Chapter Text
PARA [ noun ]; from the Greek “para,” meaning “beside” or “adjacent to.”
[ prefix ]; denoting irregularity in a function or faculty; “beyond.”
NORMALITY [ noun ]; the condition of being normal.
1.a PARANORMALITY [ noun ]; the condition of being in an unfamiliar or irregular state that ceases to resemble the condition you were previously in.
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The dog was technically a mutt, if you asked Daichi to guess at what was in him, he’d probably shrug and say “something big, something that used to guard herds.” In fact, that was the exact answer he’d given to pretty much anyone that had wanted to inquire into the Sawamura family dog’s lineage. It was one of those big dogs, with so much thick fur, and a wide, broad face and big paws and a demeanour that seemed just a little bit checked out from the world at all times. He liked to lay down in bodies of water, scared little children despite being a sweetheart, and in one particularly powerful memory of Daichi’s, had once taken kid-Daichi’s full face in his mouth.
He was a fluffy dog, mottled mostly white and light cream with some brown. When he was a puppy, he was all white. Daichi had insisted upon naming him Kumo. As the only child at that point in time he had had zero competition and won the debate with a landslide.
Kumo was, in all meaningful ways, Daichi’s dog.
Part of the contract of getting a pet had been that he would need to maintain regular walks, feeding, grooming, and all associated challenges. In many ways, Kumo had been his first foray into responsibility, the first kid he helped raise, and a shockingly useful learning curve both for the future baby siblings he would tend to and also to the very intense and rambunctious first years he was currently dealing with.
Daichi kept the dog well groomed, Daichi fed the dog on a regular schedule, Daichi took it for nice long walks every evening, or, when possible, over to the park to toss a ball as far as he could and watch him bolt. He was older now, they didn’t do that much. But Daichi was the one who trained him, and he was quite proud of that . Kumo had excellent recall, an assortment of tricks, and never pulled on the leash.
Unfortunately, because of this disparity between the management of the dog and the number of people in the household, Daichi was also the only person the dog really respected, and only his father came close to a second. That father, however, was currently living in Tokyo which meant he was Daichi’s responsibility.. Kumo was a sweetheart and never caused any trouble, but his mother, also, could not for the life of her get him to do anything .
Which is why she’s yelling.
“Daichi!”
Daichi has only just stepped foot through the front door of the home, volleyball practice having run long and then he’d gotten distracted talking with Suga and Asahi at the street corner. They’d only remembered they had to go when the sun had gone down and the streetlights had come on.
“Ah - yes? What-?”
He tosses his school bag to the side, hurrying up through the livingroom and into the kitchen, finding his mother half finished with dinner, frazzled and standing in the back doorway, cool air billowing in.
“Go get your dog, he’s gone off into the woods somewhere,” she says, stepping out of the doorway so that Daichi could pass through. “I’ve been calling him for half an hour, he won’t listen.”
“Were you using the commands?”
“I’ve been screaming my head off!”
“That is literally the opposite of what I asked. I told you, he only responds to the German,” Daichi replies, slipping his shoes back on and heading out into the back garden.
“Why the hell you taught that dog in a language nobody speaks-”
His mother is cut off by her own choice to walk away to attend to dinner, and Daichi is thankful for it, since he’s actually quite tired of trying to explain it to his mother.
The Sawamura family home was a lot bigger than everyone expected it to be. There were a lot of reasons why people tended to think Daichi’s home would be smaller and more humble than it was, though Suga had defined it mostly as Daichi having what he called ‘overworked orphan-boy energy,’ which he still hadn’t decided how he felt about.
Either way, it couldn’t be further from the truth, and the Sawamura family money was something Daichi specifically avoided talking about almost exclusively to prevent Tanaka from having an excuse for asking for more meat buns than he already did.
“Kumo!” Daichi called, stepping through into the slightly damp grass. “Hier!”
The yard in the back opened up without a fence to a patch of woodland that, in essence, was a rather uninhabited, rather useless little patch. It was only technically not farmland because it took a sharp turn into rocky, mountainous terrain just a little bit in, and on three sides was cut off by major and minor roads. Daichi wasn’t even sure if it was technically their property, but they’d been treating it as such.
There were no animals living in it bigger than a rabbit, and the most interesting thing about it was that a family of little falcons liked to nest in some of the bigger trees.
It’s unusual that Kumo doesn’t come right back to him. He really doesn’t want to enter the forest, since the grass is damp and the undergrowth is a little bit dramatic and honestly he probably wouldn’t escape without a couple of bugs on him, so it was better to avoid.
“Hier!” he calls again, louder, and this time, finally, he hears a loud crashing noise as Kumo came tumbling down the rocky terrain and through the undergrowth, undoubtedly proving why no animals permanently lived or thrived there.
“Hey, buddy,” he coos, once the dog has reached him at the forest’s edge, and he can crouch down to scratch at his face. Kumo is happy to see him, licking at his face before letting Daichi scratch down his neck and under his collar. “Exploring, eh?”
It wasn’t really like Kumo to wander into the forest. It’s unusual enough that Daichi glances up over the dog to stare off into its green, dark depths and wonder what might have caught his interest. Kumo likes low-effort activities nowadays. (He was, after all, almost twelve years old.) Daichi had once seen him let a treat hit him in the face, fall to the ground, and then completely lay down to eat it.
He hadn’t gone off into the forest like this in a long time - and certainly not been so caught up in whatever he was doing that he ignored the recall command.
But the forest is still and quiet. There’s nothing there , not really. The mountainous terrain got steeper, and steeper, and maybe there’d be interesting smells coming off from the proper wilderness, but Kumo had never cared before.
“Okay, let’s go,” Daichi says eventually, standing up.
---
Nightmares have always come easily to Daichi. Ever since he was a kid. Something about after the night fell itches his brain with all sorts of intrusive, ugly thoughts.
Insomnia came naturally too.
Having to sit and walk yourself through every reason you’re not going to be axe-murdered really was not conducive to falling asleep.
Suga always laughed at him for it. Not for the sleep issues, but for the way he talked about it.
“I’m not an insomniac,” he’d say, even though he did not sleep that much on average. “I just have insomnia.”
“Cute, but that’s definitely not how it works,” Suga had laughed.
“I mean… Look, I just mean… I have trouble falling asleep for other reasons. It’s like… insomnia by association. I just have an overactive mind.”
“I get that,” Asahi says. “Sometimes, especially before games, or tests, I’ll lay in bed and just think about it. Like… just… everything that could possibly happen. Every play that could possibly be made. Every question that might be on the test, every answer I might give. All of it.”
Daichi nods. “Exactly. It’s not my fault if the night is so still and dark and I can’t help but notice every tiny sound and shadow.”
“Oh my god,” Suga usually replies around that time. “No, Asahi, you have an anxiety disorder, and you -” and here he’s usually beckoning to Daichi. “Clearly are just afraid of the dark. Get yourself a nightlight and sleep more than three hours, I am begging you.”
“I am not afraid of the dark,” Daichi always, at that point, scoffs.
He’s thinking about that now as he sits at his desk. He’s really not afraid of the dark. Or… not all dark. His room light is turned off - that doesn’t bother him at all, sitting in the dark of his room.
The shadows of the world outside, though, that he can look at through the glossy reflection of his window, that’s a little unnerving.
His foot is bouncing against the floor, and has been for a while. He knows he’s safe, he knows he’s fine , he knows it all. There’s nobody outside, There’s nobody outside. There’s nothing in the crack under his bed or the shadows from his closet or between the slivers of moonlight scattered against the wall of his room.
The clock on his phone says a dozen minutes after two am.
He rubs a hand over eyes. He’s exhausted, he can feel his need to sleep starting to pull at his body.
He usually falls asleep around this time. Maybe if he crawls into bed now, he can fall asleep before he thinks about what might happen if he does.
And then, as his head begins to droop from its place propped up by his hand, there’s a single, low, but firm, boof sort of bark from Kumo downstairs.
Daichi stays perfectly still. Maybe it’s just a dog-dream.
But, no-
Kumo barks again, and then a little bit louder, and then louder, and then-
Daichi is up on his feet and stumbling out of his room before he even decides to go. Kumo didn’t bark for no reason, and Daichi was not going to let him wake the neighbourhood. He almost trips going down the stairs, blinking rapidly to try and clear his head.
“Hey, buddy, nein , nein , stop, no-” and he finds him at the back door, a glass sliding door that stares out into that nauseatingly rich darkness of the forest.
Daichi crouches down to grab Kumo by the neck, wrapping his arms around him as he looks out into the woods.
“What is it, boy?” Daichi mumbles, and he thinks his presence has succeeded in calming him down enough, until Kumo reaches to start scratching at the door. “Do you need to go out?”
I let you out before bed , he wants to add, but doing so would be silly, because Kumo is a dog and dog’s don’t particularly operate on rational thought.
Kumo boofs again. Daichi frowns slightly, scratching him for a moment more before standing up to slowly unlock and slide open-
He barely has it open wide enough to let the large dog out before Kumo has shoved his way through and bolted out into the woods, barking only a couple of times before disappearing.
“H-hey! Ach-” Daichi stumbles around, taking off after him and leaving the door open in the process, cold, wet grass soaking his toes as he heads to the tree line. “Kumo! Hier! Hier!”
What in the hell is going on?
There’s an oppressive air of uncertainty that he doesn’t like. Kumo is not an energetic dog that chases any scent it finds. The forest is not a dangerous or even particularly interesting place. Daichi has trained him well , he never ignores a direct command - especially not from him. The forest feels sickeningly unknown at this moment, but Kumo is gone from his sight and his hearing.
Daichi takes off into the woods before he can think a second more about the dark and the unknown.
“Kumo!” he calls again, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He thinks he can hear rustling and sniffing, he thinks he can follow the trail as he uses both hands and feet to grab at trees and rocks and pull himself up a steeper part of the mountain.
He follows the path of least resistance, because that’s where he imagines his old dog would do, but he’s got quite a head start.
“Hier, Kumo!”
His toes sink into wet moss and peat, sticks dig into their soles and rocks scratch at the skin. It’s cold, it’s uncomfortable, Kumo is not listening , but-
A shriek. Something undeniably human is screaming. Daichi reaches a flatter part of the woodlands at the same moment, in time to see Kumo leaping and barking, hackles raised slightly as if fighting something of substantial worry.
“Hier! Nein, Kumo! Hier!”
And there’s a person, understandably very flustered by the dog that’s targeting them. Tall, and coated in shadows, the flashlight they had been using dropped to the forest floor and casting harsh light up behind them, but only serving to backlight and obscure their features. Even so, there’s something oddly familiar about the voice and posture, and Daichi takes a few more steps forward, to try and see-
Slam!
Something hard and painful absolutely cracks in the back of his skull, and it’s so much force that Daichi is immediately sent to the ground, vision sparking out black and a solid ringing deafening him. Fight or flight engages immediately, but cannot overcome the wave after wave of woozy darkness, as he tries to push himself up and pull himself together for what was, potentially, going to be a fight for his life.
“Oh my god!” a, somewhat, familiar voice shrieks. “What did you do?”
He can hear Kumo barking, even more ferociously now, and when Daichi tries to shift his legs he realizes the dog has gone into position to guard him.
“Oh, good boy,” Daichi manages to wheeze out, blinking light back into his vision, everything fuzzy and slowly orienting itself.
“What did I do? Oh, I’m sorry, there was a fucking stranger shouting in a foreign language and you were screaming bloody murder! I had a perfectly reasonable response with the limited information given!”
“It was the dog , Iwa-chan! It snuck up on me! I was startled by the dog!”
“Why is the dog here-”
“Iwa-chan?” Daichi wheezes, and when he opens his eyes both people swivel flashlights over to him. It burns his eyes, and he has to close them again, fighting against the throbbing in his head.
Kumo’s growl is throaty and vicious, snapping at both of them to make them back up.
“Wait holy fuck,” Oikawa says. “That’s Karasuno’s captain.”
“What? No it isn’t.”
“Yes, it totally is! You just killed Karasuno’s captain!”
“I didn’t kill him! Dead people don’t groan and roll around in pain!”
“Kumo,” Daichi wheezes, trying to decide which of his simple commands translated to ‘don’t attack these two chucklefucks,’ the best. “ Halt, ” he tries, followed immediately by: “ Platz. Halt. ”
And Kumo listens, whining slightly and moving around to nose at Daichi. He’s happy to use the dog as support for sitting up, trying to get the light spots out of his eyes now. The two idiots have had the good sense to move their flashlights off.
“Uh… sorry,” Iwaizumi says after a moment, a little awkwardly. He tosses the branch he had swung off into the bushes. “Didn’t… uh… didn’t see it was you.”
“What are you even doing out here,” Oikawa replies, putting a hand on his hip.
“Wh… what am I-? I live here,” Daichi says, looking up at him, one hand lifting to rub at his head. “I… this-” well it’s not technically my property. “-I… no, Seijoh is… so far away, what do you mean what am I doing here, what are you doing here?”
Oikawa and Iwaizmi exchange a glance, before Oikawa replies with:
“That’s classified.”
“I’m going to have my dog kill you,” Daichi replies.
Oikawa shifts slightly. “Well… we’re… investigating. That’s all.”
“...investigating what? Dead trees? Squirrels? The fucking moon?”
“Aliens,” Oikawa replies.
“There are no aliens,” Iwa cuts in.
“ Probable aliens.”
“No.”
Oikawa ends up just pouting at him for a moment, before sighing and heading over to Daichi, offering a hand down to him. The moment he does, Kumo begins to bristle, and Oikawa’s hand is swiftly redacted. Daichi is left to get up on his own. Which he does, with considerable dizzy difficulty.
“What in the hell is a probable alien?” Daichi says.
“There was a meteor, a couple nights ago,” Oikawa says. “Came down around here, we’re trying to find it.”
“Well I think I would have noticed if a damn meteor crashed into my backyard,” Daichi replies.
“Probably not,” Oikawa says, shrugging. “It’s estimated it came down around this area, but if it survived the atmosphere, it probably wouldn’t have been very big by the end of it. Just a little guy-” and here he holds up his fingers, just an inch apart. “At least, that’s what I’m hoping-”
“Hang on- are you telling me you’ve been fucking around in the woods these last few nights?”
Oikawa nods. “I want to find it.”
“You’re the reason my dog has been acting crazy?”
“In my defense if your dog is crazy that sounds like your problem.”
“My dog is fine,” Daichi replies, waving a hand. “My dog is perfectly well trained and you have been terrorizing him with your trespassing. ”
Oikawa blinks back, the picture of innocence. Daichi eventually turns his attention to where Iwaizumi was standing, looking significantly less interested in the conversation, casting the light of his flashlight about the woods.
“Well,” Iwa starts, sounding a little bit apathetic. “You can’t blame that on us.”
“Yes I can!”
“No, you can’t. We’ve never been in these woods before. Last night we were on the other side of the highway, and the night before that even further off. We weren’t here.”
Daichi stares at him.
“How often are you guys lurking in the woods?”
“Please, when you say it like that it implies we’re being creepy,” Oikawa scoffs. “And… not that often. Not usually like this. I just wanna find the meteor.”
“And you’re planning on searching the entire goddamn mountain, apparently?”
“Don’t underestimate his crazy,” Iwa cuts in. “Do not.”
Oikawa shrugs. “As much as I can, I guess. It’s not like I’m bothering anyone. And it’s super cool, most meteorites hit the ocean, or whatever, it’s not usual that one comes down in your own backyard.”
“You’re bothering me .”
Oikawa shrugs. “Sorry. But you can go rest easy knowing there’s nothing out here but-”
Oikawa cuts himself off, because there is someone else out here. Another set of footsteps, another beam of a flashlight, another rustle. Kumo begins to tense up, so Daichi grabs him, mumbling under his breath to try and calm him down.
Oikawa steps back a few steps, and Daichi briefly wonders why he looks so concerned before realizing that whoever was approaching was doing so from up the mountain. Away from the city.
Iwaizumi immediately moves to grab his weaponized branch again, before returning to his place beside Oikawa and tensing up not unlike Kumo was, eyes locked and body ready to swing.
Daichi has a probable concussion, is on no-hours of sleep, and doesn’t have shoes on. He’s a little bit concerned he’s about to die.
“Hey!”
The sharp bark of a voice shocks them all into straightening up slightly, and they’re very surprised to see the uniformed silhouette of a police officer.
Everyone just stays perfectly still.
“What are you kids doing out here?”
“I live here,” Daichi says quickly. “I was just-”
“We were just celebrating passing our exams,” Oikawa laughed, scratching at the back of his neck. “Sorry if we were being too noisy. Daichi’s house is just down the hill, we… well we thought it would be fun to go-”
“What, drinking? Doing drugs? Burning stuff?”
What? Daichi wants to ask, but he probably has a concussion and honestly everything has been confusing so far so he just lets it slide.
“No, no, none of that,” Oikawa laughs, waving a hand. “We were just playing with the dog,” he adds. The police officer raises an eye, and to prove his point, Oikawa takes the large stick Iwaizumi had intended to weaponize and shakes it at Kumo, before tossing it into the woods. “Fetch!”
Kumo doesn’t even twitch in the right direction.
Oikawa must absolutely dominate in poker, Daichi decides, since he smiles at the police officer with a sweet, confident expression as if that had gone perfectly well.
The officer stares a second more, before just nodding to them. “Get on out of here, then. You’ve got no business being in the woods this late.”
It’s public property, Daichi wants to reply, but Oikawa is already nodding and chirping a yes sir! so he supposed that answered that.
Under the watchful eye of the officer, Daichi, Oikawa and Iwaizumi all turn and begin slowly trudging back through the forest. Kumo stays close to him, looking up at Daichi on occasion as if asking ‘what the hell is going on?’
They hear the officer leave as well, the light that had been following them disappears. Oikawa switches his flashlight back on, and Iwa does the same.
“Should I be worried about how easily you lie to cops?” Iwaizumi says after a minute.
“Don’t worry about it,” Oikawa replies, though he sounds a little distant, off in thought.
Daichi doesn’t even realize he’s leading them home until he’s dropping the last rocky ledge from the mountain and crossing the threshold of the forest back into his backyard. Flashlights swivel up, investigating the house for a moment before Oikawa says:
“Holy shit, dude, is this where you live? ”
“Uh - yeah?”
“What the fuck do your parents do, shit gold?”
“Oh, ah… no, no, they’re- both in government jobs - well, my moms a legal consultant, but my Dad’s in Tokyo, working-”
“Alright, alright, I get it,” Oikawa says, cutting him off with a wave of his hand. “Back to the matter at hand, though -” he adds, before turning and heading around the edge of the forest, leaving them behind.
“Oikawa!”
Iwaizumi takes off after him, sounding a little bit flustered himself, and Daichi, perhaps just magnetized towards them, compulsively follows.
“Where are you going?”
Oikawa glances back at him. “To see what the hell the police are doing in the woods. It’s probably some kind of cover-up.”
“...excuse me?”
“Oh my god, not this again,” Iwaizumi groans.
“Think about it!” is Oikawa’s response, looking between them. A meteorite comes crashing to earth and for some reason a random municipal cop is out in the woods demanding we leave? We weren’t doing anything wrong! They’re clearing the area for something.”
Daichi hates that it makes some kind of sense, but he’s not sure the conclusion is space conspiracy .
“I mean… maybe some else happened. Maybe the meteorite hit something.”
“Maybe the meteorite wasn’t a meteor,” Oikawa counters, wagging a finger at him.
“Maybe you need new hobbies,” Iwa throws in. “Come on, you’re not really going to drag us back into the woods, are you? To what, spy on the police? Come on-”
“You said you’d accompany me!”
“I agreed to doing a silly thing when the silly thing was just walking around a forest at night. This is borderline illegal.”
Oikawa laughs. “Well, if the police are doing stuff that’s illegal simply to see , then maybe they shouldn’t be doing it, yeah?”
Daichi also hates that that’s some kind of good point. It’s not really convincing him to go chase down the police in the woods, but before he can decide to leave these two idiots to do whatever this was alone, Oikawa has already started into the woods along a little path some distance from his house and Daichi is already following him.
“So do you guys lurk in the woods most nights, or…?” Daichi asks, lowering his voice as he leaned over to Iwaizumi.
“Don’t intentionally make it worse than it is.”
“That was not a no-”
“No! No, we don’t, this isn’t… normal, it’s… just…”
They get a firm shush from Oikawa, who waves a hand irritatedly at them, before glaring at them. Oh, right, the borderline espionage. He supposed they should be quiet.
Kumo has been following along behind quite happily, before suddenly taking off into the woods again. Daichi bites his cheek, before hissing, as quietly as he could shout: “Fuss, Kumo!”
Kumo, this time, listens, but he turns back to Daichi with baleful, sweet eyes, as if he didn’t understand why he was not allowed to go running into the woods. He probably didn’t.
He resists the urge to explain it out loud. People could see him.
“Actually, let him,” Oikawa says, glancing down at the dog. “He probably can sense whatever it is they’re hiding in here.”
“...excuse me?”
“You said he’s been acting weird, right? Dogs have all sorts of abilities that we don’t, he probably knows something weird…”
“Stop analyzing my dog,” Daichi replies.
“Seriously! Let’s see where he goes,” Oikawa says.
Daichi thinks about this for a moment, before sighing and glancing down to Kumo. “Lauf,” he says, and Kumo tenses, as if confused. “It’s okay,” he says. “Lauf.”
And Kumo does, excitedly starting off into the words on his little dog mission. Oikawa gives Daichi a look as if he’s proven anything , but either way all three boys are now following the dog so he doesn’t have a strong defense.
Daichi wishes he had shoes on.
Light from the moon brightens their way, but it’s through dappled, dark shadows that they start to realize they’re are going towards something. Oikawa makes another motion to silence them, even though nobody is speaking, and when suddenly they realize there is light in the forest, a harsh, artificial whiteness that lights up the trees, they also realize there are voices, and movement.
The moment they see a person, Daichi hisses as softly as he can for Kumo to return, and thankfully the dog listens, though he seems incredibly resistant, torn between obeying and following whatever had caught his interest.
Daichi grabs his collar, not used to not being able to trust the dog.
The lights aren’t flashlights. They’re floodlights, set up in the distance, in an area taped off with yellow police tape. Oikawa crouches down, and continues moving forward like a fucking animal, slinking through the undergrowth to avoid being spotted.
Iwaizumi is a reluctant follower, and Daichi, realizing he’s already this far into this bullshit, goes along with them much the same. It’s cold and wet, he once again wishes for shoes, but there’s an odd kind of excitement in his stomach. He knows it’s dangerous, sure, but the allure of doing something a little bit dangerous is undeniable.
Kumo is very interested in nosing in at him, curious as to what they’re doing. He keeps getting distracted trying to wander off, and Daichi hopes the police assume it’s some nocturnal creature.
They have to stop eventually, the light being simply too bright, too risky to approach. They tuck themselves in bushes and dead leaves and the underbrush, blinking against the harsh white light and hoping to use its brightness to deepen the shadows they crouched in.
Daichi tries to make sense of the scene he’s looking at.
There are municipal police, mostly standing around, looking like they were on some kind of guard. They’re carrying guns, which he takes note of. But that’s not the only group here.
There are a couple of people, off to the side, in sleek black suits covered by garrish blue raincoats. It’s not raining.
Kumo has started squirming, so Daichi has to yank him back by the collar and shush him. What the hell is he so excited about?
In the middle of the gathering people there’s a white canvas tent set up over something low on the ground - undoubtedly the object of interest. Daichi is sure that Oikawa must be sure that that is the meteorite, or whatever fell from the sky.
Kumo squirms again. Daichi tightened his hold.
One of the raincoats turns, and he can see the yellow writing across their back.
PSIA.
He can see Oikawa’s lips moving, seeming surprised. What the hell was going on? What was so involved that the PSIA was out here managing it?
Oikawa squirms around and pulls out his phone, carefully adjusting the settings before lifting it up to try and take a photo of a scene.
Oh my god this is so illegal. This is so illegal. This is so illegal.
And then one of the PSIA agents turns around, calling something to one of the officers to beckon them over, and the voice is gut-wrenchingly familiar.
Kumo recognizes it too, and Daichi’s own shock stops him from keeping a tight enough grip as Kumo takes off, barking his excitement and startling the entire gathering into swiveling their attention - and their guns - onto the dog.
“Kumo!” Daichi’s father says, surprise clear in his voice as the dog happily bounds up to him, sniffing and nudging at his hands and knees and whatever he could get to. “What are you doing out here? You should be in bed!”
Oikawa is looking at him, glaring why does that PSIA agent know your dog? very accusingly, and Daichi has a very good answer that he doesn’t want to say out loud.
My father isn’t a PSIA agent, though…
He…
“Sir, do you know this animal?”
“Uh, yeah,” he laughs, “Sorry, it’s my son’s dog, the ah - the family home is nearby. He’s usually inside at night, though…”
Oikawa is, as silently as possible, smacking Daichi furiously.
Sawamura Rion, a man that, until this exact moment, Daichi had believed was currently in central Tokyo, lifts his head to look around.
“Well it can’t be here ,” one of the other PSIA agents says.
“Right, right, ah - Toshiko! ” Rion shouts, catching the attention of one of the police officers. “Come here, you need to take this dog out of here, I’ll give you the address to return it to.”
“Yes sir,” is the chirped reply.
Oikawa is still hitting Daichi. Daichi is just barely getting his brain to process again before he says, in the most hushed whisper he has ever managed: “We need to go, we need to go we can’t be here we need to go we have to go like right now we need to-”
Oikawa, apparently now clueing into Daichi’s meltdown, nods along before nudging him and beginning to scoot backwards. Daichi hesitates before doing the same, the cold in his toes suddenly unbearable and painful. He’s glad for it, though, giving his brain something else to think about.
When they’re down a hill a bit and out of sight of the white light, they stumble back to their feet, covered in dirt and leaves and twigs.
Oikawa shoves at him to go, and so he does. Iwaizumi follows up behind.
It’s not until they are stumbling down a much steeper part of the hill, and then stumbling out of the treeline onto the side of a narrow, quiet highway, that they make noise again.
“Holy shit ,” Oikawa laughs, putting a hand on his chest. “Oh my god, oh my god, that’s definitely a conspiracy, first off-”
“Or a crime scene,” Iwaizumi says. “The tent could have been covering a body. Something normal.”
“Why would the PSIA be out here for a body?”
“Why would they be out here for a meteorite!”
Daichi feels lightheaded. He hasn’t slept. He’s taken a hit to the head.
He sways on his feet.
“Daichi!” Oikawa says, turning on him. “Your dad is- do you know what-”
He manages a shrug. “Last I heard he was managing an excel spreadsheet in a government building. I mean… the move to Tokyo was… We assumed he was just…. I… he doesn’t-” Daichi turned around to look back into the little forest that had for so much of his life been nothing more than an interesting footnote in the landscape of his town.
“I think Oikawa’s right,” Daichi says, after a second.
“Excuse me?” Iwaizumi replies.
“Not... I mean… I don’t know about the meteorite, but they’re covering something up.”
“You can’t-”
“My dad doesn’t work for the PSIA,” Daichi replies, turning back to him. Perhaps it’s just the fervor in which he stares that shuts Iwaizumi up. “He doesn’t. Or, he does . If it wasn’t some kind of conspiracy, he’d be allowed to tell his family about it. Why would he be lying?”
“Maybe he’s not lying,” Iwaizumi says. “Come on, okay, so… if he’s got this crazy government job, maybe… It was this last minute reassignment and he just got out here tonight, and won’t have time to visit, and just… didn’t want to disappoint you by not swinging by while he can before heading back. Maybe he didn’t have time, or was so busy he forgot to mention he had to come down for a bit.”
That’s reasonable.
“Right,” Daichi says, before pulling out his phone.
“What are you doing?” Oikawa asks.
“Calling him. Figuring it-”
“No!” Oikawa says, snatching his phone from him. “It’s… three in the morning! If you call him now, especially after he saw your dog, they might figure out we were there. Call in the morning. At a normal time.”
Daichi stares at him, nodding slightly before tucking his phone away again.
“Now… okay, just-”
“We need to get home,” Iwaizumi says. “There’s school in the morning. God. Tomorrow’s going to suck.”
“Blame it on me,” Oikawa says. “You usually do.”
Daichi turns his feet towards his house, trailing behind Oikawa and Iwaizumi as they bicker back and forth.
“I will,” Iwaizumi says. “But to be honest, if I was going to be losing sleep staying up with my boyfriend, this is not the activity I’d have hoped to be doing.”
“Iwa-chan! You’re awful. You agreed to come! If you wanted to stay home you could have.”
“Mhm… that’s barely true.”
“Well if you don’t want to uncover the truth about our world with me, just say so.”
“Next time I will.”
“Fine!”
Daichi’s feet hurt. He’s so cold.
“We’re going to turn here,” Oikawa says, stopping at a fork in the road. Daichi lifts his head slowly, still a little bit unsteady on his feet.
“Oh. Okay.”
Oikawa is looking at him, a little bit empathetically, perhaps, before sticking out his hand. “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
“Phone. Give it to me.”
Daichi isn’t sure he should just trust him like that, but after a second is too exhausted and does as told, handing his phone over to him. Oikawa taps around in it for a moment, before handing it back.
“There. Please text me if you learn anything. Good or bad. It’s going to eat me alive if I can’t figure out what they were doing up there."
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Daichi says, staring down at his phone. “But… sure, yeah, I’ll tell you what my dad says.”
Oikawa nods, before a nudge from Iwaizumi convinces him to turn and start walking down the road. Daichi waves them off, and finds himself, once again, alone in the darkness.
It’s cold, dark, his head is spinning.
Iwaizumi is probably right. It’s probably fine. You never really understood his job anyway. It’s probably fine. It’s fine. He’s fine. You’re fine. It’s normal and everything is normal and nothing is weird and everything is perfectly regular. It’s… normal. This is fine.
He’s shivering and dragging his feet back through his backyard when a sharp noise of surprise catches his attention, and he looks up to see a young police officer, with a makeshift leash around Kumo’s collar.
Daichi stares at him.
The police officer stares back.
He’s not sure what comes over him, perhaps it’s just his exhaustion, or the left over anxiety about not being caught spying, but he opens his mouth and what comes out is:
“You found my dog.”
The police officer, clearly glad to avoid having to lie himself, nods. “Yes, sorry, he was… just loose-”
“Yeah, I… he ran off, I was looking…”
The officer unties the dog, and Daichi is happy to finally, properly, let the dog back into the house. He glances back over his shoulder.
“Thanks,” he says. The officer gives him a nod.
“You should… you should keep those pets on a leash.”
“With all due respect, I was not trying to take him on a walk.”
---
Daichi wakes up the next morning, and for a second it feels like it was another nightmare. It certainly could be, disjointed and irrational, filled with deep-seated anxieties, about being alone, about not knowing what to do, about being powerless. But he knows it’s not a nightmare. His nightmares end when he wakes up. That one ended when he went to bed.
He grabs his phone. Operating on barely two and a half hours of sleep, he stares at his phone for long enough that he sees when Suga’s text message comes in.
Good morning! Suga sends, followed immediately by: can we meet up before school? I need to check my answers for that math homework.
Daichi nodded to himself, before sending back: Sure. I’ll meet you in the clubroom.
He gets a long string of happy emojis back from Suga, but Daichi has turned his attention away from that, finding his father’s contact number and hesitating over pressing ‘call.’
Do I even want to know?
It might be better not knowing.
He presses call.
It rings.
It rings.
It rings.
Then, finally, it’s answered: “Hey, kiddo,” his father chirps, slightly distorted over the phone. “Everything okay? Shouldn’t you be getting to school?”
Daichi is quiet for a moment before remembering he needs to speak. He leans forward, pressing a hand over his eyes as he mumbles: “Uhm… right… sorry, it’s so early - did I wake you up?”
“Not at all, you’re fine. Actually I haven’t gone to bed yet. Late night with my boss, working on a new account.”
“New account?”
“Yeah, it’s not very interesting, sorry.”
“So that means you’re still in Tokyo?”
“That’s right,” he says. “Why?”
Daichi nods along for a second, before putting a cheery note to his voice to reply: “Ah, no reason. The kids were just starting to miss you, that’s all. Think you’ll be making it home anytime soon? I know they’d appreciate it.”
“Sorry, but it doesn’t look like it. This account’s gonna be eating up most of my time for the next few weeks.”
“No worries,” Daichi says, then: “Ah, sorry, yeah, I do need to get to school. I’ll… yeah, talk to you later, or-”
“Alright, alright, get on to school then. Tell your mom I say hi, okay? Love you.”
“Yeah, sure,” Daichi says. “You too.”
The phone call disconnects, and Daichi stares at his phone for a moment before pulling up Oikawa’s contact.
It’s Daichi, he sends.
My dad lied.
---
PARANORMAL [ adjective ]; denoting that which is beyond the scope of scientific explanation or understanding.
1.b PARANORMALITY [ noun ]; when those new conditions you find yourself in are absolutely fucking insane.