Chapter 6
Buzzzzzzzz...
Buzzzzzzzz...
Buzzzzzzzz...
It was, Hisoka thought groggily, one of the worst ways to wake up. Without opening his eyes, barely comprehending where he was, he somehow managed to find his phone and get it to his ear.
"Hello?"
"Hisoka-kun!" came the very loud, very awake voice of Gushoshin. "We managed to find some information on that girl of yours."
"You have?" Hisoka blinked. The room was full of the dim light that came with the early morning.
"Yes, we've put everything together, you can pick it up as soon as you're ready."
Hisoka blinked again, wondering what time it was. If it was before 8, he was going to pluck some tail feathers.
"Hisoka-kun?"
"Yeah, okay," Hisoka muttered, trying to hoist himself upright. "I'll be there as soon as I can." He flipped the phone shut, ran his free hand through his hair and yawned.
And froze.
He was still in Totohome's house. Had fallen asleep there, and spent the whole night.
And Tsuzuki hadn't come.
It wasn't like he in any danger, Hisoka reasoned, trying to push away the irrational hurt; it wasn't like he needed Tsuzuki, or wanted his partner to play babysitter to him, it was just that this was a first. Similar things had happened before, but this time…
Tsuzuki hadn't come.
Tsuzuki had never just… left him before…
But Tsuzuki had to stay with Rika, that demon was still out there, and she was still in danger; and maybe Tsuzuki hadn't realized where he had gone.
There was no reason to feel hurt…
No reason at all….
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Tsuzuki watched as the sun crested the horizon and rose, as the pink, orange and gold of dawn melted into the clear blue morning sky. Rika was once again asleep, her soft breathing the only sound in the small room. A quick glance at his watch showed Tsuzuki that it was after 8; and Hisoka still had not come back.
Tsuzuki tried to quell his worry, Hisoka was fully capable of taking care of himself, even if something had gone wrong…
Even if he'd run into that demon again, or the person who had summoned it…
Rika murmured and turned in her sleep, and Tsuzuki gave himself a mental shake, pushing away the dark thoughts. As soon as Rika was awake, they would head over to Totohome's house and find out what had happened to his partner.
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Getting off Totohome's bed turned out not to be the simple task that it would seem to be. In placing his hands on the edge of the mattress to boost himself up, one hand slipped, landing hard on the box spring, the sting travelling up his arm. The mattress shifted as his weight fell back against it. Hisoka let out a long stream of curses that cut off abruptly when he saw the book.
Hisoka pulled it out from between the mattress and box spring where it had been hidden. He hoisted himself up and, giving the mattress a tug to right it, sat back down on the bed.
It was a small book with a plain black cover, and Hisoka turned it over in his hands several times before opening it.
It was a diary.
Or rather, a journal; as Totohome said in the first entry, only girls kept diaries.
The first entry was dated a little over a year ago. With a rising sense of excitement, Hisoka began to read.
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Tsuzuki nearly jumped out of his skin when Rika suddenly sat bolt upright in the bed, her eyes open wide, breathing heavily.
"Rika?" Tsuzuki asked, getting to his feet and moving towards her. Her head turned at the sound of his voice, but her eyes were glassy and unfocused, and Tsuzuki wasn't sure she was seeing him.
"Rika?" he repeated.
She blinked and her body relaxed slightly. "Tsuzuki?"
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Y-yes," she stuttered. "Just a bad dream. Has Hisoka come back?"
Tsuzuki shook his head and Rika gave him a long searching look. "You're worried."
"It's fine," Tsuzuki assured her with a crooked smile.
"No," Rika said, climbing out of bed. "You wouldn't be worried if there was nothing to be worried about. Let me get dressed and we can go and find him."
Tsuzuki caught her hand as she passed him on her way to the bathroom. He gave her fingers a squeeze. "Thank you."
The returning smile was warm. "Of course!"
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The first entry was dated a little over a year earlier, starting with Totohome's description of a kitchen fire at the restaurant where he worked. Apparently a good portion of the man's left side, his arm and hand had received severe burns, requiring skin grafts and rehabilitation.
Totohome wrote of the frustration of trying to work with his damaged limb, the pain of the grafts and the nerve damage. Finally, around the 10th entry, Totohome mentioned a girl named 'Kiki-san' whom he had met in the burn ward.
Apparently Kiki-san's injuries were worse than his were, she had been in the hospital for almost a year, since her apartment had caught fire with her trapped inside.
Over the next several entries Totohome wrote about Kiki-chan, how nice she was, how brave, how she argued with the doctors who were trying to reconstruct her face and hands. About how she whispered secrets to him when they were alone, and how she promised him that when they left the hospital, they could stay together forever.
After nearly a dozen entries, Hisoka found one where Totohome mentioned that something Kiki-chan said had disturbed him. She wanted him to get some things for her, but he didn't say what. A few entries later, he and Kiki-chan had moved into his house, and then things started getting weird.
Weird sounds in the night, waking up to find Kiki-chan watching him, things moving by themselves, and Kiki-chan brought home a puppy and killed it in the kitchen. Fear was the predominant theme in Totohome's later entries. He wrote how he couldn't stop what was happening, he was afraid of the girl he'd fallen in love with, and everywhere he went, he could feel eyes watching him…
Hisoka felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickle as he read the last lines, he could feel those eyes himself.
He looked up, straight into the eyes of the mutant pitbull from Hell.