Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Defy and Comply ❯ Lesson 14: Toxicity ( Chapter 14 )

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Defy and Comply

Lesson 14: Toxicity

By: Revamp

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"Nutmeg?" Lamar wondered why someone would have injected another person with nutmeg. More specifically, how in the world did anyone come up with an idea like that? It was so far out there, and not likely knowledge that someone without any type of medical degree would know about.

"But, how does one get nutmeg inside of their body other than eating it?" Kiyomaru was confused. To his knowledge there was only one way to consume nutmeg, and that was on or in foods.

"It's not dangerous when ingested, but if it's injected into the veins, it's a deadly poison. However, this was inside of her muscle. I'm glad that we caught it when we did, something deadly could have happened." They would have been dealing with another death on the campus. It was clear to Kazoo that someone was targeting Tsukimi as well as Yuunatsu, but how did they manage to gain knowledge of nutmeg being used as a poison, and why would they target both Tsukimi and Yuunatsu? Could this have been an attempted suicide by Tsukimi after killing Yuunatsu? There were a lot of possibilities and he didn't want to rule out any of them just yet.

"Ya said it was only poison when it was injected into the veins," Lamar wondered what injecting it into the muscle would have done.

"Well, you can inject it into your muscles," Kazoo knew that nutmeg was often used as a muscle relaxer, but not in such high dosages.

"Who does that?" Not even on his most amazing high, did Lamar ever think 'do you know what sounds nice, sticking nutmeg into a needle and injecting myself with it.' Who in the world ever thought of something so bizarre?

"I am with Lamar, and why would they do such a thing? I admit I have never woken up with the thought of injecting myself with nutmeg," Kiyomaru was a little shocked that the herb could be used for something like that; much less that someone had thought on it enough to inject it into their body.

Kazoo decided that he would explain it to his friends. He told them that nutmeg could be used as a muscle relaxer. However, the amount of nutmeg that was injected into Tsukimi was large, so it triggered a high immune response. People could inject small amounts that were slowly absorbed into the body. Those small amounts helped the body to develop antibodies that fought off viral infection. When a large amount was introduced into someone's body their immune system went haywire, much in the same way it would when someone contracted a serious illness. It explained Tsukimi's pain and shock from trying to break down so much nutmeg at once. It was slowly poisoning the girl. Had it been in her veins, she would have died instantly.

Kiyomaru drew back in shock. "That's terrible! Who would do such a thing?"

"That means that someone tried to poison her on purpose, but who would have done it?" Lamar couldn't think of anyone who had any vendettas against the girl for any reason. It seemed unorthodox that someone would just target her at random. Usually, people always had a motive behind what they were doing.

"Someone who had a needle," Taiga noted. Whoever injected her with nutmeg had to have acquired a needle to be able to have done the job. But, how many students really had access to needles in Shinjinku Academy?

"The nurse's office doesn't have needles, so where could the needle have come from?" Kazoo couldn't figure it out. The nurses at Shinjinku never really gave shots. They always called on professionals from outside areas to give the students any shots they needed. Whoever was in possession of the needle had to have had the needle on themself already. This meant that the needle either came from a student who took medication or did drugs, unless it was acquired through other means outside of the school. The dome hadn't dropped yet, so students could still access the outside world.

"There are diabetics here and people with illnesses that require injections, like Mishio," Taiga stated the first possible clue. Perhaps it was a student they didn't know about or maybe the needle was taken off of a student. It very well could have been stolen from Mishio's dorm after his death as well.

"She was not poisoned then." If Tsukimi was poisoned around the time of Mishio's death, then Kiyomaru was certain that he would have noticed Tsukimi acting strangely before.

"I doubt it would be one of them," Kazoo knew that wasn't the case, either.

"Not if they stole it from them," to Taiga, it wouldn't have mattered if someone stole it from Mishio right then or not, they could have used it later.

Lamar dug through his small cluster of things in the gym bag. He continued to search multiple times, getting more and more frustrated as he did so. No matter how much he dug around, he couldn't find what he was looking for. The green-haired male looked horrified, but continued to dig around more and more, his movements became frantic and he started tossing articles out of the gym bag onto the bed: song books, tooth brushes, bottle of cologne, razors, deodorant, and still he couldn't find what he was looking for. 'Shit! Where are they?' His mind berated him as he violently flung shirts, belts and pairs of jeans and leather pants across the room as everyone's attention was drawn to him.

Kiyomaru looked a little confused at the other male's actions. He barely dodged a spiked collar and arched an eyebrow. "What are you doing, Lamar?"

Slamming his hands on the bed, Lamar looked at the wall in utter shock. "They aren't here. Shit, this is bad," he cursed, angrier than anything else. He damned himself for letting this happen.

"What isn't there? Is something up?" Kazoo inquired, sticking his hands into his pockets.

"This can't be happening to me." In a panic-driven haste, Lamar turned the bag upside down and dumped the remaining contents onto the bed.

Taiga was beginning to get really annoyed with his friend's acts of paranoia. "Would you tell us what's going on?"

"They're gone. My shit's gone, yo," Lamar's voice trembled. It was the one thing he didn't want to happen, not in a case like this. He didn't even care about what he planned on originally using them for; someone else had far more nefarious intentions.

Kiyomaru pointed a finger into the air. "Excuse me but what is defined as 'your shit'?" He was completely lost as to what Lamar was referring to. Whatever it was seemed really important.

Lamar turned to the group with widened eyes. Now they could all see the shock in his face. His eyebrow twitched and his face was covered in sweat. "I had needles in my bag and they're gone. Someone took them out."

Taiga was enraged at what he had just said. "You're what? You told me that you stopped doing that shit!" Not only did Lamar fuck up, he lied to him! This wasn't going to fly with him at all. Lamar promised to be honest with him, only to lie to him about stopping his dangerous addiction. He'd better have a good explanation for it.

"You mean...you do more than smoke, you inject as well? I am deeply ashamed! Why did you not tell me?" Kiyomaru looked at the green-haired man with a stern frown. He felt lied to as well. If he knew that the guitar player's habits were that bad, he wouldn't have just forced himself to overlook them. This meant that Lamar was more of a lost cause than he had previously thought. Kiyomaru knew he had problems, but problems like those needed immediate attention.

"You fucking lied to me, Lamar! You better have a good explanation for this shit because I'm so pissed I can't see straight!" Taiga yelled, livid that Lamar would do something so stupid. He could have just been honest with him. There was no need to lie over something like that.

"I-" Lamar couldn't dignify himself with an answer. He glanced around the room, and his eyes fell on Kazoo.

The blue-haired male put a hand to his forehead. "Don't look at me. I never knew you even did drugs. I know you were a rock star and you probably saw your fair share of booze, drugs and hot women but as for actually doing any of them," he shrugged. Kazoo had always assumed that Lamar was well-accustomed to that lifestyle. There wasn't any doubt that he'd probably delved into that world, but Kazoo didn't think he would have formed any habits out of taking them.

"It's not a habit I wanted people to know about," he was cornered. Lamar had to admit that he was injecting himself with drugs other than what he smoked. It wasn't fun, and he was pretty sure that his friends were going to hate him for it, but at the same time he also needed their help. There was no way that he could win and keep his secrets as well.

"You had to come out now, didn't you? You dirty, little liar. I fucking trusted you. All of this time...All of this time I did nothing but tell you the truth, no matter how much it hurt me and you've been lying to me. You better start talking. Spit it out, Lamar! You can't afford not to," Taiga was doing everything he could to repress his anger, but nothing was working. Right now, he wanted to beat the shit out of his friend. His blood was boiling, and a part of him was glad that other people were in the room, because by the time this was over he was going to need someone to hold him back.

"I...Well..." Lamar stammered. He couldn't even form proper sentences, much less words.

"Do you even have an explanation? I'm gonna get it outta you." One way or another, Lamar was going to tell Taiga why he lied to him.

"Come on guys, this is unfair," the rock star didn't want to tell them about his drug use. It wasn't fair that they were all ganging up on him like that.

Kiyomaru's expression darkened. "You do owe us an explanation."

Lamar felt that same sense of anxiety and panic overcome him. His eyebrows upturned and he felt the sweat roll down his cheeks. Widened, green eyes darted around, as if he was somehow trying to find a way out. "I tried to quit. I wasn't lyin' back then, but every time I tried to stop, it kept comin' back. Man, ya don't understand. After graduation, I lost touch. I lost myself. I never understood it." He looked down at his hands; fingers curled and shook with the emotion that he felt.

"Why me? I had to kill them all. Do ya know what it's like, to have someone beggin' ya to take their life? Have ya ever had to make that choice? It ain't like this. Here ya got the heads up. Ya know what to expect but back then it was like the curtain suddenly droppin' on you." He glanced back up at the others with a wild look in his eyes. "All that death, when ya never seen it before. It was like a fuckin' war in there. All that blood...the blood in them was the blood on my hands. I ain't like them. Not like the bosozoku or the yakuza, or that serial killer, Slasher Ka...I was a normal kid. I had dreams, man. Dreams and a future and now it's all gone.

"Man, it's crazy, isn't it? How ya can build your whole life up over years but it takes seconds to take it all the way.

"I think about shit. There's not a moment where it doesn't go through my head. I see their bodies and I hear 'em screamin'. They beg for help and the sick thing is, the only thing ya can do is kill 'em. You think my philosophy is fucked up, Kazoo?" He turned towards the long-haired teen, who was staring at him with a strange expression. "Tell me how. That proves it, man. Humans were put here to die, but the sick thing is...I saved myself. I never gave up. I tried to live...and after graduation...it all stopped. All that time that I wanted to live, and I just stopped tryin'. I started thinking about how I'm the only one alive. I felt lonely...and guilty. The weight of the world finally sent me crashin' to my knees.

"So I decided to kill myself. I tried six times and I wouldn't fucking die. I kept waking up...even when I drowned myself; I floated to the top and come to. I tried to hang myself but I ended up pulling the ceiling fan out, I tried to smother myself, all kinds of shit. I was fucking insane. I was in pain and it hurts.

"Damn, it hurt a lot. Even on this shit, I feel the pain. When I try to get off of it, I wanna die. I only take it when I need it, though. I swear I do.

"Ya can't say shit about bein' a damned failure. No one can fail as hard as I do! Fuck man, you don't even know!" Lamar yelled, recoiling in pain. He shook, on the verge of wanting to cry. Never had his pain felt any more prominent than it did at that point. Everything had come full circle. It was overwhelming, and he could no longer bare it.

"Man...that really fucked you up, didn't it?" Kazoo felt sorry for the guitar player. It looked like Lamar really had lost his mind, and to be in so much pain that he had to drown it out with drugs was saddening on its own.

"I never meant to lie. I'm really sorry. I just don't know how to stop," Lamar glanced over to his friend with a pleading look in his eyes, as if Taiga held all of the answers for him, "Taiga, please."

"You son of a bitch, why didn't you tell me? Do you think I don't care?" Taiga was still outraged by the fact that Lamar didn't tell him the truth. They were best friends. There wasn't supposed to be any secrets between them.

"I didn't want to let you down-" Lamar started, but Taiga quickly cut him off.

"You already did."

The green-haired male felt the stab of his words. His eyebrows knitted in sorrow and his visual wounds were apparent. It was as if someone had shot him in the heart. Lamar was rendered speechless.

"Do you have to be so hard on him? He apologized multiple times," Kiyomaru turned to the seething yakuza, trying to coax some compassion into him. Being so cruel to Lamar wasn't going to help anything. It certainly wasn't solving the crime at hand.

"Butt the fuck out, you jar-headed army brat," Taiga turned his anger to the blue-haired boy, barking the phrase to his face. Kiyomaru just held steadfast. His expression never wavered from its stern appearance.

"Rude," Kiyomaru replied simply.

The yakuza then turned back to Lamar, ready to unload another round of verbal ammunition on him. "If you wanted help, you could lean on me. I told you that. I told you that you could trust me with anything. I believed that you would and you didn't. Do you have some kind of complex about confiding in people younger than you? I'm not a damned kid," Taiga barked, holding up his fist. Even if he was younger than his childhood friend, he was an obyun in the yakuza. He had witnessed more crime and death than Lamar ever could have dreamed of and he knew how to handle it a lot better.

"It's not that," Lamar wished that Taiga would understand his position. It wasn't that he didn't want his help at all. His addiction was something that he wanted to get over by himself, to show Taiga that he was strong and capable of going through with another graduation.

"You're runnin' outta good excuses," Taiga threatened. He was serious about forcing the truth out of Lamar, even if he had to pry it out of his jaws physically.

"I don't like admitting my weaknesses. I never have. Even Raiga got mad at me for it," Lamar always wanted to be the strong one, the pillar of strength and the confidant that people went to in times of crisis. Admitting his weakness meant that no one would lean on him any longer, or that they wouldn't find him as strong as they would not knowing about his problems.

"Then learn your damned lesson!" Taiga stressed the issue. If he knew other people got angry at him for it, wouldn't he think that it was time to come clean?

"I'm surprised. You should know better to be honest. Do you really want to make yourself a target to get the ball rolling like you did last time?" Kazoo was displeased with the man himself. He couldn't believe that Lamar would have been as careless as to bring needles onto the campus. Lamar was the first one to start off all of the student executions, and he was lucky that he lived through it.

"Eh..." Lamar couldn't say anything. He knew that Kazoo was right.

"What are you talking about?" Kiyomaru glanced to Kazoo in question. He was clueless that anything had happened beforehand. Was Lamar truly the one who started off the killings of the prior graduation?

"He almost died because he did something stupid that broke the rules of their game. You'd think he'd learn not to make himself a target. Now we're going to have another trial and it's going to end the same way as it did before, with him as bait. Are you a masochist or something?" Kazoo couldn't believe this. Lamar was proving to be nothing but a giant pain in the ass. This was nearly an exact replica of the events of the prior graduation. What was he thinking?

"I'm not trying to do that," Lamar looked horrified that Kazoo would say such a thing. The first trial was painful enough. Not to mention it wasn't his fault. The events of the first trial weren't anything like these events at all.

"Trial?" Kiyomaru was still confused as to what they were talking about. What did they mean by trial?

Taiga decided to explain everything to him to bring Kiyomaru on the same page. "When the killing starts up, they usually have a trial. They wanna get the ball rolling so they'll use a murder against you. They all set your ass on trial if you break the rules. They have those fucked up rules, where you can and can't kill, what times you can and can't kill. They make them up as they go along so you never know if you're doing something wrong until it's too late." That was how a lot of the students ended up being executed for crimes they didn't commit, or vague things like suicide and accidental death. The circumstances varied from trial to trial, but they were all underhanded in his opinion.

"Executed?" Kiyomaru only knew about the killings. The fact that they held trials and even executions put a new level of horror to what graduation truly meant. It appeared to him that the event was a complex series of torture sessions in and of its own.

"If you kill someone, you die one way or another," Taiga's words sent chills up his spine.

"It's either an execution or a sick event. Usually, they want to single someone out if they drag you to an event. All of your secrets, all of your lies, will be out in the open." As strange as it was, whoever was behind all the graduation events has a twisted and sick sense of justice. Kazoo could discern that much.

"This is horrible! Why must they torture us?" Kiyomaru wailed and grabbed either side of his head in dismay. For him, everything was beating down on him like a lead weight. Not only would he have to evade being killed, he would have to evade being trialed and executed. He didn't know if he could handle it all.

Lamar was silent.

"I cannot believe you lied to me," Taiga sighed, his anger was subsided for the moment. The once bubbling maelstrom was calmed down to a small torrent.

"I'll stop it. I will," Lamar pleaded.

"This is not a good time. What if you start relapsing after people start killing each other? You're gonna make yourself a target." That was something that Taiga was trying to stay away from.

"That's all I can do. I know I fucked up." All Lamar had left was to admit what he did was wrong, and hope that the yakuza didn't turn his back on him. He knew what a whirlwind of emotions Taiga could be, and it was best to handle him like a stick of dynamite, carefully. Lamar wasn't shocked that when he played with such a volatile substance it tended to explode in his face.

"Yeah, you did. How long did you think you were gonna last with what you brought? You knew you'd eventually run out," Taiga scoffed. It was pathetic that he actually thought that he was going to keep himself from going into withdrawals when they would be trapped inside of the school for god only knew how long.

"I don't know what I was thinking," Lamar was defeated. All he could do was look at the yakuza was a pleading and pathetic expression. More than anything, he didn't want to lose Taiga.

"You weren't think because you're fucking stupid," Taiga degraded harshly.

"Please, Taiga help me," Lamar wanted the yakuza to talk to him. He wanted his friend to help him. He only hoped that his friend would forgive his stupidity and help him with his addiction problems. Lamar walked up to the other man, putting his hands on his broad shoulders and looking into his aqua eyes, silently begging him for assistance.

"Now you want my help? Man, fuck you Lamar," Taiga's anger was building up again as he stressed his fake name, amplifying how much he hated it with the very infliction. If there was ever a point in time at which Taiga was done with him, it was in that very moment. Lamar had already lied to him, and now he wanted to crawl back to him? Such acts of cowardice only cause the anger to well up again.

"I...don't know what to do," Lamar put his head down. He knew this wasn't going to be easy.

"You can go to hell. That's what you can do," Taiga was proving to be stubborn in order to make his point known.

"I can't make up for the past, but I can change the future. I don't want to lose you, too," Lamar looked back up to the taller teen. He had already lost so much, including Taiga's brother. Losing the yakuza as a friend would be a devastating blow.

"What? Because I look like Raiga-"

"No, it's not that," Lamar snapped back, then his voice softened. "You mean a lot to me."

Aqua eyes bore coldly through his green contact, "If you did, you wouldn't lie to me."

"I-" Despair befell the green-haired man's face as his grip loosened on his friend's shoulders. The look in Taiga's eyes...it was as if he was not even human anymore.

"You disgust me. You don't know my feelings at all." What Taiga did next, sent shock through the room. The yakuza reeled back and punched Lamar in the chin. Kiyomaru and Kazoo could hear the man's jaw pop as his body reeled back from the force of the swing. Taiga had more muscle mass then the slimmer rock star. "This is bullshit! Be lucky I didn't knock your ass out cold!" Taiga yelled as Lamar took his hands from his mouth.

The green-haired man looked at his palms, spattered with blood. His chin felt as if he was on fire and his gums hurt and bled. Taiga had punched him so hard that his chin piercing was shoved back into his gums, rupturing them. His piercing had torn his flesh a little, causing both areas to bleed.

"Uh..." Kazoo just stared, wide-eyed at Lamar, pointing at his injuries.

Kiyomaru rushed to Lamar's side, clinging to his shoulder with worry crossing his face. "Are you alright?"

"He punched me in the piercing," Lamar gritted his teeth as he continued to look at his bloodied hands. "Man, that hurt like shit."

"You're bleeding everywhere," Kiyomaru replied as he looked at his face where blood was oozing from the sides of his mouth and becoming matted in his goatee.

Kazoo sighed in exasperation and placed a hand to his forehead. "Jeez, why would he do that?"

"I lied to him. It's my fault. I should be lucky he didn't rip it out," Lamar knew Taiga could have done worse. He had seen his volatile temper do a lot more to people than just punch them. He considered himself lucky to only suffer the minor effects of Taiga's wrath.

"You should...go clean that and probably take it out..." Kazoo noted awkwardly. Standing there, staring at a bleeding piercing made him a little uneasy.

"I can't remove it. I'll deal with it," Lamar said as he walked into the bathroom and started washing his hands, ridding them of his blood.

Kazoo turned to Kiyomaru. "Sorry you had to see that."

Kiyomaru frowned and crossed his arms, his eyebrows furrowed. "I know how Taiga is. It isn't the first time I have caught him in a fight, although the last time for more unsuccessful," the student council president noted as he remembered his own face-to-fist encounter with the yakuza. It seemed to be his standard way of venting anger.

He wouldn't have doubted if everyone in school had been punched in the face at least once by Taiga.

He closed his eyes and sighed, a beat of sweat ran down the side of his forehead. "Yes, it was far less productive."

Kazoo was bewildered, "what happened?"

"He punched me in the face," Kiyomaru said simply.

"Stone Fist Daifumi," the engineer had remembered his nick name back when he used to talk to his brother a lot.

"He punches everyone in the face...Well, everyone but women. He would never hurt a woman unless she put herself in a man's position." That was something he found admirable about the yakuza. Taiga had never harmed a women. In fact, he was known to be protective of them at times. It must have tied into his old samurai beliefs.

"He must have learned that from Raiga. Kinda funny, now that I see both of them, they do look just alike, but in attitude they really aren't all that similar. Taiga is brash and shouty and Raiga was laid back and kind of weird." The only differences Kazoo could even see in the two Daifumi brothers was that Raiga had black hair in a pompadour that he combed up. It wisped and branched off into spikes that jutted upward. Taiga just had a short, round, curly pompadour and blonde hair. Other than that, the two brothers were identical. They wore the same kind of eye makeup, had the same color eyes, the same facial features and buff body structure. Kazoo could have sworn that they were twins more than they were brothers.

"Weird?" Kiyomaru wondered what exactly made Raiga 'weird'. He had not known Raiga at all, so he had no idea how the elder Daifumi acted.

"He could be a real jerk when he wanted to. He was cold as ice when you got on his bad side, but generally he was nice. Being his friend usually also meant that he'd hit on you. We called it the Raiga Rule," Kazoo remembered all of the good times he had with the elder yakuza. It was funny how he missed little things, like Raiga's unwanted advances. When he thought about it, Raiga's advances weren't all that bad. Most of the time he played around with him back.

Kiyomaru blinked. "He...hit on you?" That was really unlike Taiga. He was pretty sure that even if Taiga was flamboyantly gay he wouldn't just hit on people.

"Yeah and he was pretty good-looking. You grew used to it after a while." At first, it weirded Kazoo out to have such advances made to him, but then he settled into Raiga's routine. Kazoo really missed his old friends. He hated that they were all ripped so savagely from him.

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"Stupid idiot...Damn it," Taiga grumbled as he looked at his fist, where a smudge of blood was apparent from when he punched Lamar in the face. He relived the moment as a fragment of time replayed through his head.

It was then that he had realized what he had done. 'Fuck, I think I hit him in the piercing. Well, now I feel like a dick. Man, maybe I should see if he's alright.' Taiga looked torn for a few moments, gritting his teeth as he continued to stare at the smudge of blood. 'No! I will do no such thing! He deserved it for lying to me. He's lucky I don't hold him down and rip their piercings out of his face one-by-one.' Taiga tried to convince himself not to feel sorry for what he had just done. He wanted to believe that punching his friend in the face was just. 'This whole situation just got complicated.'

The yakuza walked down the hallway, his face hardening as his thoughts continued to assault him. 'Now I have to keep Lamar's ass from wigging out on me...but I don't mind it.' Taiga stopped, gazing out of a nearby window. 'I want to help him. I always have.'

"I-" Taiga started to speak, then stopped himself, closed his eyes and frowned. "I really care about him. Maybe I don't wanna disappoint him either. Maybe I want him to lean on me for once. Maybe...Maybe I wanna save him for once. I've never cared about much in life but I care about him. It's not even because and my brother were friends. I...like him a lot. He's my best friend...the one person I admire. He even saved my life. I'm here today because of that man."

He continued to walk down the hall, making sure none of the students saw him as he took the secret path that led to the graveyard. Walking along the rows of tombstones, he stopped at the one with his brother's name engraved onto it. "Raiga..." Taiga's anger bled away as he stood there with the frown on his face. "I don't know if you can hear me, or if you're even there. What would you do at a time like this? I am really losing it. Should I take my chances? A part of me doesn't want to take your friend away...but I know you wouldn't like seeing me like this. You'd want me to be happy. Maybe I need to move on for the both of us. I need to tell Lamar the truth...about everything before we both lose that chance."

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Lamar walked out of the bathroom, gently wiping his face with a small towel. All of the blood was gone, but a dull pain still resonated from his chin and gums. Kazoo was the first to approach him. He asked if he was alright and Lamar nodded.

With a light groan, Tsukimi stirred awake slowly, causing everyone's attention to be redirected at her. The girl wiped away the sleep that had crusted at her eyes as she rose out of bed. Her body felt grimy from all of the sweat and she was still slightly hot. Her shoulder in particular burned like fire.

"She's awake," Lamar announced the obvious as they three ran over to her bedside.

"You must sleep like a rock. Jeez, there was a fight in here and everything. I mean, who sleeps through Taiga's ranting?" Accomplishing that on its own was pretty remarkable, much less sleeping through Lamar being punched in the face.

"How do you feel?" Kiyomaru asked, placing a hand to her forehead to make sure her temperature was gone.

"Like crap," Tsukimi groaned a little before the haze of sleep wore off. There was some strange man in her room with long, blue hair, looming over her like some weird stalker. The girl jolted back, putting up her forearm out of instinct as she shocked herself awake. "Ack! Who are you?"

Kazoo blinked a couple of time, feigning offense. "You make it sound like I'm horrifying." Surely he didn't look that bad.

"I've never even seen you before." That's what got to her. Kazoo was just there, gawking at her. She'd never seen him at school before. He wasn't dressed in a uniform like all of the other students were. Kazoo was just strange.

"My name is Kazoo Iefumi," the blue-haired graduate introduced himself. Maybe that would break the ice between the two of them and make things less awkward.

Tsukimi's mind reeled. Memories played through her at the mention of that name. She had made the connection to where she had seen it before. It was in that picture of the graduating class, the one with everyone's faces crossed off but the rock star, Leonardo Sukichi. Kazoo Iefumi was a student of the graduating class. Could it really be? Was this guy really someone from the graduating class? 'That picture!' The girl's face lit up in shock. "Did you say Kazoo Iefumi?"

"Yeah, I did," Kazoo didn't see what the big deal was.

"You were in that class picture I saw," Tsukimi pointed at him, then looked up in thought. "Only your face has a big, red ex on it."

"Everyone thought I was dead. Long story, short I'm not." Kazoo didn't feel like going through all of those painful memories again, so he decided to shorten it by a lot.

Looking around the room, she was beginning to piece things together. "I guess you guys carried me back."

"Yes, I did," Kiyomaru placed a hand on his chest.

Tsukimi closed one eye and grabbed her shoulder. "Ugh, it burns."

"Don't take it off. You'll have to wait for it to heal," Kazoo instructed as soon as her hand hit the series of bandages. He didn't want the wound being reopened or getting infected. Above everything, that wound had to heal properly.

"What happened?" Tsukimi looked up at him, not removing her hand from her shoulder.

Kazoo's expression darkened. "Someone tried to poison you."

"What?"

"You didn't realize it?" Lamar asked. He really did wonder how Tsukimi didn't notice being injected with nutmeg.

"This is probably your fault," Kazoo wondered the same thing. If she had noticed before, she would have saved herself a world of pain.

The girl looked thoughtful for a moment, trying to think of what happened before she had blacked out and the events leading up to her feeling so ill. "The other day, when I went to the cafeteria, I bumped into Yuunatsu. After that my shoulder hurt a little. I had a bump but I thought I just messed it up. I got really sick after that. When I went to find Yuunatsu, I passed out and when I woke up, I was here." That was exactly how she'd remembered everything.

"I lanced your shoulder and extracted the poison. Good thing I came along or you would have died." No offense to the other students, but Kazoo knew that none of them had the medical training to be able to diagnose such a thing, nor did they have the know-how on how to get the poison out.

"Thank you..." Tsukimi looked down and placed a hand behind her head before looking back at him. "Oh, by the way, my name is Tsukimi."

"You're still not better. I'll look after you until you're well. You'll need me anyway." In the mean time, Kazoo could stay in her dorm and make sure that no one else tried to poison her, and he wanted to know that he got all of the poison out of her. If she had complications, he would know how to take care of her.

"You can stay in here. I dorm by myself so I don't mind." It was the least she could do for someone who had just saved her life.

"You'd really do that?" Kazoo's face lit up.

"I doubt you have a place to stay, and you can watch me. We'll be close to each other." It also gave her a chance to get to know someone from the graduating class, and find out how he lived through everything and what she was in store for in the future.

"I appreciate it, thank you," Kazoo smiled. It was great that he wouldn't have to stay in that secret room anymore and that he could walk among the students without having to sneak around.

"I'm going to go find those needles, or I'm a dead man." Now that the situation had been diffused and Tsukimi was alright, he was going to venture out and hope that he could save himself from being nailed as a murderer. Lamar ran out of the room, in search of his needles, but only one question remained:

Who could have possibly taken them?

...To Be Continued