Chapter 3

Of Eavesdroppers, Voyeurs and Stalkers

Trees were great. Their existence came with a whole set of useful properties such as providing shade from the sun, producing oxygen that was vital for human survival, others yield delicious fruit and most importantly, they bestow me with a hiding place from the vicious army of fangirls I have amassed.

Having finally grown bored of eating their bentos and complementing their makeup for the week, I came to realise the futility of my ambitions. Top of the food chain or not, I hardly believed I have the required amount of sanity to dwell in this setting for a year. The sooner I get out, the better.

I made a beeline towards a leafy companion as soon as the lunch bells rang. Pulling myself up into its branches dense with cherry blossom, I watched impassively as a group of female specimens rounded the corner of the school building, frantically searching for my presence in order to ravage my taste buds with their cooking.

"Ehhh! Where did Sou-sama go? He hasn't even tried my bento yet!"

Deciding I was sick of school life for the day, I pulled my sleeping mask over my face and made the decision to skip afternoon classes in favour of a nap in this tree. Like I said, trees were great. Before I was able to take a trip to the lands of the unconscious however, I was regrettably interrupted.

"Let's eat here today Kagura, it's a nice day to be outside," an unfamiliar voice cheerfully suggested.

I frowned to myself. How about no, so I don't have to listen to your nauseating teenage love?

"'Pachi, you know I hate the sun." The female of the two sulked. See? Even the lady- wait...

Recognising her voice instantly, I peeled a fraction of my sleeping mask away from my eyes just so I could take a peek at these two star crossed lovers uniting under my tree. Sure enough, there was Lady China, now clad in regular high school uniform standing sullenly next to her spectacled friend, her umbrella opened to shield her from the sun she seemed to hate so much.

I filed the name Kagura away in my brain for future references having no current intentions of addressing her as such.

"That's what trees are for! Aren't they great?" The boy said, enthusiastically patting my tree before sitting himself down in the shade. I fought back a groan at his eagerness. This was not how you pick up girls.

"Not really... I'd rather go back to the gym storage room and nap on the gymnastics mats." The girl yawned drowsily but sat herself down besides the boy either way, shutting her umbrella with a loud snap.

"You do have some pretty dark circles under your eyes..." The boy agreed with her and trailed off at what I could only assume as a look that was sour enough to curdle milk. Great job, tell her how horrible she looks. Every girl wants to hear that.

"Hn."

"Are you...in trouble again?" The boy tried asking again in tentative concern as he pushed a beautifully prepared bento towards the girl. My ears perked in curiosity.

Two days ago, I held Yamazaki at knife point and politely "asked" for him to stay in Yokohama to assist me on my mission. The duties of tracking down the streaker had been taken over by Yamazaki entirely and I thought I could bury the matter.

Sadly, my inquisitiveness was now wholly provoked by this exchange. China's connection to this incident was still unclear to me, although if I were to make an educated guess, I would have assumed she was out to silence Tokugawa, however that does not explain why she was in trouble. I frowned to myself. Here I thought I could shirk my duties onto Yamazaki and another headache just has to appear like an unwanted guest at a house warming.

Deciding I did not need a nap anymore, I propped my sleeping mask onto my head and added 'good for eavesdropping' hastily to the list of useful properties about trees before diverting my attention to the two young adults beneath me. I watched impassively as the girl picked at the food sluggishly without making a verbal reply. Finally she shrugged idly, strangely devoid of energy.

"You know, if things get tough, you can always come stay at-" the boy offered in order to fill in the growing awkward silence between them.

"NO." The girl snapped at him forcefully, then bit her lips realising how harsh she sounded, "I'm sorry 'Pachi, it's just that these people are dangerous, I don't want to drag you into all this unnecessarily, you're a good friend to me..." she trailed off and decided to stuff a sushi into her mouth to close the discussion.

"Kagura, it hurts me to see you struggle alone through this, let me help you!" the spectacled boy said with visible emotional pain on his face.

"You really want to help?" the girl asked as she shot him a sidelong glance, mouth still full of sushi.

The boy was literally glowing with energy. "Of course I do! Tell me what I can do for you and I promise I'll do my best!"

"Don't tell anyone I'm squatting in the gym," Kagura replied flatly, "and get me some tea, being outside is baking me dry."

I watched with obvious amusement as the boy deflated faster than a leaking balloon; nonetheless, he got up and firmly told her he will not tell anyone of her whereabouts before marching off for a vending machine.

As soon as the boy was out of earshot, the girl stood up.

"Didn't I say that the next time I see you I'll blow your head off?" she asked aloud before glaring straight at me in the tree. "How much did you hear?"

"Everything, even the part where he asked you which brand of condoms you liked the most," I jokingly said.

"Give it a rest you stupid sex fiend." She shot me what I assumed would be a withering look, it was hard to tell behind the foliage. "This time you even have the audacity to eavesdrop, you really are the worst."

Making sure she could not reach me to cause bodily harm from where she was relative to my position in the tree, I retorted, "Honestly China, I was here in the tree before you came, don't coin me in with your eavesdropping when you two lovebirds basically forced me into overhearing your entire conversation."

Her cheeks flamed. "We are not lovebirds, are you blind?" she protested heatedly.

"Hoh~ then you are even worse than I thought, spectacle boy here seems pretty smitten with you, how much longer are you planning to lead him on for?" I asked her with a teasing smile, shifting my position from lounging to sitting on the tree branch, staring down her in a Cheshire cat-esque fashion.

Her azure eyes were so intense when she glowered at me, for a moment I found myself lost in the pools of blue. Her words however, jolted me back to reality pretty easily. "I am not leading him on! We are just friends. Leading on would be what you are doing to all these innocent teenage girls you sick lolicon. What are you even doing here? Repeating high school because you failed?"

"I'm here looking for a streaking vegetable, provided you haven't sliced him up and made tempura out of him already. And honestly I wouldn't be in the Royal Guard if I failed high school," I replied lazily as her face darkened.

"You think I want to kill him?" she asked in incredulity much to my own surprise.

"You weren't?"

"I don't even want to waste my time with you." She looked insulted and began gathering up the bento box.

As she started to walk away, I quickly exited the tree and fell into step with her. It was rare for me to misjudge someone but her behaviour that day clearly indicated she had some intention of harming my quarry. Sadly it would also be my duty to find out so I could plan my next course of action. China here, was not making it any easier for me.

"If you weren't trying to kill him, what were you trying to do?" I asked inquisitively as I ghosted her steps.

"That's none of your concern."

"Sadly it is China, I am bound by civil duties to protect the good citizens of Japan, not sure about illegal immigrants though."

I must have hit a nerve because the next thing I knew, I was looking at the business end of her umbrella. One might claim umbrellas were harmless, but clutched between the delicate hands of this girl, they were suddenly on par with a sharp knife.

"It's people like you that make everything so hard," she spat the words out like acid, her eyes dark and her features furious, "people like me try all their lives to escape from their past, yet people like you make it your job to make that impossible! It must be easy when everything is handed down to you, so easy you make it your hobby to step on everyone else to make sure no one can reach your sphere in life!"

She finished her speech with her face flushed and her chest heaving slightly. My face remained an empty slate although I did have a strange, tight feeling in my gut. A small voice in my head urged me to apologise but I tried to crush it with iron stubbornness. A bloated silence tangoed between us and as it meandered about, the distance between us grew.

"Look China, I'm..." The apology was at the tip of my tongue, fighting against my pride to be let out and vocalised. I was trying so hard to rationalise with myself. I am doing this for the mission, I need her cooperation and I need to apologise to get back on her good side. The bell rang before I could get the most important part out. Steeling myself to resume my 'apology' at the end of the shrill ringing, she beat me to it with words of her own.

"...an asshole? Yeah I figured already." She spun on her heels and walked off, leaving me still and stranded in a sea of students pouring back into the school building, a dull undercurrent of irritation humming through my body.

Someone ought to award that girl a prize for being able to successfully get under my skin in such a record time.

I spent the rest of the afternoon spacing out in calculus and actually spending time trying to decode what she meant by her words. Maybe she had issues with authority before? It was hard to say. All I knew was I would have to expend precious reserves of energy if I was to understand anything.

In all honesty, the general idea lacked much appeal, but somehow, I felt like I owed her some form of apology and the least I could do was investigate. Faking smiles at random strangers that greeted me as I opened the door to the home economics room for my last class, my eyes locked with a certain vermilion haired adolescent. She turned away as soon as she realised who I was and made a grand show of avoiding eye contact even as I marched up to her table to put my books down, much to the surprise of her spectacled follower.

I stood there casually and waited. After about a minute of hushed whispers and gossiping from around the class, the girl finally relented.

"Oi tell your legion of minions to stop gawking at us, our table's not a reality TV show." The petite girl was doing a marvellous job at restraining her temper as she crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently, a dark scowl colouring her face with every shade of aggravation possible. "More importantly, why are you even on this table?"

Hearing her pour all her frustration onto the one poor syllable was enough to place me in a pleasant mood, so I rewarded her with a smile only to watch her frown deepen.

"If I didn't know better China, I'd say you want to avoid me." I answered nonchalantly, ignoring the ring of stares drilling their way into our small workstation.

Glasses boy has yet to recover from the sudden shock of intense scrutiny. In an admirable attempt to avoid all forms of eye contact, he has since engaged in an all-out staring contest with a wooden spoon on the counter. Judging by how his eyes were watering, I would suppose the spoon was winning.

"That doesn't answer my question, of the nine other tables you could be on, why are you here of all places? Did this suddenly become the table for assholes?" she continued her questioning, thinly veiling the contempt she housed towards me at the moment.

Looking around curiously at the alternating looks of silent envy and star struck adoration, I decided to humour myself. "The board says we need to be in groups of four China, since there's one person missing, we'll have to be a group of 3. Do you really want to avoid me that bad?"

"Well yeah, it's taking a lot of restraint to not try and disembowel you with these cooking utensils. It might be easier if I don't have to look at you at all," she mumbled darkly as class started.

"Nice self control." I gave her a slight nod of approval as she decided to completely ignore me to jot down the recipe our plump teacher was putting up on the whiteboard.

As the cooking started, it soon became apparent that China's culinary techniques were inversely proportional to her physical prowess and martial abilities. I watched with interest whilst whisking eggs as she fidgeted around the tomatoes with a sharp knife in hand, sporting an expression quite similar to what I imagined a cartoon penguin would look like if it had suddenly found itself in a desert.

Today's recipe was nothing short of elementary - spaghetti and meatballs. Somehow I could not help but think the teacher had chosen it on purpose based on the whole exchange student hype I had caused. Everyone was buzzing with excitement over what would be a completely ordinary, Italian themed meal in America. The glasses boy, whose name I had learnt to be Shinpachi was busy preparing the mince with great concentration to make meatballs.

Turning my attention back to the girl whose eyebrows were knotted together as if she was faced with the hardest conundrum in her life, I could not help but feel a mixture of mortification and hilarity as she started stabbing at the tomato.

"This is why I only eat rice topped with egg... what is this 'dicing' bullshit?" she cursed quietly as she proceeded to butchering the poor vegetable, or one was to be immensely pedantic, fruit.

"China, it's not even Halloween yet, save the carving for pumpkins. If you keep jabbing at it like that you're going to slice your hand open." I cautioned out of decorum as opposed to care.

She transferred her murderous gaze from the tomato to me, efficiently suggesting that if I so much as make another comment, that knife could very well be protruding from my own abdomen.

"Shut u- ow..." She winced. A deeper shade of red bled into the pulpy messy of tomato guts smeared all over her left hand, slowly pooling onto the underside of her fingers before dripping onto the tiled floors.

Amidst noise of knife on chopping boards, sizzling saucepans and general chatter, no one had noticed our little mishap. I stopped my whisking and watched warily as the girl pursed her lips and held up her hand still dripping with a vampire's favourite cocktail of blood and tomato juice. My mind was seesawing between the decision to offer her a complimentary "I told you so" or not, but the sharp knife still wet and glistening held in her right hand made me reconsider wisely.

The seconds lengthened as I watched her study her hand with morbid curiosity, completely ignoring the gathering puddle of crimson on the floor. Gently I set the bowl of whisked eggs down, unsure whether I was equally mystified by the girl as she was by her blood or just stupefied by her own willingness to slowly bleed to death. Seriously, three days into this stupid mission and someone was already spilling blood everywhere. Yamazaki was so full of shit.

Being a person not lacking in moral principles, I felt compelled to at least offer some form of aid before the petulant creature before me passed out. Fighting back a sigh, I closed the distance between us and plucked the knife from her right hand while she was still engrossed in her vampiric fascinations to ensure the said utensil would not end up gutting me at a later point in time. Easing my hand around her left wrist, I pulled her to the sink gently.

Rinsing away the mush of tomato and blood with cold water, I soon noticed the two centimetre long gash running from the top of her palm all the way into the webbing between her ring and middle finger. The wound did not show any desire to close without medical attention.

"It fucking hurts." I heard her mutter from behind me as I carefully fished out a stubborn seed that was in the process of applying for permanent residence in her wound.

"That tends to happen if you try to play fruit ninja with your hand and a real knife." I rolled my eyes at her, noting the flinty look she shot me.

For the sake of general etiquette, I extracted a clean handkerchief from my pocket and hastily wrapped the fabric around her hand so it will soak up the blood before she turned our cooking area into a homicide crime scene. As I looked up from finishing my shockingly bad bandaging, I realised half the class had stopped working and was focused on us.

"I'm going to go the nurse's office," the girl murmured and took an unsteady step forward.

"I'll –" Shinpachi started as he hastily tried to wipe his meat covered hands on his apron.

"No, I'll go with her. If you touch her with all that raw meat on your hands the wound might get infected," I cut him off pragmatically and caught her right elbow and arm before she could stumble.

Sliding open the door and pulling us both into the hall, the last thing I saw was a bunch of girls looking contemplatively at their knives and their hands while Shinpachi slipped on a worried frown. Shutting the door behind me, I was not surprised when the girl pulled her arm back roughly and stopped to lean against the wall. Her gash free hand reached to pinch the bridge of her nose shakily.

"I can walk myself," she said grouchily and pushed herself off the wall.

"Probably." I shrugged in agreement but followed next to her unsteady steps anyway. "I just feel like wagging the rest of the period."

She regarded me with a nicely arched brow and a lethal dose of disdain. "Seriously, how does someone like you even become a policeman?"

"I have great moral principles."

"It's almost scary how you can misuse those words so easily," she said despairingly.

"Please China, you are hurting the fragile feelings of a loyal civil servant here." I feigned a certain degree of hurt in my voice but my face was completely neutral.

"Feelings are for people with hearts, not calcified tumours in their chest cavity."

"Careful with the big words here, I might start believing you actually know what they mean."

Pulling open the door to the nurse's office noisily, I concluded our little conversation and notified the nurse of our accident. The woman in her late thirties got up instantly and ushered the girl to a chair. Kneeling down in front of her to inspect the wound, she concluded no stitches were necessary and busied herself with gathering liquid bandaid and gauze to dress the wound.

"You can head back to class, I'll take care of her." The nurse turned around to address me.

"Actually," I said slowly as a crafty fabrication entered my mind, "she's anaemic. I just want to make sure she doesn't pass out."

"Oh? ...That's really nice of you," she replied with a hint of uncertainty.

"Don't worry, I'm only missing out on our food from home economics," I assured her quickly and smiled inwardly as I watched her features soften.

"Alright, just this time then."

As she turned her attention back to Kagura's wounded hand, the girl frowned disapprovingly at me over the nurse's head as if she had just witnessed a scandal but withheld her comments until the nurse finished her bandaging and left to dispose of the biologically hazardous hanky.

"You are unbelievable," she said with incredulity once we found ourselves seated in a corner of the empty nurse's office.

"I know China, sometimes I surprise even myself."

"I don't have anaemia."

"I know that too."

"You just used me to get out of class," she accused.

"More or less, and don't try to punch me that hand hand, it'll hurt you more than it hurts me." She pursed her lips and retracted her bandaged hand.

We sat there motionless in silence, my eyes were fixed on her bandaged hand, vaguely noting the gauze been wrapped around her ring and middle finger to restrict movement and to aid with healing.

"Stop staring, you're being creepy." She edged slightly further away from me and retracted her legs from the floor to sit cross-legged on the starchy white sheets of a bed.

I did not respond as my mind was still in thought. She lacked all general delicacy of a young woman in her final year of high school, being subtle would probably be just as ineffective as being direct. I might even save myself the confusion of explaining my subtleness to her if I just took the bull its horns and hoped she was honest with me.

"China tell me the truth, are you working for a gang?" I asked in the simplest way I possibly could, counting a total of six seconds before she finally offered me her reply.

"...Huh?" She almost fell off the bed in her haste to get away from me.

"Relax. I'm not there to arrest you."

"Sure you're not."

"Do I look like I have handcuffs on me?"

"Still..."

"I'll take that as a yes then." I surmised.

"Assumption has an ass in it you know?"

I rubbed my eyes in frustration at her intentionally uncooperative attitude.

"Consider your own position for a second would you?" I asked drawing on a deep storage of patience I never knew I had as I looked at her seriously. "Do you really think you can keep running and fighting whatever it is with that hand of yours?"

Part of me knew that I was offending her pride in some abstract way when the mulish expression crossed her face and her mouth quirked up in a defiant frown.

"I don't need your help."

"I'm not trying to help you. I'm trying to help myself." I stressed that word hoping she would get over her pride, already hating myself for even trying to be uncharacteristically considerate. "I don't want to stay in this godforsaken place any longer than I have to."

"Then you are even more of a selfish asshole than I thought you were."

"I don't particularly care what you think of me, I just need-"

"It's always about you," she interrupted, "it's all about what benefits you'll reap from something isn't it? That's why I wonder why you're a policeman. How can you help anyone when you only care about helping yourself? Everyone here is just a slab of pavement to you as you climb towards some stupid pinnacle."

The shrill ringing of last bell punctured into our conversation. The girl took it was a fitting end to our discussion, without so much as another word, she got off the bed on the opposite side to where I was sitting and left in silence, leaving me simmering in what would appear as one of the few, rare wakeup calls in my life. She might be half right.

For as long as I remembered, I avoided emotions because the weight of emotional care was a heavy responsibility I would only ever willingly accept for a few people. Truly caring about few people meant I have the power of control over others. I will be doing the teasing, I will be doing the interrogating, I will be doing the blackmailing and I will be doing the rejecting, never the other way around. This was why China's words burned with such intensity, it surprised even me.

The feeling had bubbled up from the pit of my stomach, and burst in my chest cavity, filling it with a nasty sensation. My heart was pumping venom and it crept into every crevice of my being, causing muscles to constrict and my jaws to clench. My thoughts were saturated with a dark and violent tint of red while my pride burned with the aftertaste of indignity. How dare she even attempt to sound like she understood me?

Suddenly, I had a personal vendetta against everything in the sickbay. My body was wrought with tension as I fought to stay still. My palms aching as my fingernails dug agonisingly into the soft flesh. Pain was the only thing chaining me from decimating objects at random.

If it had been some other situation and some other girl, I would have deemed the state of affairs as pointless and moved on with my life. Sadly, my unrelenting frustration had decided to take up permanent residence in my head instead, and with every thought of the girl, my mind was set ablaze with irritation and an unsightly desire for vengeance. She saw through all the glamour and looked straight at the semi-rotten core that was my heart. It was endearing in a very twisted way.

I left the nurse's office with a placid face but an army of demons hosting a pool party inside my head. Not wishing to get caught up in the hubbub of after school social obligations, I headed for the roof for some fresh air and space. Climbing to the apex of the school building, I sprawled onto the smooth concrete, warmed by the afternoon sun sitting in the clear blue sky and closed my eyes. I must have gotten too comfortable and fell asleep in the process because when I opened my eyes again, the sky was deep shade of orange.

Although the air was starting to grow cool with the setting sun, the chill was not the reason I woke up. Sharp, angry voices were arguing away heatedly from somewhere beneath my napping spot. Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and stretched. Does this school ever run out of drama?

"-until your hand heals." The last snippet of the conversation floated up to me.

"I don-"

Seeing as the sentence was never finished, I carefully edged over the side of the platform to satisfy my curiosity. Observing the scene before me, my eyebrows responded by racing for my hairline. Glasses boy had cut off China girl's sentence by fiercely embracing her. The girl was so shocked she had dropped her umbrella. I felt like I had just walked into my friend's parents doing the fornication dance.

"Trust me! I will protect you," he said with resolve.

Unable to tear my eyes away, I could not help but notice with interest that China did not return his embrace. Her hands remained by her sides while she stood there with an unreadable expression on her face, neither denying or acknowledging Shinpachi's emotional outburst.

"Come home with me today." He took her silence as acceptance and clasped his hand around her thin wrist before pulling her through the door for the stairs, completely forgetting her parasol.

Having an odd uneasy feeling about the whole ordeal, I got off from my perch and picked up the umbrella. Smiling ruefully to myself and assuring my troubled soul that I was only doing this for the sake of my assignment, I pushed opened the door myself and pursued them silently. I had already been called an eavesdropper and accidentally became a voyeur, I might as well become a stalker and complete the whole set. If worst comes to worst, I could always claim I was returning her umbrella to her.

A/N - Yeah I know there's no fluff yet, but I want to have a solid foundation for them interacting with each other since I'm writing an AU... which sadly means I have to throw out all their existing bonds and knowledge of each other from the anime. Or maybe I'm just trying to make it challenging for myself. But yes I am writing an OkiKagu, a slow one but it'll get there eventually ~ have faith good people.

I know most people like jumping straight into the fluff to get the feels, but bear with it. I'll get to the feels soon. I just find feels a bit empty without background.

The other thing I want address is my Kagura, I deliberately left out the -aru's and -uh huh equivalents because I have doubts that she'll talk like that realistically when she's 18, so if you really like the accenting, I'll have to ask you to imagine it in your head.

Thank you for all the wonderful people that reviewed, faved, followed. You are great motivators and I thank you all kindly! :) I hope you all continue to support me~!

- Ori

P.S I'm honestly trash at proofreading, if you find anything, PM me? ^^