Everywhere and Nowhere
In a kinder world, the boy would have said something, would have given any indication that he had heard her words. But he did nothing but bleed, becoming grayer and grayer, the blood from the back of his head soaking into her jeans. Eventually, paramedics arrived, prying Miyane away from him, their actions speaking enough. Fingers against the wrist, a shake of the head, and they turned their attention to Daehyun instead, the one who could be saved.
If she had been smarter, more capable, perhaps this conversation would have been the breakthrough. Maybe the conclusion would be to gently support the truant child. Maybe the conclusion would be to stubbornly approach her family unit in search for answers. There were myriads of possible solutions, but they were useless if Tsurushi did not come to any of them by herself. Her psychiatrist wasn’t here to aid her with professional development, after all. She could say ‘yes, you are making excuses, but no, you don’t need to apologize for them’ or she could say ‘no, you’re not making excuses, some schools certainly do just try to ignore their troublemakers’, but Tsurushi was the teacher, not Hisui. And in the end, there were no answers, only a somewhat pleasant sensation left behind by being able to put her problems out there, by being able to make someone else understand them.
In a more just world, she wouldn’t have to run at all, her enemies tried and found guilty, the gravity of the crimes enough to sentence them to death. Wouldn’t have to do it herself, wouldn’t have to taste viscera as it seeped into her throat, while the rest of the world saw that boy as only a boy, and her as the monster. But that was fine. The world was shit, and only those willing to get knee-deep into it would go anywhere. They broke into a car, jumpstarted it, and were off, tinted windows hiding their crimson countenances. Neither of them had licenses, but then again. What was one more crime, at this point?
If she had been sharper, more astute, perhaps she could have put the pieces together more easily, could have leveraged her connections more effectively. But the questions posed raised suspicions again, brown eyes narrowing, a nervous twitchiness entering Kiwa’s stance once more. Only non-committal, vague responses followed. She only knew that her ‘stalker’ rode motorbikes, and she suggested that Mana avoid them as well. She only knew that Ahmya was going through a rough patch in life, and she suggested that Mana help her out if she asks, but not get involved otherwise. She apologized again and, with the abruptness of someone who didn’t know how to end a conversation but had to anyways, left, clutching her bag against her chest. And, like that, Mana was alone.
In a warmer world, he would’ve gotten a proper response, an answer, a question, something that he’d be able to latch onto. But he was half-foreigner, and the kid before him was simply...a kid. Seeing him approach, the teenager immediately pocketed his phone, stammered out a response, and left quickly, running out of the livehouse. Soon after, the police had come, armed with harmless smiles and notepads. There was no escape now, especially not for someone personally involved.
In a gray world where sunshine only emerged in infrequent patches, the day passed on into night.
Northern District
There was no smell of microwaved food waiting for Tsurushi when she came back. Nor was there the sound of Zaketa’s constant chattering on stream. In the absence of both, she could have expected a chirpy ‘welcome back’ from her young lover, but that too wasn’t present. More alarming though, was just how clean their hotel room was. There were no socks lying on the carpeted floor, for one, and no scattered wires and empty packages, for another.
There was none of that coziness that accompanied a disorderly room, only two large suitcases, bulging from the amount of stuff in it. Zaketa was crouched before the third, not so much placing clothes in as she was tossing them in. There was an angry decisiveness in her motions, paused only briefly when she noticed Tsurushi standing there. For a moment, she stopped, regret flickering through her eyes.
But she recovered soon enough. She always did. Her mouth set a hard line, and she got back to work.
“We’re leaving this place,” Zaketa said. “Help me pack, Tsu.”
Eastern District
Construction in Tenoroshi continued, but Niimura Street, winding and chock full of barely-legal stores selling everything from knock-off figurines with melted faces to ground-up bear penis meant to encourage youthful excess, never changed. Years ago, Mana’d probably have been hanging in those dimly lit streets as well, puffing away a cigarette as her friends talked about nothing and shared a lighter. Now, other, newer wannabe-delinquents filled the place instead, burning away the last hours of Sunday as they vaped sweet-smelling clouds through their noses, obnoxiously loud foreign music bursting out of their wireless earphones.
Only the inhabitants were different. She had no need to pass by this time, not when no one she recognized were taking up space on the streets.
But there was something that did give her pause. Long enough for her to stop and really look. Two men, their long white coats trailing the ground, were talking to the locals there, their voices loud but largely incoherent. Aggressive posturing, gesticulations with a piece of paper, all drew nothing from the mute storekeeper, who was trying to peddle them a couple of kendama toys instead, and in the end, neither side got what they wanted. Another rude word, and the men mounted their bikes, their mufflers amplified thricefold in the narrow acoustics of the streets, before roaring off.
Sorta stupid, how their rides were so loud even when they rode so slow.
Central District
Tenoroshi General Hospital had an uncommonly busy night, but the isolated metropolis was never occupied enough that people with grievous injuries had to wait long to be admitted. In that aspect, perhaps, Daehyun was lucky.
And it was lucky for Miyane too, that visiting hours stretched so late into the night.
The sterile, deafeningly quiet environment was painful, eerie. Fluorescent lighting cast bright, pearly light against the linoleum floor, and the walls were painted pastel colors. Occasionally, a patient would be pushed past by a man or woman in scrubs, and occasionally, a couple would be supporting their elderly parent as they shakily strode down the hall, but that was it. No one in beds, being pushed to surgery. Tranquility all around, unoccupied halls occasionally broken by people with cough masks sleeping in padded chairs. Third floor, eastern hallway, fourth door to the left had been the instructions the bespectacled receptionist had left with her, and when she opened the door, that strange ‘empty’ smell became greater than before. It wasn’t a private room, three other beds laying empty, but it was private enough, curtains sectioning them off.
As she approached, Daehyun turned to face her. His arm was in a cast, his complexion was sickly, his lips chaffed and dry, but, as she expected, it was the mass of gauzes and bandages around his eye that caught her attention. Bits of blood had soaked through, but evidently not enough to cause the doctors any concern, and if nothing else, he still had enough energy to smile when she appeared.
“Brought the Sichuan Chicken, Miyane?”
That was wrong. He didn’t have any energy at all in the smile.
Southwestern District
Sakura Mansion was a place where people could live without fear of intruding eyes reporting them to the authorities, but that didn’t mean one could get away with everything. Especially not a yakiniku party, if the many muffled ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP’s of their neighbors were anything to take into consideration. Yasuo had lost count of the amount of heavy banging he heard from the thin walls, but the youth didn’t particularly care either. It was time to hard party, after all, time to celebrate and clear out all the frozen meat in Marina’s fridge. With more six-packs of beers than either of them should drink, and a steadily growing pile of greased paper towels used to clean the grill, it was certainly a wild time. Everything smelled of meat, even the crisp vegetables as palate cleansers.
Was it healthy? Hell no. Was it hel-fun? Hell yes.
Toasting once more to macabre things that had no right to be celebrated, Yasuo sipped his brew once more, leaning back. The clouds had admirably cleared up in the night, at least, and stars were twinkling up above, faint but still present. Those same stars would be witnesses to all sorts of shady shit down in the slummier parts of Tenoroshi, no doubt, but still. Pleasant sights, pleasant nights.
All came to an end though.
“Oof, lookit the time,” Yasuo said, hopping up onto his feet (and almost tripping over an empty can in the process), “Think Imma pop home now, ‘less pops goes bald.”
Western District
The stars were faint, but the western district was the oldest part of Tenoroshi. The neon of the downtown core had yet to encroach upon this hilly area of town, leaving a soothing darkness behind. Well, such things were hard to appreciate though, when one’s eyes were drawn to the shine of their phone instead. Sitting atop Tengu’s Villa, legs hanging off the side, Marc had plenty of things to think about as the day turned to a close. With Daehyun being as big as he was, local news outlets immediately picked up on the incident, articles still being updated as new information, some fraudulent, spilling in. The greatest boon to the media was the video that had been captured and then sent, all the juicy violence caught in the process. The quality was bad, the dimness of the live house making everything grainy, and the initial blows weren’t captured either, but it was enough to cause a stir nonetheless. Some were calling it a publicity stunt to drum up more interest in the movies, others were pouring out love and support for Daehyun, still more condemned the owner of Galaxy for having no security measures in place to stop a random attack like that, but the focus was clear; the tragedy was in the injury of the beloved Korean superstar, not of the death of a teenaged boy.
Unpleasant, was what it was, but it wasn’t as if Minds, Mayhem, and Mystery had much to offer that day either. They were focused on the event as well, after all. Maybe the kid who died was actually connected to the ‘dark side’ of Tenoroshi, and this was a particularly savage hitwoman. Maybe the entire thing was falsified, an experiment by the Overmind to see how much influence over reality their media-infiltrating pawns had before they executed their plans of world domination. Maybe the blonde was, considering her apparent method of attack, literally a vampire. And of course, that followed with comments about how hot she was and whether or not she was a succubus too.
Amongst the torrent of stupid shit, the other story of the day, the mysterious fire seen in one of the buildings of Tamagakahara, which had spontaneously emerged but left no traces on the building’s exterior afterwards, drew hardly any attention at all.
