Chapter Text
By the time Hisoka got back to the Summons Division, everyone else had left for the day. Except Watari, who jumped out of his seat as soon as the door opened.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
Hisoka glanced at Konoe's door.
"He's gone, Security called him out an hour ago," Watari said. "And apparently we're not under suspicion any more, but no-one's told us why."
"The Count had me trying to find traces of the thieves in the castle," Hisoka explained, sitting on the edge of a desk for a moment. He was exhausted from the constant battering of all those souls against his mind. "I didn't get much, but I knew it wasn't anyone from the Summons Division. And the candles... reflected what I saw, so he knew I wasn't lying."
Maybe it was because he was so tired, but the lies stuck in his throat this time. He wondered how many he'd told Watari now, how many edited versions of the truth he'd passed on to the rest of the Judgement Bureau. If he wasn't careful, he was going to slip, be caught in a contradiction. But the Count at least had a plan for what to say and do to avoid suspicion, and Hisoka couldn't think of a better alternative. Telling the truth would bring everything crashing down around him.
Watari hesitated, then asked, "So... Tatsumi...?"
"Wasn't involved."
Watari let out his breath in a rush.
"Of course he wasn't," he said, and Hisoka felt the guilty echo behind the words, the knowledge that he hadn't been as certain of Tatsumi's innocence as he'd claimed. "Maybe now they'll close this stupid investigation as well."
"Speaking of investigations," Hisoka went on. "The Count is going to help us with Kyoto."
Watari's head snapped up to stare at him. "You told him--?"
"It felt like the right thing to do," Hisoka replied, meeting his eyes without flinching. "He's keeping the candles of the remaining victims safe, so they can't be killed before we retrieve their souls."
"Well, that helps," Watari said after a moment. "But I don't like bringing the Count into it. Owing him a favour can be a dangerous thing."
"We don't owe him anything. This is payback for me helping him with the candles."
"Still..." Watari sighed. "I guess it's a risk we have to take."
"There's more," Hisoka went on. "He's going to use the candles to find the two who are missing. And he says he can provide us with wards to protect the victims once we've exorcised them."
"What about finding their souls?"
"He's going to try to use the candles for that too, but he isn't sure it will help, if their souls aren't in the human world. He thinks following the tethers is our best bet. But he says if we can find them, he'll get us the permits we need to cross between worlds to get them back."
Watari was silent for a moment.
"Okay," he said finally, "I guess you were right about telling him. Just... be careful, Bon. The Count has his own agenda and it's not always in line with Lord Enma's. Don't be fooled by his laid-back attitude - he's powerful, more powerful than almost anyone else in the Bureau apart from the Judges."
"I know," Hisoka replied. He had to fight back a yawn. "But he's more compassionate than he lets on. He doesn't want the Kyoto victims to lose their lives just because the Judges want things to be neat."
"He did always give in easily when anyone asked him to extend a life," Watari admitted. "I mean, it was... it was usually Tsuzuki asking." He looked away, awash with pain again. "And he always had a soft spot for Tsuzuki... but he did it for the rest of us, too, now and then. I just... always assumed it was because he liked to be able to call in favours."
"It's that too," Hisoka said with certainty. "But in this case, I think we can trust him."
"Well, I trust your judgement." Watari peered at him. "You look like you're about to fall asleep on your feet, though. We should get going."
Hisoka nodded and pushed himself away from the desk. They were halfway towards the door when he caught the sense of someone approaching on the other side. He was tired enough that he couldn't immediately place who it was, until the door opened and it was too late for advance warning.
Tatsumi barely glanced at them as he entered, making instead for Konoe's office. Watari froze in mid-step, hands clenching into fists as he stared at Tatsumi like he was trying to bore holes in him with his eyes. Hisoka shuddered under the whirlwind of contradictions battling for supremacy: relief that Tatsumi was all right, struggling with anger that he could just walk in here like nothing had happened, fighting with the deeper rage that Tatsumi had spent the last three years acting like nothing had happened, and behind it all, the fear that was close to panic, the urgent need to lash out and try to draw blood, to try and force Tatsumi to feel something, to break him before he finally vanished into the shadows forever...
What if you do break him, Watari-san? Hisoka thought. What might he do if you provoke him that far?
He didn't like the answer he sensed in the depths of Watari's mind, the darkness and the despair and the echo of the words he'd spoken the first time Hisoka had met him: will it help if you kill me?
And he still remembered Tatsumi's answer: maybe it would.
"Konoe-san isn't in," he said aloud, desperate to avert the crisis.
Tatsumi shot him a brief, cool look without stopping. "Then I will wait for him to come back."
"Did they drop the investigation?" Watari demanded.
Tatsumi didn't respond. He opened Konoe's door and seemed about to vanish inside without a word.
"Don't walk away from me!" Watari snarled. "What did they want with you? It wasn't just Sargatanas - they were talking about the fire, too. Why? What's going on?"
Tatsumi paused with his hand on the door. He didn't turn around.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss the details of any of the Security Division's work."
"Don't give me that bullshit!" Watari's eyes narrowed and Hisoka felt him reach deliberately for something to do damage. "Did they finally put you on warning? Write you up for incompetence?"
"My ability to do my job is not in question," Tatsumi replied icily, still without turning.
"It should be! You couldn't even work with Bon without putting him in danger--"
Leave me out of this, Hisoka wanted to say, but his tongue was stuck in his mouth, the electricity of the gathering storm freezing him in place.
"Kurosaki-kun is more than able to take care of himself."
"And you'll keep saying that right up to the moment you watch him die!"
Finally, Tatsumi turned around, the movement as sharp and sudden as a snake striking.
"As if your record with partners is anything to be proud of," he snapped. "You've a knack for driving people away, Watari-san."
Hisoka felt the blow strike home, but it only seemed to make Watari angrier. He shoved one hand into his pocket as if reaching for his tarot cards.
"Stop," Hisoka said, but his voice came out so soft even he could barely hear the words.
"I've got a knack for driving people away? At least I tried to help! At least I didn't just stand there--"
The shadows deepened, curled, lengthened, reached for Watari as Tatsumi's expression suddenly shattered out of immobility into something sharp and ugly and dangerous. There was no pretending now that they were talking about anything other than the events of three years ago. And all at once, the chains holding Hisoka immobile fell away before an anger of his own, one that was all the greater because it wasn't truly directed at either of the two men poised to tear each other to shreds.
"I said stop! Neither of you killed him!"
The force of his power as he lashed out stunned even Hisoka; it made the other two stagger back. The shadows faltered and fled as Tatsumi took a step backwards; Watari stumbled against a desk, one hand going to his head in futile self-defence. Maybe it was because there were two of them, maybe because of Rikugou's training, but Hisoka found that this time, he was totally in control, in no danger of losing himself in someone else's mind. He pushed, slapping down Watari's rage, boiling away the poison choking Tatsumi, forcing both of them to stillness and silence.
"Watari-san, we're leaving," Hisoka said bluntly.
He could have made Watari do it, put pressure on his mind that he couldn't refuse, but the thought of controlling someone like that made him sick to his stomach. In any case, he didn't need to. Watari followed him out of the office without another word.
Watari didn't speak until they were well away from the office, and when he did, his voice was low.
"What... what did you just do?"
"Stopped you getting yourself killed, or worse," Hisoka snapped. "I know what you're trying to do, Watari-san. It won't fix anything."
Watari flinched, then scowled as if to cover it. "You don't know him like I do, you can't tell me what I should do--"
Hisoka stopped walking and turned to face him directly.
"I am telling you." He hesitated, then added, "As a friend. This isn't the way to reach him. You're only making things worse."
For a moment, he thought Watari would snap back with more anger, or even walk away. Instead, something seemed to suddenly break in him. He turned away to hide his face, not that it did anything to obscure the fountain of grief and loss that threatened to drench Hisoka from across the hallway.
"I don't know any other way," he said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. "Do you?"
"No," Hisoka was forced to admit. "I don't. And you're right, I don't know him like you do, even with my power. But I know this is just... poisoning both of you. One of you has to stop it, and I don't think he can, Watari-san."
Watari said nothing for several seconds.
"I don't know if I can, either," he said at last. He started walking again. "I don't even know how to try."
There was no sign of Tatsumi in the Summons Division the next day. Konoe didn't mention him when he told the rest of the office that they were free to return to their casework.
Watari wasn't there either. He was probably in the lab, Hisoka thought. The notes on the Kyoto case were gone from his desk, but in their place was a faxed sheet of paper on which someone had scribbled Area 2 in ballpoint pen.
Hisoka picked it up and scanned its contents. A case in Nagasaki? His heart sank. The Count was expecting him to go back to Kyoto and try to find any traces of Muraki and Tsuzuki in the grounds of the Rokudo Chinno Temple. He took the paper with him as he went over to knock on Konoe's door.
"Come in."
Konoe glanced up as Hisoka stepped through the door.
"Ah, Kurosaki-kun, good. You've seen the case that came in this morning?"
Hisoka held up the paper in acknowledgement. "What do I do?"
"Get out there and investigate it," Konoe said dryly. At Hisoka's frown, he managed a sympathetic half-smile. "I know, it's the first one you've had by yourself, but it should be an easy one, and you seem to have got the hang of things. The Count was very complimentary about you last night."
"I didn't do much," Hisoka said quickly. "What about Watari-san's case in Kyoto? I was helping with that--"
"He'll have to manage on his own. We can't put off casework in one district for the sake of another."
Hisoka hesitated.
"What about Tatsumi-san?"
Konoe's expression didn't change.
"He's still on a leave of absence."
Hisoka brushed his mind briefly, hoping for some clue as to why Tatsumi had been in the office the night before, but Konoe's shields were at full strength today.
"According to this, the murders only happened last night," Hisoka said, hoping for a reason to delay the investigation. "Their souls won't even have arrived in Meifu yet. Why do we need to get involved?"
Konoe frowned and gestured at Hisoka to hand the paper over.
"That is unusual... ah, here's why. Odd details - no obvious connection between victims, but they were all killed within hours of each other in different parts of the city. And they all had their hair chopped off. It could be nothing, just a madman taking trophies, but the hair of a dead woman can be used in some nasty curses, that's why they've flagged it."
He handed the paper back to Hisoka.
"It might be none of our concern. If so, you'll probably figure it out quickly, with your power. Then you can just come back and close the case. If there's more to it than that, let me know. I can't spare any other Shinigami right now, but the Gushoushin are sometimes willing to do fieldwork if needed. I can send one of them out to assist you."
Konoe reached for a form in one of his desk trays, wrote on it quickly, then held it out to Hisoka.
"Here's your expenses allowance. I know it's not much, but I don't see this case taking you more than a couple of days."
Hisoka couldn't think of any other excuses, and he didn't want to make Konoe suspicious. He took the expenses form without protest.
"I'll do my best."
It was warmer in Nagasaki than it had been in Kyoto, warm enough to cast doubt on the approach of winter. Hisoka spent his first hour in the city familiarising himself with its layout. The narrow valley it was built in gave its streets a winding, chaotic character very different from the big cities that had been built on the plains. Hisoka was also struck by the number of Christian churches he saw. He remembered learning that Nagasaki had been a hub of Catholicism several hundred years earlier, but he had somehow imagined that the religion had died out since then. The churches felt strange to him when he passed them: they radiated power just like the more familiar Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, but it was an alien power, and not one that entirely welcomed him.
He thought at first that it was the churches that were making him feel ill at ease, but as he walked, he slowly realised that there was something else, an undercurrent of something that had left such a mark on the city that he still sensed its echoes. It was only when he found himself at the Atomic Bomb Memorial that he realised with a shudder what he must be picking up. Just like in Kyoto, the memory of fire had yet to fade, though more than fifty years had passed since it had burned the city to the ground.
He'd made use of the library computers before he left Meifu, and his case file now contained a number of newspaper reports and even some preliminary police interviews that Watari had managed to hack into for him before they went their separate ways. Everywhere he went in the city, he saw the same headlines on television screens and in newspapers: Five dead in psycho murder spree! Is there a serial killer loose in Nagasaki?!
He sat down on a bench near the memorial to review the case file. Five women, all killed between midnight and dawn, all with their throats cut. Each body had been found in the street in a huge pool of its own blood. Just as Konoe had noted, they'd all had their hair cut off, and Hisoka saw from the newspaper photos that each of the women had worn it extremely long to begin with. He was pretty sure at least one of them could have stood on her own braid.
So far the police had no theories. The women were completely unconnected; their long hair and their deaths were the only things they had in common. They had been found in random locations around the city, but all evidence suggested that they had gone voluntarily to the spots where they'd been killed.
Hisoka frowned at the sentence random locations, remembering something Watari had said about the Kyoto case. He pulled out a map of Nagasaki he'd bought when he arrived, and using the details in the police reports, quickly marked each death on the map. He couldn't see anything significant in the immediate vicinity of each spot, but once all five were on the map, it was obvious at once that they were strangely, evenly spaced around the city. Hisoka stared at the map for a few minutes, an idea creeping into his head.
He picked up his pen again and began to draw lines between the marks on the map. By the time he'd drawn four, he could tell that he was right, but something compelled him to finish it anyway.
A perfect pentagram stared back at him from the map. Hisoka felt a chill go down his spine. Still, he thought, studying the symbol he'd drawn, it wasn't definitive proof of supernatural involvement... only that the killer had some knowledge of the arcane and a flare for the dramatic.
He made a note of the nearest location, folded the map, and slipped into spirit form to fly to the first crime scene. It was still under active investigation, with a tent covering the body and police officers swarming over the surrounding area. Hisoka landed outside the cordon. As soon as his feet touched the ground, a wave of revulsion swept through him. The woman's terror drenched the street and made the daylight seem pale, more like the wan light of a waxing moon. Her death was even worse, as black as her blood had looked when it spilled onto the ground at her feet, as she grabbed at her own throat, trying to stem the flow even as she fell to her knees, weakness spreading like cold water through her limbs.
Hisoka shuddered, but kept his mind open, trying to read more of what had happened. She'd come here... almost in a dream... sleepwalking out of her apartment in the middle of the night, called by something she couldn't quite hear. She'd dressed herself before she went, but she hadn't taken her purse or her keys... she'd known she wouldn't need them... angels were calling her and she'd felt a strange, light sensation as she'd walked, as if she were leaving all her worries behind.
That dreamy sensation had lasted right until the knife touched her throat. Then all at once the illusion had shattered, and she had realised what was about to happen, all in one awful second, and her fear had been a scream that never left her throat before the blade plunged into it and silenced her forever.
There was something missing. Hisoka braced himself, ducked under the cordon, and approached the tent door. He felt sick by the time he reached it, even before he stepped inside and saw her body. Her hair had indeed been cut, raggedly - a stray thought from one of the forensic investigators told Hisoka that the same knife had been used on her hair as on her throat.
But who had been wielding that knife? Hisoka couldn't sense the murderer at all. The victim had seen someone, had gone towards them, but Hisoka could find no trace of any presence other than hers. And yet... he circled the body towards a series of markers laid down by the police. There were dried footprints leading away from the pool of blood; a man's, he thought, but when he tried to sense the person who'd left them, he came up blank. It was as if there were a hole in the world, or a hole in his empathy, a blind spot he couldn't penetrate.
Uneasiness prickled down the back of Hisoka's neck. His mind kept pushing at the hole, trying to find something to fill it with, but it was like staring into darkness so complete that it played tricks on the eyes.
He left the tent by the far door, following the trail of footprints. They led up the street a short way, the blood lessening with each step until there was nothing left to track. He stared at the last faint print for a long time, then took flight again, heading for the next victim on the list.
It was late afternoon by the time Hisoka had visited all five murder sites, and he felt as though he'd made little progress. He read the same story at each location: the woman entranced, walking to her death; the gap where traces of the murderer should be. The only additional information he'd acquired was that the murders had been committed in sequence, the first at midnight, then one every hour moving clockwise from the top point of the pentacle.
His head was aching and he could feel the scratchy discomfort of too many minds on his. Hisoka paused at a vending machine to buy a bottle of tea, and then looked around for somewhere to sit and drink it. He could sense a shrine nearby. A bit of exploration led him up a series of winding, steep steps between the houses.
Hisoka paused at the top of one flight of steps, surprised by what he saw ahead. Exactly one half of a carved stone shrine gate loomed at the top of the next flight. It was as if the gate had been sliced vertically in two, and its left-hand side removed. Hisoka approached, curious. There was a signboard just beyond it, explaining that this strange monument was another legacy of the atomic bomb: somehow, the blast had destroyed one leg of the gate and left the other completely intact. The remnants of the rest of the gate lay to one side. The place was called Sannou Shrine.
Hisoka followed the path into the shrine proper. Two enormous camphor trees greeted him; more information boards showed pictures of the charred stumps they had been in the immediate aftermath of the bomb. It was hard to believe the trees could have recovered from such damage, but there they stood, as green and vigorous as any Hisoka had ever seen.
It moved him unexpectedly, to see proof of such regeneration after utter devastation. He laid a hand on the trunk of one of the trees and closed his eyes. He could feel it, the distant echo of the fire... but here its weight was lighter, diffuse like the dappled light that filtered through the leaves overhead.
Hisoka sat down at the foot of the trees to drink his tea. The headache was fading at last. The shrine was high up on the slope, and between the buildings Hisoka could see glimpses of the city below. It wasn't quite dusk, but the shadows were lengthening. The last few visitors left the shrine, oblivious to his presence. A feral cat slunk out of the bushes, stared at Hisoka, then disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. One of the shrine priests began sweeping the path with an old-fashioned twig broom. When he drew level with Hisoka, he stopped, and turned his head.
Hisoka fought back a twinge of alarm. It was hardly surprising that a priest would be spiritually strong enough to sense him. Stranger was the fact that the man was wearing a blindfold, a strip of dark cloth bound across his eyes, and yet he seemed to be looking directly at Hisoka.
"Good evening," Hisoka said after a moment.
The priest seemed to regard him for a few more seconds, then nodded slowly, and continued sweeping. Hisoka watched the careful, rhythmic movements, trying to work out whether the man could see or not. It was hard to say. He seemed to chase and catch the dead leaves and twigs with the precision of one sighted, but then, his broad, diligent strokes would hardly miss anything in his path. And why wear the blindfold if he could see through the fabric? Why wear it at all, for that matter?
Without really thinking about it, Hisoka reached towards the man's mind to find the answers... only to slide off it like silk over glass. He stared at the priest, who showed no sign he had noticed the attempt. He tried again, and again seemed to simply glide over an invisible barrier that offered no measurable resistance, and yet effortlessly refused entry.
Disquieted, Hisoka got to his feet, bowed briefly to the priest, and headed for the shrine exit. He glanced back as he left, only to see that the priest had paused his sweeping and turned, as if to watch him go.
The hotel Konoe had sent him to was near Nagasaki's Chinatown. Hisoka ate at a small noodle shop on the edge of the brightly lit area, but didn't venture in further. He retired to his room to write up his notes on what he'd discovered so far, which he had to admit wasn't much. Then he checked his watch, drew the curtains tightly, and retrieved his jacket from the hook he'd left it on.
The fuda wards rustled between his fingers as he pulled them out of the inner pocket, their characters surprisingly delicate: the Count's flowing calligraphy. Several were simple barrier wards like the one he'd found in Tsuzuki's drawer. Two would summon what the Count had described as guardian oni, beings whose nature was to protect people from harm. They would not take orders, but they could be relied upon to engage anything that came Hisoka's way. A handful more could be used to create messenger birds.
The last three wards were more complex, the characters tightly packed. Hisoka took one and placed it in the centre of the room, then carefully recited the spell the Count had taught him.
Light flared from the ward, expanding in a circle until it touched the walls of the room. The characters on the paper glowed green. Hisoka waited for a moment to see if anything else would happen, then put his jacket on, and slipped the rest of the wards back into his pocket.
According to the Count, if anyone from Meifu was keeping tabs on his movements, this ward would mask the energy of his teleportation and lead them to think he was still in the hotel room. Hisoka hoped he was right. He initiated the teleport, keeping his location fixed in his mind's eye.
The Ichii-no-ki Memorial Hospital was much as he'd left it. Hisoka slipped silently through the bustle of the evening dinner rush, senses alert. He reached the private wing without mishap. He couldn't sense anyone inside. Heart hammering, he curled one of the barrier wards into the palm of his hand before he opened the main door.
Silence. Hisoka took a deep breath, then walked quickly to the room where he'd found Oriya and Kazusa.
It was empty. Cursing softly, Hisoka checked the other rooms, but they were the same: all three looked as though they'd never been used. There were no marks on the floor from the bed that Oriya had been in, no scraps of paper or plastic, no footprints. The whole place was spotlessly clean.
And not just physically, Hisoka realised as he tried to read the room. He could no longer sense Muraki's presence, or Tsuzuki's. He couldn't even find any traces of Byakko. The whole place had been wiped clean of spiritual energy. It was the same spell he'd encountered in the Castle of Candles, but here it had done its job completely. Hisoka could detect no hint of any of the people he'd come here to find.
He gathered energy around himself and teleported again. The grounds of the Rokudo Chinno Temple were quiet and dark. He found the well easily, but when he extended his senses, there was only the same eerie emptiness.
Hisoka pulled one of the messenger fuda out of his pocket and folded it the way the Count had shown him. It transformed under his fingertips into one of the white birds, almost glowing in the darkness. Hisoka told it what he'd found, and sent it off to the Count.
That was all he could do for now. With one last look at the well, Hisoka teleported back to his hotel room in Nagasaki, which was still lit by the unnatural green light. It vanished as soon as he picked up the ward.
Hisoka sighed, crumpled the paper in one hand, and opened one of the curtains to look out at the city. He could feel the rush and chatter of all those other minds, a constant low-level irritant that became exhausting after too long. He didn't think he'd ever feel truly comfortable in a city. He wondered how so many people could stand it, even without powers like his: just the crowds and the noise would be enough to drive you mad.
He watched the lights for a while all the same. He supposed there might be something comforting about it, for some people, knowing there were so many others nearby. At least, until one of them started murdering women in the dead of night...
He closed the curtain. Tomorrow, he'd visit the homes of the victims, see if he could find anything to lead him to the killer. There had to be something that would point him in the right direction. It was only a matter of looking in the right place.