Hisa sighed heavily. They'd been on the trail of Kiyoshi Fujimoto for almost two days, and not one person had seen the man passing through any of the villages in the eastern Rukongai. Kohana grilled an inn keeper, showing him several sketches of Fujimoto, but the man swore he hadn't seen him. Kohana stepped away from the desk and Hisa followed her outside. Her friend yawned and stretched her arms to the sky.
"Think he's lying?" Hisa wondered.
"No," Kohana answered. "Fujimoto is likely camping out away from people. He'll slip, though, and we'll be right there when he does."
"So what now?"
Kohana glanced toward the sky. "We wait him out. Keep looking. He's got a day or so on us so we've gotta keep moving."
That's what the women did. Hisa analyzed the sketches of Kiyoshi Fujimoto. He was a lanky man, with a long, square jaw and a razor-like nose. His ebony eyes were sunken and drooped like he was forever asleep. He had unmistakable laugh lines around his thin mouth. His mousey hair hung lazily in front of his eyes. Hisa looked up from the sketches, only to stare at the man in the flesh. Only, this man had dark, shorter hair and younger features. Hisa folded the papers and tucked them away in her belt. The man approaching wore a Shinigami uniform.
"That's the brother," Hisa whispered to Kohana, who nodded in turn. The women passed by the man, Hisa turning her eyes to the ground to avoid eye contact. They continued walking until he was out of sight.
"That was Haruto Fujimoto," Kohana said quietly. "It'd be best if we proceed carefully."
Hisa nodded. Normally, the thought of dealing with a Shinigami didn't intimidate her, but the fact that the target's brother was Second Division? That was unnerving. "We'll head in the direction he was coming from," Hisa instructed. "He wouldn't have taken a direct path, if he was smart. But we have an idea." The two women continued forward, Kohana checking behind them every now and then. Hisa sympathized with her. The last thing they needed was a highly skilled Second Division Shinigami following them.
Darkness began to fall, and the two quickly found a small inn to rest. Shabby, but still present, Hisa and Kohana settled in for the evening. When she awoke, Hisa stretched her neck, then moved her arms to push her hair out of her face.
Her arms wouldn't budge.
Through her sleepy haze, Hisa looked down at her arms, trapped firmly at her sides with thick rope. Her feet were tied with the same rope, and her sword was no longer on her person.
"What did you do?!" a strained voice demanded.
Hisa smelled the dust, the mildew in the air. Her mind was filled with bricks, her head rolling to the side. She couldn't see past the haze, no matter how much she blinked, how hard she thought.
"They were looking for you, Kiyoshi," another voice explained. "I couldn't just let them continue."
"You brought them here!"
Hisa heard wood scrape against wood, a chair move across the floor. "They don't know where they are. Calm down, brother." Footsteps thumped closer and closer to where Hisa lay against the wall, and she tried to hold her head up to look at the approaching figure, but her head wouldn't respond. "It's a shame, too," the voice whispered, fingers grasping Hisa's chin. "Such a pretty thing doing a corrupt man's dirty work." The warm flesh of a thumb caressed Hisa's cheek, and Hisa ordered her body away from the touch, but her head only managed to loll to the left.
"What about the other one?" the first voice asked.
The hand drew away from Hisa, and the figure stood, robes quietly sweeping against the floor. "She'll be out for quite awhile," the figure explained. "She put up a fight, so I gave her more than was probably necessary."
Drugged, Hisa realized. She and Kohana had been drugged. She forced her head to roll to the right, and through the haze, she could make out Kohana laying on the floor against the wall, motionless. What now? Hisa thought. How are we going to get out of this?