And she was there, waiting, among the background of distant foxfires. She didn't draw close, and nor did I want her too. I had work to do anyways and only a slight inkling of how to do it. Without Gene to guide me, the spiritual plane was little more than a black abyss.
"What did Naru say?" I closed my eyes, but it didn't block out the iridescent glow of the foxfires, or the presence of the girl, watching me. "It's based off of perception. Damn it, I can't control how I perceive things—I mean, where do I even start?"
Wishing for Gene, I opened my eyes and started walking. Something flickered in the corner of my eye, and I turned to get a better look. Just like that I was standing in the sunlight before a huge, beautiful maple tree. I gawked up at the leaves to see what could only be a younger, gangly Naru dangling from the tree branches. No, but wait, there was another Naru at the base of the tree, reading a book. They both wore jeans, though one had a black shirt, and the other a pale blue.
Gene.
"So?" asked the twin in the tree.
"Let me finish," said the sitting twin flatly, turning a page. When I drew closer and ducked down to see the cover, I saw the embossed words of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen on a plain, black faux leather cover. He couldn't be old enough to be reading Jane Austen, let alone have any interest in romance. The kid had to be, what, thirteen? Fourteen? This one had to be Gene. Though I had never thought Naru to climb a tree, though I could see it if he wanted to be alone.
"You're reading the editor's afterwards," said the above twin dryly. "So come now, you stupid scientist. Sciencefy it."
Ah, so the one in the tree was Gene. That meant this one was Naru.
As the twin on the ground aimed up a dry glare at the second, I couldn't believe how I didn't notice. Of course he'd be this precocious child.
"The author's language is intelligent and edifying. Her prose was a bit long winded for the styles of our times, but I find I liked the patience it took to understand her descriptions, for the reader was well rewarded with a almost tangible picture of the character—"
"Oh my god, nerd down. Why do you have to show off to me? Did you like it or not?"
Naru's frown didn't disappear. He snapped the book close, as he still did as an adult when he was irritated, and lifted the book in Gene's direction. "I wasn't showing off. If you had just shown a little patience yourself, I was trying to explain myself. On an entertainment level, no. It was duller than chalk. Intellectually, yes, but not because of this..." he wrinkled his nose. "You're a fourteen year old boy reading romance novels, and you think I'm the one with the problem? What was your point in making me read this? You could have made me done anything, having won fair and square, and you make me read this?"
"Hey, it was either that or Conan the Barbarian comics."
Naru stiffened. "Mother specifically told you not to—"
"Blah blah blah—do you even like boobs?" Gene's face split into a devilish grin as Naru's face went bright red. "There we go. I thought so. So be grateful I took the, ahem, safe route to awaken your more sensitive sensibilities."
Naru opened his mouth to ask something, half turned to the house as though in the mind to find said Barbarian comics and burn them, but stopped. He gave his brother his front, arms crossed over his chest.
"This is about that girl," he said.
"Her name is Marian," said Gene, wrinkling his nose in distaste as he slumped himself forward onto his branch to glare down at his brother like a lazy monkey. "And Jane and Charlotte before that."
Naru put his face to a hand with a very teenage like groan of frustration. "Gene, I don't care."
"You hurt their feelings pretty bad—"
"They didn't even know me. Besides, are they even old enough to like boys? Does a pair of budding breasts automatically qualify you for romance? If anything this will teach them not to go throwing around their affections on people they don't know."
Gene's glare dropped into amazement. "You really are a butt."
"Yes." Naru dropped his hand, turning back again. "If anything it's your fault. You're such a...flirt."
Gene shot up, and a few leaves fluttered down from his movement. "It's called being nice."
"Whatever. They probably couldn't tell the difference between me and you anyways—"
"—Until you opened your mouth, yeah." Gene swung his leg back over with is other and slipped down from the tree, landing on bended knee. He straightened, creating a perfect, blue-shirt doppelganger to the aloof, skinny Naru. "But it's really only hurting you in the end. I was trying to help you understand, and I figured something smarty and classical and...wordy would help you understand better than pictures would. Romance and girls aren't bad, and if you keep hurting people like that, you'll end up all alone with no friends and—"
Naru pushed the book against Gene's chest.
"I'm too young for this," he said.
Gene face flushed. "Are you listening to me? I'm trying to take care of you!"
At this, Naru gave his first smile, although it was tiny compared to the wide-spread grin I knew Gene was capable of at a drop of the hat.
"I know. And I'm saying don't worry. After all, I've got you, don't I?"
And he started off across the lawn. Sitting at a stone bench a ways a way was maybe a younger Lin, who was also reading a book, but clearly there to watch the other boys. A park I hadn't noticed before spread out behind him, complete with a playground crawling with children and a girl on roller blades walking her dog.
Gene didn't follow right away. His eyebrows had done the pucker Naru's did so often lately towards me when he was concerned.
"But I might not always be around, you idiot."
The scene changed. My heart had started moving towards Naru's poor, puckered brow and my desire to smooth it. He shouldn't have to worry about me—
And I was standing in the hospital room, looking on my sleeping self curled up at Naru's side. Naru had woken up, but hadn't sat up. Instead, he watched me, and the raw, naked tenderness I saw on his face and the way he lifted his hand to brush back some hair from my face made me draw back. That sort of love could make a stranger weep. Did I really do him any justice? Did I really deserve that kind of passion? Did that sort of affection even exist in real life?
But instead of being happy, or touched, it just made me fully comprehend just how easily I could destroy him. That look—there was nothing more vulnerable. Would he be able to survive if anything were to happen to me? Suddenly, I couldn't agree with Gene's concern more. Naru had put so much onto me. Didn't he know what it really meant to have friends? Didn't he have any idea how much the others loved him? He had to. He had given signs. He had even said so...sort of.
I had to hope so, because the darkness was swallowing me again, and this time a confusing menagerie of images and colors took me up. Flashes of people I didn't know, lights, music, a girl clutching at a red Solo cup, laughing as though her lungs might give up, a weeping woman alone in a small paisley kitchen, the willowy ghost girl with the sad-doe eyes, watching me, first far away, then drawing near—
I had to find something. I had to solve this case—for Naru. For the others. People were dying.
"Monsters."
She was besides me, brown sugar hair swept forward to hide her expression. She was looking down, as though into a well, and I followed her sight to the weeping woman bellow. It was back in that paisley kitchen with soft yellow cupboards and sunflower themed sugar jars. She was a plain woman, with long, skinny arms that might have once been beautiful when they had a bit of flesh on them. I thought I could recognize the angle of her slumped shoulders. She didn't look well. Her crying suddenly stopped to throw up into the sink she hunched over.
"What's wrong with her?" I asked, hoping the girl besides me would answer, but she didn't. "I know that woman. But..." From where? Oh gosh, from where?
"Monsters."
This time, however, the word didn't come from the girl besides me, but from the woman, her voice croaked with stomach acid.
"That's all they can be," echoed the girl beside me in time with the woman.
"What are you talking about? Why is she sick?"
"Why were you sick?" asked the girl.
I opened my mouth to answer that I had been traumatized, I was in a panic, that everything in my body had just been rejecting the memory of hers she had force fed me into reliving, but stopped as the woman below retched once again. Looking at the ghost's girl's willowy features, I suddenly saw the similarity between her frame and that of the woman's below. They even had the same brown sugar hair, though the woman's had already started to streak with gray.
"She's your mother." The scene blurred. I saw flashes of keys—hands—the spare keys we got for our rented room in the 2-B dormitory. The hand had been bony looking, but had surprising strength as she helped Yasu carry the tote.
No matter how high we keep our admission standards, there will always be those who treat college as the place to experiment on everything your parents told you not to.
Then it clicked in my head. Mrs. Kodachi, Head of the Student Housing department, was sure to have a master key to all of the rooms. She could unlock any door and lock it, without anyone paying her much mind. She could just be doing her rounds, checking on a room, moving someone in, she did it all the time. She also took care of drug searches, if those were done at all. When drugs were confiscated, where did they go? Also, in the upper management of the university, it was very likely for her to have the access needed to make another page connected to the universities mainframe, so only those who had a Student ID could log in—because why would a Student ID work otherwise? If I could ask Lin to look into when the site was created and the time of this girls death, maybe—
A sharp, claw like force ripped me out of the barrage like a splash of cold water. I was thrown back, pressed down, blind-sighted.
And then she was above me, knees on my thighs, thin fingers digging into my shoulders.
And her face closing in on mine. Her doe-like eyes growing darker, darker, darker, till there weren't any eyes there at all, just holes that drew me in like a pair of mouths.
You will not stop justice.
I knew what waited for me in the back of those pit-like eyes. Swii was there, telling me to strip, burying his fleshy dagger into me, cutting up into me, sawing at me, demanding I moan, demanding I bleed.
"No! Please!"
But I couldn't see her skin anymore. It was just black. I started to feel the pain in my pelvis again, the burning, horrible pain.
"Mai!"
I woke with a start, trembling, covered in cold sweat.
And staring into the dark blue eyes of my Naru, who had taken hold of my arm to shake me.
"It's just a dream," he said, letting go of my arm to wipe a thumb across my damp brow. "Come back, easy now. Shh."
The pain, I realized, was my cramps, starting up again at my stress. Really, the uterus was just a sensitive, spoiled brat when it was menstruating time.
"Mrs. Kodachi," I gasped.
His eyebrows rose. "Oh. One of those?"
When was it not these days? "The girl Swii raped—she's her daughter. She could have done it all—she could have—" I sat up, ignoring the way my tender, bleeding girl organ twinged at that action. "I've got to call the detective."