Disclaimer: All fandom-based and real-life entities, including other art and literary works mentioned in this piece do not belong to the author with the exception of original characters, plot, and subplots. The views and opinions of the characters do not necessarily reflect that of the author.
Zwischenzug
by four-eyed 0-0
Part II
"Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible."
– Eugène Ionesco, Découvertes
o-o
Theory
Hitching a ride to the Reikai meant having to look for Botan who, more or less, was occupied with her duties if not with other dealings that entailed Yusuke's involvement as well as theirs, by default.
But fortunately, Kurama had mastered the art of crossing to the other realm without anyone else's help. He laid himself down on his bed, fully dressed on a Sunday morning, before slipping into the familiar trance of being simultaneously awake and asleep.
It was as different a feeling as any, one that many would be frightened of since it was technically inducing oneself to sleep paralysis, as the soul lifted itself off one's body. His last thought before he felt the stiff, now less suffocating jolt, was Yusuke's head colliding with a baseball bat to spare him the difficulty of an inexperienced.
It had been years ago, but it didn't fail to make him smile even as he slipped away.
Kurama opened his eyes and found himself standing on the Road of Yomi, feet away from the double doors that led to the Hall of Judgment. The wind softly blew his sideburns astray, and his hand automatically connected with a lock of hair to keep it out of his face as he walked over to the intercom.
He could've broken his way in like in the good old days. The alarms would go off and send the whole place into bedlam, and he would get a good laugh then get away with it just because he personally knew the King. But he thought against it, as the times had become more demanding of serious sentiments and he was in no mood to pull a prank on anyone.
He pressed the doorbell and spoke to the intercom, "This is Kurama, asking passage from Koenma."
With a resounding creak, the doors opened instantly, and he admitted himself into the dark, tiled hallway lined up by towering pillars that held up the rafters supporting the massive stone roof. After years of walking the same path, he'd become less daunted by the general vibe it gave off. He'd realized since that it was actually the idea, as one should only ever walk the path once upon their death.
He stood to the next set of doors, and spoke once more to the intercom. The sliding doors revealed to him the disorderly office, ogres running about and yelling orders at each other with the bright overhead lights providing a sense of urgency to the air as was fitting. Kurama failed to comprehend why Koenma never opted to have his office transferred somewhere more peaceful, but he guessed it was one that came with running this division for hundreds of years.
He stopped in front of the King's desk and bowed in greeting.
"Kurama, I knew you'd come."
The addressed only tilted his head at the toddler sitting on the high chair, the towering piles of paperwork untouched and neglected at the moment on his desk. He knew he was stalling the King from getting his other tasks done in time, but he needed to know.
"That should mean you're aware of what I came here for, Koenma."
It had been a week since the second attack and three from the first. Surely, the Reikai had come up with the test results. No matter how occupied it appeared to be, Koenma's office always had to accommodate more work as they came and went.
Koenma released a sigh—one of relief more than exasperation—, his pacifier bobbing up and down just once before he yelled for the ogre named George.
A screech of skin on tiles and the blue fellow appeared next to the toddler, harried and panting. "Lord Koenma, you called for me?"
Koenma rolled his eyes. "If you're not George, then I didn't."
"Lord Koenma—!"
The toddler flicked his wrist to halt the ogre's whines of oppression and said, "Get me facsimiles of the files of Cases 2003-A-104 and 2003-I-104. If you're not back in five minutes, I'm sending you off as a ferryman to the River Styx for the rest of your weary life."
After choking with his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, George galloped away, leaving dust hanging in the air at his wake.
Kurama laughed lightly. "You really enjoy getting a rise out of them, don't you?"
"It kills boredom," said Koenma, gesturing for him to take the seat in front of his table. "But sometimes it gets too routinely it becomes just as boring."
Kurama cocked his head, a small smile on his face. "Maybe next time I can help."
The King raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't wish it."
"But it's for free."
"There's no truth in the saying that the best things in life are free."
Kurama chuckled, crossing his legs as he leant on the backrest of the client's chair. "If you say so."
The toddler cast his eyes on the ceiling, a picture of exhaustion. "I was actually going to send the file this afternoon, but as you've come to collect it, I think that spares me one less messenger from the workforce even for a while. Things are too rowdy the way they are."
Kurama decided he didn't have to answer; he was far too anxious to be less than eager to find out about the results. It didn't even matter that Koenma got off with free messengering through him. It was a fair bargain, after all.
George was scuttling back, two manila folders clutched in one hand. As he came to a stop, bending backwards at his knees to brake his momentum, Kurama was positive his bare feet were smoking. The ogre didn't mind though, too relieved to have made it in time to care about the blisters that would sprout later on.
He thrust the folders in Koenma's face, one finger lifting to point to the huge clock hanging on the wall from across the room. Koenma lifted his lazy eyes to check and flicked his wrist once more to dismiss the disheveled ogre who bared his yellowing teeth at them in delight before bowing and sauntering away.
"He's impressive as always," said Kurama for the ogre's benefit.
Koenma opened one of the folders. "He knows what I'm capable of," he said, eyes on the documents. He flitted through them briefly before handing both folders to Kurama.
His finger slid under the cover of the first folder, flipping it open to reveal the five-page document. He silently scanned through them, skipping the overview, eyes searching for the conclusions.
He paused at the fifth page, focusing on the red-inked kanji symbols.
In theory, the creatures were found to be hanyou.
He suppressed the urge to voice out the strange tone from the choice of words and instead opened the second folder automatically to the last page. Unsurprisingly, he found the same passage.
"In theory?" said Kurama, looking up at Koenma. He knew what it meant, but that didn't mean it made sense.
o-o
Chiaki blew hair off her face as she set the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter with much effort, thanks to her still injured hand. It had been almost a week since she'd acquired the handicap, since she'd last seen the redhead and the little demon.
Taking off her face mask, she tossed it to the trash bin to join its forgotten sisters. Since the incident, she'd been wearing one whenever she had to cross the front door. She took it off at the gate as she headed out and wore it again as she arrived. It was most unlike her to be paranoid, but as she'd gathered what little was left of the yellow powder by her door and examined them under the microscope, she was unable to identify the species the pollen grains came from.
Thinking about it for the better part of every hour, how was she supposed to know? The plant should have come from the demon's realm and, for all intents and purposes, be more dangerous than the redhead cared to tell her.
But it was not only the yellow powder that she found after she'd decided that it was safe for her to venture out into the open. Inches away from the threshold were a pair of dark, round objects, as small as ten-yen coins, glinting. With her tweezers, she'd taken one of it and held it to the light.
The moment she'd realized it was a contact lens, she let it drop into a separate plastic specimen holder before taking everything away with her latex-gloved hand. She grimly noted that she should've figured the mystery behind the demonic eyes sooner.
She didn't, of course. Which was expected of her. Evidence should always weigh more than assumptions, and not putting faith into anything without enough reason to was a habit of hers.
Sinking into one of the chairs by the dining table, she closed her eyes and hung her head resignedly. Walking from the local grocer's was a pain without a good left hand. She was bent on cursing the gods for giving her such a hard time, but it wasn't like she didn't choose to play heroine out of mere stupidity.
Besides, she was thankful enough that she was given leave from teaching for a week without deductions to her salary. It was a stretch coming from the faculty, as she didn't have the best working relations with the rest of the teachers. And the students.
Not to mention that the demons didn't bother her for days.
She hadn't heard from her colleagues since the incident, and it didn't strike her as odd. Knowing that the demons had set out to erase her memory of the incident, she was certain they had done so to them. She was probably the only one lucky enough to have escaped the pollen wrath, and she was unable to fully convince herself that she somehow outsmarted them.
Why they'd let her go about, fully aware of the truth, was only really because of either of two things: either they thought they'd scared her enough to stay out of trouble or they thought she wasn't worth the trouble.
Somehow she wasn't really convinced that she was, in essence, spared.
She began stacking the contents of the grocery bag on the counter, separating the dry and wet goods as she went. A cigarette found its way to her mouth, and she worked wordlessly, crossing the few feet to the fridge and cupboards.
She was almost done with setting the kitchen into some order when the doorbell rang. Cursing the blasted person who cut her smoking spree short, she snuffed out the cigarette on the ashtray by the counter. It was necessary lest something unlikely happened; like the wind picking up speed and the stick getting carried off to the flammable stuff and…
Chiaki scoffed. She'd gotten really out of it lately. The wind wouldn't even get past the shuttered windows.
Plucking another white-and-blue disposable mask from the box sitting atop the fridge, she strode to the door and peeped through the hole. No one was in sight, and against her better judgment, she took her ever dependable baseball bat from its perch and held it with resolve.
She unlocked the door and unlatched the chain, opening it as suddenly as she'd deemed enough to take aback whoever it was who thought it funny to prank someone on a Sunday morning.
Waiting a beat for some reaction, Chiaki stayed inside, still clutching her baseball bat. Nobody breathed the same air she did for several moments, and deciding that it was a clear coast, she stuck her head out.
No one was in sight.
Chiaki's eyes roved the open walkway, blinking out the emptiness, with only the subtle wind whistling against the trees lining up the parking lot. Her heart calmed down as she released a breath, and she let her gaze drop on the threshold.
Startled, she almost dropped the bat and maimed her foot when she realized a parcel was innocently posited merely eight inches from where she stood.
She shrunk back into her apartment, sliding the door closed and leaving a small space to hold out the bat and poke at the package the size of a large shoebox. Someone leaving it outside then bolting for their lives screamed a threat. It was definitely dubious, as whoever left it had not the mind to put it in the post box by the complex entryway. It was either it was set to harm a single person (me) or it was meant for her to find immediately.
By the looks of the parcel—no writings, no postage stamps, no anything but tape that held it together and closed—, she settled for harmful.
The bat found its way to poke at the deviously innocent box, sliding it a few inches to the right. Chiaki all but shrieked and banged the door closed, taking a mighty leap to the wooden floor of the hallway, outdoor slippers and all, and skidding to a halt, waiting for the worst to come.
One second. Two seconds. Three. Four. Five.
Nothing.
Thirty seconds.
Silence.
With bated breath, she inched her way back to the door and slid it slightly open, risking to get her face blown to bits as she poked at the package again.
Nothing.
No explosives or knives thrown her way.
Footsteps echoed from the direction of the lifts and Chiaki dissolved inside her apartment once more, pressing her back to the door as she waited for the person to get a decent distance from her unit.
Much to her chagrin, the person actually stopped in front of her door and rang the doorbell.
"Professor Aoshi?"
She took a moment to roll her eyes and put the bat down soundlessly before she opened the door and smiled at Kitagawa.
"Ah, Professor, good morning," said the housewife, bowing to her. "Are you all right?" she asked, noting the mask Chiaki was wearing.
Chiaki sniffed and cleared her throat, deciding to play along. "I went down with a cold."
Kitagawa adopted a solemn look. "Oh, I hope you get well soon."
"Thank you," said Chiaki. "What was it, by the way?"
She gestured towards the box with the hand not holding her groceries. "I thought the parcel must be yours."
No shit, thought Chiaki. She bared her teeth hidden under the mask, hoping that, in effect, her eyes would take the impression of a smile and nodded. "Ah, yes, I was just collecting it. Thank you, Kitagawa."
"You're welcome, Professor."
Either Kitagawa didn't know a parcel without markings smelled fishy or she was just… dumb. Chiaki couldn't blame her. Being a housewife day in and day out must've messed with the gears in her head, leaving them rusty after prolonged disuse.
She almost felt sorry for the thirty-something woman. There was a reason Chiaki never thought of settling down with a man who didn't want their wives to earn more than they did. Call it modern feminism or whatnot, but Chiaki wouldn't wish to live only in the shadow of a man and waste away inside the house to come at his beck and call.
Maybe she just really hated their being full of themselves most of the time.
Chiaki bowed to the housewife as she ambled to the unit two doors down and waited until she was inside before using the bat to drag the troublesome package into her apartment.
It was surprisingly light, and although she was certain bombs and other explosives shouldn't weigh like this, it didn't deter her from thinking it was something else entirely harmful. For all she knew, it might contain anthrax or some other microbiological weaponry, or that powder Kurama was bent on using on her. Just because they'd let her go that time, that didn't mean they would never do it again.
After she'd set the box to a far corner in the genkan, she made her way to the kitchen to fetch a pair of latex gloves, a cutter, and a spray bottle of ethanol.
Crouching by the door, she painstakingly cut through the edges of the box with one hand and lifted the flap away with the blade, spraying alcohol frantically at her immediate surroundings and into the package for a good thirty seconds.
Deeming it safe to check, she took a deep breath before leaning forward to peer into the sodden package, revealing a brown, paperback text inside, the cover wrapped with celluloid gleaming with the accumulated alcohol through the light coming from small glass window above the doorframe. Chiaki twisted her head, making out the broad, black, and brushstroke letters on the cover, and they read:
Youkai: A Biological Perspective
Y. K.
Her breath hitched in her throat, and Chiaki dropped the blade as her fingers closed in on the book, dripping from the alcohol. She read the engraved letters once more, and lingered on "Y. K."
Who could it be…?
o-o
"In theory?" Yusuke said, echoing Kurama's earlier question to Koenma.
Even in the dim lighting of the diner, Kurama could see the faint lines on the detective's face, incredulous and puzzling. He held the papers Kurama had dropped by to give them, and Kuwabara held the same expression after snatching the documents from a still shocked Yusuke.
"Hanyou?" Kuwabara muttered.
Hiei, who said nothing, turned to look outside the window instead, waiting for Kurama to explain.
"From the findings, it can be concluded that the creatures were half-demons. They had the physical manifestations of such, but as the first of them possessed none of the sacred energies, the Reikai wasn't able to find out how they could be hanyou."
"And the ones from the second attack?" asked Yusuke.
"They had no youkai but had reiki. Which is again different from that expected of hanyou."
Yusuke knitted his eyebrows, confused. "But I am a hanyou…"
"You're not," said Kurama, holding up a hand before Yusuke could open his mouth to protest. "It took forty-four generations before the dormant genes Raizen passed onto his offspring were expressed because of a trigger. You are, strictly speaking, only about one-eight trillionth demon, Yusuke. It's common to mistake the effects of atavism as that of being half-demon, but they're essentially different."
A moment of silence passed as they all let that sink in. As Koenma had said, the case was most singular, coming from the fact that no one could explain the findings. For now, all they could do was speculate, and suffice it to say that not even the Reikai could come up with plausible explanations.
Which was why Kurama had put off going home to discuss it with the rest of the team. But from the look on their faces, it was turning out that none of them could shed light to the mystery. In fact, they would need answers.
He should've known sooner.
"What does it mean?" Kuwabara finally spoke. "That they're a different kind of hanyou?"
"It's possible they're a completely different lineage of creatures. Different species, even," said Kurama, broadcasting the first things he'd established with himself upon exiting Koenma's office.
"But the Reikai held no records of them till now," said Yusuke.
"Exactly. It's almost as if they'd evolved."
But it was a backwards way of evolving, Kurama was inclined to say. Evolution was supposed to entail the passing on of favorable traits, and the lack of all or one of the sacred energies would not render anybody well-adapted to the world. That evolution took place every several hundreds of years didn't even count.
The three realms didn't undergo vast changes over the past decade, and that should be enough for Kurama to let go of the notion as it wouldn't require any living creature to adapt to new environments. But he didn't because it was as good a reason as any at this point into their investigation.
Kuwabara decided it was incredulous. "With 'as if' as the keywords."
"Of course," said Kurama. "However, we can't dismiss it. Anything is possible at the moment."
"Hold it," said Kuwabara, frowning at the papers he was reading again. "It says here that the creatures had no souls."
This captured the attention of both Yusuke and Hiei.
"Say what?" Yusuke was sputtering.
Kurama nodded. "The Reikai had no clue why that is."
"We're on a dead-end, aren't we?"
"Seems like it."
Yusuke scratched at his head. "What do we do then? The witnesses know nothing."
"I'm lost. I've read lots of material over my thousand years of living and I've never seen anything like this before," said Kurama, more to himself than anyone else. "We can only seek the help of other people."
"Who?" said Yusuke.
Kurama sighed, defeated. "That's the question now, isn't it?"
"But don't you find it weird? The attacks all took place in laboratories."
Their reactions to this statement were cut off as a single beeping sound came from their pockets, making them jump.
"Botan," the three of them said, whipping out the compact communicator.
"Boys, there's another lab attack."
At the news, each one of them had their own rendition of their shock.
Kurama settled for silence.
o-o
The steady drone of the radio served as white noise to Chiaki's otherwise silent apartment. She'd been staring at the empty patch of cream wall across from the dining table, her right hand holding the book that she'd taken for reading after she finished her lunch. It proved safe after much inspection, and now that she'd read a good hundred pages into it, she was tired and confused.
Not that she didn't understand any of it; in fact, the text was anything like she'd read before, complete with illustrations and sketches. But only of the anatomy of… demons.
But what surprised her was that the text was handwritten, the sketches inked, the pages yellow as though hailing from at least a decade back. As she scanned the pages, she felt like it was more of an investigative journal—a daily report on findings—than a textbook. A daily record too elaborate for her to dismiss as a ploy.
The handwriting was eerily familiar, and the book's dubious origin kept her at the edge of her seat.
She shouldn't have read it but she did anyway. And now she felt like she'd been living a lie her entire life. When she lifted her eyes off the hundredth page, her apartment seemed smaller.
She was never aware that the science of demons was a thing. She'd thought that whoever left the book at her doorstep must have wanted to pull a sick prank on her, but even before she opened it, she was half-convinced that none of this was meant for her to find funny.
Humans existed and had their sciences. Demons, as she'd been proved wrong about years ago, existed and should therefore have their own sciences. The adage that science was a means of understanding the nuances and bettering the life of humankind had made its way deep into her, and right now, it was difficult to grasp that anything supernatural could actually be.
Biological studies entailed all forms of life—human and animal and plant and… demon.
Demons were painted in folktales conceived by the ancestors and continued to be a ruse to her even after she'd gotten wind of the news that the "barrier" had been taken down, that demons and humans could finally coexist as they had eons ago.
But only a week prior, everything she'd clung onto and believed to be true seemed to have been all for naught.
She could see things—ghosts—even when she was younger and she'd dismissed them as a figment of her imagination. Nobody saw the ghosts except for her, and nobody talked about them. She kept mum, ignored the apparitions even when they realized she could see them, and, in fear of being labelled a weirdo, didn't try convincing anybody that she did, in fact, saw them… down the hall, by the river bend, on the highway.
When she'd finally learned to latch onto absolute truth founded on empirical evidence, she was able to push the things she'd rather not believe in to the back of her mind.
But only a week ago, everything changed. Now, holding the book in her hands made her feel less of the scientist she'd established herself to be.
They said being a person of science should make you ready for changes, as science was a constant cycle of proving and disproving. Einstein once said that the more he studied the universe, the more he believed in a higher power.
Was this it? Was this the "higher power" the renowned genius kept talking about? That there were actual things beyond the explanation of science?
It was a hazy notion in itself, as the book she now held proved that even the supernatural was tangible, and could be studied in the language she thought only humans knew.
But again, maybe that was the reason there was a "higher power" responsible of all of this in the first place. That there existed another world and that there were actual gods she only worshipped out of habit and not out of faith.
She so wanted to bang her head on the table right now.
Who was this "Y. K." and why did they have to give her the book?
She started as a single word from the radio registered in her thoughts, and she dropped the book as she turned her full attention to the device.
"—reported this month. The fire, which started in one of the units of the research facility, left three casualties and six injured."
"What the freaking hell," Chiaki muttered, rising from her seat. Someone actually died this time, and she was certain it had everything to do with last week's incident.
Her eyes roved the kitchen, trying to find her bearings.
Okay, calm down. Let's deal with this one by one:
(1) You got into this jackshit strictly six days ago because apparently, the sweet things decided to play in Stella-Bio.
(2) You were spared from the pollen storm because somehow, they decided you're not worth the trouble or you somehow managed to outsmart them, which is really very unlikely.
(3) You received a book on demons left in front of your doorstep and you've read it since it didn't try to kill you.
(4) Kurama and Hiei will most probably be involved in this third lab incident. And they are demons.
(5) They can probably give you answers with regards to the book.
(6) They are most probably in the lab by now.
Chiaki dashed to her bedroom to get her jacket. They'd most likely do something underhanded if she confronted them in private, so she'd better come up with a plan to back them to a figurative corner. Even as she was walking to the front door, she couldn't decide whether this would be another tour de force with death, and the thought made her pause.
She couldn't really trust them now, could she?
But she was safe. They didn't do anything outward to cause her more trouble in six days.
The moment she stopped in her tracks, she realized she hadn't turned off the radio. It was now spouting a fresh garbled string of words that reached her ears, and she did a double-take when she heard a name.
"Professor Yamamoto Koji."
Thinking that she was only imagining it, an overwhelming sense of urgency pushed her to dash down the hallway, using her good hand to brake her momentum as she grabbed the kitchen counter and listened over the sound of her own heart beating.
"The scientist was found dead in his apartment at Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, at approximately 11:38 this morning."
Chiaki automatically glanced at the clock hanging by the wall, reading 12:01 in the afternoon.
"The police are considering the angle of suicide as there was a note found held by the body, which, after investigation, did not show any signs of physical trauma and assault."
Suicide? Yamamoto Koji?
"Yamamoto is a renowned scientist from Stella-Bio and a professor at Tokyo Daigaku."
Chiaki suddenly felt weak in the knees and she grasped at the countertop desperately. Even with all the things going on inside her head, she couldn't help but draw one, reverberating conclusion, the only one that made sense to her now.
Her eyes locked on the book innocently sitting on the table. The brushstroke letters became even bolder and blacker to her as she realized who the author was.
It was Yamamoto Koji.
A/N:
(edit #1, 09:06 PST, 08.07.15)
* Yusuke is 1/8,796,093,022,208 demon. Raizen's offspring is 1/2 demon. If it took 44 generations before Raizen's genes were expressed as a phenotype (Yusuke), then it means the half-demon-ness of the original was halved 43 times = 1/(2^43) = 1/8,796,093,022,208. I was bent on letting Kurama pronounce the exact value but no, that would give the boys a headache. Hence I settled for one-eight trillionth. I had to think about it again before I realized the initial value was very wrong.
(edit #2, 09:06 PST, 08.07.15)
* The case file cataloging system used in this story follows this format: YYYY-Hiragana-CaseNumber. The hiragana characters should signify the order at which cases of virtually the same nature occur. In this chapter, I used A and I as hiragana characters to mean that under Case 104 there are two incidents reported to have the same nature and that they're the first two with such nature.
Yey! So we're actually down to this chapter! I know that it's taking a bit long for the real plot to get rolling but I hope you've enjoyed this chapter nonetheless. I need to set things up, and I'm going by the outline I've made. So yeah.
How did you find the chapter? Please let me know by reviewing! I really need your comments and insights on the goings-on in the chapters. It gets me going and it helps me improve my writing.
Thank you to all who reviewed and added this story to their faves and alerts! You keep me fueled!
See you next chapter! :)