Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction ❯ The First Death ❯ Chapter 9: The True Death, Part 5 ( Chapter 9 )

The True Death, Part 5

Summary: Getting through the night.

|Saki|

It's never real, this nightmare that goes on and on. Just a dream, merely something that happened a long time ago. Saki repeats the words to himself until the sounds lose their meaning.

Still, he continues through the forest, the muddy ground squelching beneath his steps, caking his shoes. It's summer, not hot enough yet for the cicadas to call, but hot enough for it to be uncomfortable. He wipes the sweat from his brow, and continues on.

Mother. It passes through his mouth before he realizes he's said it aloud.

He's been here before, but he still doesn't know where to find her.

It's been over twenty years and much has changed. The road that once led a neat path through the cemetery is now eaten up, only traces of it remaining as the forest reclaims what it rightfully owns. He hears a loud snap above him and his heart jumps as the broken branch of a tree cracks onto the ground before him, missing him by bare inches.

It's a bad omen.

Angry ghosts, the dwelling of the dead, and here, the cemetery ridge is drowning in green, the plants having erased the traces of humanity.

Here is where the unwanted were buried years ago. No one comes to visit them anymore and even the cemetery's keeper is long gone, his rickety shack left to crumble into nothingness.

Decay, moss, and the filtered green light of the sun. When Saki steps onto a small log to escape the mud, it only crushes beneath his foot, completely rotten through.

Flies swirl up in clouds, mosquitoes whine their shrill song, and he forges on through the slicing blades of grass, grown nearly as tall as himself, picking his way among tall grave markers as vines tangle and catch at his ankles. Somewhere nearby, the creaks of a stand of bamboo swaying in the breeze sounds like the aching bones of an old house settling.

Saki's foot touches a fern - it trembles away from his shoe, shrinking from contact. He makes his way up the ridge, looking for the right grave. Nothing looks the same anymore.

"Mother? I'm here." His voice sounds pathetically small to him as he carefully steps through the graves, jumbled into a meaningless meander over the years. Saki softly intones prayers as he walks, hoping that the dead will forgive his intrusion into their world.

Finally, he's found himself at the top of the hill, where the afternoon sun beats down heaviest upon his head. Saki looks up at the cloudless sky and wishes that he had thought to bring water. He didn't know that the neatly kept cemetery of his childhood memory would have turned into a tangled jungle. But twenty years is a long time.

"Mother…" Saki's eyes close, the salt of his sweat stinging his eyes. "I can't find you," he finally admits to himself.

Still, he keeps looking.

It's been hours. Saki keeps searching for the small wooden cross with her name on it that would have demarcated her tomb. He remembers having fought the church even for that piece of comfort - in the end, he had filched the wood himself, and written her name upon it in his shaky hand, adding it to the anonymous stone marker that didn't even note her name.

Saki's hands are sliced from tearing futilely at the tall grasses and he's lightheaded from dehydration. He knows now that he has to give up.

Blood mixes with the stinging salt of sweat and he wipes his hands on his pale khaki trousers, leaving crimson smears along the cloth. He buries his face in his arms, blotting out the unending green and the relentless sun, if for just one moment.

"I can't find you…where are you?" Saki whispers. "Please, God, let me find my mother…Please…"

*******

|Hisoka|

He won't let me go. Oh please, someone find me. Tsuzuki. Tatsumi. Anyone.

Oh please let me go. I can't keep seeing this in his mind. I can't bear it anymore. Stop it. Please, just stop.

Please…

*******

|Oriya|

The first thing he does is wipe the blood off his katana and sheath the blade. Oriya carefully folds the square of the cloth into a smaller square and sets the blood-soaked scrap on his desk.

"Sakaki. Are you hurt?" Oriya asks. The words startle Sakaki into cognition. Sakaki blinks, as though he's just woken up.

"I'm fine." However, he doesn't sound fine, his words shaky and unsure. Sakaki absently rubs at a stray drop of drying blood on his shirt. "Are you all right, Oriya-san?"

"Of course." Oriya steps out of the room onto the porch, cold night air seeping through the layers of his clothes to touch his warm flesh.

Before him stands the shinigami, the one that he has only seen from a distance, the one with violet eyes. Tsuzuki looks scared and lost, like a child who has come a long way alone through a dark forest. He's rummaging through his pockets madly for something, and he finally pulls out a crumpled piece of paper.

Oriya can feel the magic limned along the characters written into the ofuda as if it's a net made of shining threads, heavier along the lines of the spell, lighter along the blank expanses of the paper. It's more powerful than anything he's ever been near, with the exception of Muraki.

"Tsuzuki-san." Oriya knows the name. Sometimes he wonders if he knows more about Tsuzuki than the man would be comfortable with him knowing

"What?" Tsuzuki looks up as the ofuda folds itself neatly into the form of a bird before winging off with silent flick of shining wings. Inside, on a spiritual level, Oriya can hear its shriek as it climbs into the empty darkness. "You're Muraki's friend." It's almost as much an accusation as a statement of fact.

"Yes, that's me." Oriya watches Tsuzuki curiously.

"He told me about you," Tsuzuki says, watching the bird disappear, that sudden burst of anger forgotten in a bright dot that merges into the pinprick of stars in the vast expanse of sky. "He said you gave him the keycard. Even though he had barely drawn blood."

"I did. But the boy was stronger." Oriya watches the night sky too, also waiting for that message to appear from the heavens.

A few minutes pass as they stand, watching the slow turn of the stars. Tsuzuki looks anxious, as if he too would fly off after the shikigami, following it in its quest, but he's grounded by responsibility, by the knowledge that he can't continue without assistance. His hands move as if he can somehow urge the shiki to fly faster, to go farther.

"You'll find him," Oriya says evenly.

"I know. I always do. Even when he doesn't want me to," Tsuzuki says, not realizing the contents of his words.

"He wants you to," Oriya replies. "Anyone would."

"I guess." It's not a real answer, but Oriya knows well enough to let it alone. Tsuzuki quickly turns his attention back to the shikigami's progress. He's waiting. Every second that passes, two a breath, three…four…and he watches the sky, hoping that he is wrong. Hoping that it hadn't been a clean, untraceable teleport like he knows in his heart it was. Praying that the ofuda he gave Saki earlier isn't somehow interfering with his ability to find Hisoka, and that there is something, some way of tracing his partner. He can feel the shiki somewhere, lost and confused, looking around muddled tracks and traces, searching for Hisoka but not finding him.

Tsuzuki's eyes close as tears trickle down. He rubs at them angrily, irritated at the pain. So close, yet so far and all that separates them are two pieces of paper, one calling to Hisoka, another hiding him, both created by his own hands. The blood that never seems to wash off feels permanently affixed to his skin, a second skin of guilt and sin that clings to him no matter what he does.

But for now, Tsuzuki knows that he has to believe that Hisoka is all right, because anything else means that the fragile world that Hisoka created for him from the ashes of black flames is just a little closer to collapse.

Please. Let him be safe.

Tsuzuki doesn't want to die again.

*******

|Tatsumi|

As they draw near, Tatsumi immediately sees the look of distress on Tsuzuki's face, a stray tear gleaming in the low light. With a nod of his head, he gestures to Terazuma, who takes Muraki to go see to Oriya.

"Tsuzuki-san!" Wakaba is the first one at Tsuzuki's side. "What happened?" She pulls him aside, further into the moonlit garden so that they can talk without being heard.

"It's all my fault." Tsuzuki looks distraught. "I gave him the ofuda."

"Tsuzuki-san, what are you talking about?" Tatsumi asks, confused by the obvious hurt in Tsuzuki's eyes.

Tsuzuki looks shaken, pale and drawn. "When we were sent to find Shidou Saki…we did find him. And I gave him a protective ofuda to hide, because we didn't…I didn't want Muraki to kill him."

"Tsuzuki-san." Tatsumi says incredulously, too surprised to be angry. "You're…"

"I'm responsible." Tsuzuki's voice quavers, but then, gains strength. "But I'll find him. And bring Hisoka back"

"He took Hisoka?" Wakaba looks surprised.

Tsuzuki nods miserably. "Something happened between the time I saw Saki and tonight. He's different. When I saw him earlier, he was completely normal. Neither of us could sense anything from him - he was just a normal person. Hisoka said there was something he was hiding, but he also says that everyone has something to hide that they don't want other people to know…"

Tatsumi listens, nodding. "Perhaps Kurosaki-kun let his own hatred of Muraki blind him into not delving more deeply into Saki's motivations."

"Maybe." Tsuzuki thinks about that. "Can't you track him by his shadow, Tatsumi?"

Tatsumi nods, feeling for the tracers he's put on various people. Watari's in his office. Tsuzuki stands before him. Muraki's in the building ten feet away. And Hisoka…

"I don't know," Tatsumi says, shaking his head. "Something's blocking me." Tatsumi looks concerned. "It's not your spell - that shouldn't have any effect because the shadows follow an entirely different principle…"

"Oy." Terazuma's voice rings out into the garden. "Got something that might help."

Tatsumi walks closer to the building to see what Terazuma has. "What's that?"

"Blood." Terazuma says, dangling a small plastic evidence bag with a folded square of blood-soaked cloth inside. "Muraki says we should get this back to Meifu and to the lab while it's fresh."

Tatsumi gives a quick nod of approval, leaving Tsuzuki to Wakaba. "Terazuma-san, after we interview the witnesses, I am going to ask a favor of you."

Terazuma can only nod dully as Tatsumi gives him instructions. He's not liking what he's hearing.

*******

|Terazuma|

Suddenly, Terazuma's house is a lot busier.

Just for tonight, Terazuma thinks to himself. Because Tatsumi thinks its best to keep them under protective custody until the case is over, in case Saki decides to return for either one of them. There was a quick debriefing at Kokakurou where they questioned Sakaki and Oriya, and now they're coming to his house.

He can't help but wonder why it is that in the last few days his house in particular seems to harbor stray Shinigami and humans alike. Perhaps, he thinks, it's a sign that he and Kannuki should adopt a pet, preferably one with four legs and no penchant for murder and molestation.

Of course, Wakaba thinks this is incredibly fun.

"Welcome, welcome!" Wakaba says, gesturing for Oriya and Sakaki to follow as they enter their house. "Isn't this exciting, Hajime?"

"Peachy keen," Terazuma looks beat. It's been a very long day and now it's more than a little past the right-hand side of midnight. "Bed, all of you."

Oriya raises an eyebrow at Terazuma's order, but says nothing, instead playing the gracious guest. "Thank you for your hospitality, Terazuma-san."

"Eh, don't worry about it." Terazuma says, feeling out of sorts with this houseguest who for all he knows is as crazy and dangerous as his own pet psycho, even if Oriya seems to match a large housecat in character. "Better catch Sakaki, he looks like he's about to fall asleep on his feet."

Oriya reaches out and steadies Sakaki, catching him by his shoulder. "Sakaki-kun, just a few more minutes."

Sakaki nods blearily, more than half-asleep even though he's still standing. "Sensei's dead."

"Yes he is. But he's also at the lab tonight," Oriya says patiently, following Terazuma, steering Sakaki down the hall to the downstairs bedroom.

"I don't understand," Sakaki says muzzily.

Oriya gently helps Sakaki out of his coat and shoes, putting him to bed. "Go to sleep, Sakaki."

"Mmm." But Sakaki's already most of the way there, curled up under the covers of the downstairs room. "Smells like Sensei."

At that, Oriya had nothing to say.

"Here." Terazuma brings in some large folded futons. He gives a glance at Sakaki, who is sound asleep, but lowers his voice. "Got some bedding for you, if you don't mind sleeping on the floor. We'll set something up for the kid too, so he can sleep when he gets in."

"Kid?" Oriya sounds amused.

"Oh, sorry. Muraki. I meant Muraki," Terazuma says. "Sometimes I call him the kid, since he's the newest one here. Even Kurosaki's got seniority on him."

"I see." Oriya gives a little smile. "I can just imagine what his senpais want him to do."

Terazuma gives Oriya a calculating look. "You were his friend, right?"

"I am." For Oriya, the past tense is not quite accurate yet.

"What would you have wanted him to do?"

Oriya gives it some thought as he quietly unfolds the futons. One to the right and one to the left with some space in between, enough for a person to walk through without disturbing anyone.

Terazuma grins. "Let me guess. 'Stop being a jerk and start acting like a human being?'"

"That might work if he was a human being to begin with," Oriya says curtly. "Again, thank you for hosting us. I am indebted to your kindness."

"I…" Seeing Oriya's expression, Terazuma decides not to press the issue. "Well, good night, then. Bathroom's down the hall. If you want water, it's in the kitchen. I'm sure we'll sort everything out in the morning."

"Thank you." Oriya kneels down beside the makeshift bed, folding the covers back. Terazuma closes the door.

*******

|Tatsumi|

First things first.

One. Make certain that division six makes it their destination safely, with their respective human charges.

Two. Have Tsuzuki create a kekkai barrier to protect the inhabitants.

Three. Take Muraki to Summons Division's forensic laboratory, and leave him to Watari's care to investigate the mystery of Saki's blood.

Four. Return to Chijou. Continue investigation.

Five. Is there a five?

Tok. Tok. Tok. The rhythmic tapping of the bamboo font. Above, the waxing moon is nearly full, casting its pale light upon the garden at Kokakurou. It's dark, the master's gone, and there's an odd emptiness to it that Tatsumi hadn't noticed before. As if everything has paused, just for a little, while Oriya is away.

Above, a sakura tree's petals dance in the wind, a few dropping off to worry at Tatsumi's hair as the night wind picks up. It's out of season, but then, it's always out of season. The unnaturalness of it is striking; Tatsumi remembers when he first saw it a year ago in the light of the crimson moon.

"Tsuzuki-san." Tatsumi beckons Tsuzuki over. Tsuzuki is distracted and upset, but Tatsumi knows that even now he can be reliable.

"Tatsumi." The way Tsuzuki says that, with that mix of breathlessness and yearning, leaves Tatsumi off-balance, longing to take him into his arms.

But there's work to be done.

"Tsuzuki-san, please cast the grid barrier," he says coolly, ignoring the warring desires playing out in his head. It's always business first.

Tsuzuki's brows crease in a moment of frustration, as if he does not want to do this but knows that Tatsumi is right. "Okay."

Tsuzuki pulls out a blank ofuda, one of the cache of unmarked spell papers that he keeps for occasions such as this when he casts spells that are outside of the normal flow of kekkai and protective spells. It's a little rumpled from living in his coat, but still more than serviceable.

Tsuzuki makes a little gesture and the paper seems to straighten, holding itself in position at a sloping forty-five degree angle directly before him. It's primed.

He half-closes his eyes and before him the words of the spell as he sees it in his mind begin appearing on the paper, perfect chased lines of grass-flowing text. He never needs to retrace or rewrite - of all the disciplines that others may complain that Tsuzuki lacks, his calligraphic hand is brilliant, with a spare aesthetic and precision that nearly brings Tatsumi to tears with its beauty.

But then, the tears may be for something else.

Tatsumi watches, his throat feeling as though it's closed in upon itself from some unspoken - no, unspeakable - emotion. It hurts him to see this, to see Tsuzuki so poised and serious. This is the Tsuzuki that he lo…cares for, just as much as the one that appears in the office with the little dab of whipped cream on his nose and a smile upon his lips.

Tsuzuki grasps the completed ofuda with a quick sweep of his hand, his mind centered. It slides between his fingertips and he pauses for just the smallest fraction of a second before casting it out like a glowing band of power.

It spreads, covering the entire garden and the nearby building until it's a shining net of pure power that even Tatsumi can see. Tsuzuki makes a half-turn with his hand, and the net flexes under his control, turning into a perfectly marked grid of three feet square that settles half an inch above the ground.

Tsuzuki drops his hand and turns to Tatsumi, a half-apologetic look on his face. "Do you think it's all right? I could re-cast it. There's a few lines that aren't perfectly straight," he points. "That one's sort of wiggly and I think this one…"

"No need, Tsuzuki-san. It's just right." Tatsumi smiles. At times like these, he almost forgets why he ever let Tsuzuki go.

"Let's start looking, then," Tsuzuki says. Softly, he intones a word, and parts of the limned grid begin glowing a different color. "That's the path of energy Saki created." Another word. "Hisoka's signature."

The lines of residual energy leave muddled paths along Tsuzuki's grid, crossing and breaking, blurry with movement.

"Saki's blood. Me. The secretary," Tsuzuki begins breaking down each individual that has been here in the last hour, setting a different color for each. "Oriya?"

"Prior investigations after…well, a previous investigation brought up that Muraki's friend has at least some amount of trace spiritual powers."

"Oh. That explains it." Tsuzuki nods as he's caught up in his work. "Terazuma. Wakaba. Muraki. You."

That last word, it's got a different feel to it, grounded with a tremble of emotion.

"Please continue, Tsuzuki-san." Tatsumi says it, but he doesn't feel it.

Tsuzuki's voice comes unsteady but professional. "About two hours ago…"

*******

|Watari|

One of the best parts about 003 is her ability to fit into tiny spaces.

Watari looks up from the front step of the apartment complex, a little grin on his lips, while 003 flaps up to an open casement window above the main entry door before slipping inside through a tiny crack. A half-minute later, and the door opens.

"Couldn't you just teleport?" Muraki asks Watari as he follows him into the building.

"Shh. I'm not very good at it." Watari winks.

Muraki wonders if this is a joke.

An hour, a minor burglary, and a few cups of coffee later, Watari and Muraki have comparative DNA samples of Muraki, Tsuzuki, and Saki (both before and after this disastrous evening). As 003 flits about the office chasing moths with gleeful abandon, the two look at the data arranged in haphazard piles of printouts and along three computer monitors, including Watari's laptop.

They've been running tests now for some time, the office printer spitting out sheet after sheet of cross-referenced data.

"Saki did manage to do pretty well for what he had," Watari says, looking at the information on the computer screen closest to him. He seems impressed. Muraki is less than pleased. "It looks like he snipped out key bits of DNA here, here, here, and…here from both you and Tsuzuki." Watari taps on the screens at various locations along the three monitors. "But there are some serious problems."

"All right." Muraki listens.

"We know Saki was trying to create the immortal cell and something went wrong. That's what that weird thing was that attacked Oriya and Sakaki earlier tonight." Watari sits back in his chair, nudging back a stray lock of blonde hair. "But why?"

"Perhaps it was a faulty sample?" Muraki suggests.

"That's right." Watari nods, tapping the stack of printouts of Tsuzuki's DNA profile. "If he had used DNA from Tsuzuki's actual body from before Tsuzuki died, there's a chance that Saki's experiment would have worked. But what Saki used isn't from Tsuzuki's original body - they're samples of Shinigami cells. It's close, but not close enough because there are fundamental errors built into us Shinigami."

"Shinigami are unclonable." Muraki notes.

"It's a real shame. I've tried." Watari looks almost wistful.

At that Muraki quirks an eyebrow, but Watari continues, getting back on track.

"So!" Watari waggles his index finger. "I think Saki tried to make an intelligent guess based on what he did have, hoping that it would correct for the sections he was missing. But when he cloned those Shinigami sequences, he wasn't cloning anything of value."

"Yet Saki did manage this particular section, Watari-san, which is a key reference sequence to Tsuzuki's heritage."

"Of course. It's the most obvious, so it's easiest to notice. You've got a similar sequence. In fact, they're almost exactly the same." Watari looks at Muraki as if assessing his reaction.

"What do you mean?" Muraki's eyes narrow dangerously.

"You know what I mean. You told Tsuzuki yourself." Watari says softly. "Oni's blood. Non-human ancestry."

At that, Muraki shrugs, saying nothing. He picks up his mug of coffee and tilts it toward him, but it's empty, so he sets it back down.

Watari gives Muraki a skeptical look, but continues in his analysis. "Now, there's one other really important mistake that Saki made when he was cloning DNA and sticking the mixed up results into hollowed-out viruses for his project."

"What's that?"

Watari shuffles a stack of papers and drags out the right printout. "If you look at this specific sequence…" Watari points, tapping the papers with a pencil he's fished off his desk. "See the gene marker here?" Watari circles it. "Tsuzuki has this naturally, but with a key complimentary component. So do you. Saki copied the same sequence from you, even though he doesn't have it, probably because he guessed that it had something important to do with the immortal cell."

Muraki looks at the printouts. "But he didn't copy the necessary complimentary component, did he?"

"I think he must have overlooked it," Watari replies.

"Without it, it creates an instability." Muraki looks through the papers, a dark, desperate intensity tainting his voice.

"Exactly!" Watari beams, his eyes gleaming with excitement. His voice startles Muraki out of his fervor. "Now what do you think of that?"

Muraki looks at the paperwork coolly, sorting the problem through his head. "It's an opening. A weakness of some sort."

"Absolutely right!" Watari jumps up out of his chair, brandishing the notes in his hand. 003 flutters over his head in a little mid-air owl dance of victory. "Overall, Saki hasn't actually changed. What's happened is that Saki's opened up a genetic weakness in himself, copied from you and Tsuzuki-san. It isn't a problem with the two of you, because you each have the right half of the genes that protects you from what's happened to him." Watari points at the screen, tapping it fervently.

"What does this mean, Watari-san?"

"It means," Watari says, tilting his head so that the overhead florescent light glints off his glasses, "that we aren't dealing with a genetic monster. We're dealing with a case of minor possession."

*******

|Oriya|

An hour later, perhaps more, and yet Oriya still cannot sleep.

The world of Meifu is a mirror of the real world and, like a mirror image, does not have the same sense of reality to it. The quiet here is overwhelming. Even with the soft sound of Sakaki's breathing in the background and the reassuring hum of his life, Meifu itself is too quiet, without the silent murmur of life that Oriya's other senses are accustomed to feeling. This is a silence that is uncanny; even plants do not give off the same sense of life that they should, only gray shadows and wispy traces like death and rot.

Oriya shivers beneath the covers, turning restlessly, unable to find a comfortable position. It truly is the world of the dead. The world of Meifu makes him think of the first time he saw a corpse, a breathless husk of flesh, unmoving and silent.

It seems lonelier as the seconds tick by, thinking about this world that is bereft of life. It's worse in the darkness.

"Nn…" Sakaki's voice. Oriya is startled into awareness as the sound breaks the silence. He suddenly realizes he had somehow dozed off for a few minutes.

The rustle of covers. Sakaki is having a nightmare.

Oriya sighs. He sits up, pushing the bedding aside, grateful for the distraction that keeps him from the little death of sleep.

Oriya stands, moving to turn on a small desk lamp that he had seen earlier, fumbling in the darkness for it before casting the room in the soft glow of light. Sakaki is half-tangled in the bed sheets, shaking his head in negation. Oriya makes his way over to the bed, half-drawn by the soothingly normal sensation of Sakaki's life force.

The shift of the bed as Oriya sits down on the edge wakes Sakaki up gasping, his eyes blinking open. Sakaki's hands catch Oriya's arm blindly, still caught in his dream.

"Oriya-san?" Sakaki comes to himself as he wakes up more fully, and lets Oriya go, his hand reaching up to rub at his eyes, short black hair tousled about his head. "What's going on?"

"You were having a nightmare, Sakaki-kun." Oriya feels the fading imprint of Sakaki's fingers on him. For a brief moment, they were desperately clutching him.

"A nightmare." Sakaki presses the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids. "I-I can't seem to remember what it was about."

"Mmm." Oriya thinks of his own dreams. The recurring nightmare where Muraki's cold hands clasp his own, the light of a thousand tiny flames glinting off his cold gray eye. The keycard. Oriya takes a breath, drawn slow and sure, and it dissipates as he exhales.

Sakaki sits up, his shirt rumpled from sleeping in it. He looks wide awake. Hints of red marks mar his wrists, and for a brief moment Oriya wonders just exactly what Saki's been doing to him.

Then Oriya remembers something else.

"Sakaki. Last year I called you, just after Muraki had disappeared. What you told me wasn't exactly the truth, was it?" Oriya looks at Sakaki levelly.

"Last year?" Sakaki's expression hasn't changed in the slightest.

"I asked you if you knew where Muraki was. You told me you hadn't heard from him since he left for Kyoto."

Sakaki nods. "And?"

"And yet, all last year he was in Tokyo, wasn't he?"

Sakaki's shoulders slump, and he looks dejectedly at the bedspread. "Now that he's dead…there's no point in pretending anymore, is there?" He sighs. "I was asked - no - he ordered me not to tell you."

"What was his reasoning?" Oriya settles against the bed casually, effectively trapping Sakaki.

Sakaki looks at Oriya nervously. "He said it was the last thing he'd ever ask of me."

"Go on."

Sakaki looks uncomfortable. "That night…he came back covered in blood. It was really late - I had gone out that evening with some of the office staff, but stopped by the house on my way home to put the mail away." There is an uncomfortable silence, as Sakaki struggles with the words. "H-he made me promise him…promise that I wouldn't take him to the hospital or call for an ambulance, no matter what happened to him. Then he called the director of the hospital and left a message saying that he quit and went to sleep."

Oriya nods. "Let me guess. He wouldn't let you help him."

"No." Sakaki's voice trembles. "There was blood all over for days. All over Sensei, that is. He looked like a corpse underneath all that dried blood. I don't know how he managed not to die, because he could barely get up to move around. I couldn't even make him drink water."

"It's just like him to do that," Oriya says darkly. His expression is shadowed with hints of anger.

"Then, one day, he seemed better. He managed to clean himself up and asked me to sit with him. He told me that he didn't care what I did with the accounting as long as there was enough for his general upkeep."

"He wanted you to steal from him?" Oriya sounds incredulous.

Sakaki nods. "I've always known all his banking affairs and he said he wouldn't change it. But I told him I wouldn't do it. He made me promise that I wouldn't tell you anything. Then he asked me to leave him so he could think. By the time I came back, the house had been locked up and he was gone. He left everything behind. Even the dolls. The only thing he took was the cat. After that, I didn't know what to do."

"You could have called me."

"I made a promise, Oriya-san." Sakaki looks anguished. "It wasn't something that I wanted to do! Abandoning him was one of the hardest…" Sakaki shakes his head, his fingers clutching the bedspread, knuckles white with tension.

"Tell me, Sakaki-kun."

"It was wrong," Sakaki whispers, a tear trickling down his cheek. "But I knew he was alive, because when I went back to work the next morning, he called while I was there and asked the director to hire me as a junior administrator."

"His best recommendations, I'm sure." Oriya's voice is tainted with sarcasm.

"After that…I was too busy to worry so much." Sakaki is guilt-stricken, reliving the memories. "It was the first…first time in a long time that I felt good about my job. There were always…certain things. That I didn't like. Or that seemed wrong, but I felt that I had to do for him, because he had no one else."

"He has a way of getting people to do what he wants them to."

"I just…didn't know. I should have wondered, but I never thought to question it. I trusted him. But then, he shut me out and never let me back in…"

Oriya rests his hand on Sakaki's shoulder comfortingly. "You did what you could. Muraki decided on his path long before any of us came into his life."

"Did he?" Sakaki clasps Oriya's wrist loosely, staring into Oriya's dark eyes. "I…I guess I was naïve to think that maybe I could help him."

"You weren't, Sakaki-kun. Anytime, he could have turned away from his path. He always had that choice."

"But why did he…why didn't he just…stop what he was doing? Why did he have to take it so far? Why did he die?"

"No one knows, Sakaki-kun. I don't think he knows himself." Oriya's other hand comes up and he brushes a stray tear from Sakaki's cheek. "I'm sorry. I've made you cry."

A hint of a blush creeps along Sakaki's face. "Ah, it's all right! I mean, I-it's nothing, really." Sakaki goes to wipe his face with his sleeve, taking a shaky breath as he does so.

A hint of a smile brushes along Oriya's lips. He's about to say more, but there's something, a sensation - the touch of a life-force that burns like a wisp of white flame in the dark. Muraki is close. Oriya ruffles Sakaki's tousled hair in a spontaneous show of affection. "For now, you should rest. We'll speak of this later." He stands up, straightening his clothes as he does so. Sakaki nods, watching him go.

Oriya leaves, closing the door behind him.

*******

|Tatsumi|

"Tsuzuki. That's enough." A few grueling hours of piecing together the clues at the scene had left them nothing particularly useful except for a clearer glimpse of Saki's energy signature, a faint trace of blurry silver-black that stumbled from one point to the next until it broke off like the snap of a green branch.

"Tatsumi?" Tsuzuki looks over at Tatsumi as if he doesn't quite understand what Tatsumi is saying.

Tatsumi rests his hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder gently. "I said it's enough for now. I'll take you back to Meifu. The rest can wait until morning."

"All right." Tsuzuki looks at the ground blankly and gestures, a slow flex of his hand as if releasing the spell. The shining pattern of energy disperses into flecks of power that dissipate into the night.

Tatsumi steps forward and rests his hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder. He draws his shadows around the two of them, cloaking them from sight. Like the spell, they too fade away, disappearing into the darkness.

A moment later, they're in Tatsumi's house in Meifu. As Tatsumi walks over to turn on the light, Tsuzuki looks around the room. It's the same as he remembers it from the past; everything neatly where it belongs, the slipcover on the couch (it's blue now; it used to be green with pale yellow stripes, if his memory was correct) tautly straightened as if Tatsumi makes certain it's aligned correctly after each sitting.

"Would you care for a drink, Tsuzuki-san? Something to eat? I have a little leftover cake…" Tatsumi turns to glance over at Tsuzuki.

"We always came here first after missions, didn't we?" Tsuzuki says, staring at Tatsumi's bookcase. On the shelf, a little above eye level, is a picture of the two, taken from when they first began their partnership so many decades ago. It's black and white; Tsuzuki's arm is draped over a fussy-looking Tatsumi, tie askew and collar undone, as Tatsumi is trying to keep from laughing, his glasses slipping down over his nose. The picture was an accident - Tatsumi had meant to throw it out because it wasn't the sort of formal picture that he had wanted. Tsuzuki, however, had insisted that Tatsumi keep it, even buying him a frame. (It was Tsuzuki's first real paycheck as a full-fledged Shinigami. Afterwards, they had bought saké together and gotten terribly drunk.)

Tatsumi nods. "It's easier for me to return to somewhere of my own, when I use the shadow dimension to take us back to Meifu."

"That's what you always said. And then, you'd make tea."

"And you'd say you were hungry, and rummage through my cupboards to look for food."

"You'd scold me for spilling things or trying to cook in your kitchen."

"But after a while, I learned to buy a little cake or something sweet for you to eat so you didn't set my apartment on fire." Tatsumi crosses his arms, watching Tsuzuki with the beginnings of a little smile

"And then you started hiding the dessert as a joke, so I still had to look through all your cupboards to find it," Tsuzuki replies, his expression softening with memory

"Until you broke my bottle of cooking wine." Tatsumi smiles. "I remember."

"It was a long time ago, wasn't it?" Tsuzuki says simply. "A lot has changed since then."

A little twinge of pain passes through Tatsumi's expression, but he hides it in a quick gesture, his hand moving to nudge his glasses up his nose, pretending that the little moment of emotion didn't exist.

"I never meant to hurt you, Tatsumi," Tsuzuki begins.

"No, it's all right, Tsuzuki-san. Don't think more of it." Tatsumi's shoulders stiffen, but he looks up at Tsuzuki, his expression calm. "I'm all right."

"I don't mean just the past." Tsuzuki stands with his head bowed. "I mean when I said those things…about you abandoning me…"

For a moment, Tatsumi looks a little confused, as if he genuinely doesn't remember, but then it comes back to him, that morning not so long ago when he asked Tsuzuki to be temporarily reassigned and Tsuzuki had said the unbearable.

"I finally found a partner who will stay with me, no matter what, and I'm not going to abandon him."

"It…it's all right Tsuzuki-san. It's been so long that I don't remember it at all," Tatsumi lies. The shadow of a smile is upon his lips, but he cannot conceal the remembered pain in his clear blue eyes.

"No, Tatsumi…it's not all right. Even when we stopped being partners," Tsuzuki says. "You never abandoned me."

"Tsuzuki…" Tatsumi trembles, ice clasping at his heart. He feels as though he's run so many times from Tsuzuki, first when their partnership began growing closer in ways that he was afraid to explore, and then when Tsuzuki opened his arms to embrace the searing black flames of Touda.

He hadn't even tried to stop Tsuzuki.

Tsuzuki walks over, drawing Tatsumi to sit down with him on the couch. They crease the straightened slipcover; perhaps in another context, Tatsumi might playfully scold him for it and Tsuzuki might tease him about that, but now isn't the time. "I…you don't…" His hand touches Tsuzuki's elbow. Tatsumi shakes his head, trying to dislodge the pain in his heart. He takes a shuddery breath, calming himself. "Tsuzuki-san, you don't have to do this. You have other things to worry about."

"I want to, Tatsumi." Tsuzuki's voice is husky with emotion. His violet eyes meet Tatsumi's. "I was wrong, because you've never left me. You're always where I need you most."

"But I couldn't…I didn't go through the flames to get you myself," Tatsumi says softly. "I was afraid."

Tsuzuki smiles, a faint curve of his lips. "You weren't afraid. That's just an excuse that you're trying to convince yourself with. The only reason you didn't come after me was because you know me better than Hisoka does, and because you knew what was in my heart, what my true feelings were. I wanted to die that night, Tatsumi. But…"

"But he gave you a reason to stay." Tatsumi looks away, gaze averted. The unspoken sentiment - it was a reason that Tatsumi could not provide.

"Lucky ignorance," Tsuzuki replies, a gentle look in his eyes. Tsuzuki's voice draws Tatsumi's gaze back, and meets it. "He didn't know me well enough to leave me alone."

"Do you regret it?" Tatsumi asks.

"Sometimes," Tsuzuki answers. A pause. "Like right now. But it passes, and I'm all right again."

There's an awkward silence. Tsuzuki touches Tatsumi's hand. They look at each other for a moment.

"Really, Tsuzuki-san," Tatsumi teases Tsuzuki gently. "Have you ever been all right?"

"Once, but Watari said it was an anomaly." Tsuzuki winks. "Now can I have some cake?"

"Of course. But not on the couch."

"I know." Tsuzuki eyes stay on Tatsumi's as he draws Tatsumi up along with him.

*******

|Muraki|

I find it amusing that Watari makes sure to walk me back to Terazuma's house after we're done, as if at any second I'd run off from here and hunt Saki down myself.

It's a wise choice on his part. Very responsible. A shame, really.

We walk through the dark; Watari's owl is hitching a ride in his flowing blonde mane, occasionally flapping its wings to right itself when he makes a particularly emphatic nod of his head to punctuate a point. At one point it flapped off his head irritably and landed on mine.

The look of surprise on Watari's face was enough to make me laugh, dislodging the grumpy owl and sending it winging off to a nearby tree. Watari spent a few minutes trying to talk 003 down, apologizing profusely.

Oddly, the entire situation was relaxing in its own way. My jaw ached; I didn't realize that I had been clenching it for the last few hours.

Watari waves sunnily as he leaves me at Terazuma's house. He yawns profoundly, but waits for me to go inside and lock the door behind me before he leaves. Fortunately I had been given a key; otherwise I would have had to wake someone up.

Still, had the door been unlocked, any trespasser would have had significant difficulty making their way past the hulking specter of a fifty-foot fire-breathing Shikigami. Now that I think of it, perhaps that is why they lock the door, to minimize property damage.

I make my way down the hall toward the downstairs room but before I near it, the door opens and Oriya slips out silently, shutting the door behind him.

In the dim and uncertain light, we stare at each other.

For a moment, I don't know what to do.

Without saying a word, I nod my head, gesturing toward the back door. I go, he follows, and a half-minute later we're outside in the back yard.

He sighs. It's a wisp of fog in the air, his breath.

Between the hours of one and three in the morning is the coldest time of the night. In the land beyond the world of the living, the stars are particularly bright.

"Muraki." As he moves, the indigo pattern of his yukata is lost to darkness. The only reason I know it's indigo is from memory. His back is to me; his head half-turned to look at the waxing moon as it trembles along the horizon of the night.

"Oriya."

"I didn't want you to die." Such simple words, a bare confession. His dark hair slips past his shoulder, unveiling the pale skin of his neck. The muscles of his throat work as if he has more to say, but for now, he wants an answer.

"It wasn't anything you could have done," I say. "In some ways, the decision was outside of my hands."

At that, he spins around, and in an angry flurry of motion, grabs me by the shoulders, nearly knocking me to the ground in his wrath. We end up on the flat concrete just outside the house; I wince at the sudden pain as my elbows hit the ground hard.

"Nothing you ever do is outside of your own control, Muraki," Oriya's voice hisses quietly beneath his breath - he doesn't want to wake anyone up. "Why did you do this?"

I smile roguishly. I can't help myself. It's too dark to see what his expressions are; the moon's behind him now, but I can imagine his eyes flashing with anger.

"I was born to die, Oriya. At least, if there was nothing else I could control, I could at least choose that."

At that, he lets me go, sitting up against the cold concrete, legs folded underneath him. I can imagine his aches; he probably hurt his knees knocking me over. I sit up. The pain of my injuries fades quickly, the healing capacity smoothing over broken skin and bruised flesh.

"Were you disappointed, Muraki?" The voice is soft, the words gentle.

"Disappointed?" I genuinely don't know what he's asking.

"I didn't go after you." In another time, another place, he would reach for that pipe of his and smoke in contemplation. For now, his palms rest against the rough surface of the concrete as if he could somehow draw strength from it.

"No. I didn't expect you to."

"But you gave me the keycards. I could have stopped you myself." It's all true, really. He's very perceptive.

"Yes, that's right."

"But I didn't." He sighs.

"No."

"Would you have wanted me to?" Somehow I think that for the entirety of the year previous, this question has plagued him.

"I don't know, Oriya."

There's a long silence, as we sit. The wind picks up, and he shivers. Such a strong man, but at the same time fragile in his own peculiar way. Meifu must be terrible on his senses.

"All that…" My voice comes even before I think it should. "It seems so far away now, Oriya. It's as though from the moment I stepped into that laboratory I've been through flames and the process burnt something out of me. Perhaps it was all just a dream."

I look up; the moon shines cold and white and dead. Like me.

"I knew you weren't dead, Muraki. But you were also not alive."

"I just stopped, Oriya. I was too tired. I couldn't continue like that anymore. And so I left." A half-smile, I bow my head, covering the trembling of tears in my eyes. Tears. How silly. My hand moves to touch my closed eyes, slipping underneath the cool metal of my glasses. There, the moisture. Ah, such sentimentality.

"You left me, and you left Sakaki." It's not a direct accusation, but it's there nonetheless. "And what about Ukyou?"

I laugh, a broken weak sound. "Ukyou?"

"She doesn't know."

"Even if she did, what then? It's not as though she'd understand it or acknowledge it. She only looked confused when she was told her own mother was dead."

"Perhaps one day she'll be better again."

"And perhaps one day I'll be truly dead."

"Muraki!" I can tell he wants to shout at me, tell me all the things he's been thinking about over this last year, the plausible scenarios in his mind as to where I was, the anger and frustration as he wondered if I was dead or not. And I'll let him.

But he gets a hold of himself before then.

"Is that what you want? To be truly dead?" Oriya looks tired. He turns; the light's touching his face, that icy moonlight, and I can see the shadows beneath his eyes, the tiny lines of worry crinkling at his eyes, at the corners of his mouth.

He's aging. One day, he'll die.

"No." I move over toward him. We're very close now. I can almost touch him.

"Then what do you want?" Oriya's face is a study in misery, his voice trembles from emotion.

"I don't know." It's true, every word of it. I just don't.

"I didn't want you to die." The words are a harsh whisper of pain. Oriya's hand goes to cover his face.

"I know." My arms go around him.

It's just a hug, really. I think he needs it.

He doesn't refuse.

*******

|Tatsumi|

Such warmth. For the first time in a long time (and how long has it been exactly? To count the decades or hours or days he'd need an abacus and a calendar to follow the progression).

Tatsumi shifts gently, his glasses carefully set aside somewhere else so that his face for once is bared, seemingly more vulnerable. Even in his sleep he's still careful not to disturb Tsuzuki. Earlier, they had cake; there was tea. For the two of them until three. It was a pause in the tension, the night wearing on slowly around them, silent but for the rustle of the trees and the creak of the building as it settles.

He had made Tsuzuki sleep in his bed - Tsuzuki's mental state was too fragile to send him home. The pain in those violet eyes stung; he promised Tsuzuki that as soon as they could, they would find and rescue Hisoka. But for now, rest. So he had offered Tsuzuki his bed. Tsuzuki had asked him to stay.

And here they are, sleeping, nothing else, two grown men fully dressed, curled up together under Tatsumi's blankets, trousered legs half-twined together. A clock ticks nearby, counting the seconds as they slumber.

Tsuzuki's breath is silent as he rests, Tatsumi's arms around him.

Tsuzuki's stillness hides the fact that he's having a nightmare, that the flames are all around him and Hisoka's gone into them alone. And now he can't find Hisoka anymore, no matter where he looks.

And that is how dawn finds them.

*******

|Terazuma|

Coffee. Terazuma smells coffee.

He thinks that it's a dream, but his sensitive ears pick up the distinct sound of someone moving in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards quietly as if looking for cups. There. The distinct clink of porcelain.

Someone's making coffee.

Terazuma rolls over on the narrow sofa and pulls the pillow over his head. He needs another ten minutes, at least.

Sakaki is pouring coffee for Muraki and Oriya. The two older men sit at the table looking tired, but otherwise quietly enjoy each other's company in silence as the gray morning light filters in through the windows.

*******

|Hisoka|

The sun. It's rising.

Please…someone…

Please find me.

I'm lost…

To be continued…

Disclaimer: Yami no Matsuei belongs to Matsushita Yoko.

Thanks in general to my prereaders, Aeanagwen, DanceswithElvis, Jekka, RubyD, and Rinoa. Special thanks to Aeanagwen, who does all those and proofreads (she makes me make sense!), DanceswithElvis for her help on understanding DNA, RubyD for continuity/detail help, and Jekka for being my chapter 9 guinea pig. Any errors, however, are my own fault. :p

Also, thanks to Penny Paperbrain, Katsue Fox, Majinkarp, Wolfpilot06, Luxetumbra Zanzou, and everyone else for their general support. I'm sure I'm missing a whole lot of people in this thanks, but I am very grateful to everyone for reading and following along this far. Thank you!

Author's notes: Chapter 9 has been one of the most difficult chapters to continue. I had trouble deciding what to do with the story and where it should go, topped off with a lot of general paranoia about the overall quality. A few sections caused a lot of trouble, but were rewritten, thanks in part to Jekka's input. This chapter is mainly to tie up a bunch of various loose threads in the story.

Chapter 10 is already on its way - I've already written some of it and have it outlined. Don't worry - there's going to be definite resolution and it shouldn't take nearly so long for this next chapter. ^_^ Extras may be found on http://eag.squidkitty.org/

February 23, 2004 marks the one-year anniversary of the first chapter of the First Death.

Almost done! One more chapter! (And maybe a long epilogue?)

Chapter 10: The Shinigami move to capture Saki and rescue Hisoka.

Side story - Asato

Purple eyes.

The thin wail of a child sang with the wind, the sound torn to shreds as the storm raged outside. It had been a week; he had never stopped crying. The villagers gathered to discuss this, huddled in their wooden houses. Though the modern world had come to Japan, it had not been an even distribution - there were still many places such as this, villages hidden deep in the mountains that had missed the new laws and the new ways.

She was only fourteen and unmarried when it happened. She went by herself to gather mushrooms out in the deep mountain forest. When they found her, it seemed as though a wild beast had ravaged her. She said she didn't remember it; half the family had believed her, the other half wanted her thrown out for fear of bringing a strange spiritual pollution to their people. It was settled that the child's birth would solve the mystery.

And then, it was a son. And it had purple eyes.

She died giving birth. It was too strong for her, the midwife had said. Too bad.

They left him out in the snow on the mountain for a week in a sturdy basket with no blankets for warmth, but he lived, tears frozen to his cheeks, his body numb and blue. The men who found him dug him out of three feet of snow, finding the woven coffin of rush, and his purple eyes turned up to the light as if in gratitude. They wanted to bury him again after the ground had thawed, hoping that he would die for certain in the dark earth, but were stopped by one of the village elders.

Eventually, they gave him away, praying that they had not offended one of the old gods of the land that roamed the hidden places.

And so, to the nearest market town they took him, the boy sucking on his thumb, his violet eyes staring wide, coal black hair long to his shoulders, a beautiful child by any perspective. He was growing fast; by the thaw he could walk by himself. They kept him out in a storage shed where his strange eyes couldn't curse anyone.

Halfway to the market town they stopped for the night in another little village, one that had sprung forth as a resting point a day's walk before the market town.

They tied him firmly to a tree to keep him from wandering away. The posts were for valuable farm animals, not for one such as him. He sat quietly, because he was afraid of being beaten.

Ruka was fifteen at the time. She had been widowed before she was even married. Three times over her promised husbands had died in accidents or from illness. It was bad luck. No one wanted her anymore, because they were afraid that she was cursed. A girl who couldn't be married was useless; she knew this much.

But when she saw the little boy she knew that they had something in common. She had heard them talk about his unnaturalness, the fact that he was cursed. That the crop had failed the year he was born; that there had been signs from heaven that expressed displeasure. The freeze had been especially hard that year.

He was the child of the reed basket that had lived. That's what they called him, Asato, like the early grave they had made for him, the one that he escaped.

It was a good enough sign for her.

So quietly, after the men had gone to bed, she untied the sleeping boy, picked him up, and walked away.

She never looked back.

Note: The kanji for Asato means a flax or hemp container.