Chapter Three – And On Into The Passing Days…
Usually he didn't mind school so much. The tedious lectures and repetitive lessons could easily be blocked out by a moderately interesting novel or a scan of his research notes. The usual monotony of his school day could always be hazed over by mental procedures and tactics to capture Dark or protect yet another Hikari masterpiece. Even the daily discovery of a note tucked into his desk containing yet another confession of deepest love and admiration could be dismissed with simple arrogance and a blunt answer of 'no'. He usually didn't mind school so much.
Keyword there being 'usually'.
But after walking in after leaving Risa by herself, getting scolded by Saehara for his four day absence, finding a cornucopia of love letters clogging his desk, and discovering that sitting down was more painful than it seemed, Satoshi began to truly loath the wearisome day with a vengeance. Spending another twenty-four hours lying motionless on his bed began to look incredibly welcoming.
Near mid-morning Saehara had taken over the class and rehearsal for the play was inevitable. Risa, who had slipped into the room three minutes late, seemed to have taken his abandonment to heart, which meant that he would have to find a copy of his revised script from another source. Luckily, that source was Daisuke.
He had been lounging at the back of the classroom, leaning against the back wall and watching Takeshi argue with some of the girls about his costume. The Harada twins were arguing about Niwa's costume, and the rest of the class seemed to be arguing with each other for no apparent reason at all. The rising crescendo of their voices was slowly giving him a headache.
"Satoshi-san." He looked up to see a script shoved into his vision. "That's from Harada-san." Satoshi took it from Daisuke's offering hand.
"Thank you."
"How are you feeling?" he asked, worried. "Aren't you still tired?"
"No," was the automatic reply. "I'm fine, thanks to you."
The redhead blushed uncomfortably and shook his head. "No, not at all, it was Harada-san and Riku-san. They were the ones who really helped you. I just did what they told me to do." He scratched his head thoughtfully, looking at him with wondering eyes. "I guess I never thought about it before, but I…well---I guess I wanted to ask you…er…"
"Yes?"
He stammered nervously. "Well, I don't think I ever really thought about it before, but when Dark was hurt or I was hurt, Dark would use some of his magic to heal us both. I just…I mean, doesn't Krad heal just as easily? So wouldn't he help heal you?"
Satoshi remained blank face and guarded, keeping the scowl from his features. "We don't have that kind of understanding," he said coldly, knowing that Krad was listening and, frankly, not caring.
The smaller boy frowned. "Oh. Sorry." He dropped his eyes to the floor, apparently in shame but, more likely, in sympathy. Sympathy because he had something that Satoshi didn't, and Satoshi didn't appreciate it.
Desperate for a subject change he referred back to the script in his hands. "Is this the new version?" he asked, conversationally. His head told him that he simply wanted to stop Niwa from looking so pathetic, but a deeper, more human part of him knew that he simply didn't like being the cause of Daisuke's sadness.
The other boy lifted his head cheerfully, just as was intended, and nodded. He sat on top of a desk in front of him so he would be on eye level. Satoshi never realized how tall he was on the average. "Sorry, but a lot of your lines have been changed," Daisuke told him. "Some of us thought that Dark was portrayed as too…er…soft."
Satoshi flipped through the pages but stopped short at the remark, glancing up. "Some of us?" he asked. Daisuke shrugged.
"A few."
"A fair few?"
He smiled. "A selected few."
Satoshi resumed flipping the pages, sighing. "How selected?"
"Mostly one."
He closed his eyes, hiding the expression with a bow of his head. "So, the Phantom Thief doesn't appreciate a tame perspective of himself?"
Daisuke laughed good-naturedly. "Yeah, well, I thought I might do him the favor of suggesting some changes."
Satoshi nodded but inwardly felt the strong pang of dislike he had always had for Dark and the fact that his symbiotic relationship with Daisuke could not be mirrored between him and Krad.
He opened the script to a page near the end and scanned the contents. He frowned profusely. "This says that Dark returns to his village and Freedert by flying in on his wings." His blue eyes met Daisuke's red ones. "I'm flying?"
Daisuke smiled helplessly, holding his hands up in surrender. "It was Saehara-san's idea, not mine."
"Niwa-kun!"
Both Daisuke and Satoshi looked to the front of the room where Riku was waving for Daisuke, his costume clutched tightly in her other arm. "Yes, Riku-san?"
"I need you to try this on again before we rehearse."
Daisuke moaned audibly, slipping off the desk's top and sauntering lazily down the aisle. "Do I have to?" he complained, casting the dress a fearful look. Riku simply nodded and held it out to him. Satoshi remained at his spot on the wall, looking through the script in his hands.
"Hiwatari-san, would you like to rehearse in costume too?" one of the girls asked. A number of them giggled excitedly, but Satoshi had learned to block them out long ago.
He slipped off his glasses and cleaned them delicately on the front of his shirt. "No," was all he said. Some of the girls…okay, he had to admit, all the girls groaned loudly.
"Hiwatari-san, please?"
"We just want to make sure it fits right!"
"You need to practice moving in it."
"Just for a while, then you can take it off."
"Please!"
Someone held out the black garments for him. He looked up and saw girls all around him, eyes wide and pleading, waiting for his answer. Riku wasn't among them because she had gone to help Daisuke. Risa was no where to be seen.
Not that he had been looking for her.
He sighed, placing his glasses back on his face. Why had he come to school? Why hadn't he stayed in bed, seemingly dead to the world, where he was safe from adolescent nuisances such as these?
He rolled his script up and stuck it in his back pocket, taking the clothes in one hand. "Give me a moment," he replied, deadpan, walking through the queue of girls towards the door. All of them squealed.
"Thank you, Hiwatari-san," was the last thing he heard before he closed the door behind him. He leaned his back against the door. The hallway was empty, housing a welcoming silence. It was a good thing, too. No one could see him wince as he wrapped his arm around his middle. His body was still sore, and all movement was a strain to him.
It seemed that, on that particular day, nothing was dealing in his favor.
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Risa walked leisurely through the hallway, taking her sweet time to gaze thoughtfully out the school windows. A gentle breeze grazed the tops of the trees and the sun cast the entire courtyard in a golden glow. She grinned, imagining the entire scene doused in night, with Dark's wings flashing past to carry him to his next target.
Her heart pounded audibly in her ears. What she wouldn't give to see Dark again.
She shifted the weight of script copies in her arms so they wouldn't get tired. She hated physical labor of any kind, which was probably why Takeshi was surprised when she volunteered for the errand of printing the copies. But she would have done anything to get out of the room, first and foremost before Daisuke and Satoshi started rehearsing.
She couldn't stand Hiwatari at the moment.
It had been so rude of him to just leave her behind on the sidewalk. Hardly a backward glance or a wave of the hand had come her way. It had been the most frigid cold shoulder she had ever experienced.
But what probably pained her more was the thought that he wasn't as distant as he made himself to appear. He had been civil to her through the majority of the morning and had even saved her from a very nasty accident. Her true scope of him went as far as to see him in his most vulnerable of appearances, lying weak and ruined on his bed in an empty apartment.
Satoshi Hiwatari could be just as human as the rest of them. So that meant that he wasn't just a cold-hearted, blank-faced bastard who snubbed everyone. He was just a cold-heated, blank-faced bastard who snubbed her.
And Risa never took well to anyone who snubbed her.
Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she rounded a corner, carefully balancing the copies in her hands. When she looked up she stopped dead in her tracks, eyes wide and shocked. All sound drained from her surroundings to the point where she could barely hear herself breathe. A sweet electric excitement shot out from her chest and extended all the way to the tips of her fingers. Stars clouded over her eyes.
There, slipping out of the boy's locker room, black garments hanging on his lithe frame and purple hair spilling over his eyes, was Dark. Dark, with his shoulders thrown back in the posture that spoke of pure command over everything he did; Dark, who was tall and lean and agile in his frame; Dark with his hands stuffed in his pockets as he sauntered out of the locker room.
Her Dark.
She watched in perplexed admiration at his profile, his person too far for her to see his face, let alone the amethyst eyes she had fallen for. The curious thoughts in her head swam about in a flurry of questions, wondering what he was doing in the boy's locker room, wondering what he was doing in her school, and wondering what he was doing in daylight at all. But the other thoughts, the ones consumed in her love for Dark, simply loved the fact that he was there at all.
She beamed, despite her earlier bad mood, and started to walk towards him before she stopped short again. She looked down at herself. She was in her very unattractive school uniform, script copies piled high in front of her face, with black ink from the copier staining her hands. She blushed furiously. She couldn't possibly let Dark see her in such a way!
With one more wistful glance at the Phantom Thief, Risa quickly backed away, hiding behind the corner and away from sight. She suppressed a squeal that threatened to escape from her lips.
With a deep breath to still her heart, she hurried away to the girl's bathroom to wash up.
At the very least she had gotten to see him. Gotten the chance to see her beloved Dark.
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Satoshi stepped out of the boy's locker room, feeling completely and utterly ridiculous. There he was, dressed to look exactly like the criminal he had focused his life on capturing. And it wasn't simple dress-up; it went far beyond that. The girls had actually spent time and labor on making him look exactly like the Phantom Thief.
The black shirt with the wretched up-turned collar, the loose belt hanging on his hips, the onyx trousers meant for agility while stealing, and the horrible wig to finish it off. In every aspect, they had transformed him into Dark.
And he loathed it.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, standing there. He didn't want to go back to the classroom and to all the squeals and jeers he would receive. He didn't want to be in the play. He didn't want to be stuck in the semi-awkward position of facing Daisuke dressed as a girl.
He leaned back, scowling. There had to be a limit to how much a person could hate their own life.
A flash of movement caught his eyes and he turned to his right, staring down the hallway.
There was no one there.
He could have sworn he had seen someone, or something, down that way. He dismissed the thought, pulled the script from his pocket and headed towards the classroom.
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Risa slipped quietly into the classroom, her hair now tamed, her hands unstained, and the mountainous pile of script copies resting in her arms. She could hear Daisuke and Satoshi already rehearsing, but the large crowd at the front of the classroom obscured them from her vision. She shrugged. It wasn't as though she cared to see Niwa playing a girl or Satoshi portraying Dark in his bland monotone. It had attracted her interest in the beginning, but now, and especially after all that happened today, she didn't care too much about it.
She made her way to the back of the room and deposited her load on her desk, halfway listening to the rehearsal and halfway daydreaming about Dark standing in the hallway, only now he was standing outside her balcony window at night.
"You can't go, Dark. No matter what you say a war is still a war. You'll leave…and you won't come back." Daisuke sounded as though he was actually trying today. Well, at least he wasn't choking like he usually did. Risa smiled and sat down at her desk, pulling the pile of scripts towards her. She took out her stapler and began the tedious work of compiling the papers into booklets while she continued to listen and daydream. She could almost hear the quiet rustle of feathers and flight casting shadows on her bedroom walls.
"Freedert." A murmur of girlish giggling followed the smooth tenor of Satoshi's voice. "You mean everything to me, truly. But there are certain factors in my life that I cannot ignore. Before anything else, I am a Phantom Thief."
Yes, he was a Phantom Thief. A thief that could throw her balcony doors wide open to the evening wind. Risa finished another booklet and placed it in its pile.
"A Phantom Thief whose only purpose is to steal! Is that all this was to you? Another job, another mission? Steal the heart of a petty village girl and then leave?"
"You know it's nothing like that…"
But it was. It was, no matter how many times Risa tried to deny it. He had stolen her heart, captivated her every interest. But never once had he shown her the affection she so longingly craved. But that didn't matter. He called her now, through her wafting drapes, and she rose out of her bed to meet him, her nightgown billowing behind her and dancing at her ankles.
"How can you look at me and say that, Dark?"
"Because it is true."
"No, it isn't. I say it now with all my heart; I love you, Dark. I love you, and I ask you now not to leave me."
She clicked the stapler one more time, frowning. She would have given anything to ask Dark to never leave her; to give up his thieving and stay with her forever. But to do so would be to strip him of the very thing she had fallen for in the first place. To give up his thieving would be to give up the one thing that made him himself. It was foolish for Freedert to ask something so selfish as that, and she cursed Saehara for his lack of sensitivity.
"I can't do that."
Of course he couldn't.
"Why not?"
She couldn't blame Freedert. Risa would have asked the same thing as she stepped through her drapes and out onto the balcony.
"Because I can't give up who I am."
Because she loved him simply because of who he was.
"Not even for me?"
The same words she would have used as she reached for him.
"Not even for love."
What a cruel way of saying it, Dark!
A pause. "Will you think of me?" came Daisuke's minute whisper. There was a sigh.
"You know I will."
"Every passing minute?"
"And on into the passing days."
Yet another dramatic pause. "Come back to me, Dark."
"Now, this is where Dark's black wings rise up from behind him!" Takeshi had cut in, narrating the look and feel of the scene for the class. Risa listened to his narration avidly, envisioning twin towers of jet black feathers emerging before her. "They glisten in the sunset of the hill, the last Freedert and Dark will see of each other."
They glisten, yes, but not in the sunset. They glisten with the light from her bedroom, shadowed and brilliant.
"Then Dark takes Freedert's hand--take Daisuke's hand…Hiwatari, take his hand. Hiwatari-san! There, good. And then, Dark's wings will flap once…"
Once would be enough to send a whirl of wind to sweep across her face, lifting him inches from the parapet to hover in the air. Her hand would be grasped in his as he tugged her up with him.
"…before both are lifted up into the air…"
The cool, night air…
"…and Dark wraps her in his arms…"
…a warm embrace…
"…and then they are encased in his black wings…"
…a haven of soft, glittering white wings…
"…and that's the end of the first act!"
Takeshi slammed his fist into a desktop creating a disruptive bang that shocked Risa out of her daydream. She dropped her stapler and nearly knocked over the pile of finished scripts as she scrambled for her composure. Stupid Saehara, ruining her fantasy.
"All right everyone, we got through that last scene without any accidents, but it needs to be more intense! This is Dark and Freedert's last moment together; we have to make it beautiful so that everyone's heart will be crushed when Freedert first dies!"
Daisuke yelped. "Ow! Takeshi-kun! You hit me!"
"Sorry Daisuke-bozu; I was getting excited. Okay people, from the top of this scene!"
Risa picked her stapler off the floor and put it away, the remains of her daydream lingering in her mind. She gathered the new script booklets and began walking amongst her classmates, handing out the revised version. When she had only two left she realized that she had automatically steered clear of the main characters. She sighed, heading towards the front of the room hesitantly, but when she broke through the crowd to the empty space of the 'stage', she found only Daisuke standing awkwardly in a dress not meant for masculine wearers.
"Niwa-kun, is that your personal copy of the script?"
Daisuke looked over to her and shook his head. "No. I borrowed it from Takeshi-san." He reached out for one of the last two booklets held in her hands. "Thanks, Harada-san. Who's the other one for?"
She fiddled with the booklet, shrugging. "Hiwatari-san, in case he didn't get his already." She glanced around, seemingly without a purpose, but she couldn't find the silent lead anywhere. "Where is he, anyway? I thought you two were just rehearsing a few minutes ago." She stood on tiptoe and scanned the crowd but there was no crown of blue, or faux purple, to be seen.
"I think his cell phone rang. He's in the hall, taking the call." Daisuke started to take a step towards the door. "Why, do you need him? I could get him for you--,"
"No! No, don't bother yourself Niwa-kun," Risa injected, shaking her head. "I was just asking."
"Oh. Well, alright then." Daisuke smiled his clueless smile once more before Takeshi stepped up behind him to criticize his performance. Risa took it as her cue to leave and retreated to the back of the room once more. She sat back down at her desk, having nothing left to do, and tried to recall the last moments of her fantasy. She conjured the mental image of Dark once more, struggled with the parallel ideas of either black wings or white, cursed herself profoundly for even thinking of white wings, wondered where in the world white wings had come from, and swore against the white feather lying at the bottom of her bag before settling into a steady stream of mental pictures showing her in the arms of Dark as they both flew across the night sky.
And his wings were definitely black.
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Satoshi slid the door closed and leaned his back against it, slipping the wig off as he did so. He pulled his vibrating phone from the back pocket of his costume and glanced at the screen. A sharp pang of excitement flashed in his chest.
Detective Saehara.
He flipped open his phone and held the receiver up to his ear, his eyes wide and waiting. "Commander Hiwatari," he answered, although this time his voice had lowered with the anxiety of the chase. Saehara only called for one reason, and it was the one thing Satoshi waited for day after day.
"Commander, we've got another calling card. Looks like the Thief is after a sculpture called 'The Mystic's Dream'. Heard of it?"
Oh, yes, of course he had heard of it. It was a Hikari favorite; and Hikari favorites had a trend for being dangerous. "Yes, I have."
The detective coughed. "Well that's a load off. We've been calling up museum's all day trying to find the damn thing and we haven't hit a tangible source yet. Seems no respectable art historian has even heard of this one. Do you know where it is?"
That was not the proper question. The proper question was not whether he knew its whereabouts or not, but how did Dark know. "On the outskirts of town." And he gave no more than that. Saehara didn't seem satisfied, for he grunted with disapproval, but he said nothing to his remark.
"Oh, uh, good. That gives us a place to start. Do you want to head the frontal police force tonight?"
Satoshi smirked. "Not tonight, Detective. I'll be conducting my own protective forces on the artwork."
Saehara grunted again. "Well then, Commander, do you have any preferences for my men?"
"No."
An agitated cough. "Very good then, sir. The calling card said he'll come at nine."
"I'll be ready."
"Very good, sir."
There was a click and then the blunt dial tone. Satoshi closed the cell and slipped it back into his pocket. He pushed himself off the door and began striding towards the boy's locker room, a new found determination in his steps and a crazed smile grazing his lips.
