
But in the end, that really didn't matter to me. Nothing did, except for this being maybe one of the limited chances for me to legally mess with someone's life and really enjoy it, and I would most definitely take that opportunity in stride
This would be an interesting next few months.
If Allen Walker lasted that long.
VWV
I think part of the reason I have so much trouble writing Kanda is because he isn't the kind of person to notice much of what goes on so I don't have a lot to work with.
And I'm upset because this is four words below my word quota