Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction ❯ Yami no Kenzoku ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

Notes: According to a currency converter, twenty-five hundred yen is somewhere around two hundred American dollars. ^^

Also, this chapter mentions that Hisoka was trained as a bushi. A bushi is a warrior or samurai, so basically, Hisoka was being trained to be an able fighter.

Randomly, if you think this story is moving too quickly, that's actually my intent. I mean for it to be like the TV series in that way. Three episodes spent on one case, which in the case of this story, is like three chapters spent on one case. No worries, though. Everything ties together in the end. So it's not like I'm being totally random.

Oh, and I always call fuda ofuda. Habit from writing X stories.

Yami no Kenzoku

Chapter Two

The EnmaCho budget was stretched and strained as far as it could go, but Tsuzuki was of the opinion that Tatsumi could possibly spare another twenty-five hundred yen to offer them a decent hotel to stay in. The limit of four thousand yen on food was bad enough. Then he had to make them stay in places like this hotel that Tatsumi had found for them, that looked as though it would fall a part at any moment.

"Tatsumi, you cheapskate," Tsuzuki growled to no one in particular.

He stood on the balcony of the room he and Hisoka were sharing, leaning against the stone railing and gazing out over the city. Hisoka was inside, showering. Since they had spoken to Hijiri this afternoon, he had been more quiet than was usual, and that was saying quite a lot considering it was Hisoka, after all.

Tsuzuki was worried about him. He seemed shaken up about something, but he would not come out and say what it was, and Tsuzuki did not want to push him into talking about something he did not want to discuss.

Tsuzuki sighed. He had been a shinigami for seventy years, perhaps more than that if he bothered to continue to keep counting. He did not think he had ever encountered a problem quite like his current one. Information had been scarce on cases before, but they had never sent him out with as little information as they had given him this time. The only clues he had was that it was teenagers that were plagued by this curse, whatever it was, and that before they died they were often more tired than was natural. That was two clues too few to go on.

For that matter, he had no idea how he was supposed to prevent further deaths when he did not know what was causing them. There was nothing he could do when he did not know what caused the deaths, or who it would strike next. He could follow his instincts and the few hints he had been given, but while doing that, another person might die.

His first case back on the job and they had given him the worst they could come up with, Tsuzuki thought dryly. They could have given him something simple. Assisting someone to Meifu, for one. He missed the days when nothing had been this complicated.

The bathroom door opened and Hisoka emerged, running a towel over his hair. Tsuzuki pushed away from the balcony railing and slipped inside, closing the glass sliding door behind him.

"Feeling any better?" he asked.

"Wha . . .?" Hisoka looked startled at the question. After a moment, he recovered and gave an indifferent shrug of his shoulders. "I'm fine, Tsuzuki."

Tsuzuki smiled sadly. No matter what he and Hisoka had gone through together, surviving through everything that had happened in Kyoto, he had not been naïve to think that Hisoka would open up to him completely after the incident. Hisoka had a troubled past. It would take more than a single moment in time for him to accept Tsuzuki, and that was fine. Tsuzuki knew that he needed just as much time to accept Hisoka.

"Just checking," he said, smiling. "I ordered in Chinese if you're hungry." He gestured to the table where an assortment of colored food boxes were sitting, a few already open from what he had eaten. Hisoka made some kind of grateful noise and went over to put at least some kind of substance into his system.

Tsuzuki left him to eat and settled down on one of the full sized beds. Aside from the remote sounds of Nagasaki night life in the distance, no sound came into the hotel room. Not even Hisoka made the slightest sound as he was eating. Normally, Tsuzuki would have cracked under such pressure, but he did not say anything for fear of irritating Hisoka or upsetting him more than he already seemed to be.

He thought again of the few clues they had. It was a three weeks span of time between each death. Ikaruga Mai had been the first of the deaths, and three weeks later it was Nagumo Takujii. Hijiri had said that it was two weeks ago that Takujii had passed away, which meant that whoever the curse had befallen now had another week to live. Tsuzuki wondered if in that small span of time if he and Hisoka would be able to solve the case and save a person's life.

"Tsuzuki?"

Tsuzuki opened his amethyst eyes wide and glanced over to Hisoka. "What's up?"

"You know how I said that you shouldn't promise to protect someone?" Hisoka asked slowly. His hands were folded on the tabletop, his eyes were burning into the wall opposite of him. "Because if you fail, then it's that much more of a disappointment to both you and the person?"

"I remember," Tsuzuki replied. It was what Hisoka had told him when he had promised Hijiri that he would protect him. He had failed in doing so when the demon of Makai had taken control of his body. Worse, he had also failed to protect Kazusa, and her life had been the cost.

"What if . . . what if it's a person you really don't want to die?"

Tsuzuki sat up. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Hijiri said that the next person to die might be that girl . . . Iida Yuanyi." Hisoka's hands tightened visibly on the tabletop. His knuckles were beginning to turn white. "She . . . I don't want to let her die. But I can't promise to protect her, because I don't know how."

"She's one of the friends you made today, huh?"

"I guess so . . ."

Tsuzuki stood up. Hisoka did not notice him as he approached, much less did he even seem to feel it when Tsuzuki settled both hands on his shoulders comfortingly. He only continued to stare forward at the wall.

"What you should do is try your best," Tsuzuki said. "Try and protect her, because that's all you really can do. Don't think of the worse, Hisoka. We might have this case solved by tomorrow and she'll be fine."

Hisoka sighed. "You're too optimistic."

"One of us has to be," Tsuzuki said with a laugh, his hands slipping away from Hisoka's shoulders. "Now get some sleep. Worrying about it won't do you any good."

"Aa . . . okay, Tsuzuki."

"Hi-so-ka-kun!"

Hisoka found himself being thrown over backwards as a blur of auburn assaulted him. It took a few moments to untangle their legs and arms, but eventually the person was able to escape from him, and Hisoka found himself looking up into the smiling face of Yuanyi. Tsuzuki, who had been walking alongside him, looked down at the pair with an amused smile on his face.

"Good morning!" Yuanyi said cheerfully, picking herself up off the ground. She held out a hand to Hisoka and helped him up as well. Only then did she seem to notice Tsuzuki, and she quickly turned to him and bowed politely. "Good morning, sensei."

"Tsuzuki," the older shinigami said with a smile. "Yuanyi, ne?"

"That's me," she said. "Ne, ne, will /you/ tell me what's up with Hisoka-kun and you? Yesterday he got all shy and started stuttering."

Hisoka sputtered out something indecipherable before managing an indignant, "Yuanyi!!"

Tsuzuki laughed. "I don't know what you're talking about," was all that he would yield, but Hisoka had a feeling that smile of his said far more than his words.

"Come on, Hisoka-kun," Yuanyi said, lacing an arm through his and tugging him along. "It's only your second day and I still have lots of people I want you to meet. You don't mind, do you, Tsuzuki-san?"

"Oh, not at all! He /needs/ some social interaction."

Yuanyi laughed, while Hisoka turned a faint shade of pink, embarrassed by their teasing. "I'll be sure to get him properly introduced to the masses," she promised Tsuzuki, before she had completely tugged him away and into the crowds of students milling into the school.

"Hey, Akira said the coach really wants you on the archery team," Yuanyi said. "They only practice three times a week, so you'll still have plenty of time to spend with the cute sensei."

Hisoka's blush intensified. "Yuanyi, we're not . . . /like/ that."

"Uh huh, sure, sure. So you /say/."

Hisoka sighed. She was not going to believe him, no matter what he told her. But he would admit, he was somewhat grateful that she seemed to accept it so openly. That was, that he and Tsuzuki could possibly be more involved than they actually were . . .

He shook his head. They were /not/ involved in anyway whatsoever, as Yuanyi liked to believe, and he doubted that they would ever be. He and Tsuzuki had suffered through some hard times together, but that did not /mean/ anything.

But . . . hadn't he said 'I need you' to Tsuzuki? Had that not been the truth?

It /was/ the truth, and Hisoka wondered if that was what frightened him.

"Yuanyi, Hisoka! Over here!"

Yuanyi whipped around and caught sight of the group that was calling for them. The only people Hisoka recognized were Akira and Kensou before Yuanyi had began to drag him over, not giving him the chance to look around anymore. He nearly fell over as she came to an abrupt stop.

"Good morning!" Yuanyi said cheerfully. "Oh, hey. Hijiri, ne? How's the ankle?"

Hisoka looked. Hijiri was in fact amongst the small group, standing nestled between Akira and a girl he recognized as one from the lunch table yesterday, by the name of Ayame. He did not seem as familiar with Yuanyi as he was with the other two, but he returned her bright smile with one of his own.

"It's fine," he said. "Just a sprain." He held up his bandaged foot to demonstrate, balancing on one of his crutches. "Ne, Hisoka, where's Tsuzuki?"

"Nurse office," Hisoka mumbled in response, not knowing why it bothered him that Hijiri was asking about Tsuzuki.

"Hey, you know the cute new nurse too?" a girl, Yui, interrupted. "Tell us about him!"

"Yeah, tell us!" Ayame piped up.

Hijiri looked startled. "Well, er, Tsuzuki is just this guy that helped me out once. He . . ."

"Is a glutton for punishment and an even bigger glutton for food," Hisoka cut in.

Now why, he wondered, had he felt it necessary to say that? Maybe it was because he wanted to shut up Hijiri. It was not that it was the way he honestly felt about Tsuzuki; that couldn't be any further from the truth. It was just that . . . well, he didn't know. It had just come out that way.

"Hey," Yui said suddenly, nudging Yuanyi in the side, "there's Kaiki."

Yuanyi glanced over her shoulder. "Hey, Kai!" she called, waving an arm in the air to catch the attention of the passing boy. "Come over here!"

Having been walking with his head down, the boy looked up briefly. Hisoka wondered how old he was. He had the body shape and the basic appearance of a teenager, but something about his eyes made Hisoka wonder if he actually was. Those same eyes had something haunted about them. They were a striking color of silver, but clouded over that made them less striking to look at on a second glance. But it was not his eyes that were the most intriguing, but his hair, which was the shade of gold. Not blonde gold, as Hisoka's hair was, but a true gold color, like that of the actual substance.

He gave a smile, a brief twitch of his lips, and made some gesture to sign that he needed to hurry inside. He disappeared a moment later and Yuanyi let out a disappointed sound.

"That guy," she said, sighing. "We've been trying to get him out of his shell all school year, but he just won't budge."

"He's new?" Hisoka asked.

"Aa," Kensou confirmed. "Shinori Kaiki, but everyone just calls him Kai. He transferred here at the beginning of the year from Hokkaido. He's pretty quiet and keeps to himself. Yuanyi made it her personal goal to get a conversation out of him."

"And I will," Yuanyi said determinedly, just as the bell was ringing. "Er, right after language, that is. Hisoka, I'll see you in algebra! And don't forget - archery practice today!"

Hisoka had not been able to escape from his newfound group of friends to join Tsuzuki for lunch, nor was he able to escape after lunch, since the period following was algebra and he shared that with Yuanyi, but following that class it was a self-study period. He slipped gratefully away from class before anyone could catch him and hurried downstairs to the nurse's office. As much as he enjoyed his new group of friends, he needed a moment away to talk to Tsuzuki.

"Hey Tsuzuki," he began, stepping into the infirmary, but he stopped as his eyes came to rest on just who was seated with Tsuzuki.

"Oh, hi, Hisoka," Hijiri said cheerfully. "We were wondering if you'd show up."

Hisoka slowly closed the door behind him. "Shouldn't you be in class?"

"It's my lunch break right now, so I thought I'd come see Tsuzuki."

Hisoka glanced at his partner. Tsuzuki gave a careless smile and a shrug of his shoulders. He, at least, enjoyed the company that Hijiri offered him. Tsuzuki always did have a soft spot for the boy, and even now, that did not settle right with Hisoka.

He had almost accepted that it was because he was jealous, in some bizarre way. The problem was taking care of what was causing his jealousy, and he had no idea how to get rid of Hijiri. Except maybe to push him in front of a bus or something.

"Hijiri's been trying to help me crack the case," Tsuzuki explained, and at that comment, Hisoka could feel his blood boiling.

"Then I guess I'll just leave you two to it," he said irritably, reaching for the doorknob.

"Oh, don't go!" Tsuzuki said quickly. "I need your help too, you know."

The younger shinigami would have much rather gone and fumed about his current state of affairs, but he had never been able to straight out say no to Tsuzuki. With a sigh, he released the knob and settled down on one of the free beds. Hijiri had already finished his lunch, he noted, but had yet to leave. He was probably going to skip the next period to spend more time with Tsuzuki.

"So have you figured anything out today, Hisoka?" Tsuzuki asked.

"I think Hijiri is wrong," Hisoka replied, looking pointedly at the boy in question. "About Iida Yuanyi being the next one to die, I mean. I'm around her a lot and she doesn't seem at all tired to me. She's always real cheerful and . . . bouncy."

Hijiri returned the look evenly, apparently not noticing how much his presence was causing Hisoka discomfort. "You don't know her that well, you know. From what I know of her she does a good job of pretending she's okay, but you don't see her when she's not around people. That's when it really starts to pull her down."

"And what is this 'it' you're talking about?" Hisoka asked sourly.

"I don't know. The curse, I guess."

Tsuzuki continued to look repeatedly between the two of them, eyes wide. "Wow. Scary. You both have the evil eyes going."

Both pairs of evil eyes fixated on him, and Tsuzuki gave an eep and devoted his attention back to his slice of apple pie.

"Well, anyway, I'll keep an eye on Yuanyi, just in case," Hisoka said. "You keep your eyes open too, Tsuzuki."

"Aa, I am, I am!" Tsuzuki promised. "You didn't find anything else out, ne? Nothing unusual?"

"Saw an unusual guy, but that's not much."

"Eh?"

"Gold hair, silver eyes . . . kind of creepy looking."

"Oh, you mean Shinori Kaiki," Hijiri interrupted.

Hisoka favored him with another sour look and nodded his head once as his response. He had almost been able to forget for a moment there that Hijiri was in the room with them. He would have preferred it if he were not; that was the honest truth. Hijiri made it more uncomfortable for him to be on a working state of mind, he thought. Or maybe that was one of the excuses he was coming up with for not liking Hijiri.

"Kai's a nice guy," Hijiri continued. "Real quiet. Keeps to himself a lot. He plays cello in orchestra, and he's really good. But whenever concerts and stuff come up and they want him to be in them, he always says no. I think he's got social anxiety or something."

"He's new," Hisoka added.

"Maybe he's just shy," Tsuzuki suggested. He smiled suddenly. "Or maybe he's like Hisoka. Real mean and abrasive."

Hisoka glared at him. Tsuzuki gave another eep and vowed to keep his mouth shut for the remainder of the day.

"Well, I've got to go back to class," Hisoka said, standing up and gathering his books. "I'm staying after for archery again, Tsuzuki. You can go back to the hotel after school if you want to."

"Naw, I'll stick around and try to do some more research. You go have fun."

Hisoka sighed. "It's not fun. It's work."

"Sure, sure," Tsuzuki said, not believing a word of it. "Go on!"

"It's work," Hisoka insisted.

"Okay."

"It is."

"I believe you."

". . . . . .oh, nevermind."

Tsuzuki laughed.

Hisoka had unloaded a quiver of arrows, all directly to the center of the target, not even fifteen minutes into the archery practice. By that time a group had gathered around him, awed by his capabilities. Hisoka did not think quite as much of them as Akira was playing them up to be, saying that he was some kind of district champion. Terazuma had much better aim than he did and could shoot from even further distances and still make it to the center of the target.

Still, the praise was as welcome just as much as it was embarrassing to him. Hisoka took it all very modestly, but inside he was beaming. Never had he been complimented growing up on something he did. Even before his parents had tossed him away, claiming that he was some kind of monster, his father had not been pleased with his progress in his training as a bushi. He had never seemed to be able to do good at anything, from the way his parents made it seem. But these people were accepting him and praising him, and it was enough to bring a genuine smile to even his face.

"He~y, Hi-so-ka-kun!"

Yuanyi appeared at his side and slung an arm around his shoulders.

"You're doing great!" she said enthusiastically. "With your help, our school might just make it to the district championships. You're really good. How long have you been doing this?"

"Since I could walk," Hisoka admitted. "My parents thought it was proper for a kid to be brought up as a bushi."

"I'm sure it was just that they wanted the best for you," Yuanyi said optimistically. "Now get back to work!"

Hisoka smiled and gave a brief salute with his bow before joining Akira and the others on the field again.

They continued to practice for another twenty minutes or so, practicing aim and stance, which Hisoka of course excelled at far more than the other boys on the team. The coach continually pointed to him as an example to the others, until Hisoka was blushing furiously and sure that everyone hated him for the praise the coach was giving him. But Akira and the others only snickered and mimicked the coach when his back was turned to Hisoka, and he knew that they had no harsh feelings against him.

As he and Akira were putting their things together after practice, Akira stopped suddenly and looked around. He was frowning.

"Hey, where's Yuanyi? She always comes running down here after practice."

Hisoka straightened himself and as well let his eyes wander the area. "I don't see her in the bleachers," he said. "Maybe she went home early."

"No, that's not like her."

Hisoka could tell by the frown on Akira's face that it was more serious than he thought it was. Akira began to walk across the field toward the bleachers, and Hisoka hastened to catch up with him. There was a sudden empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, the way a person felt when they were nervous about something. But for him, it was a feeling much worse than that.

"Yuanyi!" Akira called. "Hey, Yuanyi!"

"Yuanyi!" Hisoka chimed in, cupping his hands over his mouth as he called. "Hey, where are you?!"

He stopped as Akira did. The other boy was knelt down on one knee, a terrible expression on his face.

"Oh man," he began slowly, "this isn't good . . ."

Hisoka hurried to his side. "What's not good? What're you . . . oh . . ."

Yuanyi was lying in the bleachers, apparently unconscious. Hisoka waved a hand before her face and received no reaction, but he could feel very faint breath coming out of her mouth against the back of his hand as he passed it over her. It was not hot enough, he didn't think, that she could have passed out from sunstroke. Which meant that maybe, as much as he did not want to believe it, that Hijiri was right and Yuanyi /was/ the next victim . . .

"Come on, let's get her to the nurse," he said quickly. "Careful picking her up. Hey, watch it. Okay, that's good . . . come on, let's hurry."

"Sunstroke," Tsuzuki said brightly. "Nothing to worry about. You can go on home, Akira-kun, she'll be just fine by tomorrow."

Hisoka sat in the desk chair of the nurse office, hand fisted against his cheek, watching as Tsuzuki spoke to Akira and lied to him about Yuanyi. He knew it was not sunstroke, the same as Hisoka knew it was not, and he was sure that on some level that Akira knew it too. But the boy accepted the explanation Tsuzuki gave him and drifted away, assured that his friend would be fine by morning.

"Hijiri's right," Hisoka said numbly as Tsuzuki closed the door behind Akira. "She really is the next one that's going to die. And there's nothing we can do about it."

"Don't be so pessimistic, Hisoka," Tsuzuki said.

"How can I /not/ be?!" Hisoka exclaimed. "She's got less than a week to live if Hijiri is right about all of this, and we don't even know what's causing it! If we don't know what's causing it, how can we help her?! How can we prevent another death?!"

"Hisoka, you're shouting."

"I am not!"

Hisoka stopped suddenly. He /was/ yelling, and he sounded absolutely hysterical. It was almost amusing. He shook his head, a small smile curving onto his lips. A brief laugh escaped him.

"Sorry, Tsuzuki," he mumbled.

Tsuzuki did not respond. What he did do was kneel down before Hisoka, one hand coming up to rest on the younger shinigami's knee. Hisoka looked down at him, startled.

"I'm doing my best to figure this out, Hisoka," Tsuzuki said softly. "I'll do everything in my power to keep her alive. But you have to help me. I can't do this alone."

Hisoka glanced at the hand on his knee, and after a moment of hesitation, he placed his own over Tsuzuki's. "I know. Sorry. I'm trying too."

Tsuzuki smiled. "I know."

With that, he stood up in a flash, and the smile on his face spread to become a full grin. "Well, I'm going to go get some munchies from the cafeteria. Can't work on an empty stomach, you know!"

He had whirled around and dashed out the door before Hisoka had the chance to give a response. The younger shinigami sighed, shaking his head. Tsuzuki was insane. That was the only word he could use to describe his partner. Tsuzuki /was/ insane, and that was all there was to it. But he wouldn't change him in any way if he could.

He glanced over to the infirmary bed, where Yuanyi was. In all outward appearances, she looked fast asleep and perfectly content, almost like a dead person . . .

Hisoka mentally berated himself for coming up with /that/ analogy.

But it was true, wasn't it? He had never been to a funeral before in his life, but like every person, he knew what one constituted of. There was a service where the priest or what have you would speak of the deceased and how they would be remembered. Sometimes the person that was dead was viewable to all those that had come to the funeral. That had always bothered Hisoka. Why, he wondered, would anyone want to look at a dead body? Especially considering what happened to the human body when it died . . .

He wondered if his parents had given him an open casket funeral, or if they had been too ashamed of him to allow people to see the face of their monster son. He wondered if they had even bothered to give him a funeral at all. It almost seemed more like them to shove him in a box and bury him in the ground, not even with a grave marker.

They would not have done that, he realized. Regardless of what they had thought of him, he had been the one that would take the place as the head of their family someday. The other members of the family would have insisted that he at least have some grave marker. Whether or not he would be buried on family ground, he didn't know. He didn't really want to think about it. He was thinking too much about it as it was.

His gaze returned to Yuanyi . . . or so it attempted to. He looked in the direction of where she was resting, or where she should have been resting, and found nothing in her place. She was gone.

"Yuanyi?" he asked aloud, standing up.

He had not realized how dark the room was until now. The sun had almost completely set, and he had been too involved in his thoughts to notice or turn on a light. He started forward for the light switch, in hopes of making it easier to find Yuanyi, but he never made it that far. There was a sudden flash of color and he found himself pinned down on the ground, Yuanyi above him, and a scalpel from a drawer in hand.

Hisoka quickly brought up a hand and clamped it down over the wrist wielding the scalpel, to keep it from coming any closer to him. Yuanyi struggled against him, attempting to break free or at least make her mark with the weapon. Hisoka kept having to move from side to side to avoid the scalpel coming dangerously close to his face.

"Yuanyi! What's the matter with you?! Stop!"

He saw her eyes then, as she made another move to stab him. They were not her eyes. They were hollow and lifeless, and reminded him of Tsubaki when Irene had been in control of her body. This person attacking him as /not/ Yuanyi.

Hisoka brought up one leg beneath their two struggling forms, and his knee collided with her stomach. Yuanyi, or whoever she was now, immediately pulled away from him, having the wind knocked out her. She curled up in a feeble form on the ground, struggling to breathe.

"This would have been much easier," she choked out between gasps, "if you shinigami hadn't been involved."

Hisoka took a step away from her. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Why do you know about shinigami?"

She stood and smoothed her hair from her face, revealing the same hollow eyes and a wicked smile. "Satsujinsha, demon of Makai, at your service. This girl is my host body."

"You're the one that killed those people!"

"Well, naturally. Once I had used them to their fullest extent, they were expendable. This girl will not last much longer though, I'm afraid. I should have chosen someone else. But no matter. You are a shinigami. If I had your body, then I wouldn't need any other. This is all too perfect."

"Wha . . ."

Hisoka was not sure what was happening. The hollow look of her eyes disappeared and the wicked smile faded from her lips. A pained expression overcame Yuanyi, and for a moment he thought that he could see her eyes staring out at him. But that was for only the briefest second before she dropped down to the ground. Her back seemed to split in two, reminding him too much of what had happened to Tsuzuki when Saagantanasu had left his body. He remembered Tsuzuki's screams from that time, but this time it was Yuanyi that was screaming, and like then there was nothing he could do to help.

"Stop it! You're killing her!"

He heard the words coming out of his mouth, but he did not feel his mouth moving or his vocal chords working. He could hear himself yelling something else, but he was too horrified by the sight before him to actually realize what he was saying.

The demon, Satsujinsha as it had introduced itself, was shedding Yuanyi's body like a snake would do a used skin. A head appeared from her back, a terrible thing that looked very much like the mythical dragon he remembered from books he had read as a child. Then two bat-like wings followed, and then four clawed feet, and lastly, a long, spaded tail. The demon took up the entire room and yet did not at the same time; it seemed to shrink and grow larger all at once.

It shook itself, like a dog just waking up from a nap, and spoke in a clear, cruel voice. "You are next, shinigami."

Hisoka did not seem to hear the threat. He rushed past the demon to where Yuanyi lay on the ground and gathered the girl into his arms.

"Yuanyi? Yuanyi!" He shook her, trying to bring her back to consciousness. "Wake up!"

After a moment, her eyes fluttered open, the same bright brown eyes he remembered. A smile appeared on her face.

"Hisoka-kun, you look really sad," she said. "You're not going to cry, are you?"

"Hang on, you'll be okay. Just hang on."

"Ne . . . it's okay," Yuanyi said softly. "You know . . . I'm really just tired. I'm going to go to sleep, okay? So don't look so sad. I'll see you in a bit."

"Don't go to sleep! Don't close your eyes!"

He did not know whether or not she had heard him. As he said the words, her eyes drifted closed, and as he shook her in the vain hope of waking her back up, she feel limp and lifeless in his arms.

Hisoka saw in his mind the face of Tsubaki, how she had smiled just before he had pulled the trigger, and how accepting of death she had been, just like Yuanyi. She had not fought against it. Simply closed her eyes and allowed death to take her. She would go on to Meifu and live in Joukai, he knew that and was glad of it, but the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach would not go away. She was /dead/ and he had not been able to do anything to stop it.

"Now, shinigami . . . if you are quite done . . ."

He looked up. Satsujinsha was advancing forward on him. The clawed feet made a horrible sound against the tile floor as he came forward. The bat-like wings scratched against the ceiling. Hisoka watched him come forward for a moment, then looked away, into the lifeless face of Yuanyi. Was he going to end up like this? No, of course not, he was immortal. If the demon took his body, then it too would be immortal . . . but he did not have the energy to stop it.

"Hisoka!"

He did not look up. He did recognize that it was Tsuzuki calling his name, but he did nothing.

Tsuzuki cursed below his breath. He did not have the time to make an assessment of the damage right now. He made a blind move on his instincts alone, interjecting himself between his young partner and the demon. In his hand he held a ofuda, posed between his index and middle finger. His lips began to form the beginning syllables of a spell. As he said the last word, he let go of the ofuda, and it exploded to become a ring of fire.

The demon gave a hideous cry of pain. Tsuzuki prepared to do another spell, but was not given the chance. The demon was not an idiot, he was sorry to say, and took that very moment to make its retreat. Tsuzuki was grateful for that, but disappointed that he could not take care of the problem right at that moment. This only meant that things would become more complicated.

"Hisoka," he remembered suddenly.

He turned around. Hisoka was still seated on the floor, Yuanyi in his arms. Tsuzuki knelt slowly beside him.

"Hisoka?"

"I couldn't do anything," Hisoka said numbly. "I just let her die. There was nothing I could do."

Tsuzuki winced. He wanted to comfort Hisoka, but how could he, when he too was constantly plagued by these same feelings and coped with them no better than Hisoka was? He could not tell him that he would eventually feel better, because that was a lie. Cases from even thirty years ago Tsuzuki still remembered vividly, as though they had only been the day before. That was the curse of living life as a shinigami.

"Come on, Hisoka," he began gently. "We have to notify someone about this, so her parents can take care of the body and everything . . ."

"I let her die! I let her die!"

Hisoka continued to cry out things hysterically. Tsuzuki could not deal with it for much longer, and in a blindingly quick movement, he had placed both hands on either side of Hisoka's face firmly, startling the younger shinigami into shutting his mouth. Tears still continued to fall down his cheeks.

"Stop it, Hisoka! If there was nothing you could do, there was nothing you could do! Accept that!"

"Tsu . . . Tsuzuki . . ."

"Accept that," Tsuzuki repeated, his voice softer and gentle. He brought up a hand and brushed away the tears on Hisoka's face with his knuckles. "Accept that, Hisoka."

Hisoka closed his eyes. Several moments of silence passed between them before he made any movement. Only then it was a brief nod of his head, acknowledging Tsuzuki's words. Tsuzuki sighed.

"Come on. Let's get this sorted out . . ."