*31halloween: Day 10 -- [Yami no Matsuei] "Family Spirits"*
Title: "Family Spirits"
Author: matrixrefugee
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Prompt ## and Word Count: 10. Haunted House; Word Count:
Warnings/Comments: Set post-Kyoto arc, likely by a few years or so. Mild supernatural violence and descriptions of messy family situations. Also written for Any, any, haunted house.
The house in Tokorozawa did not look quite what Tsuzuki imagined when someone called a place a "haunted house": the garden before it looked freshly tidied and while ivy grew on parts of the three-story whitewashed stone structure, the ivy had been neatly pruned recently. A portico covered the front door, with a balcony atop it, overlooking the front garden and the street before the house.
"*This is where Muraki lived? It looks so... normal," he said, skeptical.
"What were you expecting? Some rotted-out pile from an old Hammer horror?" Terazuma snarked, leading the way through the front gate and up the flagstoned walk to the front door.
"Oh, hush, Hajime: you know Tsuzuki has a wild imagination," Wakaba put in.
Hisoka, walking alongside Tsuzuki, kept silent, as he gazed up at the house, his young face brooding but calm for now.
"Are you sensing anything, Hisoka?" Tsuzuki asked, gently.
"Nothing yet, and I certainly don't think that *he* is in there," Hisoka replied.
"Well, we all kind of figured that, since no one's seen hide nor hair of him since Kyoto," Tsuzuki said. "Come on, let's go in," he added, swallowing the lump of fear that rose into his throat as they mounted the steps to the door.
The bell emitted a cheerful if muffled "dingdoong" when they rang it; a minute or two passed and someone opened the door from the inside. A kindly-looking older man dressed in a burgundy suit looked out, smiling at them.
"Ah, you young folks must be the ghost hunters I sent for," he said, with a note of relief. "I'm Sakaki, the butler and caretaker of the house."
"That'd be us: I'm Terazuma, the young lady is Wakaba, the young man with the green eyes is Kurosaki, and the purple-eyed one is Tsuzuki," Terazuma said, taking charge of the situation. Tsuzuki tried not to glare at him. "You said the place is haunted?"
"Yes, there have always been strange things that happened here, as far back as I can remember," Sakaki said, opening the door wider and stepping back to let them enter.
"I'll bet he was scaring them off," Tsuzuki muttered. Wakaba darted a look at him, shaking her head gently in warning.
"Disappeared?" Terazuma asked, puzzled, though they knew the cause of Muraki's disappearance: Sakaki couldn't know who or what they were.
"Yes, someone set fire to his lab at Shion University at Kyoto while he was at work; the fire marshal never found his body, and so it would seem that he escaped somehow," Sakaki replied.
The foyer that they entered looked dim but oddly inviting, the colored glass panels in the windows on either side of the door casting strips of red and amber and green on the neatly swept marble floor. A young maidservant approached and took their coats, bowing and taking them into a cloakroom just off the foyer. The place looked well-cared for, despite the empty feel to the place.
"Has the place always been prone to this kind of activity?" Hisoka asked.
"It has varied: the young master was an expert at keeping spirits at bay, and that may be why their presence has become more noticeable, now that he isn't here," Sakaki said, leading them to the rear of the ground floor and along a sunlit ambulatory that ran along the rear of the house. "The old master, Yukitaka, had had the north wing of the house converted into a clinic, but that part has been empty and unused since his son and his son's wife, the parents of the young master passed away nearly thirty years ago."
"Heard they were sudden deaths," Terazuma said, taking a cigarette case from his breast pocket and lighting one up.
Sakaki's calm face grew troubled for a moment. "Yes, there was ...trouble when the old master's son brought the young master's half brother to live here. The boys did not get along, and while I hesitate to speak ill of the dead, the newcomer tended to start a lot of the squabbles between him and the young master."
"So what happened to Yukitaka's patients?" Tsuzuki blurted out. Wakaba poked his ankle with her toe, while Hisoka darted a baleful, "Don't go there just yet" look at him.
Sakaki drew in a long breath. "During the war in the Pacific, the old master was busy working for the military, and so he closed the clinic here," he said. "But the wife of his son was a troubled woman. Her husband wanted to avoid a scandal, and so he had her confined to a suite in the north wing."
"So, is that where a lot of the spirits are being seen?" Terazuma said, before Tsuzuki could put in a word.
"Yes, that's where some of it starts," Sakaki said. "But the spirits tend to wander about the house. This corridor is where the spirit of the young master's half-brother tends to appear. It was around this spot where he tried to kill the young master, a few days after the young master's parents' funeral: my father, who served as the family butler at that time, shot the ruffian in the back. We were told that the boy died on the spot, but after the young master disappeared, I discovered some paperwork that told more."
"You, ah, don't have to elaborate," Tsuzuki cut in. He knew more than he cared to about the demise of Muraki's brother. "We'll figure it out. Hisoka, how about you and I take the corridor; Wakaba, you and Terazuma wanna take the north wing?"
"That sounds like a plan," Wakaba put in, before Terazuma got snarly. "Hajime, let's take a look up there."
"Bossing me around as usual," Terazuma grumbled, good-naturedly. "Lead the way, Pops," he said, to Sakaki.
"As you wish," Sakaki said, leading the pair to the north wing.
Once they had gone, Tsuzuki took a fresh ofuda from his breast pocket, while Hisoka felt around the woodwork of the ambulatory.
"So why didn't you want to explore the north wing?" Hisoka asked.
Tsuzuki gazed out the windows, into the courtyard garden. "This place feels familiar," he admitted.
Hisoka looked up at his partner. "What do you mean?"
"Muraki knows things about me, things I've forgotten that I don't want to think about," Tsuzuki admitted. "I was sick for a long time before I died: Muraki's grandfather was... the doctor who treated me."
"That was almost a hundred years ago," Hisoka said. "Maybe it's time you confronted those shadows."
"Maybe," Tsuzuki replied, noncommittally. "Are you sensing anything?"
"A lot of residual pain and jealousy," Hisoka replied, running his hand along a windowsill. "Do you think it's possible that Saki's ghost is still lingering here?"
"I suppose anything is possible," Tsuzuki replied. "He didn't actually die here, but he was severely injured in this place. It might be the last thing he remembers." Besides a life support tank in Muraki's hidden underground lab, he thought.
"Well, we can wait till nightfall and see if he appears," Hisoka replied, glancing around them.
"Sounds like a plan," Tsuzuki replied, pocketing the ofuda.
"In the meantime, I wonder if they'll give us dinner here."
Hisoka opened his mouth to make an objection, but he stopped himself from making his usual slightly snappy remark. "Well, we're going to be staying the night, and if Sakaki is a good host, he probably will.
Dinner was a simple but nourishing meal of fish and rice, served in a dining room that clearly had seen its share of entertaining back in its heyday which, even to Tsuzuki, felt hollow and lonely.
"You were smart to stay out of the north wing," Wakaba told them. "It's busy with ghosts there."
"Mostly just seems that way, with all the old furniture and medical equipment under sheets there," Terazuma put in.
"Ugh, I hope nothing jumped out at you," Tsuzuki said, shuddering as he helped himself to another serving of broiled fish.
"Don't think they'd try anything during the day, but at night might be a different matter," Terazuma said, pushing back his half-emptied plate.
"You want the rest of that?" Tsuzuki asked, pointing to Terazuma's plate.
"Don't go stuffing yourself and dozing off on us," Terazuma retorted, pulling his plate back.
An hour later, the two pairs of shinigami split up, retiring to the wings they'd selected. Sakaki had supplied them with thermoses of tea and a box of little cakes that the cook had sent up. Of course the box sent with Hisoka and Tsuzuki emptied quickly as the evening moved on toward night.
Despite the feelings Hisoka had sensed earlier, they saw no signs of activity. Tsuzuki dozed off after midnight, leaving Hisoka to keep watch.
Around three am, Hisoka stirred from his own half doze: he had heard a rustle in the shadows. Perhaps a mouse, but it sounded too large. Jolting himself fully awake, he elbowed Tsuzuki, who cursed softly as he awoke and pulled himself together.
"Did you hear that?" Hisoka asked in a whisper.
Tsuzuki reached into his breast pocket, drawing out the ofuda as a reply. "Something's coming."
The shadows seemed to lift and a figure emerged from them, a young man in a high-school uniform, a sword in hand.
"Come back for more punishment, you useless freak?" he asked, in a hollow voice. And he lunged at Hisoka.
Tsuzuki thrust the ofuda between the two, the characters on it starting to glow with an intense purple light. "Get back! You have the wrong guy," he snapped. "I command you, tell me who you are."
The ghostly figure paused, putting up its sword. "Ah, so you brought help: is this your little pet, or are you his?"
"We're neither: you're gravely mistaken," Hisoka said. "And I'm not who you think I am, Saki Shidou."
The ghost moved as if it would rear back in anger. "Then who are you?"
"We're shinigami from the Ministry of Hades: we've come to release from the mortal world and lead you to the spirit realm," Tsuzuki replied.
"Why didn't you come for me sooner?" the spirit replied, angry, rebuking them.
"We can't come for someone's soul until they leave this earth or they are scheduled to leave it," Tsuzuki replied, apologetically. "What happened to you shouldn't have had to happen. But if it's any consolation, we're here to bring you home."
"I'm already at home: I'm here to make this family pay for what happened to me," Saki retorted.
"You're making the wrong people pay: the man who shot you has been dead for years, and the brother who let your comatose body be misused is missing," Hisoka replied.
Saki said nothing to this, looking away. "You don't have to suffer any longer, and if you insist on staying here, you'll be hurting yourself," Tsuzuki added.
"Very well, lead me across," Saki replied, holding his sword out to them, hilt forward.
When morning came, the two pairs of shinigami returned to the rear hallway: as part of their front as paranormal investigators, they had to follow up with Sakaki.
"So, will the house be clear now?" the older man asked.
"Should be: some of them weren't so ready to cross over, but we convinced 'em," Terazuma said.
"The house should be more peaceful now, if your master ever comes home," Wakaba said, cheerfully.
Sakaki breathed easier. "That's a relief, and should he ever return, he'll be pleased to know that: he couldn't abide going into the north wing himself, when he was young," he admitted. "He was a sensitive boy, and I think the atmosphere there bothered him."
"Well, it should be all clear now: I hope you do find him someday. We'd help, but that's really something for the police," Tsuzuki said. "We deal with the departed and things like that, I'm afraid."
Hisoka said nothing, as they left and returned to Meifu, the realm between the realms. But once they were on the other side, walking under the blossoming cherry trees that surrounded the Ministry of Hades, Tsuzuki turned to him. "You worried about something? You seem quiet," he noted.
"We didn't completely get closure: there's Saki to think about," he said. "He's got a lot of anger about his death. You don't think the King of Hades will..." He bit his tongue.
"He's not really good material to be one of us, but he's got too much on his soul to allow him to cross over into the next life," Tsuzuki admitted, sagely. "We'll see what His Lordship's judgement will be..."
((To Be Continued in Another Story...))
Author: matrixrefugee
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Yami no Matsuei
Prompt ## and Word Count: 10. Haunted House; Word Count:
Warnings/Comments: Set post-Kyoto arc, likely by a few years or so. Mild supernatural violence and descriptions of messy family situations. Also written for Any, any, haunted house.
The house in Tokorozawa did not look quite what Tsuzuki imagined when someone called a place a "haunted house": the garden before it looked freshly tidied and while ivy grew on parts of the three-story whitewashed stone structure, the ivy had been neatly pruned recently. A portico covered the front door, with a balcony atop it, overlooking the front garden and the street before the house.
"*This is where Muraki lived? It looks so... normal," he said, skeptical.
"What were you expecting? Some rotted-out pile from an old Hammer horror?" Terazuma snarked, leading the way through the front gate and up the flagstoned walk to the front door.
"Oh, hush, Hajime: you know Tsuzuki has a wild imagination," Wakaba put in.
Hisoka, walking alongside Tsuzuki, kept silent, as he gazed up at the house, his young face brooding but calm for now.
"Are you sensing anything, Hisoka?" Tsuzuki asked, gently.
"Nothing yet, and I certainly don't think that *he* is in there," Hisoka replied.
"Well, we all kind of figured that, since no one's seen hide nor hair of him since Kyoto," Tsuzuki said. "Come on, let's go in," he added, swallowing the lump of fear that rose into his throat as they mounted the steps to the door.
The bell emitted a cheerful if muffled "dingdoong" when they rang it; a minute or two passed and someone opened the door from the inside. A kindly-looking older man dressed in a burgundy suit looked out, smiling at them.
"Ah, you young folks must be the ghost hunters I sent for," he said, with a note of relief. "I'm Sakaki, the butler and caretaker of the house."
"That'd be us: I'm Terazuma, the young lady is Wakaba, the young man with the green eyes is Kurosaki, and the purple-eyed one is Tsuzuki," Terazuma said, taking charge of the situation. Tsuzuki tried not to glare at him. "You said the place is haunted?"
"Yes, there have always been strange things that happened here, as far back as I can remember," Sakaki said, opening the door wider and stepping back to let them enter.
"I'll bet he was scaring them off," Tsuzuki muttered. Wakaba darted a look at him, shaking her head gently in warning.
"Disappeared?" Terazuma asked, puzzled, though they knew the cause of Muraki's disappearance: Sakaki couldn't know who or what they were.
"Yes, someone set fire to his lab at Shion University at Kyoto while he was at work; the fire marshal never found his body, and so it would seem that he escaped somehow," Sakaki replied.
The foyer that they entered looked dim but oddly inviting, the colored glass panels in the windows on either side of the door casting strips of red and amber and green on the neatly swept marble floor. A young maidservant approached and took their coats, bowing and taking them into a cloakroom just off the foyer. The place looked well-cared for, despite the empty feel to the place.
"Has the place always been prone to this kind of activity?" Hisoka asked.
"It has varied: the young master was an expert at keeping spirits at bay, and that may be why their presence has become more noticeable, now that he isn't here," Sakaki said, leading them to the rear of the ground floor and along a sunlit ambulatory that ran along the rear of the house. "The old master, Yukitaka, had had the north wing of the house converted into a clinic, but that part has been empty and unused since his son and his son's wife, the parents of the young master passed away nearly thirty years ago."
"Heard they were sudden deaths," Terazuma said, taking a cigarette case from his breast pocket and lighting one up.
Sakaki's calm face grew troubled for a moment. "Yes, there was ...trouble when the old master's son brought the young master's half brother to live here. The boys did not get along, and while I hesitate to speak ill of the dead, the newcomer tended to start a lot of the squabbles between him and the young master."
"So what happened to Yukitaka's patients?" Tsuzuki blurted out. Wakaba poked his ankle with her toe, while Hisoka darted a baleful, "Don't go there just yet" look at him.
Sakaki drew in a long breath. "During the war in the Pacific, the old master was busy working for the military, and so he closed the clinic here," he said. "But the wife of his son was a troubled woman. Her husband wanted to avoid a scandal, and so he had her confined to a suite in the north wing."
"So, is that where a lot of the spirits are being seen?" Terazuma said, before Tsuzuki could put in a word.
"Yes, that's where some of it starts," Sakaki said. "But the spirits tend to wander about the house. This corridor is where the spirit of the young master's half-brother tends to appear. It was around this spot where he tried to kill the young master, a few days after the young master's parents' funeral: my father, who served as the family butler at that time, shot the ruffian in the back. We were told that the boy died on the spot, but after the young master disappeared, I discovered some paperwork that told more."
"You, ah, don't have to elaborate," Tsuzuki cut in. He knew more than he cared to about the demise of Muraki's brother. "We'll figure it out. Hisoka, how about you and I take the corridor; Wakaba, you and Terazuma wanna take the north wing?"
"That sounds like a plan," Wakaba put in, before Terazuma got snarly. "Hajime, let's take a look up there."
"Bossing me around as usual," Terazuma grumbled, good-naturedly. "Lead the way, Pops," he said, to Sakaki.
"As you wish," Sakaki said, leading the pair to the north wing.
Once they had gone, Tsuzuki took a fresh ofuda from his breast pocket, while Hisoka felt around the woodwork of the ambulatory.
"So why didn't you want to explore the north wing?" Hisoka asked.
Tsuzuki gazed out the windows, into the courtyard garden. "This place feels familiar," he admitted.
Hisoka looked up at his partner. "What do you mean?"
"Muraki knows things about me, things I've forgotten that I don't want to think about," Tsuzuki admitted. "I was sick for a long time before I died: Muraki's grandfather was... the doctor who treated me."
"That was almost a hundred years ago," Hisoka said. "Maybe it's time you confronted those shadows."
"Maybe," Tsuzuki replied, noncommittally. "Are you sensing anything?"
"A lot of residual pain and jealousy," Hisoka replied, running his hand along a windowsill. "Do you think it's possible that Saki's ghost is still lingering here?"
"I suppose anything is possible," Tsuzuki replied. "He didn't actually die here, but he was severely injured in this place. It might be the last thing he remembers." Besides a life support tank in Muraki's hidden underground lab, he thought.
"Well, we can wait till nightfall and see if he appears," Hisoka replied, glancing around them.
"Sounds like a plan," Tsuzuki replied, pocketing the ofuda.
"In the meantime, I wonder if they'll give us dinner here."
Hisoka opened his mouth to make an objection, but he stopped himself from making his usual slightly snappy remark. "Well, we're going to be staying the night, and if Sakaki is a good host, he probably will.
Dinner was a simple but nourishing meal of fish and rice, served in a dining room that clearly had seen its share of entertaining back in its heyday which, even to Tsuzuki, felt hollow and lonely.
"You were smart to stay out of the north wing," Wakaba told them. "It's busy with ghosts there."
"Mostly just seems that way, with all the old furniture and medical equipment under sheets there," Terazuma put in.
"Ugh, I hope nothing jumped out at you," Tsuzuki said, shuddering as he helped himself to another serving of broiled fish.
"Don't think they'd try anything during the day, but at night might be a different matter," Terazuma said, pushing back his half-emptied plate.
"You want the rest of that?" Tsuzuki asked, pointing to Terazuma's plate.
"Don't go stuffing yourself and dozing off on us," Terazuma retorted, pulling his plate back.
An hour later, the two pairs of shinigami split up, retiring to the wings they'd selected. Sakaki had supplied them with thermoses of tea and a box of little cakes that the cook had sent up. Of course the box sent with Hisoka and Tsuzuki emptied quickly as the evening moved on toward night.
Despite the feelings Hisoka had sensed earlier, they saw no signs of activity. Tsuzuki dozed off after midnight, leaving Hisoka to keep watch.
Around three am, Hisoka stirred from his own half doze: he had heard a rustle in the shadows. Perhaps a mouse, but it sounded too large. Jolting himself fully awake, he elbowed Tsuzuki, who cursed softly as he awoke and pulled himself together.
"Did you hear that?" Hisoka asked in a whisper.
Tsuzuki reached into his breast pocket, drawing out the ofuda as a reply. "Something's coming."
The shadows seemed to lift and a figure emerged from them, a young man in a high-school uniform, a sword in hand.
"Come back for more punishment, you useless freak?" he asked, in a hollow voice. And he lunged at Hisoka.
Tsuzuki thrust the ofuda between the two, the characters on it starting to glow with an intense purple light. "Get back! You have the wrong guy," he snapped. "I command you, tell me who you are."
The ghostly figure paused, putting up its sword. "Ah, so you brought help: is this your little pet, or are you his?"
"We're neither: you're gravely mistaken," Hisoka said. "And I'm not who you think I am, Saki Shidou."
The ghost moved as if it would rear back in anger. "Then who are you?"
"We're shinigami from the Ministry of Hades: we've come to release from the mortal world and lead you to the spirit realm," Tsuzuki replied.
"Why didn't you come for me sooner?" the spirit replied, angry, rebuking them.
"We can't come for someone's soul until they leave this earth or they are scheduled to leave it," Tsuzuki replied, apologetically. "What happened to you shouldn't have had to happen. But if it's any consolation, we're here to bring you home."
"I'm already at home: I'm here to make this family pay for what happened to me," Saki retorted.
"You're making the wrong people pay: the man who shot you has been dead for years, and the brother who let your comatose body be misused is missing," Hisoka replied.
Saki said nothing to this, looking away. "You don't have to suffer any longer, and if you insist on staying here, you'll be hurting yourself," Tsuzuki added.
"Very well, lead me across," Saki replied, holding his sword out to them, hilt forward.
When morning came, the two pairs of shinigami returned to the rear hallway: as part of their front as paranormal investigators, they had to follow up with Sakaki.
"So, will the house be clear now?" the older man asked.
"Should be: some of them weren't so ready to cross over, but we convinced 'em," Terazuma said.
"The house should be more peaceful now, if your master ever comes home," Wakaba said, cheerfully.
Sakaki breathed easier. "That's a relief, and should he ever return, he'll be pleased to know that: he couldn't abide going into the north wing himself, when he was young," he admitted. "He was a sensitive boy, and I think the atmosphere there bothered him."
"Well, it should be all clear now: I hope you do find him someday. We'd help, but that's really something for the police," Tsuzuki said. "We deal with the departed and things like that, I'm afraid."
Hisoka said nothing, as they left and returned to Meifu, the realm between the realms. But once they were on the other side, walking under the blossoming cherry trees that surrounded the Ministry of Hades, Tsuzuki turned to him. "You worried about something? You seem quiet," he noted.
"We didn't completely get closure: there's Saki to think about," he said. "He's got a lot of anger about his death. You don't think the King of Hades will..." He bit his tongue.
"He's not really good material to be one of us, but he's got too much on his soul to allow him to cross over into the next life," Tsuzuki admitted, sagely. "We'll see what His Lordship's judgement will be..."
((To Be Continued in Another Story...))