It all goes to hell from hereShadowHunter23 wrote: Anyway, the story seems to be taking a turn for the best
Emina is way too old to be a reincarnated Haruka, but i did briefly consider a body swap by way of drug induced brain death. But that'd be unfair to Emina.and perhaps Emina could be Haruka in another body.
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BD Reanimation: The Ghoul
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”It's beautiful.”
“I know, right? There aren't any places to watch a sunrise like this back home, huh?”
I didn't really think there was anything special about that sunrise. It was nothing compared to the faces the angel above me made when we became one.
Haruka and I spent the morning after our experiences with each other on the roof of the school's main building. On the same bench that Emina and I would eventually share lunches, we huddled close together under a blanket. With Haruka's body pressed so close to mine, I experienced familiar feelings that up until then I did not understand. My heart was hurting just by being next to her. But it was a good pain that only felt better whenever we were together.
I had experienced these feelings for some time, but hid them away because they confused me. They felt wrong. But now, it was okay. I was allowed to let my heart burn for her. We were in love. She wasn't my girlfriend. She was beyond that. She was my everything.
After spending more glorious moments together back in her room, we got dressed for our date in town, after which my parents would come by and take me back home. She wore the beige sun dress that she would eventually wear throughout my memories to come. It was a cheap, visibly worn piece made out of a bumpy, wrinkly fabric that clung to body and was cut low enough to expose some of her scars. Not much to look at on its own, but on her, it made her look like everyone's ideal girl-next-door.
Haruka and I were finally where we were meant to be. After that day, she came back home to visit me almost every weekend.
Six months later, she was dead.
...
“Yoohoo! Earth to Kato. Kato, do you read me?”
“Yeah, I hear you. What?”
Unsurprisingly, Rokurou was expelled from Yamaku as soon as he regained consciousness. The school had a zero tolerance policy for drug trafficking and abuse, unless you're within Hasegawa's sphere of influence. Yoshiko replaced him as my study partner in class. She might have been an annoying opinionated dyke but at least she could carry her own weight when it comes to schoolwork. Usually.
“Oh! I know that look on your face! Have you killed him yet?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
We were supposed to be helping each other rehearse our role playing as historical figures. I was going to make a speech pretending to be Vlad Dracula. Yoshiko was going to be Sappho of Lesbos. Seriously.
“That's the look of someone who's about to go on a killing spree of vengeance!”
“Well yeah, Vlad was a pretty brutal dude.”
“No I mean like, something personal. I've seen it before.”
“Where?”
“In movies, like you know, when the samurai guy or gunfighter gets betrayed by his masters and goes off to avenge his family and kill everyone.”
“Tachibana, those were actors who were faking it. You probably wouldn't know that look you're talking about if you really saw it.”
I swiped Yoshiko's hand mirror to get an idea what she was talking about. Rampaging vengefulness? No, not yet. More like seething anger. Barely contained rage, tops.
No, my master plan, should It happen, wasn't going to happen until tomorrow, September 20th, some annual end-of-summer fireworks festival. The town here has festivals and holidays for just about every occasion. I imagine that hundreds of years ago, the village elders got together over some sake and set out to make up as many festive ways to get drunk as possible. This event commemorated some historic battle, but in reality I think it was an excuse to ignite the fireworks left over from all the other local holidays.
I didn't have lunch with Emina that day. Beyond getting thanked for watching out for her, we didn't talk much since I spent the night... er, morning in her room. She said that she was going to have her friends take her to see a counselor or something. It was the least they could do after dragging her to that party and somehow losing track of her. I did feel some relief that things were out of my hands there.
I wouldn't have wanted her around to see what I was going to do.
After unloading almost my entire stock at near-charity prices and dumping what I wouldn't sell down the drain, I stopped by the pharmacy and told Hasegawa that I wasn't feeling well and that I would be out of commission for a while. He replied with “No worries” and later informed me that Masashi bought up my reserved inventory and had picked up my slack.
A virtuous man would've just flushed everything down a toilet instead of making one last fast profit, but then again, a virtuous man wouldn't have been selling drugs to begin with. It was my loss alone, anyway. I paid up front and didn't have any outstanding loans.
Besides, Hasegawa wasn't going to make a single yen from me ever again.
That night, I cleaned my room. Aside from my gun, a single carton of ammunition, and a bottle of Phenobarbital, you'd never know a pusher lived there. I considered writing letters to my parents, but I had nothing to say to them that they would listen to. I wanted to write a letter to Emina, but I just couldn't commit a single word to paper.
After doing my homework just to throw off anyone who would eventually retrace my activities this week, I set aside three freshly cleaned and pressed outfits for tomorrow. First, my usual school uniform, second, my most anonymous set of street clothes -a gray sweatshirt and jeans, and finally, my best suit for special occasions.
That night, I slept soundly in my bed for the first time in memory. I didn't dream of anything, and that was just fine with me.
The next day, Saturday the 20th, I cheerfully conducted myself in class, thoroughly creeping out Yoshiko. At lunch, I saw Emina again. And here's where it got weird. I was actually happy to see her again. Now, I wouldn't say that I was starting to care about her, but it was nice to have her company. She was still quietly distant but she did say she was feeling better.
After school, we met up again for an early dinner, which we ate in the cafeteria. It was a mellow, pleasant day. Perfectly suitable for one's last.
After seeing off Emina, I headed back to my dorm. On the way there, I stopped by Masashi's room to see if he could render some assistance. My newly realized friendship with Emina left me worrying about what she would think of me after today. Otherwise I wouldn't have cared if I died with my pants down and surrounded by freshly sheared sheep. The less Emina knew of my grand finale, the better.
Besides, Masashi owed me big for selling the roofies to Rokurou.
I pushed my way through the unlocked door and found Masashi in his usual evening state, curled into the fetal position in one corner of the room. Next to him was an empty plastic bottle filled with some sort of translucent residue, along with several expended tubes of modeling cement.
“Yo! Kataoka! Are you dead?”
“Hrmph... yeah, Coach...”
He was more responsive than usual today. Once Masashi keeled over onto the floor and started snoring, I rummaged through his dresser. I took the liberty of borrowing his two-way pager and his gun. I never bothered with pagers or cell phones for business. The less business related encumbrances, the better.
As for Masashi's gun... oh boy. It was a heavily weathered thirty-two caliber revolver with traces of orange paint in various spots on the frame. The barrel was chopped down to almost nothing and been bored smooth to remove obstructions, suggesting that it was a benign starting pistol in a past life. A spot on the grip was filed off, probably where it said “Property of Yamaku Academy Athletic Department.”
Could this thing really shoot? It had to. I didn't want to use my own piece. The cops here might not be able to catch a cold on their own but I couldn't take any chances. After tonight, my name would be all that remained. I wanted it to be as clean as possible for Emina's sake.
On my way out, I took out Kataoka's pager and punched in a message for Hasegawa.
“BIG DEAL LINED UP. I NEED MORE OF EVERYTHING. DETAILS LATER. HAVE MONEY.”
After a few minutes, I got a response.
“COME TO MY OFFICE DOWNTOWN AT 9”
On the bus heading to town, I ended up stuck next to “Sappho of Lesbos” and some college chick she was with.
“There! See, Eri? That's the boy I told you about. Doesn't he look like he's about to go on some quest for vengeance?”
“Yeah, wow. Just like in that movie we watched last week, except he's not a Latvian prostitute...”
“I know, right?”
I responded with a laugh that apparently creeped them out.
I didn't bother arguing with Tachibana over the expressions I was making. This time, she was absolutely right. That night, I was going to avenge Haruka, myself, Emina, and all those kids who got sick from Hasegawa's pills. Hell, I might as well avenge Rokurou too. The poor guy probably ended up short-handed from all those steroids. No wonder he preferred his women unconscious.
There was no way I could lose. Even if die in a blaze of futility and disgrace, I would still get to see Haruka again. I just couldn't go unless I tried taking care of those loose ends.
Mr. Hasegawa's office away from school was situated in a quiet commercial area away from the busier parts of town. Unfortunately, it may have been too quiet. A gunfight there, even with the fireworks going on, would definitely attract attention.
“Hey kid, aren't you going to light firecrackers tonight?”
“No, I don't have any.”
“Well, that's no good,” I told the boy while handing him a wad of cash from my pocket, “you can't have a festival day without fire crackers. Why don't you go to that stand over there and buy everything you want.”
“A-Are you sure? Do you anything from there, Mister?”
“Nothing for me. Go ahead and spend it all. Just be sure to light 'em up when the rest of the fireworks start.”
“Thanks!”
That settled that. Provided the kid doesn't just take the money and run, I should have a decent distraction.
At exactly nine, I knocked on the door of Hasegawa's office and was let inside. The fireworks should begin at any moment.
Hasegawa's office served mostly as a stockroom and a transit point between the school, his suppliers, and the nearby hospital.
“Odd. I was expecting Kataoka,” Hasegawa inquired while dipping a cotton swab into a small bottle of “medicinal” cocaine from his personal reserve and inhaling deeply with it up his nostril. “Did something happen to him?”
“Oh, no. I just borrowed his pager since you weren't at the pharmacy.”
“I see, I see. I take it you're feeling better. What's with this big deal you're telling me about?”
“Actually, I'm going to go back home on some family business for a while. Turns out there isn't any competition out there.”
“Expanding into new markets eh? Whatever book you're reading, hold onto it.”
Hasegawa cheerfully opened up his safe and used the keys inside to unlock some metal cabinets that lined the walls.
“What do you need?”
“Umm, the usuals, plus Fentanyl, Ketamine, Paxil, Adderall, and...”
“...And?” he asked, crouching down to fetch my order.
“...And Flecainide.”
Hasegawa slowly raised his head to ask for clarification, only to stare up at the barrel of my borrowed gun.
“What's this all about, Kato? A robbery? What do you need the heart pills for?”
“I've got a broken heart.”
I wished Tachibana was around. She would have been able to tell me if I'm making one of those grim smirks that 1980s vigilante action heroes made.
“I see,” he replied with a heavy breath while his eyes darted around looking for a way out. “A girlfriend?”
“Something like that.”
“Tell me, Kato...”
Hasegawa was obviously buying time, which was just fine by me. My fireworks haven't started yet. I kept my eyes on his hands and feet, just in case.
“...How did she die?”
“What? She got a heart attack from taking your rotten pills, that's how.”
“But how do you remember her, Kato? As a nice piece of ass, still in her prime? Or a withering invalid, wasting away in a hospital bed?”
“Well, uh.”
Hasegawa slowly got up, confident that he had full control of things again.
“I'll bet you two ended on a high note, probably fucking each other's brains out, huh? Aren't you glad that your last memories of her are pleasant ones? If only we all could be fortunate enough to not see death coming.”
Off in the distance, I heard the town's main fireworks display begin. But where was my backup?
“Cut the bullshit! She trusted your drugs to make her better, but you killed her instead.”
“Please, if anything, I probably gave her peace before she even felt any suffering. You should thank me.”
Finally, I started to hear a chorus of popping and screeching from across the street.
“Thank you.”
“PLACK!”
With a twitch of my finger, Hasegawa's eyeball was somewhere across the room. With the firecrackers still raising hell nearby, I emptied Kataoka's gun into the carcass. Shots from the modified starting pistol seamlessly blended in with the racket outside. My own gun might have too, but I wasn't sure.
There was no time to relish my victory. Frantically, I emptied some of the cabinets and scattered pills everywhere, then grabbed money out of the safe. If anyone saw this, it would look “drug related.” Hell, if you really think about it, it was. Briskly, I walked back into town, dumping the piece and the pager into a canal.
Kataoka served me well. I never did see him after that. I wondered if the police pinned him to Hasegawa's death, or if they just chalked it up to being a drug deal gone bad. At the very least, he must have been a person of interest if they ever found his prints on the gun and the pager last used to contact Hasegawa.
It didn't help that he was never the sort of person to have an alibi better than “I was fucking stoned.” Either way, Yamaku's biggest supplier of knock-outs was now out of commission, as was his supplier.
Back in my room, I got ready for my trip. I didn't think much more about what happened at Hasegawa's office. I must have really become a cold blooded sociopath that night. I totally freaked out when I found that I might be loosely connected to Haruka's death, yet I was breathing easy after just killing a man and probably destroying another. I had gone beyond the event horizon and become a complete robot.
In the hours before sunrise, I sat in my chair and remained still, savoring the mere sensation of being alive, trying to mentally record in describable detail just what it felt like to breathe, blink, be cold, to feel itchy...
The sky outside slowly brightened up to a bluish gray ahead of the sun. With my best suit on, I marked one more X on the calendar. Sunday, September 21st. Haruka's 21st birthday, incidentally.
My pistol went back to its hiding place. If someone finds it in the future, they'd never know it was mine. With mechanical stateliness, I glided through the empty halls and made my way up to the roof of the main building and sat on my bench.
I was done. I came to know that clearing Yamaku of its monsters was the one reason I continued to exist long after I've given up on life. With that out of the way, all that there was to do was leave.
There was one more demon to slay. The one who killed Haruka and raped Emina through apathy: Yuki Kato.
Smoku wrote:Oh and... guns are so easy to get now, are they?
