A treat for flawedrhetoric (Part 2 of 2)
Back to Part 1
She wasn't wonderfully attractive, but her voice was soft and warm where it murmured in his ear. Her jewellery sang to him as she moved, so many chains and pendants and earrings sparkling silver in the moonlight that would look just beautiful glinting and twinkling from beneath a final varnish of blood. He slid his hands beneath her clothes, eager but careful. He'd learned now that if he pushed too hard, or too fast, then they break too soon, and an unfinished task grated on his fragile nerves like stone on a chalkboard.
But there were footsteps, getting closer and closer, and a voice, "Mika-chan?"
She turned towards the sound and he tamped down on the urge to yank her back to him by her hair. Instead, he smoothed his fingers through it so that she leaned into the touch and purred like a kitten, giving him enough time to growl heatedly at the intruder.
"Get lost," he snarled, deep and primal, and the other girl's eyes widened, a tiny squeak escaping before she scampered away.
That's right, little mouse. Run.
Mika - he'd never bothered to find out her name before - was even better than he'd hoped, warm and agreeable in every way imaginable, and when the time finally came, she was just as quietly responsive when he slid his knife home, sharpened to perfection so that the only sound that escaped from her was a soft, shocked gasp, too stunned to do anything else. He could see her mind struggling to figure out what was happening to her even as her blood flowed thick and rich over his hands and her mouth worked soundlessly as the life slipped from her.
-
Yamashita awoke with a start, a cold sweat on the back of his neck and his clothes stuck to his body. Blood flashed before his eyes, but when he ripped the covers away, there was nothing. He breathed a long sigh of relief, but his heart was still pounding in his chest, terrified by the sheer intensity his dreams had acquired. Hime-chan whined softly at her master's discomfort and nudged at his hand, but the effort it took to lift it to pet her was too great. Every part of his body felt like it had been filled with lead, weighing him down and forcing him into the mattress, and Yamashita groaned in frustration. As soon as this case was over, he was going to take a long overdue vacation. He'd go down to the sea with his surfboard, sleep to his heart's content with the sounds of the ocean surrounding him, then come daylight he'd ride his worries away on the waves.
He managed to pull himself out of bed and was smiling at the memory of the sun on his face and the sand between his toes when he was yanked from his fantasies by the obnoxious trill of his cellphone.
"Nngh. What?" He grunted, eyes only open enough for him to avoid tripping over Hime-chan as he headed towards the bathroom.
"Pi," It was Ryo's voice on the end of the line, and he didn't sound happy. "Roppongi. We've got another one."
-
The moment Yamashita stepped into the alley, plan grey brick and concrete stretching on before him, he felt an eerie sense of déjà vu wash over him. They hadn't washed away the blood yet, and the puddle of red spread out in a wide circle around the exposed body of a girl, clothes hiked up and slouched like a rag doll. The closer he got, the tighter his chest felt, as if an invisible hand had wrapped around his throat and was slowly choking the breath from him. Long brown hair pooled around her, matted with dried blood, pale skin marred only by smudged lipstick and smears of mascara, and finally, there was the glint of silver underneath all that blood. Jewellery, too much jewellery.
Mika.
Yamashita turned away, and vomited.
"Jesus, man, are you okay?"
Straightening and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Yamashita nodded despite the way his stomach was still churning.
"You-" he started, then cleared his throat when his voice came out as barely a whisper, "You think this is our guy?"
Please say no, please, please say no...
"Mmhmm," Ryo shifted to the side, and Yamashita appreciated the subtle change in direction so that he wouldn't have to look at the body, "No visual injuries - except for the obvious one, of course - but the location and type of woman are identical. I think he's learning to control himself, instead of lashing out before he's..." Here, Ryo paused and looked away, "Taken his enjoyment."
Yamashita's stomach turned over again and breathed long and deep to try and settle it. "How about her neck?"
"Fine," Chinen clarified from where he was bent over the body, "Just one single slice through the femoral artery, clean but angled, with no other immediate visual abrasions. She'd have fainted pretty quickly from the blood loss, and been dead within a few minutes. Didn't stand a chance."
"The bastard's experimenting," Ryo spat, but Yamashita wasn't listening any more. He had a murder weapon to find.
Half way through his circle of the alley, Ryo caught up with him.
"Pi?" He said, "Pi, where are you going? Pi!"
Once he'd walked to the end of the alley and back again, Yamashita let his feet do the rest, carefully ignoring all logic and sense and self-preservation. If this worked, well. He didn't want to think about what it could mean if this worked. Ryo followed him as he wandered out into the street, silent now but for the odd hushed, "What the fuck, man..." and Yamashita turned left, away from the entrance to the club, eyes fixed firmly ahead. Left again, back out when it didn't feel quite right, and then again, another left, a little further up. Halfway down this alley was an innocuous-looking, clean, white dumpster, and Yamashita headed for it like a homing missile.
"Give me a leg up," he ordered. Ryo did as he was told without question or argument, but Yamashita was hardly in the mood to appreciate it. Holding onto the edge with one hand, he peered over the top, then jumped back down and walked around to the back instead, where he dropped to his knees and began to rummage through the pile of black refuse sacks piled up against the wall. One, two, three bags down and there it was, silver-stained-red. His heart sank.
Lifting it up, he held it out for Ryo to see.
"What the... Oh shit, gloves!" Ryo exclaimed, and Yamashita belatedly realised that in his haste - if it could be called that - he'd forgotten to put on his gloves. Any fingerprints that may have been on the hilt would now be compromised, unless they got terribly, terribly lucky.
He swore.
Ryo reached into his back pocket and produced a packet containing a fresh pair, then slipped one on to take hold of the knife gingerly.
"How did you do that?" He breathed, staring straight at the razor-sharp blade, "How did you know it was here?"
Yamashita wanted to throw up again.
"I don't know."
He was more than happy to be rid of the knife when Ryo handed it over to one of the forensics working on the scene, and two more of them scuttled off to process the area where they'd found the knife, too.
"By the way," Ryo asked, peeling off his glove and shoving it back into his pocket, "Did you have any luck with those security tapes last night?"
"Oh, I-" Yamashita paused, and swallowed. He'd just dreamt about a girl being murdered, the very same girl who was now led out in a body bag, and had known exactly where to go to find the weapon that had been used on her. Now really didn't seem like a good time to tell Ryo about the face he'd seen on the security tapes last night, and how he was beginning to fear for his sanity. "No, nothing."
Ryo frowned, but it was concerned, not troubled. ""You really don't look too hot. I mean, you could never hope to hold a candle to me," He smirked, and Yamashita forced a chuckle, trying to focus through the fuzzy blur around the edge of his vision, "But you really don't look like you'll be much good today."
Yamashita avoided pointing out that he'd led them to the knife, and just nodded mutely.
"Is Jin in town? Maybe you should call him up when we get back to the station, get him to take you home. Chill for a bit, watch a movie, get some rest."
"Yeah," Yamashita replied, grateful for the opportunity to get out of here and sort his head out, "Yeah, I think I will."
-
But before he'd even made it home, things suddenly got a whole lot worse.
They'd been lucky enough to come across a witness who had seen the man Mika Takashima had left the club with. Emi Nishikawa had gone looking for her friend and had found the couple in the very alley they'd found Mika's body abandoned in, but Mika had seemed to be just as into whatever he had planned as he was, so she had left as soon as the man turned feral eyes on her. It was just too much of a coincidence to ignore.
She had come back to the station, and the men on duty had rapidly assembled a line-up of men being held in their cells that could fit the vague description she'd given them. They weren't really hoping to get lucky, but hoped she'd at least be able to narrow down the description of their guy a little more.
Yamashita had followed them back to the station in his own car, but it took him twice as long because he kept almost nodding off at the wheel and opted to drive especially slowly to avoid any accidents. By the time he'd parked up and gone inside to wait for Jin - who promised he was on his way - Emi had already been taken in to view their haphazard line-up. He hadn't tried to convince Ryo to let him oversee it too; he tried to tell himself it was because he was too tired, too eager for the rest that was awaiting him, but he couldn't hide the truth from himself. He didn't want her to see his face.
Jin arrived just as he was finishing his third cup of coffee in under ten minutes - anything just to keep his eyes open - and followed Yamashita down the hall so that he could tell Ryo he was leaving for the day. The first time Jin had gotten all the way from the front desk to their offices in the back, Yamashita had questioned how. Jin had just waggled his eyebrows, pursed his lips in Yamashita's direction, and flashed the visitor's pass he'd been given, and the girl on the front desk had never looked at him in quite the same way ever again.
"Yo," He said softly, letting his hair fall into his eyes as he poked his head around the door and into the room where Ryo was seated with Emi and Detective Superintendent Tsubasa, "Any luck?"
Ryo sighed. "Hey. Nah, nothing, Nishikawa-san - Nishikawa-san, this is Tomohisa Yamashita, the other detective on the case - says she'll keep trying for us, though."
Yamashita forced a slight smile and inclined his head as the girl turned to bow. He let out a sigh of relief when nothing else happened, his heart suddenly so light he thought it might try and float away. Then she looked up, and gasped.
"You." She breathed, and Yamashita felt his world come crashing down.
Emi stepped back, as far as she could without making a spectacle, and turned back to Ryo with wide eyes.
"He's the one I saw, last night," she said, quietly.
"Eh?" Ryo blurted, face the picture of ignorance, and Tsubasa looked up from the paperwork he'd been filling out.
"I think you must be mistaken, Nishikawa-san."
She shook her head firmly. "I'm sure it was him. I remember thinking," here, she blushed, "That he was really good looking, when Mika-chan left with him. Until he shouted at me."
Yamashita's mind was working on overdrive even whilst his body was threatening to shut down. He remembered watching tape after tape of people in the very first club, remembered, with a lurch, his own face on the monitor, remembered resting his head on the desk for just a moment... and remembered waking up in his own bed, the remnants of a nightmare hovering around the edges of his conscious. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember a thing in between. He stood, silent, for a long, agonising moment until Tsubasa turned towards him, eyes questioning. Ryo was studiously avoiding his gaze, and that was possibly even worse.
"I've never even met the girl!" He exclaimed, "This- I- Why would I kill her? Why would I kill anyone?!"
"I think I'd like to leave now, Nishikido-san, Tsubasa-san" Emi said softly, her voice shaking as she spoke. Ryo sighed again helplessly and nodded.
"No!" Yamashita burst, his tone taking on a desperate edge, "Don't, please, we need your help. I didn't do this, I swear, I was at work late last night then I went home, I swear it!" He did, he did, he had to have done.
Jin moved behind him so that he was more than just a shoulder in the doorway, "He's telling the truth. He was at home with me the whole time."
Yamashita tamped down on the urge to throw his arms around his friend's neck, and thought his knees might give out from the force of the relief he felt coarsing through him like a tidal wave.
"You see?" Ryo said, obviously relieved Jin was there to back up his story. Whether Ryo trusted him or not would have been irrelevant if they had a witness and he had no alibi.
"I-I'm sorry, Yamashita-san." Emi bowed her head, "It was dark. I must be confused."
Yamashita shook his head and waved his hand in dismissal, not trusting his voice to not betray him in some way.
-
Jin was quiet during the drive, but Yamashita was grateful for the peace. It was only when they'd gotten home that Jin finally spoke.
"So, are you going to tell me what's going on?"
Yamashita frowned, and the movement made him want to close his eyes. Everything was so bright. "You know we're not supposed to talk about our cases..."
"That's not what I mean, and you know it." Jin's voice was just this side of harsh, and Yamashita wasn't used to having it directed towards him like that. He could feel the icy fingers of panic starting to claw at him again as Jin stared at him, gaze steady.
"What are you talking about?"
"Pi," Jin said firmly, with an edge of worry beginning to creep in, "You didn't come home last night."
"...What?"
Jin flopped down on the sofa with a huff. "Look, I just lied to the police for you, the least you can do is tell me where you were."
Yamashita's mouth worked soundlessly as he searched for something, anything in the gap in his mind between the times he'd fallen asleep at his desk and woken up again eight hours later, safe in his bed. Anything, locking up his office, getting on the train to come home, fishing his keys out of his pocket... But there was nothing. Just a few flashes of skin, a girl, and blood, everywhere.
"Pi?" Jin asked again, concern definitely winning out this time, "Where did you go?"
"I... I don't know," Yamashita whispered, his insides turning cold, "I can't remember..."
"What? Are you okay? I know you're not sleeping well, and you're up at all hours of the night, but... Is something wrong? Is there something else?"
"I'm f-" Yamashita bit back his automatic response, and paused. He was feeling terribly light headed, despite being sat down already, and he closed his eyes to try and get some sense of purchase. "No, not really, I... I'm scared, Jin. Things keep getting more and more fucked and I don't know what's going on." Yamashita brought his hands up to cover his face, head tipping back to rest against the back of the sofa where the cushions were heavenly-soft behind him. "I'm having nightmares, dreaming that I'm doing terrible things to people..." Each word was getting harder to think of, harder to pronounce, like someone had injected him with a strong anaesthetic and his tongue was swelling to the size of a golf ball, "Horrible, unforgivable things... I'm forgetting things, and I'm always so tired, Jin..." Even as he said it, Yamashita's eyelids were drooping, invisible hands reaching out and pulling him under no matter how hard he tried to resist. "No matter how long I sleep, I'm always so... so tired..."
-
"As if you'd ever understand." Yamashita's lip curled in distaste, and Jin's hackles rose visibly.
"Oh, so now I'm a moron too?!"
"Why do you think I'm still here? Living with a failure. Couldn't succeed at anything else so you fell back on being a musician, and you couldn't even do that either. You're great for my ego, Akanishi."
When Jin looked at him, eyes brimming over with hurt, with betrayal, he couldn't hide the satisfaction it filled him with. He wasn't really trying too hard, though.
-
"What the fuck is your problem?! I can't believe I lied to the fucking police for you, you're such a- a-" Jin stuttered, clearly racking his brains for a suitable enough word.
"Please, don't strain yourself. I wouldn't want it to hurt."
"What's wrong with you? Why are you being like this?!"
"Like what? Like a human?!" Yamashita yelled, blood suddenly boiling. "Like I'm not some snivelling little mild-mannered idiot pandering to anyone who looks at me the right way? Like I've got a backbone?!
"Like an asshole!"
-
"This isn't you, Pi! You're not like this! I don't want to believe you hurt those girls, I don't, but like this I can't help but think..."
"So what if I did?" Yamashita drawled, "You have no proof. Would you turn in your best friend for murder?"
Jin looked away, and Yamashita sneered.
"Of course you wouldn't. Always so fucking loyal, Akanishi, like a puppy that keeps coming back no matter how many times you kick it. Pathetic."
A fist collided with his face, and while he was still rebounding from the force of it, the door slammed.
He smiled.
One down.
-
Yamashita pried his eyelids open, but found himself confronted with just as much darkness as there had been before he awoke. It was quiet, too, too quiet, and it took all of his energy to push himself up into a sitting position. If the ache in his thigh was any indication, his cellphone had still been in his pocket when he fell asleep, and he fished it out, still straining for any sign of life in the apartment.
The light from his phone was painful, and he squinted at it through cracked eyes.
1:37AM
He groaned. When was the last time he'd even seen midnight? Oh shit, and he'd fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation, too. Jin was going to be pissed.
Yamashita yawned widely, and his jaw throbbed. Lifting a hand to it, he pressed a fingertip to the skin and white hot pain shot through his face. He had a vague memory - a dream, maybe - of fighting with Jin, of saying cruel things that he could never even remember thinking before, and Jin had... Had he left? It certainly seemed that way from the silence and darkness of their apartment; Jin rarely slept before three in the morning.
Punching in Jin's number, Yamashita slumped down into the cushions as it rang, over and over until switching to voicemail. Ending the call, he tried again. On the third try, someone picked up, and Jin muttered a quick "Stop calling me" before hanging up on him.
He must be really pissed. Yamashita struggled to remember what he'd said, what had happened after they returned home from the station, but all he could remember clearly was dozing off mid-sentence, then waking again hours later. Everything in between was fuzzy and distorted, like he was trying to focus through frosted glass or thick syrup, and the details refused to come to him.
- Talk to me, - he typed, - please. -
- Why? - Jin replied simply.
- Did I upset you? I don't remember what happened. -
- Can't use the same excuse twice. -
A second message arrived just as Yamashita was reading the first.
- Asshole. -
It hurt when he smiled, serving as a brutal reminder of just how much Jin hadn't appreciated everything he'd been saying, but then there were keys in the lock, and Jin flicked the overhead light on. Yamashita grimaced and covered his eyes with a hand, but even that wasn't enough to block out the light completely.
"I'm back," he muttered, clearly still in a bad mood, but he was here and that was a start.
"Welcome home," Yamashita replied, and tried to ignore the throb starting up in his temples.
"I'm only here because I trust you," Jin told him, and Yamashita noticed he hadn't taken off his shoes or jacket yet, and had yet to move away from the door. "But I'm going to stand over here."
"Jin..."
"Seriously, I don't... I'm really worried about you, Pi. You're not yourself. The things you said to me..." Jin looked down and away, and folded his arms across his chest. "It wasn't you. Maybe it's just the lack of sleep, but-"
"I'm getting plenty of sleep," Yamashita interjected, "It just isn't doing any good."
Jin scoffed. "You're disappearing at all hours of the night, and even I don't hear you come in. How much sleep are you getting every day, an hour, two? No wonder you're always so exhausted."
"But I..." Yamashita murmured. As if it had been waiting for this moment, the fog surrounding his memories began to clear, snippets of time flashing behind his eyes. "I don't... I can't..."
"I think... I think you need to get some help, Pi, talk to someone. Before, you said you were scared, scared o-of yourself, and... I think I'm a little scared of you too."
Horrific realisation began to dawn on him, and Yamashita felt the churning of disgusted nausea in his stomach as things started to come together, the denial he'd been hiding behind for so long finally being swept away like old, dusty cobwebs. The restless nights, being thrown out of the bar, the dreams, the knife, his face on the cameras and now the empty patches of memory, slowly, slowly being filled with images of girls, so many girls dancing with him, writhing over him, dying beneath him... "No..."
Everything around him was coming together and falling apart simultaneously, tugging him this way and that between the memories, the facts, the impossible.
"No, I... I can't, I would never..." Yamashita's voice was gradually getting more panicked, and he brought his hands up to cover his face again, vainly hoping that hiding his eyes will stop the terrible, gut-wrenching scenes of pain and mutilation and death from playing out across his mind's eye. "No... no..."
His stomach convulsed again, harder, tighter this time, then there were strong arms around him, lifting him and steering him through the apartment until he felt cool porcelain beneath his feet, his knees.
He barely noticed the splash of icy water across his face once he was done emptying the contents of his stomach, but when he felt an unnerving urge to laugh bubbling up in his throat, Yamashita whipped his head up to look at his bedraggled appearance in the mirror.
Slowly, his reflection smiled.
-
Yamashita stirred, gradually coming to and lifting his chin from where it had been slumped against his chest. He moved to stretch his arms out of habit, to release the knot of tension in his upper back, but when he tried to move, he couldn't. Things cleared much more quickly after that, and after a few moments of testing his limbs, he found himself tied rather securely to a dining chair.
Despite the ache in his muscles, though, he actually felt better than he had in a long time. The light didn't hurt his eyes anywhere near as much as usual, and there wasn't so much as a trace of the fog that he'd begun to forget wasn't supposed to be hanging around his head all the time.
But there was still the matter of why he was tied to a chair.
"Jin?" He called out, craning his neck to try and see into the kitchen, "Hello?"
There was a soft rustle from the other side of the room, and Jin's sleep-mussed hair appeared over the back of the sofa. He blinked owlishly in Yamashita's direction, then seemed to catch himself, sitting up quickly and regarding him with a cool - and slightly drowsy - expression.
"You're awake."
Yamashita hummed affirmatively, "I'm also tied to a chair. What happened?"
"You passed out on me, in the bathroom. I didn't want to take my chances."
"Oh," He replied simply, "Well... Do you think you could untie me now? My legs are cramping up."
Jin's expression was wary, to say the least, and Yamashita couldn't say he blamed him.
"Do you think that's a good idea?"
"I'm fine, I promise, I'm all me." Jin frowned sceptically, and Yamashita lifted his head clearly, "Look at me, come on."
Jin slowly came closer and peered into Yamashita's eyes, forehead creased in concentration. "You don't look so... cruel, I guess."
"See?" Yamashita made a conscious effort to smile, "I'm okay. Please, just let me stretch my legs for a minute then you can tie me back up if it'll make you feel better."
Jin sighed, and he knew that he'd convinced him. "Well... I guess it couldn't hurt. But only for a minute..." He untied Yamashita's feet first and then, once he was certain the other man wasn't going to try and kick him in the face, freed his hands, too.
Yamashita grinned gratefully, stretching his arms up and making an appropriately content sound. Then, he gathered all of the strength he could muster, and punched Jin hard in the face. His friend stumbled to the floor with a shout of pain, hands flying up to protect his face, and before he could retaliate Yamashita had him pinned down, his forearm pressed firmly across Jin's throat. Jin's eyes were wide, terrified as he gasped for breath that wasn't coming, pupils dilated until there was almost no colour left around the outside. He tried to thrash, to buck Yamashita's body off of him, but Yamashita's hold on him was unforgiving, and it wasn't long until the life began to fade from his eyes.
Eventually, Jin slumped back against the floor, unconscious. Yamashita was tempted to finish the job, adrenaline pumping fast and addictive through his veins, but he had to be careful now. One wrong move, and everything he'd been working so hard for could all go to hell.
Tonight, he was going to have a little fun instead.
-
Yamashita groaned, rolling onto his side, and felt his leg throb. He felt like death warmed over, body aching like he'd spent the past twenty four hours being beaten to a pulp, head throbbing with a hangover like nothing he'd ever felt before, a stiffness to him that could only come from - he pried his eyes open - Shit. Sleeping on the pavement. He grimaced and forced himself into a sitting position, muscles screaming in protest, and felt something cool and wet drip from his cheek. Then he saw it.
Her.
Sprawled not two feet away from him was the body of what may once have been an attractive blonde foreigner. Except now, there was barely enough left to identify her. Her face had been mutilated beyond recognition, strips of skin and flesh hanging from her skull like a macabre piece of art. Her arms, legs, and neck had all been broken, if the angles they were lying at were any indication, and her clothes had been stripped from her body to reveal more of that bloody, nightmarish canvas of flesh. There was a trickle of images in his head, projections, memories, and when Yamashita sucked in a horrified breath, the stench of blood was unbearable. She'd been alive when he'd done this. He tasted bile, and the urge to feel that scarlet fluid dripping between his fingers was suddenly overwhelmingly strong. Clothes sodden with gore stuck to him like a second skin as he tried to scramble away, white-hot pain shooting through his leg from a deep gash in his left thigh, and his own blood had mingled with hers, his hands dipped in a heady cocktail of human life.
It was a threat. Look what I could be doing. Be grateful.
Too much, it was just too much, too much to take in, to process, to handle. Slick hands scrabbled through his pockets for his cellphone, punching in that number that he knew better than his own, and there was more, a fist, his arm pressed against Jin's neck, oh God, oh God, please pick up, please, plea-
"H-hello?"
"Jin! Oh my God, Jin, you're alive, please, you have to come get me, please," Yamashita babbled, filled with equal parts relief and terror. There were tears on his cheeks that he hadn't noticed shedding, and he barely recognised the sound of his own voice.
"Pi?" Jin's own voice was hoarse, "Is that you?"
"Yes, it's me, I promise, listen, please, you need to come get me, I- he- I- something terrible's happened. Please come, please, I can't- please, Jin-"
"Hey, calm down. Just breathe and listen to me, okay?"
Yamashita closed his mouth and sucked in a long breath through his nose, then choked on the stench of blood. He dragged himself further away, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, and tried again.
"Where are you?" Jin was asking, "Just tell me where you are and I'll be there as soon as I can."
"I..." Yamashita cast his eyes around, "I don't know."
A few old, long-forgotten shipping containers sat innocuously to his right, followed by seemingly never-ending stretch of concrete, surrounded by trees and foliage in the distance. Glad to have something to focus his attentions on, Yamashita moved further away from the body until he could lean up against one of the containers, and continued to draw in long, deep breaths through his mouth until the sickening smell had faded, being replaced by another. Salt water.
"I-I think I'm near the ocean..." Something rumbled in the distance and Yamashita instinctively curled in on himself as the sound grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening overhead, then died out to nothing again. "I think... I think I'm near the airport..."
"It's okay, just hang up the call and turn on your GPS. We can synch it to mine and I'll be right there, alright?"
Yamashita had never been more grateful that Jin had talked him into buying an up-to-date cellphone, and hung it up quickly, hands shaking as he tried to do as Jin had instructed. His guess had been correct, and his location popped up on the little screen in colours too bright for his situation; barely a few hundred feet from the Tama River, in full view of the stretch of monorail track that connected Ota-ku with the Haneda Airport terminals were it not for the huge metal containers hiding him from sight, and far enough away from civilisation that in the middle of the night, he probably wouldn't have even had to bother muffling her screams.
Now, all he had left to do was wait.
Not five minutes later, his phone rang. The noise made his head throb even harder, and he accepted it automatically before checking the caller ID. Glancing down as he did so, he saw Nishikido Ryo, connected flash up on the screen, and quickly hung it up again. It rang once more and Yamashita refused the call, then it stopped. Whatever Ryo needed him for could most definitely wait.
Soon, there was the distinctive sound of tyres on dirt, and Jin's car peeled into view. He must have driven like a madman to get there so quickly, and Yamashita could have cried with relief as his best friend flew out of his car and immediately froze.
"Oh, shit..."
Yamashita studiously didn't look to see what Jin was staring at, had no wish to see any more of exactly what his hands were capable of doing. Jin seemed to shake himself and turned away, hurrying to his side and hooking an arm around him to help him to his feet. Yamashita cried out in pain and Jin very nearly dropped him, grip slipping for a moment before he tightened his hold again, his own clothes getting smeared with blood.
"My leg," Yamashita gasped out through gritted teeth, "Careful."
Jin nodded his apology and together they half-carried, half-limped him to the car.
"Ryo called me just now," Jin said, and Yamashita was glad to have something to talk about, "He said he assumed you were taking the day off, and that the prints came through on your knife. Just yours, of course, but luckily they think that's because you were the one that found it."
Yamashita swallowed and nodded, squeezing his eyes shut against the barrage of emotion that hit him like a train hearing his best friend talk about what he'd done almost nonchalantly. Guilt, relief, shock, affection, panic, comfort. It hurt, and as Jin lowered him into the passenger seat and straightened, Yamashita clutched onto his wrist tightly.
"I'm so sorry, Jin," Yamashita said softly, eyeing the bruised skin across Jin's neck, "I-"
"Shut up," Jin snapped, then immediately softened, "That wasn't you, okay, he's... that thing in your head, he's not you."
"I- He-he's strong, really strong," he whispered, feeling his eyes grow wet, "This whole thing, it was just... just to prove a point. I- he clears up after himself, makes sure I get home clean and safe and tidy and that there's no traces left behind at the scene... He tore that poor girl to pieces just to make a point." He drew in a shuddering breath and released Jin's wrist to cover his mouth so that his next words came out muffled, "I'm not safe to be around."
"Stop talking like that," Jin said firmly, "You're going to be fine. I'll help, whatever you need, we'll get you through this and you'll be fine. Just fine."
When they arrived back home, Jin stripped off his shirt, stained with blood, and left it in the car while he went to fetch some clean clothes, and helped Yamashita change into them in the back seat. He balled their sodden clothing up in a black refuse sack which he left in the trunk for now, and half-carried Yamashita up the stairs to their apartment, where he sat him down on the edge of the tub and cleaned and bandaged his wound - which was thankfully nothing catastrophic, meant to scare, not incapacitate - complete with a few messy, home-made stitches. It hurt like hell, but anything was better than going to the hospital.
The next few days were relatively normal, all things considered. Yamashita didn't ask where Jin learned to stitch flesh back together, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. Yamashita didn't ask how Jin managed to procure a legitimate-looking doctor's certificate signing him off of work with a combination of stress and exhaustion, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. Yamashita didn't ask how Jin could afford to spend all his time at home, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. It was a comfortable existence, but one that only lasted during the day. As soon as dusk arrived, Yamashita felt like some kind of monster - and really, perhaps that was true - as Jin tied him securely to his bed, long lengths of rope around his torso, wrists, arms and legs, with a makeshift gag around his face, then retreated to his own room and turned his iPod up to the max. He never forgot and he never left the house, and no matter how loud Yamashita shouted, no matter how loud he screamed and yelled and fought, he never, ever let him loose.
Unfortunately, they soon learnt that the denial method only made things worse. Both of them were getting weaker and weaker every day, a lack of sleep soon catching up on Jin, too, and the longer Yamashita went without rest, the easier it got for him to lose sight of himself. He could feel his 'other half' lurking just beneath the surface sometimes, hovering, close enough to make him uncomfortable but never pushing enough for him to be willing to worry Jin with it. His friend was surviving on the rest he could get during the hour or so of peace and quiet there was between when Yamashita led down to when he awoke again, and that was fitful at best.
Yamashita lasted through almost two weeks of days spent studiously not talking about what happened at night, before he made his decision. He could feel whatever was inside of him fighting, clamouring to get out, and he could feel himself slipping, too. Jin would say something innocuous, and Yamashita would snap back at him, filled with a fit of irrational rage for a split second before it was gone like it had never existed. He'd pick up a glass to fill it with water, and end up smashing it against the wall, the shards flying out in every direction. Jin would painstakingly tease out every piece that embedded itself in his skin, cleaning and dressing the deepest cuts, and would clean up the glass without a word, but they both knew what was happening.
They were just too scared of it to talk about it.
And that, that had to be the worst of it all. Forget the pain, the psychosis, the death, none of that seemed to matter now. Not when it was clear that if Yamashita was going down, then Jin was willingly going to go with him.
That realisation was what had pushed him that final inch. That realisation was what had him waiting patiently until Jin had fallen asleep on the sofa, breath slow and even, before he pocketed his wallet, cellphone and several bottles from the bathroom cabinet, and headed to the nearest convenience store, typing out a mail to Jin on the way. The last thing he wanted was for his friend to think he was guilty of anything other than being too good a friend.
Yamashita had never thought he'd be grateful to have been assigned to one too many possible suicide cases in the past. Even with the other half of him trying to break out and stop him, it didn't take as long as he'd thought it would to force down the cocktail of tablets and drinks he'd seen used successfully before, including several types of sleeping pill he'd been prescribed over his years as a police detective. He turned one of the empty bottles over and over in his hands as the drowsiness began to kick in, and closed his eyes against the world spinning around him, leaning back against the driver's seat headrest.
This way, at least, he thought, mouth curving into a soft smile, everyone would be safe.
-
The light that used to burn his eyes now only warmed his face, and sounds that had grated on his nerves were now like music to his ears. The sun shone, the sea danced and the breeze rustled through the trees. It was a beautiful day, and it was his alone to enjoy.
Making himself sick to get the worst of the pills out of his system had been a painful experience to say the least, but it was more than worth it when this was the result. His body was finally all his own, and that was the kind of thing he'd have gone through any discomfort to have back again.
It felt good to be free enough to go out again, to go to clubs again, to not have to worry about anything but enjoying himself again, and he walked through the doors and up to the bar with a smile.
The bartender eyed him up and down appreciatively. "New in town, huh?" She asked, voice silky with a distinct American lilt, "What can I get you, Mr..."
"Yamashita. But please," he said softly in heavily-accented English, and leaned forward into her personal space. He cast his eyes away from the mirror along the back wall, where he could see that pitiful, worthless excuse for a human that had inhabited his body for so many years pounding his fists against the glass, face contorted in a long, silent scream, and smirked.
"Call me Tomo."
She wasn't wonderfully attractive, but her voice was soft and warm where it murmured in his ear. Her jewellery sang to him as she moved, so many chains and pendants and earrings sparkling silver in the moonlight that would look just beautiful glinting and twinkling from beneath a final varnish of blood. He slid his hands beneath her clothes, eager but careful. He'd learned now that if he pushed too hard, or too fast, then they break too soon, and an unfinished task grated on his fragile nerves like stone on a chalkboard.
But there were footsteps, getting closer and closer, and a voice, "Mika-chan?"
She turned towards the sound and he tamped down on the urge to yank her back to him by her hair. Instead, he smoothed his fingers through it so that she leaned into the touch and purred like a kitten, giving him enough time to growl heatedly at the intruder.
"Get lost," he snarled, deep and primal, and the other girl's eyes widened, a tiny squeak escaping before she scampered away.
That's right, little mouse. Run.
Mika - he'd never bothered to find out her name before - was even better than he'd hoped, warm and agreeable in every way imaginable, and when the time finally came, she was just as quietly responsive when he slid his knife home, sharpened to perfection so that the only sound that escaped from her was a soft, shocked gasp, too stunned to do anything else. He could see her mind struggling to figure out what was happening to her even as her blood flowed thick and rich over his hands and her mouth worked soundlessly as the life slipped from her.
-
Yamashita awoke with a start, a cold sweat on the back of his neck and his clothes stuck to his body. Blood flashed before his eyes, but when he ripped the covers away, there was nothing. He breathed a long sigh of relief, but his heart was still pounding in his chest, terrified by the sheer intensity his dreams had acquired. Hime-chan whined softly at her master's discomfort and nudged at his hand, but the effort it took to lift it to pet her was too great. Every part of his body felt like it had been filled with lead, weighing him down and forcing him into the mattress, and Yamashita groaned in frustration. As soon as this case was over, he was going to take a long overdue vacation. He'd go down to the sea with his surfboard, sleep to his heart's content with the sounds of the ocean surrounding him, then come daylight he'd ride his worries away on the waves.
He managed to pull himself out of bed and was smiling at the memory of the sun on his face and the sand between his toes when he was yanked from his fantasies by the obnoxious trill of his cellphone.
"Nngh. What?" He grunted, eyes only open enough for him to avoid tripping over Hime-chan as he headed towards the bathroom.
"Pi," It was Ryo's voice on the end of the line, and he didn't sound happy. "Roppongi. We've got another one."
-
The moment Yamashita stepped into the alley, plan grey brick and concrete stretching on before him, he felt an eerie sense of déjà vu wash over him. They hadn't washed away the blood yet, and the puddle of red spread out in a wide circle around the exposed body of a girl, clothes hiked up and slouched like a rag doll. The closer he got, the tighter his chest felt, as if an invisible hand had wrapped around his throat and was slowly choking the breath from him. Long brown hair pooled around her, matted with dried blood, pale skin marred only by smudged lipstick and smears of mascara, and finally, there was the glint of silver underneath all that blood. Jewellery, too much jewellery.
Mika.
Yamashita turned away, and vomited.
"Jesus, man, are you okay?"
Straightening and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Yamashita nodded despite the way his stomach was still churning.
"You-" he started, then cleared his throat when his voice came out as barely a whisper, "You think this is our guy?"
Please say no, please, please say no...
"Mmhmm," Ryo shifted to the side, and Yamashita appreciated the subtle change in direction so that he wouldn't have to look at the body, "No visual injuries - except for the obvious one, of course - but the location and type of woman are identical. I think he's learning to control himself, instead of lashing out before he's..." Here, Ryo paused and looked away, "Taken his enjoyment."
Yamashita's stomach turned over again and breathed long and deep to try and settle it. "How about her neck?"
"Fine," Chinen clarified from where he was bent over the body, "Just one single slice through the femoral artery, clean but angled, with no other immediate visual abrasions. She'd have fainted pretty quickly from the blood loss, and been dead within a few minutes. Didn't stand a chance."
"The bastard's experimenting," Ryo spat, but Yamashita wasn't listening any more. He had a murder weapon to find.
Half way through his circle of the alley, Ryo caught up with him.
"Pi?" He said, "Pi, where are you going? Pi!"
Once he'd walked to the end of the alley and back again, Yamashita let his feet do the rest, carefully ignoring all logic and sense and self-preservation. If this worked, well. He didn't want to think about what it could mean if this worked. Ryo followed him as he wandered out into the street, silent now but for the odd hushed, "What the fuck, man..." and Yamashita turned left, away from the entrance to the club, eyes fixed firmly ahead. Left again, back out when it didn't feel quite right, and then again, another left, a little further up. Halfway down this alley was an innocuous-looking, clean, white dumpster, and Yamashita headed for it like a homing missile.
"Give me a leg up," he ordered. Ryo did as he was told without question or argument, but Yamashita was hardly in the mood to appreciate it. Holding onto the edge with one hand, he peered over the top, then jumped back down and walked around to the back instead, where he dropped to his knees and began to rummage through the pile of black refuse sacks piled up against the wall. One, two, three bags down and there it was, silver-stained-red. His heart sank.
Lifting it up, he held it out for Ryo to see.
"What the... Oh shit, gloves!" Ryo exclaimed, and Yamashita belatedly realised that in his haste - if it could be called that - he'd forgotten to put on his gloves. Any fingerprints that may have been on the hilt would now be compromised, unless they got terribly, terribly lucky.
He swore.
Ryo reached into his back pocket and produced a packet containing a fresh pair, then slipped one on to take hold of the knife gingerly.
"How did you do that?" He breathed, staring straight at the razor-sharp blade, "How did you know it was here?"
Yamashita wanted to throw up again.
"I don't know."
He was more than happy to be rid of the knife when Ryo handed it over to one of the forensics working on the scene, and two more of them scuttled off to process the area where they'd found the knife, too.
"By the way," Ryo asked, peeling off his glove and shoving it back into his pocket, "Did you have any luck with those security tapes last night?"
"Oh, I-" Yamashita paused, and swallowed. He'd just dreamt about a girl being murdered, the very same girl who was now led out in a body bag, and had known exactly where to go to find the weapon that had been used on her. Now really didn't seem like a good time to tell Ryo about the face he'd seen on the security tapes last night, and how he was beginning to fear for his sanity. "No, nothing."
Ryo frowned, but it was concerned, not troubled. ""You really don't look too hot. I mean, you could never hope to hold a candle to me," He smirked, and Yamashita forced a chuckle, trying to focus through the fuzzy blur around the edge of his vision, "But you really don't look like you'll be much good today."
Yamashita avoided pointing out that he'd led them to the knife, and just nodded mutely.
"Is Jin in town? Maybe you should call him up when we get back to the station, get him to take you home. Chill for a bit, watch a movie, get some rest."
"Yeah," Yamashita replied, grateful for the opportunity to get out of here and sort his head out, "Yeah, I think I will."
-
But before he'd even made it home, things suddenly got a whole lot worse.
They'd been lucky enough to come across a witness who had seen the man Mika Takashima had left the club with. Emi Nishikawa had gone looking for her friend and had found the couple in the very alley they'd found Mika's body abandoned in, but Mika had seemed to be just as into whatever he had planned as he was, so she had left as soon as the man turned feral eyes on her. It was just too much of a coincidence to ignore.
She had come back to the station, and the men on duty had rapidly assembled a line-up of men being held in their cells that could fit the vague description she'd given them. They weren't really hoping to get lucky, but hoped she'd at least be able to narrow down the description of their guy a little more.
Yamashita had followed them back to the station in his own car, but it took him twice as long because he kept almost nodding off at the wheel and opted to drive especially slowly to avoid any accidents. By the time he'd parked up and gone inside to wait for Jin - who promised he was on his way - Emi had already been taken in to view their haphazard line-up. He hadn't tried to convince Ryo to let him oversee it too; he tried to tell himself it was because he was too tired, too eager for the rest that was awaiting him, but he couldn't hide the truth from himself. He didn't want her to see his face.
Jin arrived just as he was finishing his third cup of coffee in under ten minutes - anything just to keep his eyes open - and followed Yamashita down the hall so that he could tell Ryo he was leaving for the day. The first time Jin had gotten all the way from the front desk to their offices in the back, Yamashita had questioned how. Jin had just waggled his eyebrows, pursed his lips in Yamashita's direction, and flashed the visitor's pass he'd been given, and the girl on the front desk had never looked at him in quite the same way ever again.
"Yo," He said softly, letting his hair fall into his eyes as he poked his head around the door and into the room where Ryo was seated with Emi and Detective Superintendent Tsubasa, "Any luck?"
Ryo sighed. "Hey. Nah, nothing, Nishikawa-san - Nishikawa-san, this is Tomohisa Yamashita, the other detective on the case - says she'll keep trying for us, though."
Yamashita forced a slight smile and inclined his head as the girl turned to bow. He let out a sigh of relief when nothing else happened, his heart suddenly so light he thought it might try and float away. Then she looked up, and gasped.
"You." She breathed, and Yamashita felt his world come crashing down.
Emi stepped back, as far as she could without making a spectacle, and turned back to Ryo with wide eyes.
"He's the one I saw, last night," she said, quietly.
"Eh?" Ryo blurted, face the picture of ignorance, and Tsubasa looked up from the paperwork he'd been filling out.
"I think you must be mistaken, Nishikawa-san."
She shook her head firmly. "I'm sure it was him. I remember thinking," here, she blushed, "That he was really good looking, when Mika-chan left with him. Until he shouted at me."
Yamashita's mind was working on overdrive even whilst his body was threatening to shut down. He remembered watching tape after tape of people in the very first club, remembered, with a lurch, his own face on the monitor, remembered resting his head on the desk for just a moment... and remembered waking up in his own bed, the remnants of a nightmare hovering around the edges of his conscious. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember a thing in between. He stood, silent, for a long, agonising moment until Tsubasa turned towards him, eyes questioning. Ryo was studiously avoiding his gaze, and that was possibly even worse.
"I've never even met the girl!" He exclaimed, "This- I- Why would I kill her? Why would I kill anyone?!"
"I think I'd like to leave now, Nishikido-san, Tsubasa-san" Emi said softly, her voice shaking as she spoke. Ryo sighed again helplessly and nodded.
"No!" Yamashita burst, his tone taking on a desperate edge, "Don't, please, we need your help. I didn't do this, I swear, I was at work late last night then I went home, I swear it!" He did, he did, he had to have done.
Jin moved behind him so that he was more than just a shoulder in the doorway, "He's telling the truth. He was at home with me the whole time."
Yamashita tamped down on the urge to throw his arms around his friend's neck, and thought his knees might give out from the force of the relief he felt coarsing through him like a tidal wave.
"You see?" Ryo said, obviously relieved Jin was there to back up his story. Whether Ryo trusted him or not would have been irrelevant if they had a witness and he had no alibi.
"I-I'm sorry, Yamashita-san." Emi bowed her head, "It was dark. I must be confused."
Yamashita shook his head and waved his hand in dismissal, not trusting his voice to not betray him in some way.
-
Jin was quiet during the drive, but Yamashita was grateful for the peace. It was only when they'd gotten home that Jin finally spoke.
"So, are you going to tell me what's going on?"
Yamashita frowned, and the movement made him want to close his eyes. Everything was so bright. "You know we're not supposed to talk about our cases..."
"That's not what I mean, and you know it." Jin's voice was just this side of harsh, and Yamashita wasn't used to having it directed towards him like that. He could feel the icy fingers of panic starting to claw at him again as Jin stared at him, gaze steady.
"What are you talking about?"
"Pi," Jin said firmly, with an edge of worry beginning to creep in, "You didn't come home last night."
"...What?"
Jin flopped down on the sofa with a huff. "Look, I just lied to the police for you, the least you can do is tell me where you were."
Yamashita's mouth worked soundlessly as he searched for something, anything in the gap in his mind between the times he'd fallen asleep at his desk and woken up again eight hours later, safe in his bed. Anything, locking up his office, getting on the train to come home, fishing his keys out of his pocket... But there was nothing. Just a few flashes of skin, a girl, and blood, everywhere.
"Pi?" Jin asked again, concern definitely winning out this time, "Where did you go?"
"I... I don't know," Yamashita whispered, his insides turning cold, "I can't remember..."
"What? Are you okay? I know you're not sleeping well, and you're up at all hours of the night, but... Is something wrong? Is there something else?"
"I'm f-" Yamashita bit back his automatic response, and paused. He was feeling terribly light headed, despite being sat down already, and he closed his eyes to try and get some sense of purchase. "No, not really, I... I'm scared, Jin. Things keep getting more and more fucked and I don't know what's going on." Yamashita brought his hands up to cover his face, head tipping back to rest against the back of the sofa where the cushions were heavenly-soft behind him. "I'm having nightmares, dreaming that I'm doing terrible things to people..." Each word was getting harder to think of, harder to pronounce, like someone had injected him with a strong anaesthetic and his tongue was swelling to the size of a golf ball, "Horrible, unforgivable things... I'm forgetting things, and I'm always so tired, Jin..." Even as he said it, Yamashita's eyelids were drooping, invisible hands reaching out and pulling him under no matter how hard he tried to resist. "No matter how long I sleep, I'm always so... so tired..."
-
"As if you'd ever understand." Yamashita's lip curled in distaste, and Jin's hackles rose visibly.
"Oh, so now I'm a moron too?!"
"Why do you think I'm still here? Living with a failure. Couldn't succeed at anything else so you fell back on being a musician, and you couldn't even do that either. You're great for my ego, Akanishi."
When Jin looked at him, eyes brimming over with hurt, with betrayal, he couldn't hide the satisfaction it filled him with. He wasn't really trying too hard, though.
-
"What the fuck is your problem?! I can't believe I lied to the fucking police for you, you're such a- a-" Jin stuttered, clearly racking his brains for a suitable enough word.
"Please, don't strain yourself. I wouldn't want it to hurt."
"What's wrong with you? Why are you being like this?!"
"Like what? Like a human?!" Yamashita yelled, blood suddenly boiling. "Like I'm not some snivelling little mild-mannered idiot pandering to anyone who looks at me the right way? Like I've got a backbone?!
"Like an asshole!"
-
"This isn't you, Pi! You're not like this! I don't want to believe you hurt those girls, I don't, but like this I can't help but think..."
"So what if I did?" Yamashita drawled, "You have no proof. Would you turn in your best friend for murder?"
Jin looked away, and Yamashita sneered.
"Of course you wouldn't. Always so fucking loyal, Akanishi, like a puppy that keeps coming back no matter how many times you kick it. Pathetic."
A fist collided with his face, and while he was still rebounding from the force of it, the door slammed.
He smiled.
One down.
-
Yamashita pried his eyelids open, but found himself confronted with just as much darkness as there had been before he awoke. It was quiet, too, too quiet, and it took all of his energy to push himself up into a sitting position. If the ache in his thigh was any indication, his cellphone had still been in his pocket when he fell asleep, and he fished it out, still straining for any sign of life in the apartment.
The light from his phone was painful, and he squinted at it through cracked eyes.
1:37AM
He groaned. When was the last time he'd even seen midnight? Oh shit, and he'd fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation, too. Jin was going to be pissed.
Yamashita yawned widely, and his jaw throbbed. Lifting a hand to it, he pressed a fingertip to the skin and white hot pain shot through his face. He had a vague memory - a dream, maybe - of fighting with Jin, of saying cruel things that he could never even remember thinking before, and Jin had... Had he left? It certainly seemed that way from the silence and darkness of their apartment; Jin rarely slept before three in the morning.
Punching in Jin's number, Yamashita slumped down into the cushions as it rang, over and over until switching to voicemail. Ending the call, he tried again. On the third try, someone picked up, and Jin muttered a quick "Stop calling me" before hanging up on him.
He must be really pissed. Yamashita struggled to remember what he'd said, what had happened after they returned home from the station, but all he could remember clearly was dozing off mid-sentence, then waking again hours later. Everything in between was fuzzy and distorted, like he was trying to focus through frosted glass or thick syrup, and the details refused to come to him.
- Talk to me, - he typed, - please. -
- Why? - Jin replied simply.
- Did I upset you? I don't remember what happened. -
- Can't use the same excuse twice. -
A second message arrived just as Yamashita was reading the first.
- Asshole. -
It hurt when he smiled, serving as a brutal reminder of just how much Jin hadn't appreciated everything he'd been saying, but then there were keys in the lock, and Jin flicked the overhead light on. Yamashita grimaced and covered his eyes with a hand, but even that wasn't enough to block out the light completely.
"I'm back," he muttered, clearly still in a bad mood, but he was here and that was a start.
"Welcome home," Yamashita replied, and tried to ignore the throb starting up in his temples.
"I'm only here because I trust you," Jin told him, and Yamashita noticed he hadn't taken off his shoes or jacket yet, and had yet to move away from the door. "But I'm going to stand over here."
"Jin..."
"Seriously, I don't... I'm really worried about you, Pi. You're not yourself. The things you said to me..." Jin looked down and away, and folded his arms across his chest. "It wasn't you. Maybe it's just the lack of sleep, but-"
"I'm getting plenty of sleep," Yamashita interjected, "It just isn't doing any good."
Jin scoffed. "You're disappearing at all hours of the night, and even I don't hear you come in. How much sleep are you getting every day, an hour, two? No wonder you're always so exhausted."
"But I..." Yamashita murmured. As if it had been waiting for this moment, the fog surrounding his memories began to clear, snippets of time flashing behind his eyes. "I don't... I can't..."
"I think... I think you need to get some help, Pi, talk to someone. Before, you said you were scared, scared o-of yourself, and... I think I'm a little scared of you too."
Horrific realisation began to dawn on him, and Yamashita felt the churning of disgusted nausea in his stomach as things started to come together, the denial he'd been hiding behind for so long finally being swept away like old, dusty cobwebs. The restless nights, being thrown out of the bar, the dreams, the knife, his face on the cameras and now the empty patches of memory, slowly, slowly being filled with images of girls, so many girls dancing with him, writhing over him, dying beneath him... "No..."
Everything around him was coming together and falling apart simultaneously, tugging him this way and that between the memories, the facts, the impossible.
"No, I... I can't, I would never..." Yamashita's voice was gradually getting more panicked, and he brought his hands up to cover his face again, vainly hoping that hiding his eyes will stop the terrible, gut-wrenching scenes of pain and mutilation and death from playing out across his mind's eye. "No... no..."
His stomach convulsed again, harder, tighter this time, then there were strong arms around him, lifting him and steering him through the apartment until he felt cool porcelain beneath his feet, his knees.
He barely noticed the splash of icy water across his face once he was done emptying the contents of his stomach, but when he felt an unnerving urge to laugh bubbling up in his throat, Yamashita whipped his head up to look at his bedraggled appearance in the mirror.
Slowly, his reflection smiled.
-
Yamashita stirred, gradually coming to and lifting his chin from where it had been slumped against his chest. He moved to stretch his arms out of habit, to release the knot of tension in his upper back, but when he tried to move, he couldn't. Things cleared much more quickly after that, and after a few moments of testing his limbs, he found himself tied rather securely to a dining chair.
Despite the ache in his muscles, though, he actually felt better than he had in a long time. The light didn't hurt his eyes anywhere near as much as usual, and there wasn't so much as a trace of the fog that he'd begun to forget wasn't supposed to be hanging around his head all the time.
But there was still the matter of why he was tied to a chair.
"Jin?" He called out, craning his neck to try and see into the kitchen, "Hello?"
There was a soft rustle from the other side of the room, and Jin's sleep-mussed hair appeared over the back of the sofa. He blinked owlishly in Yamashita's direction, then seemed to catch himself, sitting up quickly and regarding him with a cool - and slightly drowsy - expression.
"You're awake."
Yamashita hummed affirmatively, "I'm also tied to a chair. What happened?"
"You passed out on me, in the bathroom. I didn't want to take my chances."
"Oh," He replied simply, "Well... Do you think you could untie me now? My legs are cramping up."
Jin's expression was wary, to say the least, and Yamashita couldn't say he blamed him.
"Do you think that's a good idea?"
"I'm fine, I promise, I'm all me." Jin frowned sceptically, and Yamashita lifted his head clearly, "Look at me, come on."
Jin slowly came closer and peered into Yamashita's eyes, forehead creased in concentration. "You don't look so... cruel, I guess."
"See?" Yamashita made a conscious effort to smile, "I'm okay. Please, just let me stretch my legs for a minute then you can tie me back up if it'll make you feel better."
Jin sighed, and he knew that he'd convinced him. "Well... I guess it couldn't hurt. But only for a minute..." He untied Yamashita's feet first and then, once he was certain the other man wasn't going to try and kick him in the face, freed his hands, too.
Yamashita grinned gratefully, stretching his arms up and making an appropriately content sound. Then, he gathered all of the strength he could muster, and punched Jin hard in the face. His friend stumbled to the floor with a shout of pain, hands flying up to protect his face, and before he could retaliate Yamashita had him pinned down, his forearm pressed firmly across Jin's throat. Jin's eyes were wide, terrified as he gasped for breath that wasn't coming, pupils dilated until there was almost no colour left around the outside. He tried to thrash, to buck Yamashita's body off of him, but Yamashita's hold on him was unforgiving, and it wasn't long until the life began to fade from his eyes.
Eventually, Jin slumped back against the floor, unconscious. Yamashita was tempted to finish the job, adrenaline pumping fast and addictive through his veins, but he had to be careful now. One wrong move, and everything he'd been working so hard for could all go to hell.
Tonight, he was going to have a little fun instead.
-
Yamashita groaned, rolling onto his side, and felt his leg throb. He felt like death warmed over, body aching like he'd spent the past twenty four hours being beaten to a pulp, head throbbing with a hangover like nothing he'd ever felt before, a stiffness to him that could only come from - he pried his eyes open - Shit. Sleeping on the pavement. He grimaced and forced himself into a sitting position, muscles screaming in protest, and felt something cool and wet drip from his cheek. Then he saw it.
Her.
Sprawled not two feet away from him was the body of what may once have been an attractive blonde foreigner. Except now, there was barely enough left to identify her. Her face had been mutilated beyond recognition, strips of skin and flesh hanging from her skull like a macabre piece of art. Her arms, legs, and neck had all been broken, if the angles they were lying at were any indication, and her clothes had been stripped from her body to reveal more of that bloody, nightmarish canvas of flesh. There was a trickle of images in his head, projections, memories, and when Yamashita sucked in a horrified breath, the stench of blood was unbearable. She'd been alive when he'd done this. He tasted bile, and the urge to feel that scarlet fluid dripping between his fingers was suddenly overwhelmingly strong. Clothes sodden with gore stuck to him like a second skin as he tried to scramble away, white-hot pain shooting through his leg from a deep gash in his left thigh, and his own blood had mingled with hers, his hands dipped in a heady cocktail of human life.
It was a threat. Look what I could be doing. Be grateful.
Too much, it was just too much, too much to take in, to process, to handle. Slick hands scrabbled through his pockets for his cellphone, punching in that number that he knew better than his own, and there was more, a fist, his arm pressed against Jin's neck, oh God, oh God, please pick up, please, plea-
"H-hello?"
"Jin! Oh my God, Jin, you're alive, please, you have to come get me, please," Yamashita babbled, filled with equal parts relief and terror. There were tears on his cheeks that he hadn't noticed shedding, and he barely recognised the sound of his own voice.
"Pi?" Jin's own voice was hoarse, "Is that you?"
"Yes, it's me, I promise, listen, please, you need to come get me, I- he- I- something terrible's happened. Please come, please, I can't- please, Jin-"
"Hey, calm down. Just breathe and listen to me, okay?"
Yamashita closed his mouth and sucked in a long breath through his nose, then choked on the stench of blood. He dragged himself further away, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, and tried again.
"Where are you?" Jin was asking, "Just tell me where you are and I'll be there as soon as I can."
"I..." Yamashita cast his eyes around, "I don't know."
A few old, long-forgotten shipping containers sat innocuously to his right, followed by seemingly never-ending stretch of concrete, surrounded by trees and foliage in the distance. Glad to have something to focus his attentions on, Yamashita moved further away from the body until he could lean up against one of the containers, and continued to draw in long, deep breaths through his mouth until the sickening smell had faded, being replaced by another. Salt water.
"I-I think I'm near the ocean..." Something rumbled in the distance and Yamashita instinctively curled in on himself as the sound grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening overhead, then died out to nothing again. "I think... I think I'm near the airport..."
"It's okay, just hang up the call and turn on your GPS. We can synch it to mine and I'll be right there, alright?"
Yamashita had never been more grateful that Jin had talked him into buying an up-to-date cellphone, and hung it up quickly, hands shaking as he tried to do as Jin had instructed. His guess had been correct, and his location popped up on the little screen in colours too bright for his situation; barely a few hundred feet from the Tama River, in full view of the stretch of monorail track that connected Ota-ku with the Haneda Airport terminals were it not for the huge metal containers hiding him from sight, and far enough away from civilisation that in the middle of the night, he probably wouldn't have even had to bother muffling her screams.
Now, all he had left to do was wait.
Not five minutes later, his phone rang. The noise made his head throb even harder, and he accepted it automatically before checking the caller ID. Glancing down as he did so, he saw Nishikido Ryo, connected flash up on the screen, and quickly hung it up again. It rang once more and Yamashita refused the call, then it stopped. Whatever Ryo needed him for could most definitely wait.
Soon, there was the distinctive sound of tyres on dirt, and Jin's car peeled into view. He must have driven like a madman to get there so quickly, and Yamashita could have cried with relief as his best friend flew out of his car and immediately froze.
"Oh, shit..."
Yamashita studiously didn't look to see what Jin was staring at, had no wish to see any more of exactly what his hands were capable of doing. Jin seemed to shake himself and turned away, hurrying to his side and hooking an arm around him to help him to his feet. Yamashita cried out in pain and Jin very nearly dropped him, grip slipping for a moment before he tightened his hold again, his own clothes getting smeared with blood.
"My leg," Yamashita gasped out through gritted teeth, "Careful."
Jin nodded his apology and together they half-carried, half-limped him to the car.
"Ryo called me just now," Jin said, and Yamashita was glad to have something to talk about, "He said he assumed you were taking the day off, and that the prints came through on your knife. Just yours, of course, but luckily they think that's because you were the one that found it."
Yamashita swallowed and nodded, squeezing his eyes shut against the barrage of emotion that hit him like a train hearing his best friend talk about what he'd done almost nonchalantly. Guilt, relief, shock, affection, panic, comfort. It hurt, and as Jin lowered him into the passenger seat and straightened, Yamashita clutched onto his wrist tightly.
"I'm so sorry, Jin," Yamashita said softly, eyeing the bruised skin across Jin's neck, "I-"
"Shut up," Jin snapped, then immediately softened, "That wasn't you, okay, he's... that thing in your head, he's not you."
"I- He-he's strong, really strong," he whispered, feeling his eyes grow wet, "This whole thing, it was just... just to prove a point. I- he clears up after himself, makes sure I get home clean and safe and tidy and that there's no traces left behind at the scene... He tore that poor girl to pieces just to make a point." He drew in a shuddering breath and released Jin's wrist to cover his mouth so that his next words came out muffled, "I'm not safe to be around."
"Stop talking like that," Jin said firmly, "You're going to be fine. I'll help, whatever you need, we'll get you through this and you'll be fine. Just fine."
When they arrived back home, Jin stripped off his shirt, stained with blood, and left it in the car while he went to fetch some clean clothes, and helped Yamashita change into them in the back seat. He balled their sodden clothing up in a black refuse sack which he left in the trunk for now, and half-carried Yamashita up the stairs to their apartment, where he sat him down on the edge of the tub and cleaned and bandaged his wound - which was thankfully nothing catastrophic, meant to scare, not incapacitate - complete with a few messy, home-made stitches. It hurt like hell, but anything was better than going to the hospital.
The next few days were relatively normal, all things considered. Yamashita didn't ask where Jin learned to stitch flesh back together, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. Yamashita didn't ask how Jin managed to procure a legitimate-looking doctor's certificate signing him off of work with a combination of stress and exhaustion, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. Yamashita didn't ask how Jin could afford to spend all his time at home, and Jin didn't ask him about the girls he'd killed. It was a comfortable existence, but one that only lasted during the day. As soon as dusk arrived, Yamashita felt like some kind of monster - and really, perhaps that was true - as Jin tied him securely to his bed, long lengths of rope around his torso, wrists, arms and legs, with a makeshift gag around his face, then retreated to his own room and turned his iPod up to the max. He never forgot and he never left the house, and no matter how loud Yamashita shouted, no matter how loud he screamed and yelled and fought, he never, ever let him loose.
Unfortunately, they soon learnt that the denial method only made things worse. Both of them were getting weaker and weaker every day, a lack of sleep soon catching up on Jin, too, and the longer Yamashita went without rest, the easier it got for him to lose sight of himself. He could feel his 'other half' lurking just beneath the surface sometimes, hovering, close enough to make him uncomfortable but never pushing enough for him to be willing to worry Jin with it. His friend was surviving on the rest he could get during the hour or so of peace and quiet there was between when Yamashita led down to when he awoke again, and that was fitful at best.
Yamashita lasted through almost two weeks of days spent studiously not talking about what happened at night, before he made his decision. He could feel whatever was inside of him fighting, clamouring to get out, and he could feel himself slipping, too. Jin would say something innocuous, and Yamashita would snap back at him, filled with a fit of irrational rage for a split second before it was gone like it had never existed. He'd pick up a glass to fill it with water, and end up smashing it against the wall, the shards flying out in every direction. Jin would painstakingly tease out every piece that embedded itself in his skin, cleaning and dressing the deepest cuts, and would clean up the glass without a word, but they both knew what was happening.
They were just too scared of it to talk about it.
And that, that had to be the worst of it all. Forget the pain, the psychosis, the death, none of that seemed to matter now. Not when it was clear that if Yamashita was going down, then Jin was willingly going to go with him.
That realisation was what had pushed him that final inch. That realisation was what had him waiting patiently until Jin had fallen asleep on the sofa, breath slow and even, before he pocketed his wallet, cellphone and several bottles from the bathroom cabinet, and headed to the nearest convenience store, typing out a mail to Jin on the way. The last thing he wanted was for his friend to think he was guilty of anything other than being too good a friend.
Yamashita had never thought he'd be grateful to have been assigned to one too many possible suicide cases in the past. Even with the other half of him trying to break out and stop him, it didn't take as long as he'd thought it would to force down the cocktail of tablets and drinks he'd seen used successfully before, including several types of sleeping pill he'd been prescribed over his years as a police detective. He turned one of the empty bottles over and over in his hands as the drowsiness began to kick in, and closed his eyes against the world spinning around him, leaning back against the driver's seat headrest.
This way, at least, he thought, mouth curving into a soft smile, everyone would be safe.
-
The light that used to burn his eyes now only warmed his face, and sounds that had grated on his nerves were now like music to his ears. The sun shone, the sea danced and the breeze rustled through the trees. It was a beautiful day, and it was his alone to enjoy.
Making himself sick to get the worst of the pills out of his system had been a painful experience to say the least, but it was more than worth it when this was the result. His body was finally all his own, and that was the kind of thing he'd have gone through any discomfort to have back again.
It felt good to be free enough to go out again, to go to clubs again, to not have to worry about anything but enjoying himself again, and he walked through the doors and up to the bar with a smile.
The bartender eyed him up and down appreciatively. "New in town, huh?" She asked, voice silky with a distinct American lilt, "What can I get you, Mr..."
"Yamashita. But please," he said softly in heavily-accented English, and leaned forward into her personal space. He cast his eyes away from the mirror along the back wall, where he could see that pitiful, worthless excuse for a human that had inhabited his body for so many years pounding his fists against the glass, face contorted in a long, silent scream, and smirked.
"Call me Tomo."