Chapter Text
It’s a Saturday night.
It’s a Saturday night and you’re playing cards with Mizuki and Koujaku in your room. They’re drunk and you’re getting there, but it’s a Saturday night when you get the first message.
Koujaku is red-faced and happier than you’ve seen him in a while. For as big as he is – for as Koujaku as he is – he’s surprisingly bad at holding his liquor. Almost as bad as you. He’s had a few shots and some beers but he’s giggling from the tip of his teeth and getting progressively worse at cards. He’s also getting progressively worse at cheating. You swat him away from your fingertips every time he leans over to peek and he chortles every time.
Mizuki is a little harder to read. He actually gets more reserved when he’s drunk, but certainly not less playful. He stares you down and smiles, his lips closed and eyes scanning your face for any sort of emotion that he can take advantage of. He’s an intimidating drunk, and that pisses you off. He told you not that long ago when you visited in the hospital that you were an annoying drunk and that only served to encourage you to drink more in front of him. You’ll annoy him. Oh yeah. You’ll annoy him.
It’s a Saturday night when you get the first dick pic.
It’s from an unknown number and you aren’t expecting it so you react a bit more violently than you want to. Koujaku and Mizuki both ask to see what it is, and when Koujaku retches at the sight, you tell him it serves him right from grabbing your Coil from you without your permission.
“It’s some random dick pic,” you tell Mizuki as he grabs it from Koujaku in curiosity. “I get these sometimes, always from different numbers. I just block them. Ignore it.”
But his eyes glaze over. He furrows his brows and stares at the picture a bit longer than you’d expect him to, even if he’s interested in the dick himself.
“What?” you ask. “You wanna text them back from your number? See if they’re down?”
Koujaku snickers but Mizuki doesn’t budge. You’re a little concerned because he doesn’t tend to let an insult go by unchallenged. But he doesn’t say a word as he hands your Coil back to you.
“What’s wrong?” Koujaku presses. Mizuki shakes his head and throws another card down on the table.
“Nothing,” he shrugs.
“Want me to send you it?” you ask, again hoping that your taunts will provoke a reaction. They don’t. He shakes his head and Koujaku raises his eyebrows in confusion as you awkwardly get back to your game.
“So… Aoba,” Koujaku asks a few minutes later as he organizes his cards precariously. “How much longer do you think you’ll be living here?”
You roll your eyes. Mizuki looks at you in confusion.
“I take care of granny,” you remind him. “I’m not moving in with you.”
“More like Tae-san takes care of you,” he chides with a smirk. You glare at him. He’s been on your case to move in with him for a few months now. You don’t know where it came from or why he cares.
“So what if she does?” you ask. “Just because you can’t cook doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take advantage of my grandmother’s cooking.”
“I can cook!” Koujaku cries, slapping his cards face-up against the table. Mizuki groans in frustration as he collects everyone’s cards and shuffles to deal again. “And if you lived with me, I’d cook for you.”
“I’d rather not die of poisoning,” you tell him, and before he can respond, your Coil goes off again.
“Tell me it’s another one,” Mizuki grins. “Aoba’s getting mystery dick pictures.”
“I told you, I get these a lot,” you say, flipping your Coil up. Sure enough, it’s from a number you don’t recognize. You don’t open it right away. “Well, not a lot. But I’m sure it’s just some random people from – ah… a while ago.”
From when you used to go by Sly Blue and decimate people in Rhyme. Koujaku and Mizuki can gather that probably. You don’t really want to say it out loud.
“I guess I was kind of a tease,” you mutter under your breath and check the message. There it is. A dick. You flip it around for your friends to see. “I guess some guys are still pissed about it.”
Koujaku recoils once again. You’re not surprised. Koujaku seems to have some issues when it comes to other guys recently. Not that you’re exactly in love with getting pictures of random cocks, but you’ve never been into guys… really. Koujaku has been getting increasingly flustered by the mention of other guys’ sex lives, including yours and Mizuki’s. You roll your eyes over to share a look of frustration with Mizuki, but he’s staring at your Coil. He’s transfixed. His eyes are glazed over and his mouth is parted slightly, like he’s looking at something particularly delicious but frightened by it at the same time. A scary donut, perhaps?
“Hey, are y—”
“Give me it.”
He snatches your Coil from you and starts to text back.
“What are you doing?!” you cry, reaching over and snatching it back before he can do anything stupid. All he has typed so far is, “What are yo,” and you delete it from your screen.
“I just want to text them back.”
“Text them from your own Coil!” you shout. “I don’t want them to think I want more of these kinds of pictures!”
Mizuki’s eyes flutter up to yours and hold your gaze. He looks… sad. He’s staring at you in actual, genuine grief and you have no idea why. Your eyebrows go from furrowed to slanted as your anger gives way to confusion. Why is your friend so sad?
“Mizuki, what’s wrong?”
You expect an answer right away, but he doesn’t give you one.
In fact, he doesn’t answer at all.
He tears his eyes from you and blinks a couple of times, looking out the window for just one second before he looks back down to the cards in his hands. He starts to deal them again and Koujaku has to tug on your sleeve to sit down after a few more moments. You’re both extremely confused but continue playing in an awkward silent.
It’s four minutes later when your Coil goes off again.
You all react in different ways, but you all seem just as exasperated as each other. Koujaku groans from the back of his throat, disgusted and annoyed; Mizuki closes his eyes slowly and lowers his cards to the table as he nods his head down to face the floor. You tip your head up in frustration and promise yourself to throw your Coil off the veranda if it’s the same number.
It is.
“To be honest with you, this is more than usual,” you tell them. You pull the message up and there’s another dick. Well, it’s the same dick. You can tell because there are piercings all over it. But it’s here again, and you’re about to silence your Coil and shove it under the table when Mizuki’s arm slinks silently across the table. He opens up his fingers and gently pushes his palm at you. He wants to see the picture and something tells you it’s not because he’s horny.
You look at Koujaku, who shrugs at you. He nods at Mizuki’s hand so you put your Coil into it and Mizuki pulls it back in and takes his time turning it toward himself to see the screen.
“Mizuki, what are you doing?” you ask sternly. “What’s wrong?”
He takes a deep, labored breath. He doesn’t look up from the Coil.
“This is Noiz,” he says. Koujaku gasps. You’re sure you didn’t hear him correctly, but then he repeats: “This is Noiz texting you.”
You wince.
Oh no.
You look at Koujaku in despair.
You both thought Mizuki was over this.
Noiz has been gone for a year. He left just after Oval Tower fell. In fact, Oval Tower fell, and no one ever saw him again. At first you thought he was dead, but Mizuki got a little obsessive about finding information out about him. He’d said there was no body so there was no proof. No one else died in the collapse and it just didn’t add up. Then he got wind from another Rib team that Ruff Rabbit’s leader had gotten in contact with his second-in-command and told him to disband the team, that he was gone, and not coming back.
Mizuki had kind of been a wreck. From what you understood, he had just been getting close to Noiz.
Close enough to recognize him from a photo of his dick, at least.
“Mizuki…”
The tone of Koujaku’s voice implies that he’s going to deny it, but Mizuki shakes his head.
“This is him,” he says. “I know it’s him. How many white guys with pierced dicks do you know?”
“He’s only half white,” Koujaku shrugs and Mizuki shoots him the meanest glare you’ve ever seen. You didn’t know Mizuki was capable of looking so angry. Koujaku throws his hands up defensively and you finally open your mouth:
“I’m sure it’s not him, Mizuki.” The Coil goes off again in the middle of your sentence. “He was a punk but he wasn’t… he wouldn’t do something like that.” Mizuki checks the message. “He wouldn’t leave for a year and then start sexting your best fri –”
Mizuki turns the Coil screen to you, his elbow thumping loudly against the table as he slams it down.
It’s Noiz. He’s naked, his hands tied together above his head and to a bedframe. It’s so explicit that you cover your mouth to keep from dry heaving. There’s semen all over his chest and stomach and fear in his eyes. So much fear. So much that it’s the first thing you notice. Koujaku turns to look and does the same as you: covers his hand with his mouth and crooks one eyebrow in absolute shock.
“That’s disgusting,” he whispers. He’s not insulting Noiz. He doesn’t mean that Noiz is disgusting. He knows as well as you do that there’s something bigger going on here.
“You’re right,” Mizuki says finally, his eyes still piercing into your own. He tosses your Coil back to you. “Noiz would never do something like this to me.” You pull your hand away from your lips as Mizuki says the words that will haunt you from this day forward: “Someone else is doing this to him.”
“Do you think… it’s… consensual?”
You and Mizuki both turn to Koujaku so quickly you’re surprised your necks don’t snap. Of course it was running through your minds but Koujaku just says it so… ably. As if the mere thought doesn’t terrify him to the point of muteness. Mizuki sneers.
“Why the fuck would you ask that?”
“Well, look at it,” Koujaku shrugs. You shake your head.
“We should call the police,” you say, pulling up the dial pad on your Coil. Mizuki reaches over to cover up the screen.
“No,” he says gruffly. “They’re not gonna help. We need to trace the call.”
“You always say that but Akushima is not the only cop in this town,” Koujaku says, his voice straddling the line of sobriety and frustration. “And even if he is, he’s not gonna let a missing person get raped just because you’ve egged his car a few times.”
“What the fuck?!” Mizuki cries, reaching over the table to take a swing at Koujaku. You shout at him to get back but Koujaku blocks his punch with his forearm and pushes him away.
“What?! What the hell is your problem?!”
“How can you just say that?” Mizuki shouts at him, voice echoing in your tiny room. “How can you be so casual that something like this is happening to Noiz? No, I know, don’t answer. Because you always hated him.”
“Whoa,” Koujaku yells. “He was an annoying little shit but I don’t think he deserves to be – I don’t think he deserves to have bad stuff happen to him.”
“We need to calm down and do something because fighting with each other isn’t going to help Noiz.” You, as always, have to be the voice of reason. Your friends stare at each other a moment longer before they both seem to calm down and Mizuki nods over at you.
“The police aren’t gonna help find him. If we’re getting pictures of him tonight, that means whoever has him is going to do something even worse tonight. They’re not going to start a search party at eleven thirty.”
You roll your eyes.
“Even if any of that is true, what do you propose we do about it?”
“Track the number,” Mizuki shrugs, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the word. You squint at him.
“Track the number, because we’re in some sci-fi movie with unrealistic technology and I can just track this number like that.” You laugh. “How do we track a number? Even if we find out who it belongs to, how do we found out where they are?”
Mizuki reaches over the table and snatches your Coil away from you again. You let him take it with a loud sigh and look at Koujaku for help. He seems to have checked out already: his arms are crossed over his chest and he refuses to look at Noiz. You shake your head.
“There has to be something that can trace the number. How does 119 do it?”
“I don’t know, Mizuki, but we’re not 119.” You sit back and start to rub your forehead with your fingertips. “We’re just a bunch of guys getting drunk on a Saturday night playing cards.”
“There’s nothing?” he asks. “Nothing at like, Heibon? No kind of… tracking software?”
Your head springs up immediately.
“Actually.”
Koujaku shouts that you should be calling the police as the three of you sprint to Heibon. He and Mizuki have sobered up a bit mentally, but physically they’re both still a bit slow. Koujaku is better at keeping it together – probably because he never cared for Noiz in the first place. But Mizuki is slowly losing his mind. And in all honesty, so are you.
Noiz was a little punk, the emphasis though being on the little. He annoyed the hell out of you and you could never understand what he was thinking. His thought process – his logic – was so bizarre to you that you stopped trying to guess what he’d do next. You had written him off as an annoying teenager who thought he was cooler than he was, who wanted to be an adult but didn’t know how to be, and didn’t understand that you were never, ever going to Rhyme him. He never tried to kiss you again after that time in Heibon, but that one kiss had already sealed his fate as far as you were concerned: annoying, trouble, brat. Not the worst person you’d ever known, but maybe in a few years he’d be a little more tolerable.
Then you found out about his condition.
He actually told you straight-out; he didn’t beat around the bush or drag it on forever. He cut his palm on some glass and you reacted to the pain more than he did. He noticed your wince, your squint, your gasp through clenched teeth as you watched the blood trickle down his hand and onto the carpet. He noticed your reaction and then tried to mimic it. He seethed too, and then flinched, just one moment too late. You asked him what he was doing and he told you: pretending that it hurts, because it doesn’t. Nothing hurts. Nothing has ever hurt.
He said his family couldn’t do much about it; it was incurable and he was sick of feeling like he’d hurt people so he ran away from home. You told him that his family must miss him terribly and he nodded, noting that he’d like to see his little brother again but it would have to wait for now. You bandaged him up and noticed he was not the same after that: he was a little quieter, a little more down to earth. He had a vulnerability hangover you suppose. But you can’t say you weren’t a little relieved. He became easier to be around and you suddenly felt responsible for his wellbeing. You don’t know why. He never asked you to. But he mentioned his little brother and that’s when it clicked: you needed to care for him like he was your little brother. Which was always a little odd since he hit on you constantly, but all you had to do was roll your eyes and poke him in the nose and he’d settle down.
He seemed to actually like being taken care of. Of course, you never did it too obviously.
You regret that now.
When he disappeared, you were a little perplexed. You’d thought he and Mizuki were close to dating and if not, you always thought that you had a certain sort of relationship with him. You always thought you deserved more than a sudden disappearance, but if you’d been misreading the relationship the whole time, then so be it. You were hurt, but didn’t want anyone to know it. You wrote it off as a youthful indiscretion, a kid no longer interested in Rhyme or Midorijima and moving on to something bigger and better. You wrote it off as that, even if you knew, deep, deep down, that wasn’t it. Noiz wasn’t that kind of person.
Mizuki knew that too. Mizuki never believed he just ran away. Koujaku is still in the process of convincing Mizuki that Noiz is gone forever, yet… here he is.
“This one is a video,” Mizuki says as you’re scouring the backroom of Heibon for the tracking software. You turn to him immediately.
“Koujaku,” you say sternly. “Give it to Koujaku.”
Koujaku is sitting on the couch, trying not to throw up. He lifts his head up and stares at you quizzically and you have to rely on your decades of friendship to get your point across without saying another word. You give him your best, “You know Mizuki can’t watch this because if it’s something bad it will traumatize him for life, now go watch the fucking video you absolute hippo” look and he nods at you. You sort of hate that he knows you so well but he gets up nonetheless and takes the Coil from Mizuki, who lets it go without a fight.
“But I need to see it,” he protests, his voice shaking, as if he doesn’t really believe his own words. Koujaku shrugs him off.
“I’ll see it first,” he says, switching the volume off. “Then I’ll let you see it, okay?”
Mizuki doesn’t reply. You stand rooted to your spot, a giant computer fan dangling in your grip.
Drunk Koujaku doesn’t have nearly as good a poker face as Mizuki.
“Ah, Jesus,” he mutters, blinking slowly and turning away from the Coil. You take in a sharp breath.
“What is it?” Mizuki asks, moving toward him. Koujaku pulls the Coil away from him. “Is he okay? Is he alive?”
“He’s fine,” Koujaku says. “Just… way more of Noiz than I ever wanted to see.”
You grunt in frustration.
“But he’s okay?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Just…” Koujaku shrugs and holds the Coil high up in the air, away from Mizuki, the way a big brother would do. You feel a tug in your chest. “Sex stuff.”
“What sex stuff?” Mizuki asks. He’s on the verge of tears.
“I don’t know man, just… not stuff that I think you should be jealous about. This doesn’t look…”
Koujaku pretends he’s searching for the word, but you both know he’s not. He knows the word. He just doesn’t want to say it. He’s said it once already tonight, and he’s not going to say it again.
“Look, I think we should just go to the police,” he says, finally relenting and handing Mizuki the Coil. You don’t try to stop him. Mizuki takes it frenziedly and turns around to watch the video in horror. “They’re going to be able to do way more than we can.”
“You go,” you tell him pointedly. “We’ll stay here and try to find him ourselves.”
Koujaku blinks at you dumbly. His face goes expressionless as you stare him down, daring to argue you on this. He can go. He can go file a report with the police, and they can do what they can while you and Mizuki stay behind and do what you can.
You’ve come to agree with Mizuki. If you want to find Noiz tonight, you’re going to have to find him yourselves.
And you are going to find Noiz tonight.
You just have to find the software first.
“This isn’t recent.”
Mizuki’s voice fills the room. You and Koujaku both turn to him sharply.
“What?”
“This isn’t a recent video,” he says, his voice turning shaky again. “Look. There’s blue on the tip of his hair. We did that. We dyed some of his hair blue. A year ago. If this was from tonight, it would be out by now.”
Koujaku frowns and takes the Coil back to watch the video again. You don’t think you can stomach it, so you’ll take their word for it.
“He does have blue tips but that could mean anything. If this was a year old, what does that mean?”
“It means he didn’t run away,” Mizuki says. His entire body seems to be vibrating. He can’t sit still and your eyes are glued to him because you can’t seem to move. “It means someone took him after Oval Tower fell and now they have him and they’ve had him for a year and now they’re sending us these fucking disgusting things. God, oh my God, they’ve been doing stuff like this to him for a year and I’ve been moping around like he just left, I should have known he didn’t just leave and now he’s out there in trouble somewhere?” Mizuki has his hands in his hair now as he starts to pace, every bit the image of a man in the middle of a breakdown. Koujaku rushes to him immediately but he rejects his advance with a broad wave of his arm. “He’s just out there and I don’t know where he is and no one else cares!”
“Hey!” you shout angrily, waving the fan in the air. “I’m the one who brought us here, aren’t I?”
“I care,” Koujaku adds indignantly. “I didn’t like him but this is messed up.”
“Then do something! Both of you!” Mizuki screams.
You hurl the fan at him before you can stop yourself.
“I’m trying!” you shout back. “You’re the one standing there screaming instead of doing something productive!”
“Something productive?” Mizuki screeches. “Really productive, not finding this miracle software that will track this sadist. We need to call this number and demand him Noiz back!”
“That’s a bad idea,” you tell him, pointing your finger at him violently. “They might not answer. They might stop altogether. We need them to keep contacting us.”
Koujaku takes a long, loud breath and you look over to him. He’s wincing at you and you cock your head to the side.
“I just – that’s logical, but I don’t think there’s any logic to this. If they’re sending us videos then they want us to know this is happening. I don’t think they’re scared. I think it’s a game.”
It’s a game. Something about that sends chills down your spine and it’s all the encouragement Mizuki needs. He nods at his friend and then at you and dials the number. You can’t move as the screen pops up and ringer starts. It’s a game. Someone’s playing a game with you. Someone has brought doing terrible things to Noiz, possibly for the past year, into a game. They’ve made a game out of this. You feel like you know someone who would do that, but you can’t figure out who.
Then, to your – relief? surprise? terror? – someone actually picks up.
“I was wondering when you’d call.”
Mizuki starts to shout immediately but you’re not entirely sure what he’s saying because you react so viscerally to the voice that speaks. Everything becomes cloudy. You’re wracking your brain trying to place that voice, but nothing’s coming up. You know that voice. You know it well, in fact. You just – have – to place it –
“Your friend is fine,” he says.
You look at Mizuki and roll your pointer in a circlular motion, indicating to him to keep the person talking.
“What – what did you do to him?”
“I don’t think you’d like to know.”
Mizuki’s face falls. He looks up at you, eyes wide and mouth open, and seems to lose control of his body as he slumps down to the floor. He turns away as he falls to his knees.
“Where is he? Give him back,” he says, his body finally giving over to the misery. He starts to cry. Koujaku has to look away. You feel empty inside. You feel completely empty. You feel – you feel like Noiz: you can’t feel anything.
“We plan on it,” the man says, causing Mizuki’s head to perk up. “Ah, but – you aren’t Aoba-san, are you?”
Aoba-san.
Your brain places it.
You rush to Mizuki, barreling him over in your frantic effort to get to your Coil.
“Virus!” you bark. “Where are you?! Where are you?!”
There’s a ringing in your ears. It feels like there’s a film over your vision; everything else happens in a filter of confusion and panic-turned-calm. It’s as if your anxiety reaches a fever pitch and gives way to complete serenity. Virus gives you an address and Mizuki takes off, sprinting down the road. Koujaku follows behind him but you stay on the line with Virus until he hangs up. He tells you that he and Trip had finally found someone just as interesting as you and just wanted to play with him for a while. You can’t respond. Your mouth is dry and your throat is closed and you gasp for air and you worry that with Koujaku and Mizuki gone, you might get snatched up next. You feel like he’s right behind you and you have to rush out onto the street, gasping for air, scanning the area for other people – strangers, just anyone who will notice if you get kidnapped next. You hold your head in your hand for a few seconds before you tear down the street after Koujaku, heading to the address that Virus gave you.
Mizuki is already there when you arrive and you feel nothing.
He’s carrying Noiz bridal style out of a building. A t-shirt much too large for him drapes over his frame, but you can’t tell if it’s too big because it’s a giant shirt or because Noiz has suddenly become half the size you remember him as. You suck in a deep breath as you realize it’s probably both – it’s Trip’s shirt. And Noiz has lost weight.
His eyes are open when Mizuki lays him down gently on some grass. You lick your lips and stare at him. You want to be happy – his eyes are open. That means he’s alive. But his eyes look dead. Empty. If he’s alive, he’s only just. He isn’t happy to see Mizuki.
He doesn’t even seem to know who Mizuki is.
Koujaku stands off to the side as you kneel down next to Noiz. Mizuki’s face is streaked with tears and his eyes are redder than they were when he was drunk. He can hardly breathe without sobbing and you motion for Koujaku to come take him away. When you’re alone with Noiz, you sit him up, but he falls back down.
“Sit up, Noiz, we’re here now,” you tell his limp body. You pull his arms up again but he bends at the waist for only a few moments before he goes crashing to the ground again. You shake your head in disbelief.
“Stop dropping him!” Mizuki shouts. You look over at him. Koujaku’s arms cage him in, keeping him from taking off back to Noiz. He’s struggling but just barely. You shrug at him.
“I’m not dropping him, he’s falling,” you say. You get onto your hands and knees and crawl next to him. “Noiz? Do you hear me?”
Koujaku is the one who finally calls the hospital. An ambulance shows up, loud and bright and gives you a headache within seconds. You’ve always been susceptible to headaches.
“We were getting… pretty bad videos,” Koujaku is telling a police officer. Noiz is on a stretcher. It’s all so surreal that you’ve lost the ability to talk. “On this Coil, here. You can watch them but… they’re bad. I guess it was some Yakuza creeps. They’re probably on a different continent by now.”
Virus and Trip. They were your friends. They disappeared the same time Noiz did, but you never put it together. You didn’t exactly miss them like you missed Noiz. Virus’s words ring in your ears: “We finally found someone as interesting as you.” As interesting as you?
Could this have been you?
They were always sort of obsessed with you, but you thought they were just weird guys. They could cross the line into creepy on occasion, but they never scared you. You didn’t know they were capable of this.
Mizuki is sitting cross-legged on the wet grass, his head in his hands and he stares at the ground and mutters to himself. He looks as traumatized as Noiz. Someone puts a shock blanket around him and he doesn’t even seem to notice.
Koujaku calls a cab but Mizuki insists that he get to go in the ambulance with Noiz. You don’t protest but somehow he ends up in the cab with you anyway. The drive over is silent, save for Mizuki’s sobs. The cab driver looks a little uneasy but Koujaku gives him a big tip and you find yourself in a waiting room eventually, staring at Mizuki who’s fallen asleep in a chair across from you. His cheeks are still wet. You can actually see the stains of tears he never wiped away.
Koujaku puts an arm around you.
“Take a nap,” he says quietly. His kimono is soft under your skin. “Even if we all fall asleep, they’ll wake us up if something happens.”
You realize that he’s right and start to close your eyes. As you fall asleep, you realize Noiz wouldn’t be able to feel how soft Koujaku is. He wouldn’t be able to feel anything.