Warnings for the fact that I'm totally bs-ing both Tsuzuki's past and Oriya's personality. Way to go, me.
Chapter Four
I follow Tsuzuki along obediently, not having any clue where he’s going anyway. He stops at a large apartment building that I’ve sure never seen and beckons me into the elevator. “Go ahead,” he says, once we’re facing one of the doors. “Ring the bell.”
I give him a suspicious look and ring it. There’s a thud from inside the apartment, and then the door swings open. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
The last time I saw Minase Hijiri, we were both sixteen. Looking at him was like looking in a mirror, so much so that people were questioning if we were twins that had somehow gotten separated at birth.
Now he’s nineteen, and looking at him I see the man I would’ve grown into. He’s taller -- he’s even taller than Tsuzuki, though only by about an inch. He was thin before, and is still slender now, but he looks more graceful. Not so much of a gangly teenager. He’s grown his hair out longer, too. It sweeps forward around his chin, tapering to a point in the back. His eyes are the only thing that are the same, that vibrant, liquid green.
Now they widen in surprise and happiness. “Tsuzuki!” He blinks at both of us. If looking at him is weird for me, it’s probably equally weird for him to see me. “Hisoka, too . . . come on in!”
He ushers us inside. “I never expected to see you again,” he says, closing the door behind us. “At least, not while I was still alive. I mean, I figured I would after I was dead. You two look just the same.”
I flinch. Tsuzuki sees my look and also flinches. Hijiri sees us both flinching and . . . yes, you guessed it. He flinches.
“Sorry,” he apologizes hastily. “I guess that was sort of thoughtless.” He gestures for us to sit down on the couch. “Can I get you anything? Tea?” He grins suddenly. “I just bought a box of cookies . . . they aren’t homemade, but they’re still good.”
“Cookies?” Tsuzuki perks up immeasurably.
Hijiri laughs. “I’ll be right back.” He walks into the kitchen. He’s different now. He was arrogant then, but he isn’t anymore. He’s just confident, and he wears it like another outfit. It suits him. Would I have turned out that way? I somewhat doubt it.
“Of course,” he mentions, walking back in with a tray of tea and cookies, “I could always make curry. Ne, Tsuzuki?”
Tsuzuki laughs, and reaches for the cookies. I’ve never seen anyone go through sweets the way he does. Honestly. Hijiri pours us both tea. “So what have you been up to?” Tsuzuki asks him.
Hijiri brightens and begins to tell us. So far, he doesn’t ask any questions about why we’re here or what’s going on, for which I’m profoundly grateful. He’s pretty perceptive, all things considered. I didn’t know Tsuzuki had been keeping track of him, but I guess he must do that to anyone he cares about.
Turns out our boy Hijiri has gotten himself pretty famous. I knew he was good, but apparently he’s just as good as I thought he was. Only nineteen years old and already being advertised as one of Japan’s best violinists. Ever. Not a bad reputation to have.
Tsuzuki asks if he’s seeing anyone, and Hijiri says no. Damn it all. Must resist the urge to say, ‘well, we’re married so you can’t have him.’
“So how are you two doing?” Hijiri asks, shifting in his armchair and pouring himself more tea.
“We’re doing good,” Tsuzuki says, lying through his teeth.
Hijiri doesn’t believe him, which I find rather funny. He glances at Tsuzuki as he reaches for another cookie, and his eyes land on the ring. I don’t bother to hide mine, watching in amusement as Hijiri’s eyebrows crawl up his forehead. “So you two are married, ne?”
Tsuzuki nearly chokes on his cookie. I pat him on the back. “Yes,” I say, taking his hand and scowling at Hijiri.
He nods in what looks like satisfaction. “Good. I was wondering if you two idiots would ever realize you were head over heels for each other.”
Now it’s my turn to choke. I nearly spray tea all over him. “You knew?” That early? When we met Hijiri, I’d only been a Shinigami for four months. I couldn’t have been in love with Tsuzuki then, could I have? At least . . . not that obviously!
Hijiri rolls his eyes. It’s funny how I didn’t notice at first, but he still has the cat’s pupil in one. “Of course I knew. And if you ask me, so did everyone who came within a fifty-foot radius of you two.”
“Then why were flirting with Tsuzuki?” I demand. Tsuzuki chokes again. Hijiri actually starts to snicker.
He grins at me, unremorseful. “Because I thought if I made you jealous enough, maybe you’d do something about it,” he tells me. “Or at least slip up long enough for Tsuzuki to realize that you returned his feelings and do something about it himself.”
Tsuzuki and I stare at him.
“So how long did it take you?” he asks, settling more comfortably into his armchair.
“Well, we just got married a few weeks ago,” Tsuzuki says.
Hijiri nearly falls out of his chair. “It took you almost three years?!”
“No,” Tsuzuki says defensively. “We’d been living together for nearly a year before that.”
He gives us a look through narrowed eyes. “Well, that’s better, I guess,” he says. “But what the hell took you so long?”
“Extenuating circumstances,” I say, and glare back.
It seems like we’re going to sit there and glare at each other for eternity while Tsuzuki plows through the cookies, until Hijiri starts to laugh again. “Well, as long as you’re happy together now.”
“We are,” Tsuzuki says firmly, and takes my hand. Wonderful, now I’m blushing. The cookies are entirely gone. Hijiri and I ate about one apiece.
“So what brings you here?” Hijiri asks, leaning back with his tea. Ah, the fun part of the conversation.
“Well,” Tsuzuki says, stretching this out into several syllables, “we were wondering if we could ask a favor.”
“Sure,” Hijiri says immediately. “Name it.” And I know he means it. He would honestly do anything for us, especially for Tsuzuki.
“It’s not much,” Tsuzuki says. “Just . . . we need a place to stay for a night or two.”
Hijiri nods. “I’ve got a guest room. It’s not much, but . . .” He smirks suddenly. “Since one bed is all right, you’ll both fit.” And now he gets to see me blush even redder. Excellent. “But do you mind if I ask why?”
Tsuzuki glances at me, as if requesting permission to explain, and I nod slightly. So Tsuzuki starts to explain the whole entire mess, which takes quite a while because he has to give some back story on Muraki before any of it will make sense anyway. It takes him a little over a half an hour to give enough information to satisfy Hijiri.
“So you’re here because they won’t think to look for you here?” he confirms at the end of it.
Tsuzuki nods. “Tatsumi and Watari know about you, but they won’t tell anyone.”
“Okay.” Hijiri changes the subject, engages us in small talk, which I’m grateful for. It means I don’t have to think anymore.
~~~~
It’s late before we finally crawl into bed. Tsuzuki and I have opposite kinds of insomnia. When we’re stressed, neither of us can sleep. I just don’t fall asleep at all. He, on the other hand, conks out immediately. But then he wakes up really early and can’t fall back to sleep. It’s no fun whichever way you choose.
So he’s snoozing beside me and I’m just curled up in his arms, trying desperately to stop thinking long enough to lose consciousness.
When it finally works, I’m immediately drawn into dreams. But not a regular dream. One of those dreams where I’m standing in the middle of nothingness, looking around and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
I figure it out pretty quickly when Akimiya appears next to me. “Yo,” he says, nonchalant, as if nothing is wrong.
Blink at him. Let’s hear it for brainpower. “Hi,” I manage.
“Where the hell are you?” he asks, beginning to sound irritated. “All Tatsumi-san would tell me was that you were gone. Tsuzuki too.”
“You want the whole story?” Quite frankly, I don’t care about breaking the rules anymore. Akimiya deserves an explanation, and knowing that it would piss off the higher-ups is giving me a small amount of satisfaction. At his nod, I continue. I tell him about the test and EnmaDaiOh’s decision about Tsuzuki. He listens to all this in silence.
“Wow,” he finally says. “That sucks.”
“Yeah, thanks, Einstein.”
“So what are you going to do?” he asks, settling comfortably on a chair that conveniently appears behind him. Sometimes I forget how weird it is to be in a dream with Akimiya, who just casually warps the surroundings to suit him. He explained to me once that if he’s controlling the dream, everything works on a physical basis. Thoughts and feelings can be represented in a metaphorical form. Must be handy.
“Hell if I know.” I look around for a chair, and one obligingly pops into existence behind me. “All we’ve thought of so far is to keep running.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Akimiya shifts uncomfortably. “Shinigami can always find each other. You know that.”
“Not necessarily,” I say. “I couldn’t find Tsuzuki that one time that Muraki kidnapped him.” Pause. “That was a bit before your time.”
He shrugs. “Maybe that was because of Muraki, though. I mean, God only knows that he’s stayed off our radar enough times when it was inconvenient.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“Well, the point is, I don’t think you can just hide from whoever they send after you.”
I give him a look. “Thanks for the pep talk, Sunshine Boy.”
He lets out a little sigh. “Look, Hisoka, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. I’d help you if I could. This was totally unfair. But . . .”
“But they’re going to catch us and send me on anyway,” I say shortly. “Yeah, I know. I tried to tell Tsuzuki that, but he wouldn’t listen. I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do, Akimiya.” Great, now I feel tears stinging at my eyes. Shoot me now, please.
“Well . . .” He shifts uncomfortably. “I’ll keep an ear out for news and stuff. And if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.”
I wake up then. Tsuzuki is still asleep, his face peaceful. I wish I could join him, but I don’t. I just stare at the ceiling, all night long.
~~~~
Hijiri tries to keep us distracted the next day. Tsuzuki has decreed that they won’t actually start looking for at least a day or two, giving us time to come back on our own, so we have that long to have fun. I try to remind him we should be planning our next move, but he’s having none of it.
Sight-seeing with Hijiri is surprisingly nostalgic. I mean, we did quite a bit of it the last time that we met up.
Tsuzuki skips ahead to buy us ice cream.
“It must be hard for you,” Hijiri says quietly, staring over the fence at the ocean. “To have finally found a family and have to leave it all behind.”
I search for a sarcastic comment, a really scathing one. What I actually end up saying is, “Yeah.”
“Is he worth it?” Hijiri asks with a smile, his eyes following Tsuzuki to the ice cream truck. And in that moment I know he wasn’t telling the entire truth. He did love Tsuzuki, but he knew that Tsuzuki loved me, and so he let him go. It’s hard to dislike him anymore.
“Of course.”
He turns to me. “Do you have a place to go after this?”
“Not yet.” I can’t help but smile slightly. “I want to try to plan, but that idiot won’t hear about it. Even if we found a place to go, I don’t know how we’d get there.”
“Well . . . here.” Hijiri reaches into a side pocket and pulls out a large wad of cash. He sees my surprised look. “You know Tsuzuki will never accept it. I know that you don’t want to either, but you’re practical so you will. You’ll need money and I have plenty to spare.”
I accept the money and tuck it into one of my own pockets. “Thanks.”
He grins at me. “I owe it all to you guys, anyway. Think of it as your percentage of the profits.”
I can’t hold back an undignified snort. “Yeah, right.” But I guess he’s right. He would have died if we hadn’t been there. He would have been sixteen forever, just like me. I have a brief image of Shinigami-Hijiri. That might have been fun, if only for all the switching tricks we could have played on people. Of course, that would have given him more of a chance at Tsuzuki, which wouldn’t have been good.
Tsuzuki bounces back from the ice cream vendor and hands out our cones. Then he runs off ahead to look at something equally enthralling. Hijiri and I just walk along in companionable silence, because there’s nothing more we need to say.
~~~~
It’s late when we get back. Hijiri apologizes and says he has an early rehearsal the next morning, so he’s going to turn in. I tell him to wake us up before he leaves to say goodbye, because we’ll be going. Tsuzuki starts to protest, but I give him a death glare and he agrees.
“Why do we have to leave?” he asks, after Hijiri has gone to his rehearsal the next morning and we’re safely packing up.
“We’ve stayed here long enough,” I say firmly.
“But no one except Tatsumi and Watari know about Hijiri,” he protests. Why do I have a vague feeling he’s lying?
“And Konoe-Kachou,” I remind.
“All right, and Kachou.”
“No one else?”
He shifts uncomfortably.
“You know, you never told me how you were able to see Hijiri when you were possessed by that demon,” I say casually. I’m flailing, but apparently I’ve hit something, because he flinches. “Ah.”
“That was . . . sort of . . . EnmaDaiOh’s doing,” he mumbles.
I nearly fall over. “So you took us somewhere that EnmaDaiOh is going to think of. Oh, excellent. And yet you didn’t want to leave.” I glare at him. “Care to explain that?”
He scuffs the floor with one foot. “You’re the one who keeps saying it doesn’t matter where we go,” he says, sounding sullen.
“And you keep arguing with me!” I flop onto the bed. “I swear, Tsuzuki, you’re acting like you want to get caught!”
There’s a brief flare of panicked reaction through the bond. I sit up again and stare at him.
“Tsuzuki . . .”
He looks away.
“Tell me,” I say softly. “Tell me what you’re trying to do.”
“They’re going to catch us no matter what,” he replies quietly. “I thought we should have a bit of fun first.”
“You’ve been acting like it won’t happen,” I remind him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He shifts uncomfortably. “Well, see, I knew that we could never get away from them,” he says, starting to talk in a rush, “so I thought we could do something that would piss them off more and then they’ll send us both on instead of just you.”
I stare at him. “That was your plan?!”
He looks at the floor.
“That’s not a plan! That’s the sort of thing you do when a plan already failed!” I march across the room to look him in the eye. “And how do you know we’ll go to the same place?”
“Oh, we will,” he says earnestly. “You’re always allowed to keep your loved ones in Heaven.”
“Tsuzuki,” I say softly, “that’s not what I meant.”
He flinches.
“Whatever it was you did to deserve an eternity as a Shinigami in penance . . . are you so sure that it won’t get you sent to Hell if you die here?”
Tsuzuki rubs his eyes. “Aa . . . that was why I became one in the first place. Too good for Hell . . . not good enough for Heaven. So I got this instead, and EnmaDaiOh was supposed to keep an eye on me to make sure that my penance was long enough. When it’s over, then I get to go on to Heaven. It was promised to me.” He takes a deep breath. “It was an accident. That was why I didn’t get sent to Hell for it. Because it was an accident.”
I reach up and touch his face. “What happened?”
“No.” He turns away. “I-I’m sorry. I . . . I can’t.”
“You can’t tell me?”
“I can’t rememeber,” he gasps out, and presses his hands against his face. “So much of my life has come back in bits and pieces, but that . . . that’s still a blank. All I know is that so many people died . . .”
He folds into my arms and I embrace him tightly.
“That was why . . . in Kyoto.”
“That was why what?” I ask, confused.
“Why Tatsumi and Watari were going to let me die.” He rests his head against my shoulder. “I had been a Shinigami for seventy-two years . . . it could have been over. All I wanted was to die so it could be over. And they knew that. They knew it had been promised to me, so they let me try to die.”
“But I called you back,” I say quietly. Out of my own selfish reasons, I kept him from the peace he had been promised.
“You called me back,” he echoes with a nod.
“Because I didn’t know.” My voice breaks slightly.
“Yes,” he whispers. “Because you didn’t know.”
We sit in silence.
“I’m sorry.” It’s about all I can offer him, even though I know it’s far less than he deserves or needs.
He manages a smile and looks up at me, caresses my cheek. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I was never angry with you. Besides . . . you did what nobody else could. You made my existence good, rather than letting me end it.”
I can’t help but smile a little at that. “So what now?”
“Now?” His voice drifts off into a sigh. “Now they’ll come for us, and they’ll send you on to Heaven, and drag me back for my penance.”
“And then . . .?”
“Then . . .” He leans up and brushes his lips over mine. “Then I’ll call down Touda. And we’ll stay together.”
I know this is not technically among the best plans I’ve ever heard. But I sure as hell don’t have a better one, and anything would be better than spending Eternity without Tsuzuki. Even Heaven isn’t as good as Tsuzuki.
More silence.
“Well,” I finally say. “We may as well make them work for it.” I stand up, and pull him up with me. “Come on. I have an idea of where to go. We’re going to go see the expert on hiding from Shinigami.”
~~~~
Tsuzuki doesn’t really think this is such a good idea, but I manage to talk him into it. I mean, there’s not much else we can do, and Muraki is the one who got us into this mess in the first place. It helps that no one will ever think to look for us with him, too. It’s a pretty simple matter of using my empathy to track him down, using the money Hijiri gave us to travel.
Not to even mention he’s staying in probably the most obvious place that I can think of. Sometimes I think he doesn’t even care if we track him down.
Oriya answers the door at his fancy brothel. Upon seeing me, he grins. “Yo.”
I glare at him. I never did figure out why he was working with Muraki, other than that they were friends in high school. Old loyalties die hard, I guess. But he did let me have the key when it mattered. “Muraki here?”
“No,” he answers calmly. “Should I tell him that you’re looking for him, next time I see him? It’s not very often, you know.”
“I’m sure.” I fold my arms over my chest. “Why don’t you go tell him that we’re here, and then he can decide whether or not he wants to see us. You know that he’ll say yes, because he’ll wonder why we’re here and his curiosity will get the better of him.”
Oriya’s lips twitch in a smile. “Come in,” he says, and holds the door open for us. He leaves us in a sitting room while he goes to get Muraki.
Muraki walks in a minute later. I hate it when I’m right. He smiles at both of us benevolently. “Wasn’t expecting to get a visit from the two of you,” he says. I hate the way he’s always so pleasant. You know, until he tries to kill me.
In retrospect, it’s kind of interesting . . . he only started trying that after Kyoto. I wonder what happened there? I never got the full details from Tsuzuki. He never wanted to talk about it, and I wasn’t going to be the one to ask.
Tsuzuki smiles right back. “You owe us a favor,” he says pleasantly. “We want to know how you’ve been hiding from the Shinigami all these years.”
Muraki laughs. “And for exactly what reason would I be inclined to tell you that?”
“Well,” Tsuzuki says, looking like he might launch himself at Muraki and rip his throat out any second now. “You had the misfortune to interrupt something rather important the other day.”
“And what was that?”
I didn’t know that Tsuzuki was going to tell him what was going on, but I suppose he has to if we want to get the spell from him. That makes me feel annoyed, because I don’t want Muraki to know what an idiot he made of me.
“Hisoka’s test to become a full Shinigami,” Tsuzuki says quietly. “Because of you, he didn’t finish. Because of you, they were going to send him on. So now, in order to stay together, we have to hide from the rest of the Shinigami.”
“And tell me, Tsuzuki-san . . . why would I want to help you stay together?” Muraki sits down next to Tsuzuki, reaching a hand out towards him.
Tsuzuki pushes his hand away. “Because if they take him,” he says pleasantly, “I’ll call down Touda and burn down the entire world, if need be, to be with him again.”
Muraki considers this. “So what’s in this for me?”
“Well,” Tsuzuki says dryly, “you seem to be rather enamored of trying to catch me for your own, which won’t work very well if I’m in Heaven and safely out of your reach.”
Muraki smirks. “Are you offering what it sounds like?”
Tsuzuki meets his gaze evenly. “I will never be yours voluntarily, Muraki.” He reaches out and takes my hand. “I couldn’t anyway. Hisoka and I are blood bound now. Like you and I were for that brief period of time.”
Muraki raises an eyebrow at me. “Did I make you paranoid, little one?”
“Just a bit,” I retort.
“I can’t give myself to you,” Tsuzuki says, “even if I wanted to. I’m his now. But you must admit that if I die, you won’t even be able to ogle me from a distance anymore, as you also seem fond of doing. And seeing as this is all your fault anyway, I think you could do us the favor.”
Muraki seems to consider this for a long minute. “All right,” he finally says. Then he smiles again. “But it’ll take a day or two to prepare the spell. You should probably stay here until then.”
I know damn well that’s a crock of shit, and Tsuzuki knows it too. But there’s not much we can do about it. Tsuzuki nods reluctantly.
~~~~
“So did I really keep you from becoming a real Shinigami?”
Right. Remind me to never ever offer to go get some tea when trapped in a brothel with Muraki. You’d think these things would occur to me, but no. I just offer and then waltz off like we’re at home. I’ve gotten too used to living in safety, damn it. Don’t answer. Just pour the hot water over the tea leaves and pick up the pot.
Damn him. He’s blocking the doorway.
“If you don’t mind,” I say through clenched teeth, “I’m getting some tea for Tsuzuki. Don’t you have something better to be doing?”
In three quick steps he has me pinned up against the counter. I drop the pot of water and it breaks on the floor, showering us both with hot water. It doesn’t hurt me very much. He doesn’t even seem to notice. “I ought to thank you, boy,” he says, right into my ear. “You’ve led Tsuzuki right to me.”
“And what are you going to do now, kill me?” I snap. “I’m sure that’ll work out really well. Especially since coming here was my idea, not his, so he can’t even blame himself.”
“So maybe I won’t kill you,” he says with a laugh, making me shudder. “Maybe I’ll just have some fun with you instead.”
“Oh, that’ll go over great,” I snarl. “Why don’t you go ahead and rape me right on the counter, and then Tsuzuki can shove the shards of this teapot right up your -- ”
Bastard kissed me.
That’s it. I’ve had enough. I hike my knee right up into his groin. That gets him to let go of me, at which point I punch him across the face.
“I. Have had. Enough,” I announce, and shove him to the floor. “I’ve had one of the worst weeks ever and it’s all your fault, and I’m going to get my God damned tea unmolested, thank you very much.”
There’s a chuckle from the doorway. Oriya is standing there with his pipe, or cigarette holder, or whatever the hell that thing is.
“What are you laughing at?” I snarl.
“I just think it’s funny that you finally got the best of him.”
I snatch up a new pot and start to boil water. “Thank you. I find it rather amusing myself.”
Well, I don’t, but it sounds good. Oriya stands there and watches me boil water, which must not be very interesting. Muraki seems to have decided not to get up. Good for him. It’s safer on the floor anyway. I resist the urge to pour the boiling water on him. Make tea and go upstairs.
“Are you okay?” Tsuzuki asks. “For a minute I thought something was wrong, but then you seemed pretty satisfied with yourself and I thought it might be safer up here.”
I pour him a mug of tea. “I’m fine.”
“Really?” He accepts it and looks owlishly over the rim.
“Really.” I glance back at the door. I think Muraki’s still downstairs. “I have an idea.”
“Oh?” He puts down the mug.
“If Muraki is going to make us stay here with him, let’s make him pay for it.”
“What did you have in mind?” Tsuzuki asks, his eyes glinting a little.
“Let’s have really noisy sex.”
~~~~
For some reason beyond my understanding (ha very ha) Muraki isn’t a very good mood that evening. Oriya seems to be secretly laughing his ass off. Oh well, it struck me that he had a pretty strange sense of humor anyway. Tsuzuki and I decide to turn in early. And, well, maybe have some more sex while we’re at it, because if that’s the only way we can piss Muraki off, I’m certainly not objecting.
It’s late when there’s a knock on our door. Tsuzuki is sound asleep already. “Who is it?” I call sleepily.
In answer, that asshole opens the door. Good thing I pulled the blankets up.
“What do you want?”
“There’s someone here to see Tsuzuki-san.”
I sit up in bed and glare at him. “So, you’re supposed to be helping us hide, and you told someone he was here?”
“No,” he snaps. “He came to the door and asked to see him. He obviously already knew he was here, so I didn’t see the point in denying it.” He hesitates, which is odd for him. “You’ll understand when you see him, anyway.”
He leaves, and I get Tsuzuki out of bed. He doesn’t seem pleased with the situation, but follows me out to the front room after getting dressed.
The man standing in the front hall is . . . is . . .
He turns to us. He’s tall and slender, perfectly formed. His hair is black and feathery, just barely reaching his shoulders. His features . . . there’s no word for them. He’s honestly the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my entire existence.
And his eyes . . . his eyes are pure amethyst.
“Asato-kun,” he says pleasantly. His voice is smooth and light, and sends waves of ice crashing over me. I feel so cold that I can’t move. He’s freezing. Everything about him is cold.
I know two things without being told. The first is that this . . . man . . . who isn’t really a man at all . . . has to be Tsuzuki’s father.
The second is that we’re in far more danger now than we were with Muraki.
~~~~
Chapter Five
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