September 12, 2003
3 years, 2 months, 11 day prior to Incident
His tenshi-sama was the Shi no Kage.
That... was an irrefutable fact.
He'd found proof of this the fifth time he'd visited the haven she'd suggested. The portal of entrance was opaque on the outer side but clear inside the hidden room, so he'd been able to see a variety of uneasy characters entering the statue and writing on the opened scroll. These, Teru had accurately guessed, were the clients tenshi-sama had spoken of.
On June 21st, a haggard looking woman had stumbled in and begun writing furiously. Finally unable to withstand his curiosity, Teru had peered through the window to see what she was writing.
'Please kill Hoshita Karuto.'
The name was familiar, but at the time, he'd only been mildly puzzled. It wasn't until the next morning, when a news reporter had announced minor politician Hoshita Karuto as another victim of the Shi no Kage that Teru had started getting suspicious.
He'd rebelled against the idea at first, of course, because how could his angel possibly be that wretched mass murderer? But name after name, victim after victim, client after client had come and gone, and he could no longer dispute the theory that had so firmly embedded into his mind.
Perhaps his tenshi-sama wasn't an angel after all? Perhaps she was just another horrible sinner, and he'd misjudged the situation?
He had spent a fortnight agonizing over this, so when he'd heard his tenshi-sama at the Gion Matsuri, Teru had been eager for the chance to finally get some sort of resolution. If this was untrue, if she had nothing to hide, the answer would be a conclusive 'no'.
He hoped it was a no, otherwise...
His angel - Sakura, the boy had called her - had clearly been displaying the moral integrity he'd seen from her before, though on a lesser scale. So he'd asked, thinking he'd be proven wrong.
... In her evasion, however, he saw confirmation instead.
His knowledge of tenshi-sama wasn't matching up. The ends weren't meeting. Was there something he was overlooking? A missing side to the triangle?
The next time a client came in, Teru paid close attention to what they wrote on the scroll. Instead of noting the names of the targets she accepted, he took care to read out the reasons.
He raped my sister.
Accepted.
She cheated on me.
Rejected.
My grandmother is deathly ill because her boss wouldn't let her get treatment and refused to pay his share of her health insurance.
Accepted.
He's a liability to our family name.
Rejected.
He's embezzling funds from our company, and blackmailing the police into keeping quiet.
Accepted.
He keeps beating our children and I'm afraid he'll try to rape our daughter soon.
Accepted.
And so, Mikami Teru finally understood.
Normal humans wouldn't realize why these men needed to die because they were uninformed. Ignorant. They only saw the smiling masks of amiability, and not the bottomless pits of blackness in these men's hearts. His tenshi-sama was weeding the world of these two faced liars, and the masses didn't even know.
Sakura-sama was doing them a favour, and they repaid her by calling her a serial killer and a deranged, cold-blooded murderer.
This enraged him, but he wouldn't speak out. He would follow Tenshi-sama's advice and lie in wait, biding his time until an opportune moment to clear her name revealed itself.
Mikami Teru would let the world know that the Shi no Kage was an angel.
Fuyuno Sakura - age 13, 3rd year junior high
Mikami Teru - age 18, 3rd year high school
AN
I don't know how well I did, but that was easier than I thought. Huh.
Now I can spam you guys with the chapters I wrote up while procrastinating the summer scene! :D
Candy Dream: Miku was napping lol. And she wouldn't have called either way, cause she recognizes Mello.