Arc 1: The American Psycho [IX]

Chapter: Like Mother, Like Daughter.

"I have a few more questions for you, Mrs. Forger." Hikigaya said to the woman restrained to the bed. "After then you are free to go."

"I will try my best to answer them." Yor Forger stated. "I have only one request – that you do not ask me any questions about my family. They have nothing to do with my mission."

Hikigaya had no reason not to believe her. Although he did wonder why the woman had brought along her daughter to the hotel. The only reason that came to mind was so that she could establish an alibi. Kids were gullible. If told, they could easily lie for their parents. He didn't like it, how she planned on using her kid. But she was a professional assassin, and not a contender for 'The Mother of the Year' award. As such, he decided to let it go. At least for the time being. There were more important matters to discuss.

"Why are you in this hotel?" He asked.

"To kill The American Psycho."

He figured as much. But he wanted a longer answer. "What makes you so sure that he would be in this hotel?"

"It was mentioned in L's notes." Yor Forger stated. "Two days ago a rental girlfriend was murdered and the killer's modus operandi matched the handiwork of The American Psycho. He is in Ikebukuro. But not for long. L thinks he is a rich businessman, who has to travel a lot, so he must be staying in a hotel. He has expensive tastes, otherwise he wouldn't be able to afford those high end escorts and prostitutes which were his first few victims. The White Lotus is the most luxurious hotel in Ikebukuro. The body of the murdered woman was found in an alley, a few blocks away from this place. It makes sense that he would be staying here."

Hikigaya was able to follow the logic behind her explanation or rather, L's explanation, since she got all this from his notes. Mrs. Forger was right. L had pretty much everything figured out. Except for the killer's identity. He wondered how he was able to do that, work a case and not stick around to figure out the killer's true identity. It would be different, if he wasn't able to solve the case, because it was too difficult, but he didn't think that was the case with L. He was one of the greatest detectives on the planet. Yet, his handling of this particular investigation, how he left the case unsolved on purpose, letting someone else figure out the true identity of the killer, it made Hikigaya question whether L truly deserved the title of a great detective. But who was he to judge? Oh right, he was a very judgmental person.

"Two days ago." He murmured to himself. "Tell me if I am wrong, but wasn't it a Monday, two days ago?"

"Yes it was." Yor Forger stated. "If you want to know some of the finer details, you can take a look at L's notes yourself. I brought the file with me. It's in my shoulder bag."

"Yes, I think I will take a look." Hikigaya said.

He retrieved the file from the shoulder bag which was kept on a table in the other room and got to work immediately. For a while, neither of them spoke. Yor Forger didn't say anything, didn't request him to remove the restraints, didn't ask for a glass of water or demand a trip to the bathroom. She stayed completely quiet and let him study L's notes in silence. Somewhere down the line, CJ stirred and mumbled something incoherent and he was reminded of the fact that he was present. It seemed like the effects of the drug was slowly wearing off.

For ten minutes, nobody spoke a single word and then Hikigaya closed the file, lowered his head and cursed out loud. "Fucking psychopath."

"Yes, he is." Yor Forger stated. "That's why I plan on killing him."

Hikigaya let out a dry chuckle. "I am actually considering letting you do that. But no, death is too easy. For a guy like him, it's mercy. Besides, you don't look like a woman who will make him suffer. You are a pro. You will make it quick. Efficient. Painless. I don't want that for him." His voice darkened. "He has to pay. He has to suffer."

Yor Forger didn't know what to say. The truth potion in her system let her speak only the truth. "I am not a monster. I don't torture my targets. I just put an end to their life."

"What if I told you he killed that poor woman because it was a Monday and he was feeling blue?" Hikigaya countered. "No, he is a psychopath. He doesn't have such a wide range of feelings or emotions. He was just trying to fit in, act normal, relate with others and someone must have told him it's Monday, why are you not feeling blue and so he decided to feel blue and kill someone, just so he could pretend to be in touch with his humanity. Or, it could be that he was in Ikebukuro and someone told him about the rental girlfriend services and he decided to try it out. But when he found out that rental girlfriends weren't like hookers and no sex was involved, he killed them out of sheer anger and annoyance. Both reasons seem plausible. I hope it's the former and not the latter."

Despite the mental haze created by the truth potion, Yor Forger was able to think. It seemed like the effects of the potion was lessening over time. "He killed her because it was Monday? But doesn't that make her death even more meaningless?"

"All these murders are meaningless." Hikigaya told her. "He has an idea about who he is, but it's more or less an abstraction. There is no real him. He sees himself as an entity, something illusory. We can walk past each other in the hallway and our eyes might meet and he will be able to hide his cold gaze and when we shake hands, I can feel his flesh gripping mine, but don't make the mistake of thinking that he is ever there…he is not."

Yor Forger had no idea what he was going on about. "Hikigaya-kun, what are you saying?"

He shook his head to clear his mind. Not good. Really, not good. He had gone off on a tangent. L's notes were extensive. Thorough. It was helpful. But he didn't want to get inside the killer's head. It left a bad taste in his mouth. He had to remember to buy mints. Or order something nice and expensive from the restaurant at the hotel.

"I know who he will target next." Hikigaya spoke abruptly. "You said, his first victim in Ikebukuro was a rental girlfriend, right? Well then, if we disregard the 'Monday Blues Theory', then I think his next two victims will be rental girlfriends as well."

Yor Forger latched onto one single detail. "Two victims?"

"Yes." Hikigaya said. "Things are about to escalate. And if I'm not wrong, he is trying to repeat his first string of murders. Back in New York, when he first started, he killed a hooker and then after a couple of days, he killed two more. I think he is going to repeat the same thing with rental girlfriends this time around."

"But why rental girlfriends?" Yor Forger asked.

"Because the first rental girlfriend he hired probably said or did something stupid which upset him, which annoyed him, made him feel inferior, less of a man and so now, he has made up his mind and decided to kill more and more rental girlfriends." Hikigaya said. "If I had to guess, it's probably the no sex thing which annoyed him the most. He probably thinks its false advertising."

Yor Forger listened to everything he had to say and by the end she couldn't stop herself. "How do you know all these things? None of this was mentioned in L's notes. Are you The American Psycho's accomplice?"

"If you went through L's notes as thoroughly as you did, you would know that The American Psycho acts alone. So no, I'm not his accomplice. I don't know why you would think that." Hikigaya told her. "Which brings me to my next line of questioning – how am I involved in any of this?"

Yor Forger had the answer prepared. "When I went to Izaya Orihara for information about The American Psycho, he handed me the file and wished me 'good luck'. I don't know where he got the file or who told him to expect me. If I am being honest, I found it a bit creepy. I like to think it was Yukinoshita-san who phoned ahead and told him to expect me. It would explain why he didn't charge me anything for the info. But he told me that I owed him a favour. I didn't like it. But I had no other choice."

Hikigaya couldn't help but wonder what her voice would have sounded like if she wasn't under the effect of the truth potion. Would she sound sad? Afraid? Annoyed? Desperate? At the moment, all he got was the usual monotone voice, a byproduct of the potion. It was like she was reading lines from a long grocery list. Most people didn't agree, but he considered this one of the few disadvantages of the truth potion. You can tell a lot from a person's voice, emotions, the look in their eyes. But because of the potion, he got nothing. All he had were her words and a small consolation that it was the truth.

"Keep going, Mrs. Forger." He had stopped framing questions. He also tried to put her mind at ease and make her feel a bit more comfortable. "And if I had to guess, Orihara got L's notes from L himself. Although, I wouldn't exactly call them friends, I can see them working together. Before coming to this hotel, I met L and a girl named Kanra. She is Izaya Orihara's twin sister. They seem acquainted. And at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if L handed his notes about another ongoing serial killing investigation to a man like Izaya Orihara. At this point all he cares about is Kira. Nothing else matters to him." Hikigaya hoped he was right, or at the least believable. "And you are right. It seems probable that Yukinoshita told Orihara to expect you. I have met her too. She seems like an intelligent woman who likes to think ahead and prepare for all eventualities." He skipped out the bit where Mrs. Forger now owed Izaya Orihara a favour. That was definitely a cause of worry. "You have nothing to worry about, Mrs. Forger." He lied convincingly.

"Thank you." Yor Forger stated. "And to answer your question, about how you got involved in all this, it was Izaya Orihara who told me to get in touch with you. When I went through L's notes, I discovered that he hasn't mentioned anything about the killer's true identity. When I mentioned this to Orihara-san and accused him of scamming me, he told me that he had hired a person to uncover the true identity of the killer, a detective consultant by the name of Hachiman Hikigaya. He showed me your picture and everything and told me to get in touch with you."

"Finally," Hikigaya let out a world weary sigh. "One of my assumptions turned out to be true." But he couldn't really bask in the glory for long. "Wait a minute – that still doesn't explain why you felt the need to drug me back at the bar."

"Because Orihara-san told me that you wouldn't work with an assassin." Yor Forger stated. "It was Orihara-san who came up with the plan to drug you, bring you back to my hotel room and interrogate you for information. I told him, it's not how I do things, but he told me I had no other option. It was the only way."

There was no doubt left in his mind – Izaya Orihara was a master manipulator. If he wasn't stuck on the wrong end of one of his schemes, he might have developed a twisted appreciation of his handiwork. There was symmetry, there was poetry, and there was chaos. But the most dangerous element of this dangerous cocktail was the one thing which can never be left out – the truth. In the end, Izaya Orihara had told Yor Forger the truth. Hachiman Hikigaya would never work with an assassin. And despite all his heinous crimes, The American Psycho will face justice.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Hikigaya got up from the side of the bed, leaving Mrs. Forger behind and walked upto the main door which led to the hallway outside. The door was locked. But he didn't take a chance. He took out his silenced pistol and kept his finger on the trigger. He was prepared for action. Ready. He thought about it for a second and took the small risk of looking through the peephole. A bullet through the eye wouldn't necessarily kill him, he reasoned.

There was a short young girl standing on the other side of the door and she couldn't be more than five or six years old.

Anya Forger, his brain supplied, Mrs. Forger's daughter.

For a moment, Hikigaya almost panicked. What the hell was he gonna do now? The entire room was a mess, evidence of their fight and the ensuing violence strewn all about, from the slashes made by Yor's signature weapon to the large hole made by CJ's Desert Eagle. And lest we forget, CJ was passed out on the floor next to the couch and Yor Forger was restrained to the bed in her underwear.

This cannot be happening, he thought. But he had no other choice but to open the door. Or else the kid might get suspicious and bolt. And so, Hikigaya plastered a smile on his face, put on a sunny disposition, or at least the best he could manage and opened the door a bit, just enough to greet the young girl, but not enough to give her a chance to sneak past him and get inside the room. He reasoned, he was doing her a favour, by saving her from seeing her mother in this horrid state.

"Hello! You must be Anya. I am –yaouch!"

If you have ever been kicked in the balls, you would know it hurts like hell. But Hachiman Hikigaya had the distinction of being the first man to receive a drop kick to the scrotum. Word's couldn't even begin to imagine the world of hurt he was in. And to add salt to injury, Anya Forger ran past him into the room, saw her mother, took in her state of undress, made a strangled sound which told him, the little girl was somewhere between shocked and traumatized for life and before he could figure out what the hell was going on through the haze of pain, he heard her loudly exclaim a number of things in quick succession.

"Mama is cheating on Papa!" Anya said, standing horrified next to the bed, where her mom lay restrained in her undergarment.

Next, Anya bounced over to CJ. "He's a gangsta!" And all the previous horror was gone from her voice, replaced with child like wonder and excitement. In fact, there was something innocent about her declaration.

Finally, Anya stood before him and the horror was back in her eyes. "Hikki kissed Mama!"

He had no idea how a child's mind worked, but he knew a little kid like her couldn't be that intuitive. By now he was no longer lying on the floor, curled on himself, writhing in pain. It still hurt like hell, but he could deal with it later. Somehow he managed to sit up, but he figured he would need another moment or two before he was back on his two feet. It was now or never. He had to deal with the little girl and – "Yaaouch!"

Hikigaya was barely able to sit upright, had to put all his weight on his hand to support him and this little menace had stepped on top of his hand and skipped out of the room.

"Anya is going to get Papa!" The kid told him as she ran down the hallway. "Papa is gonna make you disappear. It's gonna be like an episode from Spy Wars. Anya is so excited. Waku-Waku!"

Hikigaya didn't like the sound of that. The kid sounded certain, like her father disappeared people for a living. What the hell was he – a magician? Or another professional assassin. But how the hell did the kid know all this. Doesn't matter, his brain supplied. You have to stop the kid.

And so, even though he was hurting and in a world of pain, Hikigaya got up on his own two feet and stumbled out of the hotel room, giving chase, running after the kid who seemed to know a lot more than she should be knowing.