Warnings: This chapter is a lot of transition and explanation so I think it’s pretty boring, but I suppose that’s just me. And, uh, has a cliffhanger. So don’t say I didn’t warn you. And for those of you who were getting sick of Subaru, you're in luck, because he's barely in this chapter. ^_^
Chapter Eleven: Knowledge
“Wow, that’s a bad one.” Keichii gently turned Kamui’s face to the side, examining the large bruise that colored his cheek and jaw. “What happened?”
Kamui didn’t move from where Keichii’s hand rested on his face. “He just . . . got mad. I guess I kinda deserved it, I -- ”
Keichii gave him a look.
Kamui laughed softly. “Okay, I didn’t deserve it. Thanks.”
“No problem.” Keichii ran his fingers gently over the bruise. “I don’t like to hear you talk like that,” he said quietly. “I won’t preach or anything, you know I won’t . . . but it’s not your fault when stuff like this happens.”
“Yeah.” Kamui managed to smile up at him. The two of them had bumped into each other by sheer chance before school. As Kamui had been early, trying to spend as little time with Subaru as possible, given the foul mood he was in, they had settled on a bench to talk for a bit. It was actually a rather beautiful day, with the sun shining down benevolently and a slight breeze.
“Does it hurt?” Keichii asked curiously, his fingers tracing the edge of the bruise.
“Not so much,” Kamui said, still trying valiantly to smile. “At least, not on the outside.” He paused, startled, wondering if he had actually just said. And if he had, he wanted to shoot himself for having such a big mouth.
Keichii winced a little at that. “Anything I can do?” he asked softly.
Kamui shook his head. “Just . . . what you’re doing is fine. It’s nice to know that . . . you’re here, if I want to talk.”
Keichii nodded slightly. “Always.”
“Thanks,” Kamui repeated, and wondered why Keichii’s fingers were lingering on his cheek like that. In fact, they stayed that way far longer than one would consider proper, and Keichii unconsciously began to pull Kamui’s face towards his.
“Hey, I thought you were dating Subaru,” a familiar voice said.
Kamui and Keichii pulled apart quickly; Kamui let out a rather undignified squeak. “F-Fuuma,” he managed to stammer, standing up.
“The one and only,” Fuuma replied, leaning against the bench.
Kamui’s instinctive manners kicked in, overriding the waves of fear and anger and remembered pain. “Uh, Fuuma, this is Segawa Keichii . . . Keichii, Monou Fuuma.”
“Nice to meet you,” Keichii said, as genki as always, reaching out to shake Fuuma’s hand.
“So,” Fuuma said, lighting up a cigarette and looking at them pensively. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No, of course not,” Kamui said, a bit too quickly. “Keichii was just looking at the bruise on my cheek, that’s all.”
Fuuma tilted his head to one side, examining the aforementioned bruise. “Nice,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”
“It’s none of your business,” Kamui replied, stung. “I thought I told you to stay away from me.”
“Yeah, but I rarely do what I’m told. It’s one of my worst qualities, or so I’m told. Besides . . . you seem to be the only person I can go to for answers of any sort.”
The bell rang. Both Keichii and Kamui glanced up.
“Seriously,” Fuuma said. “I don’t like not having any memory. I want to know what’s going on. Can I meet with you?”
“No,” Kamui said sharply. “Leave me the hell alone.”
He turned and stomped off towards the school, grabbing Keichii by the sleeve and towing him along afterwards.
“I kinda feel bad for him,” Keichii said thoughtfully as they walked down the hallway towards their first class.
“You would’ve felt sorry for Hitler,” Kamui grumbled.
Keichii regarded him curiously. “Do you hate him?”
“I don’t know,” Kamui said with a sigh. “I don’t really . . . I’m glad he lived, but I had to let him go. And I’ll keep letting him go. I don’t want to risk what might happen if he got close to me again.”
“Do you love him?” Keichii asked quietly.
“I don’t know that either,” Kamui said. “I’m not sure if I ever loved him. Or if I loved someone who never existed, the way that Subaru did.”
The second bell rang.
Kamui sighed again. “I’ve got to go home after school,” he said. “But do you want to do something this weekend?”
“Sure.” Keichii smiled. “I’ll see you later.”
“Bye.”
~~~~
“Hey, can I ask you for a favor?”
Keichii turned around and offered Fuuma a cheerful smile. “Sure. What’s up?”
Fuuma fell into step beside Keichii as he walked back to his dorm room. “Look, I don’t know what I did to Kamui. I haven’t got any memory of it whatsoever. And I have no plans on hurting the kid again. But he’s the only person I know who I think I knew before my sister died that’s still around. Think you could talk some sense into him?”
“I could try,” Keichii said. “But I don’t promise success.”
“Well, I’ll do you a favor,” Fuuma said. “If you talk sense into Kamui, I won’t go tell Subaru that you and Kamui were kissing.”
Keichii blushed. “We weren’t kissing.”
“Okay, no, you weren’t, but you would’ve been in about another ten seconds, and you know damn well that I’m right.” Fuuma shrugged. “How do you think Seishirou would react if I told him? He’s all gung ho about letting Subaru be happy with Kamui . . . bet he wouldn’t be too thrilled if he knew that Kamui was seeing you on the side.”
“Kamui isn’t seeing me,” Keichii said stiffly. “It was my fault, all right?”
“Oh, yeah, like he was kicking up a fuss,” Fuuma said with a smirk. “Of course . . .” He gave Keichii a long, appreciative look. “I can see why he likes you. But still, he ought to show a little fidelity, ne?”
Keichii turned red. “I can see why Kamui hates you,” he said, cheerfully enough. “Memory or not, you’re still a prick.”
“And I take pride in it. Tell Kamui if he wants his precious secret to be kept, to meet me at the ice cream stand on the corner of Hakuwo and Kanashi. Okay?” He offered Keichii a grin.
“What makes you think Kamui knew you before your sister died?” Keichii asked smoothly.
“Because his phone number was on her desk, written in pink marker, so she obviously knew him,” Fuuma replied. He smiled at Keichii’s frustrated look. “See? I’ve done my homework. Tell Kamui I’ll see him tomorrow at five o’clock sharp.”
“I’ll tell him,” Keichii said. “And I’ll come with him.”
Fuuma shrugged. “All one to me. See you around.”
~~~~
Kamui poked sullenly at the sundae that Keichii had insisted on buying him as an apology for indirectly getting him into such a mess. He wasn’t angry with Keichii, he honestly wasn’t. He just wanted Fuuma’s head on a pike to display to the world.
“Hey.” Fuuma slid into the booth next to them, holding a waffle cone heaped high with different flavors and sprinkles. “I’m not late, am I?”
“Not really.” Kamui took a small spoonful of ice cream and tried not to look sullen. “All right, I’m here. You can ask whatever you want, but I don’t promise to answer anything, and you’re not allowed to blackmail me for the answers.”
“Give me a break,” Fuuma said with a laugh. “You’re just not going to answer anything.”
“I’ll answer what I can,” Kamui said, shrugging. “You have my word.”
“Okay.” Fuuma gave his ice cream a long, slow lick, watching as Kamui blushed and looked away. Then he grinned. “So why do you hate me so much?”
“Um, let’s see, because you took great delight in torturing me for an entire year,” Kamui said brightly, picking the cherry off his sundae and resisting the urge to feed it to Keichii. He didn’t particularly like cherries, so he simply pushed it to the edge of his sundae and continued to eat.
Fuuma gave him a look. “Is that your final answer?”
“You’ve been watching too much television,” Kamui retorted. “Yes, that’s my answer, and that’s the truth.”
“Why was I torturing you?” Fuuma asked.
“I don’t know. Because you’ve got a sick sense of humor or something, that’s my best guess,” Kamui said sharply. Technically, this was entirely true. There was really no reason for Fuuma to have been doing those things to him, Dark Kamui or not.
“That’s not really a reason,” Fuuma mused, eating his ice cream just slowly enough for it to look like a big deal.
“Look, is it my fault that you’re a sadistic bastard?” Kamui asked pleasantly. “I think not.”
“All right, all right,” Fuuma said, sounding amused. “What do you mean by torturing you?”
Kamui thought for a moment about how best to answer that. “Okay, to start with, did Seishirou explain to you what his -- er -- career is?”
“That he’s an assassin? Yeah, he covered that. And apparently I was working with or for him or something.”
“Close enough.” Kamui waved this aside. He didn’t really care what lies Seishirou had told Fuuma. “Anyway, you were supposed to kill me. On a certain day. But you couldn’t just wait for the stupid day, no, you had to keep popping into my life and beating the crap out of me and torturing my friends at random intervals.”
“Oh.” Fuuma considered this. “So why aren’t you dead?”
“Because on the day you were supposed to kill me, we fought and I won.” Kamui resisted the urge to add ‘so there.’ “Technically speaking, anyway. And then part of Tokyo Tower fell and I thought you were dead, until I saw you the other day.”
“Okay.” Fuuma started munching on the cone. “So why did I go all bad, anyway?”
“I can’t answer that,” Kamui replied calmly. He had decided ahead of time that he simply wasn’t going into any of the destiny stuff. He would work around what he could. “I have a suspicion that you were always like that and just repressed it, but as to why you stopped, that’s something I can’t tell you.”
Fuuma pouted. “All right.”
“What else?” Kamui had finished his ice cream and was still toying with the cherry, sitting in the bottom of the dish.
“Was I actually sleeping with you?”
Kamui choked. “What makes you think that?”
“Well, your reaction, to begin with,” Fuuma said with a smile. “And Seishirou mentioned that I had been . . . shall we say . . . attempting.”
“Well, you succeeded.” Kamui glared at him. “Proud of yourself?”
“Given that you obviously hate my guts, it was quite an achievement. So, in short, yes.”
Kamui gave him a withering look. “You happened to catch me at just the right moment, for your information. And when I tried to say no the second time, you didn’t give me much of a choice. I suppose that goes along with the torture, though.”
“Oh.” Fuuma finished his ice cream cone. “I suppose I should apologize, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t take me seriously anyway.”
“Nope. Not a bit. Any other questions?”
“A few. To begin with, are you going to eat that cherry?”
“No. You can have it if you want.”
Fuuma smiled. “But I don’t have a spoon.”
Kamui gave him a long look. “Okay, fine. I’ll eat it.” He picked the cherry up and started to move it towards his mouth. Fuuma grabbed him by the wrist and pulled his hand over. “Prick,” Kamui said as Fuuma ate the cherry off the spoon.
“So,” Fuuma said, smiling, “why was I supposed to kill you? I mean, we obviously knew each other before that. You were friends with my sister. I don’t usually just randomly start trying to kill friends of mine.” He paused. “I don’t think.”
“Well, we were friends, and then you ‘went bad’, as you so charmingly put it, and we were no longer friends,” Kamui replied. “And that’s when you started trying to kill me.”
“Why was I supposed to kill you?”
“For the sake of our environmental welfare,” Kamui said sarcastically, knowing that Fuuma wouldn’t take him seriously. Keichii coughed slightly. “Anything else?”
“Tons of questions, Kamui. Am I still supposed to be trying to kill you?”
“Would I be sitting here if you were?”
“I did sort of blackmail you into it,” Fuuma said with a shrug.
Kamui rolled his eyes. “Yeah, a word on that. Subaru really doesn’t give a damn what I do with Keichii.”
“So why’d you come?” Fuuma asked.
“Because I didn’t want you to tell Seishirou.” Kamui paused. “If Seishirou thinks that I’m not right for Subaru, he might change his mind about leaving Subaru alone, and come take him from me. And despite what I feel for Keichii, I do love Subaru, and I don’t want that to happen.”
“Oh,” Fuuma said. “But I take it that Subaru doesn’t treat you very well.”
Kamui gave him a look. “He treats me better than you ever did.”
Fuuma paused. “Hey, wait, were we an item before I started trying to kill you?”
“Not . . . really,” Kamui said, trying not to sound too hesitant. “I did care for you, quite a bit, but . . . I was more of a kid then. I didn’t really understand how I felt.”
“My sister had a crush on you.”
“How could you tell?” Kamui asked dryly.
“The fact that your name was written in pink marker and left right in the center of her desk,” Fuuma replied.
Kamui sighed. “Well, she’s dead, so it doesn’t matter.”
“How did she die?” Fuuma asked.
“In an earthquake.” Not quite an outright lie. There had been an earthquake when Kotori died, so she technically had died in an earthquake. Just not because of the earthquake.
“Oh.” Fuuma pondered this. “Were we really close or something?”
“Yeah. You protected her all the time.”
“So I guess it makes sense that I would tweak out when she died,” Fuuma said thoughtfully.
Kamui was getting sick of the conversation. “You tweaked out before she died.”
Fuuma blinked. “Oh?”
“Yes. Not long before.” Kamui wanted Fuuma to shut up and go away, and so resorted to rather low techniques. “She was in the place where the earthquake was because of you. She was trying to talk sense into you, really. And now she’s dead, and are we done yet?”
“She died because of me?” Fuuma asked, sounding startled.
“You could put it that way.” Kamui poked at the dish with his spoon. “Forgive me if I don’t offer my condolences.”
Fuuma put this aside. “I only have one more question, if you don’t mind.”
“Fire away.”
“Do you know where I can find Kuzuki Kakyou?”
“Yeah, he’s dead.”
Fuuma paused. “Oh.”
“Why did you want him?”
“Seishirou told me that he and I had been friends. I guess I was hoping to get some more information from him. But no such luck, I suppose. How did he die?”
“I don’t know,” Kamui answered, truthfully. He knew Kakyou was dead from seeing him in the Dreamscape, but had no idea how the yumemi had actually died. “He died the same day that I thought you did.”
Fuuma leaned back in his chair. “Kamui, you know, I just have this feeling that you’re not being totally honest with me.”
“How remarkably perceptive of you.” Kamui stood up. “Now don’t try to look for me again. If you want the answers, ask Seishirou. He knows everything except the end, anyway, and if he told you that he doesn’t he was lying.”
“I see,” Fuuma said.
“Did he tell you that?”
“He implied it,” Fuuma said.
“Seishirou’s really good at implying things and never saying them,” Kamui said with a sigh. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, this was supposed to be my asshole-free day, so I’m going to go spend it elsewhere.”
~~~~
“So, I heard an interesting story today,” Fuuma said, hauling himself up to sit on the counter and watching Seishirou make dinner. “I talked to Kamui for a bit and he said that you were just as capable of giving me the answers as he was.” Seishirou didn’t reply, but Fuuma could see his shoulders tense a little. “He said you knew everything except the end, and that if you’d said otherwise, you were lying.”
“I haven’t lied once,” Seishirou said calmly.
“Kamui also said you’re very good at not lying,” Fuuma replied. “And I know you’re hiding something just from the tone of your voice.”
“Kamui knows remarkably little about me,” Seishirou said, still not turning around to look at Fuuma. “Despite what he thinks.”
“Look, Seishirou,” Fuuma said patiently, “all accusations of lying aside, tell me one thing -- do you know why I went all weird and started trying to kill people.”
Seishirou hesitated, just for a second, but long enough that simply answering ‘no’ was not an answer that Fuuma would accept. “Yes.”
“Thank you.” Fuuma paused. “Being honest is hard for you, isn’t it.”
“I’ll admit it’s not something I’m accustomed to.” Seishirou finished what he was doing and turned around to face Fuuma. “Any other questions?”
“I suppose ‘why did I go all weird and start killing people’ would be a little unoriginal, wouldn’t it,” Fuuma said thoughtfully.
“Just a bit, but it’s what I expected.”
“All right, go ahead and explain then.”
Seishirou gave him a long, steady look. “Before I do, know one thing -- I’m not going to baby you. I’m going to tell you what happened and I’m not going to be sorry if you come off emotionally worse for the wear. This isn’t going to be pretty to hear.”
“All right, I stand warned. But I’d rather know than not.”
Seishirou got himself a mug of tea and sat down. “There was a battle going on for the Fate of the earth.”
“Interesting,” Fuuma managed.
Seishirou rolled his eyes. “You’re going to have to take some of this on faith. I hope you at least believe in magic. If you don’t, I can demonstrate; I have quite a bit myself.”
“Sure, do something cool,” Fuuma said eagerly.
Seishirou sighed and took Fuuma into a hastily put together mabaroshi. “Satisfied?” he asked.
“Yeah, okay.”
The kitchen returned to its normal state of being. Seishirou sipped his tea. “This battle basically involved whether or not humanity would survive.”
“Great,” Fuuma said.
“If humanity was allowed to survive, the earth would eventually perish, that is unless people wise up and stop abusing the environment.” Seishirou paused. “To this end, there were Seven Dragons of Heaven, which strove for the survival of humanity, and Seven Dragons of Earth, which strove for the survival of the Earth. Their goal was to take down the kekkai -- those are protective structures -- around Tokyo, thus causing the destruction of humanity. Don’t ask me for specifics, it gets very complicated and it doesn’t matter anymore since the battle is over.”
“Okay, I’m still with you. I take it the Dragons of Heaven were supposed to protect the kekkai?”
“Exactly. Each set had six Dragons and one Kamui. Do you know what the word means?”
Fuuma shook his head.
“It has to do with sharing the majesty of god or hunting the majesty of god, I don’t think the etymology is really important. Anyway, your friend Kamui is the Kamui. He got to decide which side he was supposed to be on. You are -- were -- his Twin Star. You automatically got shuffled to whichever side he didn’t want.”
“Oh,” Fuuma said. He examined this, then said, “I got shafted, didn’t I.”
“Yes. Kamui chose to be a Dragon of Heaven and protect humanity, which made you want to destroy humanity, thus you ‘going weird’, as you so elegantly put it. In fact, you went to it with abandon, knocking down kekkai and killing quite a few hundred people. You were supposed to kill Kamui on the Promised Day and destroy the central kekkai, which you obviously didn’t; hence all of us still being here.”
“And that’s the part you don’t know?” Fuuma guessed.
“Exactly. I was also one of the Dragons of Earth. Subaru was a Dragon of Heaven, which naturally put even more of a crimp in our already severely crimped relationship. About eight months before the Promised Day, Subaru nearly punched out my heart and I ended up in the coma.”
Fuuma raised his eyebrows. “Subaru did that?”
“Not intentionally,” Seishirou admitted. “It was a spell that his sister cast as I killed her. That if I ever tried to kill him, it would reverse and he would end up killing me, even if he didn’t want to.”
“So why’d you try to kill him, you dumb shit?” Fuuma asked.
Seishirou gave him a look.
“You wanted to die,” Fuuma stated. “God, you really are an idiot. We’ll get back to that. I take it that rather than avoiding Kamui like a good boy until the Promised Day, I tortured him?”
“And played a variety of interesting mind games, too,” Seishirou said. “Not least of which was trying to seduce him.”
“Which I succeeded in.” Despite the circumstances, Fuuma looked rather proud of himself at this. “But I think that was after your little accident.”
Seishirou considered this. “Kamui would have been very vulnerable after that, because I’m sure Subaru wasn’t doing so well . . . but if Kamui refuses to talk about it, we may never know.” He shrugged; the intimate details of Fuuma’s conquest weren’t of particular interest to him at the moment.
“So I take it that Kakyou was another one of my dragons?” Fuuma asked.
Seishirou nodded.
“Kamui told me that he had died, but he didn’t know how,” Fuuma added.
“I’m guessing that the only dragons left alive are the two of us, Kamui, and Subaru,” Seishirou said. “I’ve been looking into it.”
“All right.” Fuuma considered this. “That wasn’t so bad. Well, except for me killing the hundreds of people bit.” He paused. “But if I didn’t have any choice . . . I don’t see why Kamui hates me so much.”
“Well, there are a few more things you should probably know,” Seishirou said. “The mind games couldn’t have helped, but that’s neither here nor there. I know for a fact you killed several people close to him. Also, though I’m not sure either Kamui or his friend -- what’s his name, Keichii? -- is aware of this, but you’re responsible for the earthquake that killed Keichii’s mother.”
“Oh.” Fuuma thought about this. “Whoops.”
“Anyway, I doubt Kamui really hates you, in any case,” Seishirou said. “Though I can’t speak for what he’s actually feeling.”
“All right, so, want to tell me what you left out?” Fuuma asked brightly.
Seishirou sighed. “I really hate the way you’re so observant. It always used to annoy me, and it still does. All right, this is the worst of it. It’s about your sister.”
“Kamui told me that she died because of me,” Fuuma said. “So if it’s that, don’t worry.”
“Kamui said that?” Seishirou rolled his eyes. “And he says I’m good at not lying. Kotori did die because of you. You killed her.”
Fuuma started. “I did?”
“Yes. Rather messily, in fact.”
“Why?”
Seishirou considered. “I was never quite sure, actually. I think perhaps because she would have been a weakness for you, or maybe because destiny required it, but mostly I think you just did it to hurt Kamui. He cared for her very much, you know.”
“I killed my own sister just to hurt Kamui?” Fuuma asked.
“Yes.” Seishirou paused, then tried vaguely to look concerned. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, it’s just . . . I don’t know quite how I’m supposed to feel.” Fuuma tapped at the table pensively. “I still don’t remember her. I know that I should care that she’s dead, but . . . I don’t. Do you think that makes me a horrible person?”
“Fuuma, I’m really not the person you should be asking about morals,” Seishirou said dryly.
“I suppose not.” Fuuma laughed. “Well . . . I’ll think about it, I guess. But at the moment I want dinner.”
Seishirou sighed. “You get over everything so quickly.”
“Yeah. You envy me?”
“You have no idea.”
~~~~
Kamui met Keichii for lunch on Sunday, then spent most of the day over at his friend’s apartment. He finally, rather reluctantly, made himself go home. It wasn’t that he didn’t like being with Subaru, it was just that Subaru was very hard to anticipate and his temper flared up at some very odd things. And sometimes Kamui just didn’t get out of the way in time.
At least, he reflected, Subaru had never forced him into bed again. Of course, that was probably because he’d never protested again, not wanting to take the risk.
He unlocked the front door and went inside. The apartment was dark, except for the lamp in the living room. Kamui toed off his shoes and hung up his jacket. “Tadaima!” he called out, and waited to see if Subaru was home. He often was at this time of day, but that was no guarantee. Kamui received no answer, though, so he assumed that Subaru wasn’t around and went into the kitchen.
He got a soda and wandered into the living room to see Subaru sitting on the couch. He stopped in puzzlement. He’d never seen Subaru sitting there before; he spent most of his time at the kitchen table or in the bedroom. He was sitting at the end by the fax machine, which gave the impression that he had sat down to read a fax and not gotten back up.
“Subaru?” Kamui walked over to see that Subaru was indeed holding a fax in his hand. “Subaru, are you all right?” The Sumeragi still didn’t even look up. His face was dead white and his eyes fixed to the paper he held.
“What’s going on?” Kamui asked, and leaned over Subaru’s shoulder to read the fax. Normally, this was an offense punishable by quite a good smack, but Subaru didn’t really seem home to be annoyed about it. Kamui scanned the first few lines of the fax and drew in a sharp breath.
‘Target is a former government employee who has knowledge of far too many things to be allowed to live now that he is no longer employed. Please deal with this accordingly. Target’s name is Sakurazuka Seishirou.’
~~~~
Chapter Twelve
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