Research breeds its own brand of fic.
.
Title: Massacre
Fandoms: Monster / Tokyo Babylon. No spoilers for Monster, though.
Characters: Kenzo, Seishirou
Rating: PG.
Words: 1800
Summary: April 24, 1983. A small hospital in Yokohama takes on an interesting patient.
-
Massacre
monster / tokyo babylon
Mithrigil Galtirglin
1983.04.24
00:06
“Uh?”
“Kenzo, we need you. I think it’s another one of the boys from the incident this afternoon. ”
Nothing wakes him up faster than this kind of call. “I’ll be down in five minutes.”
-
00:10
The door’s double-hinged and keeps swinging when Kenzo’s long past it. There’s a junior surgeon waiting with a clipboard already, a pillar of efficiency that falls into step behind him-and then in front of him, implicitly leading him to prep. He asks what isn’t on the profile first, “They couldn’t take him at Showa?”
“Probably trying to keep the victims and the perpetrators separate, sensei,” the junior-Seki-says with urgent seriousness. “They’ve got all the vagrants at Showa. A third one just died, according to the news. And so they must be sending us the gang.”
“I’ve been asleep all afternoon, Seki. Gang?”
“Bunch of middle-schoolers turned out to be responsible for that massacre of the homeless, in the park.”
Kenzo falls behind a solid step and forgets how to pronounce the second kanji of this boy’s family name, if he knew it in the first place. The three that make up the first name are easier. “He’s a little old for middle school.”
“Well he’d be a little clean for a vagrant, under all the blood. Some of which isn’t his. They made their choice, sent him here.”
The bare scheme of the injuries is outlined. “He’s in radiology now?”
“Yeah. Stabilized his condition en route-we just need to determine the scope of the injuries and the cause of his unconsciousness, there’s probably a contusion, possible DAI. The trail of blood led from him to right under the one that died on site.”
He almost overshoots when Seki leads him around a corner, trying to turn a page on the clipboard at the same time.
-
00:36
The blood’s smeared over most of the name and face on the student’s train-pass, but that’s evidence, so Tenma has to make do with squinting through the plastic bag. The birthdate’s intact, though; he turned eighteen back on the first of the month and his school is given as Shinobugaoka, up in Tokyo-he’s a long way from home, that’s for sure.
Though most of the blood was concentrated around his hands and chest, those aren’t injured beyond a possible sprain in the right wrist. Radiology hasn’t turned up much either-strain at the temples but, once the blood was cleared away, no penetrating head injuries. Blood had leaked from his ears-there are trails down his skin to indicate that, plain physical pictures, and the blood’s his-but there’s no evidence in the scans of intracranial hemorrhage.
What do they expect Kenzo to do, magic?
-
00:48
“He’s awake,” Seki says, his head through the door.
Well, that settles a few things.
“…How awake?” Kenzo asks, picking up the clipboard.
“He’s asking after the welfare of those vagrants.”
Kenzo keeps eye-contact up with Seki just to ascertain the lack of sarcasm.
-
00:50
It’s a familiar picture, and usually a welcoming one-the patient straining to sit up on a cot that’s meant to accommodate the people standing, not the one lying down. That kind of stubbornness is refreshing to Kenzo. There’s nothing more worth saving than someone who wants to live.
And the young man on the cot shows that in every straight ledge in his posture. He’s clearly an athlete, broader-shouldered than Kenzo is now (let alone than he was at that age) but with an enviable spare litheness to him. The clipboard says he’s also a good deal closer to two meters tall than Kenzo will ever be. His hair is a black close enough to brown that Kenzo has to squint in order to tell whether there’s still blood in it, and long enough that he’d probably complain if it had been shaved off for surgery, hanging not quite into his eyes.
He’s-smiling, almost.
“Sensei,” he says-his voice has already broken, or mostly-and tries to support himself on his elbows, “I’ll be fine, this has happened before-are those men okay? The day laborers?”
Kenzo narrows his eyes, comes nearer. “This has happened before?”
“I practice onmyoujutsu,” the young man says. “I guess the strain just overwhelmed me, out there.”
Instead of believing him, Kenzo checks his vitals.
The young man sinks back into the cot accommodatingly, rolling his eyes instead of sighing. “They’re not all right, are they.”
“No, you’re actually healthy enough that we’re wondering if something’s wrong with us.”
“I meant the day laborers.”
“I don’t know. I’ve barely been awake longer than you have.”
A raise of an eyebrow, a hitch in his heart rate. “I assure you, I’ll be fine. It’s just sakanagi.”
“Backlash?”
“I told you; I’m an onmyouji.”
“All right.” Kenzo reasserts his clipboard. “Just to make sure-”
“My name is Sakurazuka Seishirou. Sei from star, shi from history, rou. If the absence of my wallet is any indication you know that my birthday is April first, nineteen sixty five. The student train-pass should be expired, I graduated, and I’m just starting my second year at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. My current student ID should be in a black briefcase with some of the paraphernalia from my other profession, the one I’ve now told you three times has landed me in the hospital before. Did they leave that in the ambulance? And which hospital am I at?”
Kenzo just puts a check next to “Conscious.”
-
02:01
“I’d like my insurance card back.”
“Oh?”
“And the rest of my things. But the insurance card will probably take the longest for your father to relinquish.”
“My father?”
“He’s the director, isn’t he?”
“You’re not leaving in the middle of the night.”
“How are those day laborers?”
“If you stick around until morning you’ll get the same newspaper with breakfast that I do.”
“What were those boys doing?”
“Sakurazuka-kun, I’ve been observing you for the past hour. I haven’t remedied my lack of knowledge of the massacre any more than you have.”
“Massacre?”
Kenzo sighs. “Three died.”
“Of the kids, or the day laborers?”
“Which got blood all over you, Sakurazuka-kun.”
There’d been a kind of daring, intellectual smugness on the young man’s face; Kenzo watches it drip down, without a change in pulse. “So I couldn’t help him,” he says, somberly.
Kenzo’s palms sweat, one on the pen, one on Sakurazuka’s wrist. “That’s what you were trying to do?”
“I was performing a ritual nearby that had nothing to do with anyone else-in the world of the living, I mean. I heard the scuffle, it distracted me-that must have been when the sakanagi started-and then tried to intervene. Those kids were the aggressive ones, I was pretty sure the day laborers had been minding their own business…”
Somber-not remorseful, Kenzo notices.
“That’s why you’re keeping me here, isn’t it? Because I’m a witness, or a suspect.”
“Yes.”
“Magical evidence isn’t admissible in court. And I think I’d like my one phone call-since I don’t have parents to notify, was anyone called at all?”
Kenzo stares at the easy smile reasserting itself on Sakurazuka’s chin, and doesn’t know.
-
03:45
“Phone call,” Sakurazuka reminds him.
“And who would you be calling?”
“The House of Councilors.”
“The only people in Japan who sleep less than you, apparently.”
-
04:59
Even college students need sleep; when Sakurazuka finally does, it doesn’t look relaxing. Kenzo’s seen that before, in patients, in his father, in his roommate from medical school. He sleeps but doesn’t shut down. He holds things; the pillow in his arm, the bar of the cot in his left hand, the sheets between his knees. At one point, he bites down on a corner of the pillow, not urgently but not erotically-just consuming, almost considerate. Testing. Like he’s been doing to Kenzo this entire time, testing.
-
05:15
Seki slides him the briefcase.
“He called it paraphernalia,” Kenzo says, mostly to the air but Seki can listen too. “As if he didn’t care about the other connotations of the term.”
“Aren’t all magic-users on drugs anyway?”
Kenzo shrugs. “That’s not what I meant.” He opens the case; a stack of inked cards, white-on-black-wards?; stones; a ceremonial dagger and the cloth to clean it; paper ribbon; a travel first-aid kit, bottled water, aspirin, a disposable camera; breath mints. Nail clippers. Spare change. Keychain. University ID. Glasses in a glasses case and a bottle of eyedrops.
Seki whistles, not-quite-approvingly. “Does his mother pack his lunch in there too?”
“His parents are dead,” Kenzo says.
-
06:02
“Phone call,” Sakurazuka repeats. His arm’s still curled around the pillow, but the rest of him is rather clearly awake.
Kenzo leaves him the newspaper instead.
Sakurazuka leaves that at the foot of the cot-sits up straight, hangs his legs over the bars and hoists himself to the floor with a kind of bestial effortlessness. “Bathroom, then?”
“In that corner. And socks,” Kenzo points out, “I’ll be back with some socks. Which reminds me-who’s going to bring you a change of clothing?”
The bathroom door shuts. “Phone call.”
-
06:04
Three dead; thirteen of the day laborers injured; all the boys off scot-free, apparently, no one worse off than Sakurazuka, who doesn’t even seem to be counted among the gang’s number. His story’s implicitly clear just from skimming the article; all those boys were much younger than he, from schools here in Yokohama, and what would a college student have to do with the likes of them?
-
06:06
“Why were you in Yokohama, Sakurazuka-kun?”
The bathroom door shuts. “Do you believe me?”
-
07:00
“-Father-”
“You’re not on this one, Kenzo,” the director of the hospital says, and takes the clipboard out of his hands.
This door’s single-hinged, with a window in it, and slow to pull shut on its hydraulic. Beyond that, Sakurazuka smiles welcomingly, gets up from the edge of the cot and doesn’t bow. His right hand’s arched like a crab on the newspaper, no evidence of a sprain at all. He listens to whatever Kenzo’s father says with receptive eyes, squinting a little. Kenzo remembers the glasses, the eyedrops.
Everything else, he should probably forget.
---
-
-
The events described as taking place on April 23 in Yokohama are not ficticious.
-
Title: Massacre
Fandoms: Monster / Tokyo Babylon. No spoilers for Monster, though.
Characters: Kenzo, Seishirou
Rating: PG.
Words: 1800
Summary: April 24, 1983. A small hospital in Yokohama takes on an interesting patient.
-
Massacre
monster / tokyo babylon
Mithrigil Galtirglin
1983.04.24
00:06
“Uh?”
“Kenzo, we need you. I think it’s another one of the boys from the incident this afternoon. ”
Nothing wakes him up faster than this kind of call. “I’ll be down in five minutes.”
-
00:10
The door’s double-hinged and keeps swinging when Kenzo’s long past it. There’s a junior surgeon waiting with a clipboard already, a pillar of efficiency that falls into step behind him-and then in front of him, implicitly leading him to prep. He asks what isn’t on the profile first, “They couldn’t take him at Showa?”
“Probably trying to keep the victims and the perpetrators separate, sensei,” the junior-Seki-says with urgent seriousness. “They’ve got all the vagrants at Showa. A third one just died, according to the news. And so they must be sending us the gang.”
“I’ve been asleep all afternoon, Seki. Gang?”
“Bunch of middle-schoolers turned out to be responsible for that massacre of the homeless, in the park.”
Kenzo falls behind a solid step and forgets how to pronounce the second kanji of this boy’s family name, if he knew it in the first place. The three that make up the first name are easier. “He’s a little old for middle school.”
“Well he’d be a little clean for a vagrant, under all the blood. Some of which isn’t his. They made their choice, sent him here.”
The bare scheme of the injuries is outlined. “He’s in radiology now?”
“Yeah. Stabilized his condition en route-we just need to determine the scope of the injuries and the cause of his unconsciousness, there’s probably a contusion, possible DAI. The trail of blood led from him to right under the one that died on site.”
He almost overshoots when Seki leads him around a corner, trying to turn a page on the clipboard at the same time.
-
00:36
The blood’s smeared over most of the name and face on the student’s train-pass, but that’s evidence, so Tenma has to make do with squinting through the plastic bag. The birthdate’s intact, though; he turned eighteen back on the first of the month and his school is given as Shinobugaoka, up in Tokyo-he’s a long way from home, that’s for sure.
Though most of the blood was concentrated around his hands and chest, those aren’t injured beyond a possible sprain in the right wrist. Radiology hasn’t turned up much either-strain at the temples but, once the blood was cleared away, no penetrating head injuries. Blood had leaked from his ears-there are trails down his skin to indicate that, plain physical pictures, and the blood’s his-but there’s no evidence in the scans of intracranial hemorrhage.
What do they expect Kenzo to do, magic?
-
00:48
“He’s awake,” Seki says, his head through the door.
Well, that settles a few things.
“…How awake?” Kenzo asks, picking up the clipboard.
“He’s asking after the welfare of those vagrants.”
Kenzo keeps eye-contact up with Seki just to ascertain the lack of sarcasm.
-
00:50
It’s a familiar picture, and usually a welcoming one-the patient straining to sit up on a cot that’s meant to accommodate the people standing, not the one lying down. That kind of stubbornness is refreshing to Kenzo. There’s nothing more worth saving than someone who wants to live.
And the young man on the cot shows that in every straight ledge in his posture. He’s clearly an athlete, broader-shouldered than Kenzo is now (let alone than he was at that age) but with an enviable spare litheness to him. The clipboard says he’s also a good deal closer to two meters tall than Kenzo will ever be. His hair is a black close enough to brown that Kenzo has to squint in order to tell whether there’s still blood in it, and long enough that he’d probably complain if it had been shaved off for surgery, hanging not quite into his eyes.
He’s-smiling, almost.
“Sensei,” he says-his voice has already broken, or mostly-and tries to support himself on his elbows, “I’ll be fine, this has happened before-are those men okay? The day laborers?”
Kenzo narrows his eyes, comes nearer. “This has happened before?”
“I practice onmyoujutsu,” the young man says. “I guess the strain just overwhelmed me, out there.”
Instead of believing him, Kenzo checks his vitals.
The young man sinks back into the cot accommodatingly, rolling his eyes instead of sighing. “They’re not all right, are they.”
“No, you’re actually healthy enough that we’re wondering if something’s wrong with us.”
“I meant the day laborers.”
“I don’t know. I’ve barely been awake longer than you have.”
A raise of an eyebrow, a hitch in his heart rate. “I assure you, I’ll be fine. It’s just sakanagi.”
“Backlash?”
“I told you; I’m an onmyouji.”
“All right.” Kenzo reasserts his clipboard. “Just to make sure-”
“My name is Sakurazuka Seishirou. Sei from star, shi from history, rou. If the absence of my wallet is any indication you know that my birthday is April first, nineteen sixty five. The student train-pass should be expired, I graduated, and I’m just starting my second year at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. My current student ID should be in a black briefcase with some of the paraphernalia from my other profession, the one I’ve now told you three times has landed me in the hospital before. Did they leave that in the ambulance? And which hospital am I at?”
Kenzo just puts a check next to “Conscious.”
-
02:01
“I’d like my insurance card back.”
“Oh?”
“And the rest of my things. But the insurance card will probably take the longest for your father to relinquish.”
“My father?”
“He’s the director, isn’t he?”
“You’re not leaving in the middle of the night.”
“How are those day laborers?”
“If you stick around until morning you’ll get the same newspaper with breakfast that I do.”
“What were those boys doing?”
“Sakurazuka-kun, I’ve been observing you for the past hour. I haven’t remedied my lack of knowledge of the massacre any more than you have.”
“Massacre?”
Kenzo sighs. “Three died.”
“Of the kids, or the day laborers?”
“Which got blood all over you, Sakurazuka-kun.”
There’d been a kind of daring, intellectual smugness on the young man’s face; Kenzo watches it drip down, without a change in pulse. “So I couldn’t help him,” he says, somberly.
Kenzo’s palms sweat, one on the pen, one on Sakurazuka’s wrist. “That’s what you were trying to do?”
“I was performing a ritual nearby that had nothing to do with anyone else-in the world of the living, I mean. I heard the scuffle, it distracted me-that must have been when the sakanagi started-and then tried to intervene. Those kids were the aggressive ones, I was pretty sure the day laborers had been minding their own business…”
Somber-not remorseful, Kenzo notices.
“That’s why you’re keeping me here, isn’t it? Because I’m a witness, or a suspect.”
“Yes.”
“Magical evidence isn’t admissible in court. And I think I’d like my one phone call-since I don’t have parents to notify, was anyone called at all?”
Kenzo stares at the easy smile reasserting itself on Sakurazuka’s chin, and doesn’t know.
-
03:45
“Phone call,” Sakurazuka reminds him.
“And who would you be calling?”
“The House of Councilors.”
“The only people in Japan who sleep less than you, apparently.”
-
04:59
Even college students need sleep; when Sakurazuka finally does, it doesn’t look relaxing. Kenzo’s seen that before, in patients, in his father, in his roommate from medical school. He sleeps but doesn’t shut down. He holds things; the pillow in his arm, the bar of the cot in his left hand, the sheets between his knees. At one point, he bites down on a corner of the pillow, not urgently but not erotically-just consuming, almost considerate. Testing. Like he’s been doing to Kenzo this entire time, testing.
-
05:15
Seki slides him the briefcase.
“He called it paraphernalia,” Kenzo says, mostly to the air but Seki can listen too. “As if he didn’t care about the other connotations of the term.”
“Aren’t all magic-users on drugs anyway?”
Kenzo shrugs. “That’s not what I meant.” He opens the case; a stack of inked cards, white-on-black-wards?; stones; a ceremonial dagger and the cloth to clean it; paper ribbon; a travel first-aid kit, bottled water, aspirin, a disposable camera; breath mints. Nail clippers. Spare change. Keychain. University ID. Glasses in a glasses case and a bottle of eyedrops.
Seki whistles, not-quite-approvingly. “Does his mother pack his lunch in there too?”
“His parents are dead,” Kenzo says.
-
06:02
“Phone call,” Sakurazuka repeats. His arm’s still curled around the pillow, but the rest of him is rather clearly awake.
Kenzo leaves him the newspaper instead.
Sakurazuka leaves that at the foot of the cot-sits up straight, hangs his legs over the bars and hoists himself to the floor with a kind of bestial effortlessness. “Bathroom, then?”
“In that corner. And socks,” Kenzo points out, “I’ll be back with some socks. Which reminds me-who’s going to bring you a change of clothing?”
The bathroom door shuts. “Phone call.”
-
06:04
Three dead; thirteen of the day laborers injured; all the boys off scot-free, apparently, no one worse off than Sakurazuka, who doesn’t even seem to be counted among the gang’s number. His story’s implicitly clear just from skimming the article; all those boys were much younger than he, from schools here in Yokohama, and what would a college student have to do with the likes of them?
-
06:06
“Why were you in Yokohama, Sakurazuka-kun?”
The bathroom door shuts. “Do you believe me?”
-
07:00
“-Father-”
“You’re not on this one, Kenzo,” the director of the hospital says, and takes the clipboard out of his hands.
This door’s single-hinged, with a window in it, and slow to pull shut on its hydraulic. Beyond that, Sakurazuka smiles welcomingly, gets up from the edge of the cot and doesn’t bow. His right hand’s arched like a crab on the newspaper, no evidence of a sprain at all. He listens to whatever Kenzo’s father says with receptive eyes, squinting a little. Kenzo remembers the glasses, the eyedrops.
Everything else, he should probably forget.
---
-
-
The events described as taking place on April 23 in Yokohama are not ficticious.
-