Chapter Text
Chifuyu felt bad, slipping away that morning.
Upon arriving at his apartment the night before, he didn’t know why he forgot his initial plan to leave for the abandoned theater to treat his wound. Perhaps old habit had taken over. He had found himself in a reliable hideout where he knew no one could hurt him, he had been tired, and instincts had done the rest.
Now Chifuyu remembered why this had been such a bad idea. He had woken very early morning, and he had watched his closest friend sleep on, next to him.
“Baji-san…”
The last time he had seen Baji so peaceful just as he had been then and three days before was… the 31rd of October 2005.
His heart clenched painfully in his chest.
This was a miracle… and a reminder.
Chifuyu yearned for this. He longed for what he had thought he could never have again. That which was in front of him. Around him, every day. All of this. It felt so real…
So far away too.
Chifuyu couldn’t. Not yet, if ever.
He had to make sure this would still exist the next day. The one after. The next month. And after. For two years. Three. Ten, twenty- no, thirty more at the very least.
“You hear that,” he murmured, caressing his best friend’s cheek, tucking a lock away, “you’re not allowed to die before you turn sixty. I won’t let you.”
He remained longer that he wished he had.
“So basically these guys were found in someone’s shop, all of them tied together. The shop was roughened up, so the owners will be compensated. Testimonies said that after the group got in the place, really soon the poor citizens living there had enough of their terrorizing and they somehow managed to bash all of them heads in. They didn’t stop here. The criminals kinda look like victims with how hard they’ve been beaten up afterward. Some of them, actually a large part of them have bullets wounds in the legs, but they all need that hospital ‘cause of the beating wounds. The guys they harassed down in the suburbs really had enough of them… Someone called the police somewhere in that, which is why they’re in custody even though the police can’t really access the criminals for questioning. The suburbs inhabitants led the guys to the criminals’ base, where there were stored all kinda fireweapons, though not as much as one might imagine. Both the shop and the base are still in observation until the case is solved. The dirty money was found in the shop with them- the strong box in which it was kept was bloodied, I wouldn’t have liked being one of these assholes. The guys who are actually awake refuse questioning from the police but they might not be averse to talking to others- wait, who exactly do you think I am?”
Ryusei smiled awkwardly.
“Our informant?” he suggested. “Thank you for finding the name of the hospital they’re in.”
“You better, be grateful. You know that’s not actually my job? Do you know what’s gonna happen if the commander finds out that I’ve been looking around fishy things for you? If the commander gets his nose into it then all of Toman will end up getting involved- and for what!”
Ryusei clapped his shoulder reassuringly.
“Don’t worry, mate. Detective Baji is on the case.”
“From what Chuu tells me about it, this is not reassuring at all, Ryusei!”
“I’m on the case too?”
“…Make an effort, man, please,” his tall blonde friend begged him resignedly.
“Ahah, Sorry for that. But we’re really grateful,” Ryusei assured him, turning himself halfway toward Baji behind him who was inspecting the hospital with a bothered look on his face. “It’s already fantastic that you got all of that for us. I’d mistake you for some private detective if I didn’t know better.”
The older man stared at him with raised eyebrows. He ended up sighing after a few moments spent alternating looking at Ryusei and their common captain mumbling to himself in the background.
“Alright, I give up. Do what you want. Get revenge for the little shit or whatever, just don’t do anything too stupid.”
“Don’t worry, we’re just going to question them if we’re allowed to.”
Ryusei wasn’t surprised when the other sent him a disbelieving glare. Of course he would worry, it was Baji. And of course Baji wouldn’t just leave if he was told to, it was Baji.
But hopefully, everything would go right. As right as it could be.
“Just text when you’re done. Don’t get the other divisions involved, it’d be such a mess. I’m leaving.”
“Thanks for the info and the location!”
The young man hopped back onto his motorcycle and left with only a few mumbles. Ryusei could only pity his friend. They were difficult to deal with, Ryusei was quite aware.
He turned back to Baji.
“What’s the long face for?” he inquired.
The ugly grimace on Baji’s face worsened.
“I’m just thinking it’s so stupid that I can’t even break their faces because they’re already in a hospital.”
“Well, at least they don’t have weapons? So you could try.”
“Really?”
“No,” Ryusei backed down on his joke after seeing the genuinely elated glow of his captain. “Please don’t.”
“Tsk. Let’s get in.”
That was how Ryusei and Baji found themselves entering one hospital a ride away from their home, still in the middle of Shibuya, while the sun was still up. For seemingly no reason, since none of their friends was kept inside.
Admittedly, maybe one of them should be.
Thanks to the help of the first division, they managed to acquire enough information to locate the people involved in the case… even if they still didn’t know what neighborhood these had been found in. That information was seemingly out of reach for middle schoolers. Not that any of the other stuff should have been accessible to middle schoolers.
Yet, the hardest was to come.
“Hello, we’re here to visit some people,” Ryusei was the image of polite when he spoke to the receptionist. “The most recently admitted, I heard.”
He was met with a suspicious look.
“Are you from the police?”
The question came out of the blue but… Ryusei could understand why.
“No, why?” he made his best attempt at innocence… and he knew he was good at it.
Though it wasn’t quite enough to convince the receptionist. They kept a side glance on them as they checked their monitor.
“Name, please?”
Yes, thanks all the gods in existence for the first division’s help, Ryusei suspected someone had a friend in the last division… that or they should be part of it instead.
They had the names.
Some at least.
The receptionist couldn’t really stop them now unless the patients themselves refused contact.
“Alright. I’ll tell you the room numbers.”
Thankfully Baji managed to hold back on his muttered threats the whole walk to said rooms. Ryusei was so proud of his entire division right now. Seriously, why were they part of a lame-ass gang when they could be informant for whatever authority organizations out there?
Just kidding, of course. Riusey would never.
They walked quietly and inconspicuously until they reached their destination Ryusei poked his head in to check for nurses before Baji could barge in and do something stupid to get them expelled. Good thing was, there was no one standing in the room. Ryusei winced when he saw the faces of the patients. Whoever beat them up after they were caught hadn’t really been gentle.
Second good thing was, one of the blokes was awake.
Bad thing was, he looked ready to press a button, one that was most likely going to call a nurse in.
Ryusei waved.
“Hello~”
“Who’re you bastards? If you’re with the pigs…”
“Wow! No need for threats! We’re all friends here, right?”
That got Baji growling. Ryusei elbowed him before the older boy could ruin his efforts. Of course they weren’t friends and obviously they’d rather bash the guy’s head against the wall rather than speak cordially, but life was made of small sacrifices.
“Are you?”
“We’re not. Hoodlum’s honor.”
“Oh. Then you’re part of those annoying pissy rats, huh?”
Ryusei blinked confused.
“What rats? Uh, anyway we’re really not. I’ve just come here because, between the afternoon and the moment you got caught, you might’ve seen one of our friends…?”
He voiced that as a tentative question, as it would be a rather bad idea to antagonize their only source of information from the get go. But the criminal didn’t seem to catch the bait.
“Ah?” he snarled. “How’d we do that? We were just minding our business.”
Your very illegal business.
“The only guys we saw yesterday were the rats from the suburbs and…”
Ryusei perked up.
“And?” he exhorted the other to answer.
But then he noticed how hard the other’s fist was clutching the sheets of the bed. With gritted teeth, the patient spat out a few words.
“That fucktard bastard with the hood! That asshole, he’s the one who shot my leg!”
Ryusei blinked. The what now? That didn’t sound like Chifuyu. Probably another criminal lurking around. But before Ryusei could insist some more, Baji’s eyelashes ticked, and he took a few steps inside the room, looking threatening yet a bit blank. Unusual.
“The bastard with the hood?” he reiterated, a tint of interrogation in the words.
“Yeah… You know him?”
“Depends. Describe him to me.”
Ryusei stared at Baji with wide eyes. The older boy could not possibly believe it was Chifuyu, right? It was too far-fetched.
“Uh. I wouldn’t really know, it was too dark.”
“Then how the fuck do you expect me to know, you shit?”
“Baji! Calm down, goddamn…”
“I’ll make you eat your words!”
“Guys, please!”
“What height, at least?”
The criminal paused for a moment, reminiscing.
“Kinda small,” he said after some time. “Smaller than you. He appeared frailer too. But strong. And stealthy. That bastard with the hood fucking knows how to use weapons. Nobody expected something like that to happen.”
He mumbled to himself then:
“Might not be a coincidence that literally no one died in that shitshow… Anyway, what’s your friend like? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I didn’t see him anywhere yesterday. Unless he got mixed up with the rats.”
Baji and Ryusei looked at each other.
“Blond. With an earring that glints in the dark,” Baji volunteered a few scraps of info.
“Don’t know anything about an earring. Blond might be the color though. Otherwise, haven’t met anyone like that in the streets.”
“Shot no one either?”
“The only ones who got shot during that disaster were our own men.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” someone else interrupted.
They all turned to another patient who just woke up in the room. He had been hit so much his face was unrecognizable, if only Ryusei had seen him before which he was certain he hadn’t.
“What?”
“Ya didn’t see what happened during the wild goose chase. By the end of it, one landed a hit on the shit. I’d give so much money to get that asshole under bars too, now. But no one knows where he went or what he even wanted to do by trapping us. Only knows he’s the one who called the police, I reckon that’s how he escaped the place in time before anyone could find him.”
“Somebody did? Lemme thank them, tell me that guy died.”
“Didn’t. Too smart for that.”
Ryusei titled his head. He wasn’t keen on reminding them of his presence, in case they stopped speaking, but it seemed as long as they weren’t police, they didn’t mind talking about what happened the day before… as long as it didn’t involve their own business, at least.
“How so?”
The older man turned to them with a hostile grimace on his features.
“Smart like you wouldn’t want to meet him face to face. The little shit managed to provoke an entire group of armed people into one on one fights until he had all of us exactly where he wanted to. I don’t even know why he did that, since they found our base too, as I heard… Left the money as evidence, so I don’t know what he got from that. The suburb’s recognition? Gratitude? What’d he do with it?”
“What suburb was it?”
“None ya business.”
Not helping.
“At any rate, whoever that was, it was a damn good fighter. You can’t deny him that. Lots of survival instincts, I personally only saw that level of experience overseas. Don’t know how he’d hold in a fair hoodlum fight like you said you were, but in all or nothing I don’t think we’d have beat him, especially with the element of surprise with him. Just like you said, even though we were ‘round forty against him, he managed not to kill any of us, that’s some skill. We wouldn’t have gotten him.”
Baji nodded slowly. Ryusei’s head was spinning. This was a lot of information. A lot of it didn’t make sense either. But with two people giving their testimony, what else was there to say?
Had Chifuyu been lying?
Had he encountered a different group of criminals?
They left with even more questions than they arrived with.
“Do you know any blond guy who would be able to crush an entire pack of armed buddies, Baji?” Ryusei asked the silent middle schooler once they left the hospital. “Because last news I’ve got Chifuyu wasn’t able to do that.”
“Mikey could,” Baji mumbled. “Draken too. Well, maybe not armed. It might not even be one of our owns…”
“Could be that blond guy from the last generation of Black Dragons, what do you think?”
“Like Draken, he’s too tall. He’s like your size, if I eyeball it well.”
“Okay… But seriously, just because Chifuyu matches the profile doesn’t mean it’s him.”
“Yeah. Could be Mikey. But there are contradicting elements. So…”
Ryusei followed Baji to both of their bikes, curious as to his captain’s course of actions.
“So what now?”
“Now we confront Chifuyu.”
Ryusei almost choked on air.
“Wait wait wait! Are you crazy! What says he tells you the truth? What says we’ll even be talking about the same situation? We might have confused everything badly! What’ll we do then?”
Baji got on his Goki, shaking his head as he went.
“If Chifuyu’s not involved, he’ll tell us.”
“With how weird he’s been acting? By your own words!”
“And I don’t like it when we can’t go to the point! I’ll just recount to him all that we’ve heard and I’ll ask him if he has anything to clarify to that. That shouldn’t be too complicated.”
Without letting Ryusei any time to resume the argument, Baji kickstarted the motor and flew down the road with his motorcycle, leaving Ryusei behind. Ryusei had no choice but to follow Baji quickly if he didn’t want to lose him.
“Okay. To Chifuyu’s uh? I have to stop that idiot from doing something stupid.”
But truly, Ryusei should really be there this time. Baji, as he had so well shown during his near breakdown from earlier, was not equipped to talk with Chifuyu right now. Especially if this really had nothing to do with the criminals’ case, which would only mean that Chifuyu is extremely messed up on an unknown level…
Ryusei shook his head, ridding himself of such worrying thoughts and made his own bike roar.
Unfortunately, there was no one to confront there.
“For fuck’s sake!”
Ryusei heard Baji shouts from the other side of the apartment. He stared back at Chifuyu’s mother, who he had been greeting to make up for his captain’s lack of esteem. He looked at her with uncertainty.
Everything was so sudden.
“Matsuno-san… Is your son not home?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“…Boys. As I was telling you, Chifuyu is at a friend’s for the rest of the week. He has my authorization, why are you so worried?”
“Did he tell you who?”
“Yes. Although I don’t recall hearing the name before, he even gave an address, just in case I was concerned.”
“Do you remember what address?” there was a strange urgency in Baji’s voice as he appeared from Chifuyu’s room, still breathing fast from the previous race, and so very obviously angered…
Or was it worry?
“Mh… He told me the name of his friend was Takemichi. He really told me the address out of precaution, sweet child… I’m sorry, I think he left a note with the address on it, but I don’t remember where he left it. Come back tomorrow, I’ll have found it by then. But in the meantime, why don’t you call him?”
Nothing of it felt any good to Ryusei.
Still, he bowed to the lady.
“Thank you. I’m sure Baji will be back tomorrow if Chifuyu doesn’t answer. Have a good night, we’re sorry to have bothered you. You must be tired.”
“It’s fine if it’s for you two. Come by anytime.”
Just like that, Ryusei pulled Baji out the door, leaving the poor lady to rest in her own home without interruption.
When he turned to Baji afterward, the older boy was already waiting with his flip phone to his ear, his foot tapping the ground in obvious impatience. Ryusei stared, disheartened, as Baji ended up gritting his teeth in frustration, almost throwing the phone down to the floor where it not for Ryusei stopping him.
The rough words that escaped the long-haired young man were so close to those that were looping in his mind like a goddamn fireman alarm.
“Out of all times… What do you think you’re doing right now, Chifuyu?”
Truly, Ryusei could only agree.
Why now, of all times, when things seemed like they could not be woven away from each other, all knotted together in an ineligible messy lot, with no sense whatsoever?
Was it a coincidence?
“Baji… You’re getting far too worked up.”
“Chifuyu is fucking hurt! What’s he doing out there!”
“Baji!”
Ryusei punched his captain.
The bluntness of it all finally got the young man to calm himself down, if only for a few instants. And thank all the gods and yokai entities for that, if it meant Ryusei wasn’t going to deal with an irrational Baji Keisuke.
That was the last thing he wanted to do that day.
“This is weird,” he admitted, his tone just as worked up as the other, if only more contained, “I’ll give you that. It’s fishy, and I too want to get to the bottom of this as fast as possible, before this creates a chaos that none of us can stop. But you need to keep your head cool, Baji.”
Baji was looking at him now, with wide eyes, almost unseeing. Ryusei let out a loud breath.
“Listen. Whatever’s happening, Chifuyu still respects you more than anyone out there. You’re still his goddamn captain, even if he, too, starts to get into stupid shit like I don’t know how many of us idiots from the first division. And as his captain, it’s your responsibility to help in that shit… and that means remaining level-headed. You got that?”
Ryusei frowned at Baji, who ended up nodding numbly.
Ryusei didn’t know when it started raining. Looking at the sky, he cursed internally. This was definitely not helping his inner chaos.
Probably not Baji’s either.
He passed a hand in his light hair before grabbing Baji’s collar.
“Now. If you don’t go back to your own apartment, take some goddamn needed sleep and think all of this over with a fresh head in the morning, without catching sickness in between, I swear to you, Baji, that I will hit you again.”
There was silence. Nothing but the rain falling.
Ryusei kept his searing glare anchored right into the taller boy’s eyes.
The status quo was kept still for at least a few minutes. It was so, until Baji finally recovered. He batted his vice-captain’s hand away harshly, although with far less fury than earlier.
“You say that as though you could beat me.”
Ryusei let him pass.
He stayed there, and only looked away after seeing Baji enter his own home.
He sighed once more, shielding his eyes from the rain.
Baji was right anyway.
For fuck’s sake, Chifuyu. What do you think you’re doing?
He knew for a fact Chifuyu knew no Takemichi.
Chifuyu smiled at the stupidly made mini-manual that he had taken out from inside the tape’s envelop, hidden in its mechanisms.
“Couldn’t be clearer, Draken?”
He almost laughed, before the urge to cry made him press his lips one against the other. He was almost done anyway. Only a few more installations and he could start.
This was very cleverly done. Chifuyu could only admire the genius of Naoto, the mechanic smarts of Draken, and the long suffering of all the others that came before him.
Seriously, how stupid could they all be. It made him feel nostalgic.
As though they were all here with him again.
“Done. Now, as per this shitty manual, everything should work now…”
“Then, let us begin.”