A Place In my Head - Chapter One
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I was acting to fast. My brain, I had left far behind me back at the cabin after Omi called, but my body wouldn't let me leave this opportunity unnoticed. So I slipped in the car, taking the folded towel with me and was driving down the road doing way past the speed limit, Omi's voice ringing in my head the whole time. "There's been an up rising of some sort of underground society here in the city." He spoke into the phone, his voice getting a little more official. I smiled, he needed practice. "We need you here Ken, at the shop." Now Omi was just pleading with me. I had asked when I needed to be there but he didn't seem to notice I'd been convinced, but I wish he had heard me because what he said brought back a wave of anxiety through me.
"We need to be a team again, Ken-san." He had said. Although that tugged on my heartstrings I still felt awkward about coming back to a team where I was the only one who didn't want to be there. "We can stop this only together." Omi's words nagged at the back of my head and my eyes slipped down to look at the crumpled up towel next to me in the passenger's seat. It started to take on the shape of Omi's face in my mind. As corny as that is his face held a look of pleading, a quivering bottom lip and large crystal blue eyes, looking up at me admiringly, needingly. I liked that feeling of authority and adore…I needed to have a kid.
Surpressing the urge to reach down and hug the little Omi faced dish-rag, I turned into an exit on the slope of a hill and opened the window. I could practically feel the air getting warmer and more humid as I descended my way down from the mountains. On the horizon a glazed light of varying colors was raised into the sky and I felt a tug at my stomach. It was the city where I've spent so much time of my life. It was only here that I could face the thing that tore my mind in half, and find where my soul belonged.
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The sun was beginning to rise again, starting a new day in the deep city that I found myself driving through. It puzzled me that I hadn't crashed yet considering the fact my mind had been so extremely elsewhere that I didn't even remember what country I was in. In a flash of realization I remembered the cotton towel that I had been keeping an eye on like a troublesome puppy dog and looked to my left. It was still there. It's not like I was expecting it to be foaming at the mouth, wherever that may be and holding a bloody butcher knife. I guess sometimes I can be just as trustworthy to inanimate objects as I am to humans.
I looked around at the buildings to my right. The sun hit the walls with a sharp awakening glare and slowly all of the shops around me were opening their doors and sweeping their porches for the early morning joggers and unfortunate people with night-shifts. Ah, the night-shift. I had memorized this city inside and out over the time I spent under the wing of Kritiker. I knew blueprints to every building, backdoors, sidedoors, basements, everything and I knew I'd probably never forget it either.
Then there, like a block flying towards my head, stood the flower shop. The Koneko no Sumu Ie. To think, I had almost passed it, what would that have said if any of the other guys saw me. I slowly pulled over murmuring a gentle "We're here" to the towel and opened the car door. I stood there anxiously, wringing my hands into a knot at the bottom of my T-shirt. I should've worn a jacket, I underestimated how cold it could get around here.
So there stood the Koneko. Most of it was the same as I remembered, except there were a couple of small landscaping palms and a table of some purple flowers that were covered in clear plastic. On the sign hanging just above the door handle in big black letters read 'open'. I gulped as I saw the shadow of someone move behind the shutters. Why was I feeling so nervous? These guys were my friends, right? Maybe I could just wait in the car for a few minutes and they'll come and see me.
"Ken?" Ah, yes, my prayers were answered. I had bent down to open the driver's side door when on the shiny blue paint I saw a fuzzy reflection of someone waving to me across the street. I recognized the deep golden hair and turned around, straightening up and blushing.
"Omi." I acknowledged. "Hi." My voice chirped. Omi ran across the street carrying some empty crates and a rice cake wrapped in cellophane balanced on the top. The kid was definitely taller from the last time I saw him. His hair was the same length and I supposed him spending a lot of time here made him a little more prepared for the weather, seeing as he was dressed in a heavy looking blue sweatshirt that rivaled the color of my car and some… shorts. The same ol' Omi as ever.
"Ken!" His voice echoed excitedly as he put the crates down on the sidewalk curb to greet me. He didn't even notice when his breakfast fell off. It caught me slightly off guard when he reached around to hug me, but it felt warm and welcoming, after all the company of others is what I missed the most in life. I patted him on the back, returning his hug in a manly way. Omi was what…almost nineteen now and I didn't want my parental ways to get in the way anymore. "I didn't think you'd get here so fast, how many speed limits did you break on the way?" Omi narrowed his eyes which seemed nearly impossible to me considering they were so big, and smiled.
"It doesn't matter unless I get caught." I pointed out to him. Omi just kept smiling and staring. Did I look that different to him? Because every time I looked in the mirror it was just me…the same brown hair, the same dusty eyes, the same everything. It made me kind of mad sometimes like I was being left out of stuff here in the city where nothing stopped and everything just kept moving. I turned around and wiggled into the backseat of the car, taking out my one duffle bag and tossing it over my shoulder. "This place sure brings back memories." I said carefully, not noticing Omi's smile grow a little weak. "I guess we should go inside then, did you call the others?"
"Yeah, Ken." Omi's voice sounded unusually soothing like he was pacifying me into not worrying. It wasn't working. My brows fluttered a bit and Omi clearly tried to ignore this by busying himself with opening the door and pushing the crates through. I wondered if the other guys were here too.
As I stepped into the shop, carefully because first impressions in a long time are important, I felt awkward walking in. I felt like the many customers that flooded in here and that's all I felt like. It just wasn't home for me anymore. Home to me was my house up in the hills where the sunset would splash colors everywhere and I could drink hot tea on the porch at autumn. It had been to long, and I shouldn't be here. "Omi?" I froze in my spot, holding my ground as the door hit me in the back, almost knocking me over. "Omi, is that you? I need a new pair of shears, these just broke against the damn stem." I knew that voice, nagging and sarcastic with an air of importance and loads of self-esteem. Yohji Kudou. I couldn't help the smile coming to my face but hid it when Omi turned around and gave me a mocking face.
I looked around. The shop still smelled like the chemical fertilizer we put in the water, the fresh crispness of every new plant, and then there was Yohji's cigarette. Old habits were still prominent I supposed. There was a faint alluring smell of coffee in the back room too. I felt really weird now. I wanted coffee in a place I used to call home and couldn't even go get it my self without looking rude. I needed to talk Omi into offering me a cup before Yohji found out I was here and I'd have to go through more introductions and long uncomfortable silences looking like crap and feeling it too.
"Ken. Ken Hidaka. Your Ken!" I looked up from my preparing to tap Omi on the shoulder in surprise and saw Yohji's upper body leaning around a hedge. A cigarette burned in his mouth and his signature shades hung on the collar of his shirt.
"Y-Yohji!" I smiled weakly noticing the extent that the volume of my voice raised. I was blowing this by the minute. "Gee, it's, it's been a while." I smiled, widely, with bearing teeth to show my gratitude.
"A hell of a while!" Yohji stood up. Okay that was it for Yohji's introduction. It had been two years and I felt kind of hurt as he moved on to the business. "Thank god your finally here, Omi and I have been doing all of the damn research for whatever dumb reason I forgot a long time ago and now that brute of a jerk Aya just called us and told us he won't be able to make it until tomorrow." I stepped on my own foot in discomfort as Yohji talked to me like I had been there all along. He saw me bite my bottom lip in agony. "We're glad you're here Ken. You must be thirsty, there's some fresh coffee in the back."
Yohji was a god. I wanted to hug him but instead I dashed to the back eagerly with a watering mouth as I poured the coffee into a mug and drank it down like a man lost in the desert with a pitcher of holy water. A broad smile inched it's way across my face announcing my content and happiness as I turned around. "Ack!" I managed to choke out, the cup dropping out of my hand and shattering on the floor. Pinned on the door of the refridgerator a gruesome picture caught me by surprise. It was a close up of a dead child's face. The right side of the skull was beaten in and caved like a rotten melon, the thin-dark hair crusted in blood from the wound. The eyes I couldn't see but it looked like they were scraped with some sharp object as fresh blood drained out of them and down the child's pale cheek. I shuddered and backed away from the glossy photograph. It just didn't look like a human being anymore but more like a slab of butchered meat with skinny limbs twisted at weird angles and hanging from a meat hook in a factory.
"Case number eleven." Omi's voice echoed softly behind me. "Shiro Morita, a six year old boy from the outskirts of Okaida. Found dead with severe injuries to the skull and eyes. He was discovered hanging from a crucifix by his hands and a noose around his neck in a back alley." Omi's voice died away in volume. He sounded scared, almost as scared as I was now. I had every reason to be scared, I had been away from this for so long and wasn't used to these haunting images I had to go to bed pondering about. Not like Yohji, he came up to my right side and just stared silently at the picture, taking a long nauseating drag on his cigarette and letting his head hang as he exhaled. "Case eleven," Omi repeated. "Out of 23." His eyes scanned upwards towards me. "This is what we're dealing with Ken. The reason you haven't heard about it in papers is because Kritiker's been keeping a tarp over it."
"Oh, man." I managed to mutter out, practically biting my lip off. I wanted to cry and go home and run to my mommy, but I knew I couldn't do it because I was the adult here. On instinct I looked back at Omi who was looking down as he shuffled his feet and at Yohji who was now slouched against the counter twisting the cigarette around in his hands like a tiny baton.
He looked up at me, his amber eyes meeting mine. "Welcome back, Ken."
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TBC...