Killing Time, Part 14

Izumi watched Koji as the man sat slumped in the sofa in the living room, staring fixedly at the rug they'd bought to cover the discoloured spot on the carpet. He was brooding again, it didn't take a genius to work that one out. Izumi would have laid money that he knew what it was that was on his mind. This was getting annoying, very annoying. If he was still obsessing over that bottle-blonde whose name Izumi had almost totally forgotten, or the high school boy who'd seemed even more clueless than the majority of high school boys did, or that drunken girl and her boyfriend or any of the others, he wanted to know why.

Izumi himself certainly didn't think like that about any of them. Out of sight, out of mind.

Again it had been Serika's fault. Izumi had gone to meet her from school and Koji had tagged along after him. When his sister arrived she was talking to another girl, slightly smaller than she was, her light brown hair in a bob. They'd been talking. The conversation hadn't been long and certainly hadn't been very meaningful, but it had been enough.

"Oh, how's your brother?"
"Not much better. He just wants to be alone all the time, so… me seeing him doesn't help much."
"Serious? He wants to be by himself all of the time?"
"Mm. Apparently it's common, with depression."
"But that'd drive me… niisan! Hello! You remember Madoka, don't you? She's coming home with me today."
Izumi had looked at Koji and he could tell that the name had registered with him straight away. He'd looked surprised. He'd been largely quiet until Serika and her friend had left. Izumi, by contrast, hadn't thought there was anything at all unusual about the girl. He'd seen her with Serika a couple of times before. She was just another fairly unremarkable high-school girl.

"Koji." Izumi said. "Snap out of it."

Koji looked up from the rug. He seemed tired, anxious. "Do you know who she was?"
Izumi blinked. "Know who who was?"
"She's Katsumi's sister." Koji replied, little caring about Izumi's decidedly noncommittal answer.
There was still no sign of recognition on Izumi's face. "Who's Katsumi and what's he got to do with anything?"
Koji looked at him in incredulity. "You can't even remember who he is?"
It was surprising Izumi hadn't actually noticed the danger signs. It was probably because he wasn't expecting them, certainly wasn't looking for them.
"No, I've barely even heard of him before. Who is he and why should I know him?"
"Because you told me to kill him is why!" On a purely intellectual level Koji was surprised by the anger in his voice.
Izumi looked at Koji in mild disdain. "Oh. The blonde, right? Koji, this was back in July, why drag it up now?"
"I saw the way you looked at his sister. Izumi, we are not hurting that girl!"
"And why on earth not?" Izumi asked.
"Because…"

Koji supposed he'd better come clean with Izumi, but how could he put it so he didn't sound totally crazy? How could he say it? He'd seen Katsumi again, but the boy hadn't recognised him. Out of some kind of morbid fascination Koji had found out when his father's funeral was, had gone along to look - probably he'd just wanted to see him, maybe he'd been hoping to talk to him again. He didn't know why. As it was Koji hadn't managed to do anything of the sort. He'd seen Katsumi sat with some male relative a few yards from the rest of the mourners. He'd been crying openly and hadn't seemed to realise that his companion was trying to talk to him, either that or he just didn't care. He probably wanted his father. Then after the funeral he'd gone back home with his stepmother and sister and he'd tried to kill himself again.

Koji didn't know why he hadn't thought. In under twenty-four hours he'd raped one of Katsumi's best friends then killed his father and then he'd wondered why the boy was so sad.

"Haven't we done enough to him?" Koji asked incredulously. "He fell in love with me, that's not his fault! We've raped him, orphaned him and driven him mad, isn't that enough to be getting on with? You want to kill his little sister too? Izumi, if you so much as touch her…"

"Oh, you're threatening me now? Very impressive, Koji. I'm not one of those slutty girls you've been dragging home and I'm not some pretty, empty-headed teenager. Save your threats for someone they may actually scare."
"I'm not threatening you, I'm…" Koji hesitated. "I just want to leave that boy alone! He didn't do anything to you, why can't you leave him be? Please, Izumi. Not her too. She's just a child!"
Izumi snorted. "If you're so devoted to that space cadet Katsumi, why don't you go find him and tell him all this? Get out, Koji. Don't even think about coming back until you've calmed down."
"Izumi…"
The look on Izumi's face was strange, frightening, and Koji gazed at him in consternation as he gestured toward the door, barely restrained anger obvious in his voice. "I said get out, Koji. Go. Now. Lock the door behind you."

***

It wasn't the place he normally went to. It was the place he normally went to when he needed to be alone. He'd never brought Izumi in here. The place wasn't worryingly smart or exclusive, but it had a nice location, reasonable décor and fairly nice-looking staff. It wasn't as gloomy in here, the chairs weren't as uncomfortable, and it was seldom, if ever packed to capacity, though it nonetheless seemed to do good business.

Koji had been there for an hour or so and he was feeling miserably drunk. At this time of day the bar was practically deserted apart from one or two hard-core alcoholics, a businessman with a girl young enough to be his daughter but who almost definitely wasn't his daughter, and the barman, a bottle-blonde in his early twenties, who looked like a starlet with the morals of an alley cat, and as if he would go to bed with anyone who seemed even remotely interested. If the guy was even half as bored with serving drinks as he appeared he should definitely have handed in his notice on the spot. The most animated Koji had seen him all afternoon was during the five-minute phone call he'd received from some girl called Kimie. God knew who Kimie was and what she had to do with this man here. If she was his girlfriend, Koji almost felt sorry for her.

If Koji hadn't been so heartily sick of the entire enterprise he might have tried to get the man to come home with him, but he didn't want to. He didn't know this man and certainly had no reason to dislike him, so why he would want to take him home…

Koji gestured the barman over and ordered another drink - the young man arched one slender eyebrow in mild surprise as he surveyed the glasses already lined up in front of him. "Just how drunk are you intending on getting?"

"A lot." Koji replied shortly. "I can still remember everything."
"Dare I ask what it is you're trying to forget? Girlfriend troubles?"
"You could say that." Koji replied. He watched the young man pick up the glasses in front of him and stack them neatly out of sight before turning to the line of bottles behind him.
"Same again, wasn't it?"
Koji nodded. "Yeah." It was all the same to Koji want it was he drank. He didn't really care what noxious creation this blonde wanted to lay on him just as long as it stopped him thinking straight.

The guy was completely, comprehensively drunk. Kai didn't really like it when people got this drunk on him. He'd seen this guy a couple of times before and it wasn't like he couldn't hold his drink so why was he getting so hammered today? He didn't know. Maybe the guy was a bigger alcoholic than he had suspected. Maybe he'd just had a bad night. Oh well. As long as the guy kept paying he'd keep serving him. All the same…

"Hey, steady on." Kai watched in quiet consternation as the man drained his glass bare seconds after he had put it down in front of him. "We don't give out

prizes if you finish in under fifteen seconds, you know." "No? Well, you should." The man started laughing. Kai rolled his eyes. Someone was pissed.
"I think you've had enough." Kai narrowed his eyes and spoke coldly, then added, almost as an afterthought, "Sir."
The man glowered at him. "I'll be the judge of that."
"Oh, of course." The man was clearly a lost cause. Kai wasn't quite sure why he was bothering to talk to the guy, except for the fact that there was quite obviously nobody else to talk to and nothing else to do.

A small, soft beep indicated that the dishwasher had finished its cycle and he turned away to retrieve the clean glasses from the machine, stooping slightly in order to pick up the dishwasher tray and place it near one of the sinks behind the bar, the occasional clinking of the glasses as he wiped, sorted and stacked them sounding strangely loud in the near-silent room, the only other noises the low voices of the salaryman talking at his secretary, mistress, girlfriend or whoever it was he had with him - Kai's money was on mistress - the piped pop music that had been popular for six weeks over half a year ago and which Kai hadn't liked even then. He preferred his music to express far less saccharine-sweet feelings, but it wasn't right for the afternoon so he just had to cope. He normally didn't mind his job but slow days like this sucked, big time.

Koji stared moodily into his glass and waited for the barman to finish doing whatever it was he was doing with the glasses before attempting to talk to him again. You never know - getting a bit of impartial advice might be just what he needed right now. "You ever made a… really bad choice? About life or something?"

The blonde grinned suddenly. "I've had a couple of girlfriends I'd have been happier not knowing."
"Oh. See… I was worried it was just me."

Here we go, Kai thought to himself. Someone's in a 'wouldn't it be a great idea to share my most intimate secrets with a barman?' mood. Wonderful. Still, he supposed it would help kill some time and listening to drunken confessions came with the territory.

"You see, there was this…" Koji hesitated. He wasn't quite sure what gender he should say the protagonists in his life story were. Eventually he settled for the less worrying female. He had no idea how the barman would have reacted to the truth even though it didn't look like it'd have mattered that much to him (Koji had him down as the 'I'll jump anything with a pulse' type), but better safe than sorry. "… this girl I liked? Problem is, well, I already had a girlfriend, and she wasn't happy about it, so she… well, she got me to do something drastic to this other girl. Just to scare her, but… we… well, we kind of got carried away." Koji could tell the man wasn't really listening to him judging from his politely bored expression and slightly glazed eyes, but he carried on anyway.

***

"I don't get it. Why me?"

The only illumination in the room came from the windows. They had not closed the blinds, but it didn't matter. It was dark outside, the light in the room the reflected glow of the streetlamps, occasionally the glare from the headlights of a passing car. In the gloom Keisuke could only just make out Takafumi's face and couldn't see his expression clearly, it was far too dark for that. Even before his lover spoke, though, Keisuke knew something was the matter.

"What do you mean, why you?"

Another one of those nights. No accident they happen after dark. It was strange, and sad in a way. Though he tried to hide it Takafumi had been very clearly distressed by what had happened to him the day Katsumi's father had been murdered; Keisuke couldn't help but feel ill at ease, as if it was somehow an imposition just to put his arms round his lover unless Takafumi made it very plain that he wanted him to. And if anything he wanted to far more often than he had before. They had just made love, but had not spoken since until Takafumi, lying flat on his back with his eyes open as if he were dead, had unexpectedly broken the silence.

"I'm just confused… why is this my life?" He turned to Keisuke, clearly bewildered. "You're a nice guy from a… what do they call it again? A good family. You should be engaged by now, or have a steady girlfriend, or be seeing some girl at least. There's plenty of nice women out there and it's not like they don't like you judging from how many of them hit on you in front of me, so why me?"

"Because." Keisuke replied simply. "They're not you."
"Sappy." Takafumi said with a small smile. "But seriously, Kei. You don't think we've made a mistake? We've been seeing each other since high school and I still think you'd probably like being with a girl a lot more than you do me. You know…" he broke off and sighed. "You know I was convinced when we first started seeing each other that it'd last two months at the most then you'd realise all this was ridiculous and that all we'd managed to do was blow our friendship? You're so… conventional in a lot of ways. You just don't seem the 'boyfriend' type. Damn, you're probably fantastic husband material, that might be why all those girls flirt with you…"
Keisuke blinked in the darkness. "Well, I thought you'd get bored with me long before now. You've had far less conventional boyfriends than me. I know you had a lot of lovers when we were in school, why aren't you with one of them?" Takafumi had started tracing a pattern on the bedsheets with the tip of his right
index finger; he concentrated on it rather than looking at Keisuke. "Because they didn't love me. It was just sex. I went with any man who asked and none of them liked me let alone loved me. I got around more than my sister did and everyone said she was a tramp, but at least she actually liked the people she slept with. I'd be prepared to lay money that the first time you heard my name it was because someone was warning you not to get too friendly with me because everyone said I was easy."
"Why did you do that?" Keisuke guessed this was revisionist history. He'd always been under the impression that Takafumi had been crazy about some of his other partners even if on occasion it had been 'just sex'. He'd certainly loved his previous boyfriend and after they'd broken up he had cried on Keisuke's shoulder, who had then been his best friend. Definitely revisionist history.
"Because I'm a slut. If you don't want a girl you could get a far less trashy boyfriend."

There. Keisuke had known it was coming. Takafumi had been upset by what had happened to him, maybe not as obviously or as seriously as Katsumi had, but still he'd been upset and it showed. It had become painfully obvious to Keisuke that his lover had blamed himself for 'letting' that man Nanjo rape him, just the same as Katsumi blamed himself for everything Nanjo had ever done to anybody. "You are not trashy." He spoke firmly.

"Liar." Takafumi sounded regretful, as if he didn't want to say it but felt he had to. "Don't do that, Keisuke, there's no need to spare my feelings. It doesn't help things any. Why don't you just say what you think instead of worrying about me?"
"Because it is what I think and you're being stupid. Why are you blaming yourself for something that couldn't possibly be your fault? You're not a slut, nobody ever thought you were, except perhaps yourself. Snap out of it. Please."
Takafumi hesitated. "If I'm not a slut then why…"
"You think he cared either way what you were or you weren't? You were just there. You don't think it was Katsumi's fault that Koji-- you don't think he asked for it do you? What makes you any different?"
"You don't understand." Takafumi said simply. "I'm not surprised you can't and I wouldn't want you to. It's not your fault, but you don't understand."

***

Kai had left before Koji did, meeting up with Kimie outside the bar. The boy had come straight from school, or at least he hadn't changed out of his uniform and was still carrying his book bag, which was pretty much the same thing. He was leaning casually against a lamppost, following the advice they give young teenagers about staying to lighted areas to the letter, not that staying in crowds and light had helped him last time. He was holding his bag behind his back, his posture was that of someone who had been waiting a long time and could have carried on doing so for hours. One thing he didn't look was bored. Kai wondered what he had been thinking about.

He couldn't believe that anyone would have been able to see a boy like this as nothing more than a victim, someone to use and abuse any which way and then discard. There was more to him than that. He was so much more than a crime statistic or a traumatised victim.

"I had an argument with my mum." he said as Kai approached. "This morning."

"What about?" Kai asked incuriously.
Kimie shrugged. "Just stuff. You know how it is with arguments. It started over whether or not it was a disadvantage to be bad at baseball. She thinks you're a bad influence." He fell silent, picking at a loose thread on his bag, then looked up again. "How was work?"
"Boring," Kai said. "We've had about seven customers in all afternoon and the only one who stayed more than an hour was trying to drink himself into a stupor because he's made a couple of mistakes with women."
"Bo-ring," Kimie agreed with a giggle. "But at least you're not working in an office."
"Is that such a bad thing?" Kai had never liked the idea of office work but much more of the afternoon shift and they'd probably drive him to it.
"They'd make you cut your hair. Well… not make you… but you know what I mean."

Kai looked at his watch. Nearly six. It felt a lot later, for some reason, probably the darkness. It got dark quickly at this time of year. It wasn't a warm night. He wondered how long Kimie had been waiting, but decided not to ask. He'd tell him if he wanted to and it was a stupid question anyway. It was a shame the kid still lived with his parents, though, not to mention kinda restrictive. Whilst he was on the subject… "What time do your folks expect you back?" he asked.

"They don't." Kimie said with a shrug. "I told them I was staying round a friend's. I had to give them your number so they'd let me go. I think they're actually kinda relieved, you know… that I'm going out more and stuff, I mean."

He wondered why the boy hadn't bothered getting changed before they met up. It would make it hard to take him anywhere, not that it wasn't hard normally. He didn't look much older in casual clothes, partly due to the way he acted. He looked gauche - hell, he was gauche. Kai wasn't quite sure if the way Kimie stood would be described as effeminate or childish. What was it about Kimie? He was no more than quietly attractive; he certainly wasn't beautiful in any conventional way. He was the kind of person Kai normally looked at once then ignored. He was a nice enough kid, even if he was a bit weird with it, but Kai wasn't normally the kind of person who set much store by character.

Kai had no idea what he saw in him.

***

"Why doesn't she take her shoes off? She's a dork for trying to run in those things."

"Of course she's a dork. If she was smarter she'd never have gone outdoors."
"But it's the dumbest thing she could have done. Why the hell'd she decide to walk home from her boyfriend's at three in the morning when she could have got a cab?"
"Because she's a filler character. She's only in the story at all to bump up the body count, you expect her to act smart as well?"
"Well… no. But I did expect her not to be, well, totally stupid…"
"Filler characters aren't allowed brains. Only the main characters are allowed to try and save their lives."
"That's dumb."
"Of course it's dumb."
"This programme sucks."
"Of course it sucks."
"Then why are we watching it? I hate detective shows."

Of course he would. Whatever way you looked at it, shows about maverick detective so-and-so and his gorgeous but totally professional female partner, whose life he would undoubtedly end up saving before the end of the programme so that they could end up an item, trying to catch this and that psychotic lunatic who was going round attacking well-endowed young women, were the kind of shows that Kimie would probably go out of his way to avoid. Whichever way you looked at it, Kai thought, this was a bad choice of programme.

"I'll turn it off." Kai said.

"Doesn't that bother you?" Kimie asked. "Weren't you watching it?" Kai grinned. "See one of these and you've seen 'em all. The girl the hero works with'll get in danger, he saves her, they kiss, the psycho is packed off to prison and they all live happily ever after. Credits." He turned the television off.
Kimie was looking at his hands. Kai had noticed this; he did it when things were troubling him, when he was thinking things he didn't want to consider. "…TV's convenient like that."
"Yeah." Kai agreed. "The cops always get the bad guys, the bad guys always get theirs, the girl gets saved, the guy gets the girl. Guess that's what people want. Reality's bad enough."
He didn't need to convince Kimie about that one. "Tell me about it." he said. He had his arms round his knees again. "But isn't there plenty of serial killer stuff in the news right now? What'd we need these stupid dramas for? Why don't people just buy a bloody paper if they want cheap thrills?"

Because in real life the killer doesn't always get found. There's no kiss after the danger's passed, no happy ending. Sometimes there's no ending at all. Life's anything but convenient.

"The shows know when to stop." Kai said.

"And life doesn't?" Kimie asked. He shook his head, laughed softly and derisively. "No. Guess not."
"What kind of ending do you want?" Kai asked suddenly, filling up the silence that followed.
"To what? All this… stuff that's been happening?" Kimie asked, pausing when Kai nodded. "…a definite one." He said finally. "Like I know there'll be no more."
Kai squeezed one of Kimie's hands. "Don't worry. It'll happen." he said quietly.

Startled, Kimie turned, looking directly at Kai for the first time since they'd started talking, his expression one of quiet apprehension. "You'll make it happen, you mean. You're going to make me a TV ending." When Kai didn't say anything, he carried on. "I thought it was a joke… but you were serious about those knives then. You want to…"

"Yes." Kai interrupted. "Of course I want to."
"But if it's revenge… that's something I've got to do myself. You can't do it for me and I wouldn't want you--" Kimie broke off and fell silent for what felt to Kai like an age. He wondered what he was thinking about. The look in his eyes was strange, one Kai had never seen from him before. "Okay. Do it." he said. Level, calm. The calmness in his voice came as a surprise to both of them. "If you want to do that for me, go ahead. But only…"
"Only what?" Kai asked quietly.
The boy looked away, his reply was practically a whisper. "... but… only if I can do it too."