Chapter Two
Sometimes I hate my job. I mean, I’ve always wondered what the qualifications for being a Shinigami really are. You’d think that they must screen pretty carefully (given the number of unresolved deaths in a year and the number of Shinigami) and look for certain attributes, but hell if I can figure out what any of them are. I mean, half the time we’re detectives, and the other half it’s brute magical force.
In three years I’ve improved a lot with my jitsu. I could never hold a candle to Tsuzuki or Tatsumi (or, for that matter, half of the human onmyoujitsu out there), but I can hold my own in a battle. And if I can’t win, I can valiantly call for Tsuzuki’s help.
When I was still partners with Tsuzuki, we shared responsibility fairly evenly, but when it came to fights, it was all him. Akimiya and I are the opposite. I have to do most of the fighting. In return, he does a lot of the sleuthing. Which is fine with me, because I don’t like it anyway.
Akimiya, after all, isn’t the most ethical of people when it comes to the fact that he’s a yumemi. He’s perfectly okay with going into someone’s sleeping mind, extracting whatever information we need, and leaving again. He says that if they’re guilty, they deserve it, and if they’re not . . . well, it’s not like it hurt them.
Of course, it gets more difficult when we’re fighting a demon instead of a human, but that’s another story all over again.
But I’ve gotten sidetracked. I don’t mind the sleuthing and I don’t mind the fighting. What I mind is these stupid undercover jobs. I hate being a student. Hate, hate, hate it. And I’m the only one young enough to do it, too. Not that this is the worst undercover job ever. (Akimiya still laughs his ass off whenever that stupid Goth club comes up. You know, conveniently ignoring the fact that he tried to kill me later that night. But, uh, that’s another story all over again.)
What I hate most about being a student is sitting there, trying to pay attention. I know damn well that it doesn’t matter, but if I screw up, I’ll call attention to myself and potentially blow my cover. It’s the most annoying thing ever. Fortunately, I’ve done it so many times at this point that I think I already know anything the teacher might be teaching.
Students at this school have been going missing. There’s been four now, in the past two weeks, and people are panicking. Akimiya’s job is to look through the newspaper articles and look for a common link. Mine is to sit around in the classroom, collect gossip, and do the same. Thus far, and it’s the afternoon of our second day, we haven’t had any luck.
Right. Did I mention that I hate going undercover?
I trudge out at the end of the day with all the other students, trudging along equally as dismal as I am, and go back to the hotel where I’m staying with Akimiya. It’s really a pain in the ass to go back and forth between Chijou and the Meifu, though I’ve been doing a little more often recently. I don’t like to be away from Tsuzuki that long. So sue me, okay?
But this time, given our parting, I think it may be best.
The parting in question was bittersweet. He was still afraid. I was still afraid, and a little bit angry, though not really at him. There were no harsh words spoken. Just a lack of the usual affectionate ones. Somehow I think that may be worse.
Akimiya hands me a folder of papers and a take-out container of fried rice. I start to eat while looking through the folders. “I’ve looked through all this already.”
“I know,” he says, with a slight sigh. “I was hoping you might see something new.”
I mutter something uncharitable about the entire situation and start to leaf through the folder again. Reaching for the food with one hand, the folder slides right through my fingers, giving me a nasty paper cut on the way down. I swear vehemently and with great vocabulary before scooping the papers up and starting to suck on my finger. It hurts a ridiculous amount for such a tiny cut.
“What’d you do?” Akimiya asks, not sounding particularly interested. Poor guy probably just wants to go home to Rika, and he’s stuck out here with me. Most likely because of me, though I’m damned if I can figure out why.
“Cut my finger on the folder,” I reply absently, and display the finger in question.
There’s a pause before Akimiya speaks again, and when he does, his voice is very soft. “Why is it still bleeding?”
I jerk to attention and stare at it. Sure enough, it’s still bleeding. I think that no matter how long you’re a Shinigami, the healing powers might never seem natural. When you cut yourself, you’re always going to expect to bleed, which is why it didn’t take me off guard at first. But now that I’m thinking about it, why the hell didn’t the cut close instantly?
As we both stare at it, it slowly closes and heals. The skin is left unmarked.
I look up at Akimiya. “Do you have a knife?”
He nods silently and hands it over without question. He always carries one, the way I always carried a gun before I learned ‘jitsu, and still do on particularly dangerous missions. Akimiya watches as I slice the palm of my hand open. Then we continue to sit in silence for the full ten minutes it takes to heal.
“Now what?” he asks, as I wipe the knife off on a napkin and hand it back.
“Now we go back to the Meifu,” I say, standing up. “And Tatsumi will tell me what the hell is going on.”
And come to think of it, I’ll pick up my gun while I’m there.
~~~~
Naturally, Tatsumi isn’t in his office. Neither is Konoe-Kachou. Everyone is doing a splendid job of avoiding us. Peachy. Akimiya gives me a nervous look, maybe because he sees that I’m swelling up with anger. I think he’s afraid I might pop. He follows me down to Watari’s office. I have a vague feeling he knows what’s going on. Of course, he isn’t there either.
“Oi, Rika-chan,” Akimiya says, poking his head into the tiny office where she works. “Have you seen Watari? Or Tatsumi-san? Or anyone?”
Rika blinks up at us. “No, I haven’t seen anyone for a bit,” she says. “What are you two doing back here?” She’s giving me a nervous look, like she too is afraid I’m going to explode.
“I’ll explain later,” Akimiya says. “You don’t know where anyone is?”
“Well, Watari said he was going to Chijou to pick some stuff up,” she says, and shrugs helplessly. “You know how Watari is. I don’t know about Tatsumi-san.” She pauses, then adds, “But I think Tsuzuki is in his office.”
My eyes narrow and Akimiya gives me a nervous look as I turn and stalk out of the room. I hear his hasty, “Thanks, Rika-chan,” before he follows me. “What are you going to do?”
“Let me see your knife again.”
He stops dead and glares at me. “No.”
“Fine.” I keep walking. My anger carries me all the way to Tsuzuki’s office. I have a feeling I’m going to regret this later, but right now I’m too angry and frightened to care. Tsuzuki looks up as I walk into his office without knocking. He looks neither surprised nor pleased to see me.
“You’ve stopped healing.”
I stop short, my angry tirade cut short by a wave of even stronger fury. “You knew?”
He nods slowly.
“And let me guess. You couldn’t tell me.”
He nods again. “If I could have -- ”
“That doesn’t do me any good, damn it!” It feels good to yell, good to be angry instead of scared. “When are you going to start telling me? When it’s too late? Why the hell is all this happening?!”
He shakes his head, stares down at his desk, says nothing.
“ANSWER ME!”
“It’s not going to be too late!” His head snaps up and I see that his eyes are brimming with tears. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Hisoka! You’re going to be fine, now please . . . please stop being so angry with me . . .”
“What do you want me to be, Tsuzuki?” I’m so furious that I don’t even care that my anger must be burning the link between us. Burning him. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Just . . . finish the mission.” His voice chokes. “You have to finish the assignment.”
I grab him by the chin and force him to meet my eyes, ignoring the waves of misery traveling along the link. “Or else what?”
“I . . . can’t . . .”
I let him go, let him fall bonelessly back into his chair. “How am I supposed to finish the assignment when I have no powers?”
He looks away, and it’s just as well. There’s an agony of indecision in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I snort. “You’re always sorry,” I snap. “But you’re going to be apologizing to my dead body if nobody tells me what’s going on.” With that, I leave the office. I don’t think I can bear to see his reaction to that statement.
Akimiya is waiting outside. “What -- ” he begins.
I stop. So does he. Tatsumi is standing at the end of the hall, and even from this distance, I can tell that he’s pissed.
There are few things on earth I’m more afraid of than a pissed off Tatsumi.
He walks forward slowly. I just stand there and wait. It’ll just make it worse if I try to avoid it.
“Tsuzuki-san is upset,” he says, his voice dangerously soft. It’s easy to forget that Tatsumi has a touch of psychic ability, because he almost never uses it. It’s only at times like this, when I really wish he doesn’t have it, that I remember that he does.
“I’m a bit upset too,” I say, my voice just as soft.
“What did you say to him?” His voice is curious, light in tone. If it weren’t for my empathy, I’d probably never know he’s ready to rip my throat out if I say the wrong thing.
The only answer I can give is the truth. “That if he didn’t stop apologizing for not telling me things, he’s going to be apologizing to my dead body.”
Akimiya starts to slowly back away. Smart boy, Akimiya.
“I’ll tell you only one thing, Kurosaki-kun,” Tatsumi says gently. “And then I’ll let you go. Believe me . . . this isn’t any easier on him than it is on you. If you can’t feel how terrified he is for you, you don’t deserve to be a Shinigami.”
I know I should back down and shut up, but I’ve never been known for listening to reason. “If he’s terrified for me, he should tell me what’s going on,” I manage between clenched teeth.
“There’s a very good reason why he can’t,” Tatsumi says. “And I know you don’t believe me and I don’t particularly care. If you truly loved him . . . you wouldn’t be angry at him for this.”
That stings. A lot.
“He’s not the cause of this,” Tatsumi continues. “Nor is he the solution. And even if he could tell you . . . it wouldn’t help you any.”
“And why can’t you?” I challenge. “For the same reason?”
He nods, and for a second there’s sorrow in his eyes. “For the exact same reason.”
I believe him, and that just makes me more angry. “Tsuzuki keeps telling me he’s not afraid. That he’s sure I’m going to be all right.”
Tatsumi shrugs. “Tsuzuki is accustomed to hiding how he really feels, even from you. If you think he can’t manipulate empathy, you’re wrong, and you should have known that for years by now.”
“I do know it,” I admit. “Or else I would have realized how serious the situation in Kyoto was long before it got that serious. I just didn’t realize he was still doing it, or could do it to the link the blood bind had created.”
“I doubt very much that he does it on purpose,” Tatsumi says with another shrug. “But if he wants, badly enough, for you to not realize how afraid he is . . . he can lock all that fear in a part of him that even you can’t get to.”
“So why do you know about it?” I snap.
He suddenly looks very tired. “Because I’ve been through this before, with him,” he says. “And I know how afraid for him that I was then.”
A very subtle reminder that Tatsumi loves Tsuzuki almost as much as I do. And that he’ll kick my ass if I continue to upset him like this. “All right,” I say reluctantly. “Finish the assignment? That’s all I have to do?”
He nods slightly. “That’s all you have to do, Kurosaki-kun.” His eyes glint suddenly. “Well, that and one other thing . . .”
I recognize the look in his eyes and nod, though I really don’t want to do this. Then I walk back into Tsuzuki’s office. He’s still sitting at his desk, in almost the exact same position that I left him in. “Tsuzuki . . .”
He looks up. His eyes are dull. I still don’t feel that much fear from him. He’s hiding it extremely well, if what Tatsumi says is true.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have said any of that.”
He smiles slightly. “Tatsumi made you come in and apologize, right?”
I close my eyes. “Yes,” I admit. “But I was already sorry before he did.”
“Why?” he asks softly. “You’re right.” He looks up and meets my eyes, somewhat steadier than he was earlier. “But there’s nothing I can do about this, Hisoka.”
“Tatsumi said you went through it yourself.”
He nods slightly.
“If you did it, so can I,” I say, and I’m almost confident. Stripped of our powers, Tsuzuki and I aren’t so different. And I can keep my head in a crisis better than he can. I lean forward and kiss his cheek. “I will come home to you. I promise.”
He manages a wan smile. “I’ll be waiting.”
~~~~
Akimiya settles onto the bed, and looks at me questioningly. “Should we go over the case?”
I rub my hands over my face. “I suppose we probably should.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Not that case,” he says immediately. “This one.” He gestures at me, and I understand what he means. Try to solve the case of what’s happening to me. Is that what Tsuzuki meant when he told me to finish the assignment? Or am I reading into it too deeply?
“Oh, sure,” I say. “What the hell.”
He sighs slightly, but doesn’t blame me for my understandably cynical outlook on things. “Are you still having dizzy spells?”
“I haven’t had any today or yesterday. I think they’re gone.” I pause, then add, “Maybe they’re just the first signs of whatever this is.”
“Okay, so, what’s the problem now?” Akimiya asks. “Exactly.”
“Exactly, the problem is that my empathy is out of whack. It’s not gone, not like it was when you first showed up. Half the time it isn’t there, and half the time it’s too receptive and I can’t get my shields to work. And I must be projecting. Have you noticed?” At his slight nod, I continue. I don’t want to ask what I’ve been projecting. I just don’t want to know. “And now my healing seems to be slowing down, and from the way Tsuzuki talked about it, it’s going to stop entirely.”
“What about your ‘jitsu?” he asks.
A reasonable question. Why didn’t I think of that? “I don’t know,” I say. “You’d better let me check.”
He raises an eyebrow at me again. “What are you going to do, banish a demon that isn’t here?”
I give him a dirty look. “No, you moron. I’m going to put wards up around the room.”
He smiles slightly. “I was kidding, Hisoka.”
“Uh huh. Sure you were.”
“I was!”
I take out two ofuda and walk over to the doorway, place them at the edges. Akimiya watches in idle curiosity as I fold my hands into prayer position and say the incantation. Nothing happens. I try again. Still nothing.
Splendid.
“Akimiya, get over here and do this to make sure my ofuda aren’t damaged,” I snap. I know I’m being a demanding jerk, but I think I have the right to be a little irritated. Not that it matters much in the long run.
Akimiya walks over and folds his hands. He stumbles slightly over the words -- he really needs to work some on his ‘jitsu, but he just doesn’t have a natural talent for it at all -- and the wards flare up in the doorway.
Excellent.
I glare at them and try to dispel them. Even that doesn’t work. Akimiya sighs, dispels them himself, then picks up the ofuda and hands them back. “Don’t glare at me,” he says defensively. “It’s not my fault.”
“I know,” I admit, and plunk down onto my bed. “You’re the only person I’m not irritated with.”
“Good to know,” he says with a nod. “So you have messed up empathy, no ‘jitsu, and failing healing powers. Can you still fly?”
“If I can’t, I don’t want to find out the hard way.”
He laughs slightly. “So basically, all your powers are going dead. Uh, for lack of a better term. Is there anything that isn’t affected?”
I ponder that. “Yes,” I say slowly. “My empathic link with Tsuzuki is still functioning normally. But that might be because the blood bind goes deeper than whatever this is.”
“It’s weird that your empathy isn’t gone,” Akimiya says thoughtfully. “But correct me if I’m wrong -- out of all the things that are going, that’s the only one that you had before you became a Shinigami, right?”
I nod. “Right.”
“That might have something to do with it.” He pinches his lower lip thoughtfully. “When did this start?”
“The first dizzy fit I had was at the wedding.”
He blinks at me. “That early?”
I nod. “I didn’t bother mentioning it to anyone, not even to Tsuzuki. I just figured I’d had a little bit too much champagne.”
He frowns at me. “But you were barely drinking.”
“Well, I know, but it was the best explanation I could come up with at the time.” I sound a bit defensive. In retrospect, I wish I had realized earlier that it had something to do with this, but what good would it have done me?
“Who else knows about this?”
“Knows about me being dizzy, or knows what’s going on?” I ask. “I think it got around the whole office that I hadn’t been feeling very well. Tsuzuki and Tatsumi obviously know what’s up, and I think Watari does too, but I couldn’t swear to that. My empathy’s been weird and I haven’t been around him very much.”
“So, all Shinigami that have been around longer than you.”
“Well, yeah. You’re the only one who hasn’t been. There haven’t been any new Shinigami since you, at least, not in our department. There hasn’t been a need for them.”
“And the first day it got really bad was at your birthday party.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long moment of silence. Finally, he shrugs helplessly. “I’m stumped,” he admits. “Everything that makes you a Shinigami seems to be disappearing, but hell if I can figure out why.”
I nod slowly, thoughtfully. “Because it’s not my empathy itself that’s going -- it’s my control over it. That’s something I got when I became a Shinigami. The empathy itself is inherent to who I am, so they can’t take that away from me.”
“They?” Akimiya asks quietly.
I shrug. “I don’t know. But there must be a they. Unless you think this is all one big coincidence.” I consider further. “And it’s happened before. Tatsumi mentioned that it had happened to Tsuzuki. Hell, maybe it is just a virus and I’m just overreacting.” I wish that were the case, but I know it isn’t. Not from how uneasy Tsuzuki has been over it.
Akimiya is shaking his head too. “I wish you knew when it had happened to Tsuzuki.”
“I don’t know, but I think it was a while ago,” I say thoughtfully.
He sighs. “This is getting us nowhere. Should we work on the other case for a little while? At least if we can solve it, we can go home. Maybe it’ll be easier once we’re back in the Meifu.”
“And you want to see Rika,” I say with a slight smile.
He blushes, which is fairly satisfying because he doesn’t often blush. “Oh, shut up.”
~~~~
It takes two days and another disappeared child before we have a definitive lead on the case. By that time, my healing ability has stopped completely. (Which I know thanks to the horrific bruise I have on my knuckles from when I punched the wall out of frustration. I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t break my fingers.)
It’s not a demon. From what we can tell, it’s a group of people worshipping a demon, sacrificing the children to it. I don’t give much for their welfare.
“You do realize the easiest way to do this, right?” I ask wearily.
Akimiya shakes his head. “You can’t play bait. You can’t heal. If they sacrificed you, that’d be it.”
I smile at him slightly. “Then you’d just better make sure you get there in time, ne?”
He doesn’t like it (neither do I), but neither of us see a better option, so we get right to it. I can’t just wait around for them to pick me, so I have to draw their attention to me somehow. Not quite sure how to do that when I don’t have any magic of my own at the moment. But from what I can tell, they have a scout at the school, so if my empathy will just even out for a day so I can figure out who it is, I’ll be golden.
But fate apparently decides to take it easy on me, since I’m having since a rough time, and has them pick me out anyway. I should be happy about this, right? Right. Maybe if I weren’t on the way to my doom.
I recognized the compulsion spell, even as it was being put on me, but without any ‘jitsu there was no way I could fight against it. Pretty handy way of kidnapping people, really. No struggle, no ropes or gags or blindfolds. Just a few muttered words and they’ll do whatever you tell them.
Right.
Akimiya is following us, silently and invisibly. I can feel his presence flickering in and out as my empathy does the same.
The man who’s leading me along stops at a street corner. I’m guessing the entrance to their . . . lair? God, that word is stupid . . . is around here somewhere.
“Stay here,” he tells me firmly, and I nod vaguely. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. He disappears into a building.
“Akimiya,” I say through clenched teeth. “Get this damned spell off me.”
It takes him a couple tries, but he does manage it. Now I’ll just pretend to be obeying, and then . . . well, I’m sure I’ll think of something.
Footsteps. A new voice. Long white coat and silver hair.
“Hello, boy.”
Maybe I won’t think of something after all.
~~~~
Chapter Three
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