Chapter Text
Takina looked at the display of her phone. It would be another hour before the others at LycoReco would notice her absence. They would probably think she was ill or had an accident on the way to the café, so in order to find out, they would call her. She had no intention of picking up any of those calls. In fact, she had no intention of talking to anyone until she had accomplished what she had suddenly set out to do on the night before, when she had received a call from someone she had not spoken to in a long time.
It had been shortly before midnight. She had been relaxing in her desk chair, reading a book as a light drizzle pattered against the only window in her small apartment. She had already changed into her pajamas and just as she was about to go to bed, her phone had rang with a number she did not recognize. When she had transferred to Tokyo, she had changed not only her actual phone, but her phone number as well, and so the only people who appeared in her contacts now were Chisato, Mika, Mizuki and Kurumi, as well as the number for the phone they used in LycoReco. She had been hesitant to pick up, but her curiosity had ultimately gotten the better of her.
"Hello?" she had cautiously said as she picked up the phone.
"H-Hello," a vaguely familiar voice had responded on the other end. It had sounded like a girl, roughly the same age as her. "Is this... Takina Inoue?"
"Yes. Who am I speaking to?"
"Ah, I thought you might not remember my voice," the girl on the other side had said. There had been a pause and what sounded like someone taking a deep breath. "It's Hinata Ichinose."
When she had heard those words, it telf as if a painful sting had punctured her chest. It was true that she did not remember the girl's voice, but that name she could never quite forget, just like all the other little things that were connected to that part of her life.
"How did you get this number?" she had said, her breath lightly ragged.
"From D.A." Hinata had responded. "I knew you had transferred to Tokyo, so I contacted headquarters."
"And what do you want?"
"Umm..." There had been another pause, then, the girl had said the words that had spurred Takina to now sit in the earliest possible bullet train to Kyoto. "They found the people who killed Yoko."
Even now, remembering Hinata speak that name made her wince. She felt a ripple of pain run through her body, spreading from her brain all the way to her toes. She had sworn that she had been done with all of this. That she was finished with Kyoto, that she was not going to look back. She had found a place she belonged to now, people who accepted her and wanted her in their lifes. She had found a new partner, someone who respected her and who loved her and for whom she would go to hell and back again. Yet, the name 'Yoko' had caused her to forget about all of that. Just hearing it again had made her remember feelings and emotions she had long kept buried underneath mountains of work and training. It was like a flood that overwhelmed everything else in her head. The only thoughts related to her current life that had remained back then were: 'Why now of all times?'
But even that quickly faded into the background. After exchanging a few more words with Hinata, she had hung up and immediatly researched whether or not there were still seats available on the earliest bullet train to Kyoto for the next day. Unsurprisingly, since it was the middle of autumn, there were a bunch of seats still available, so she had set her alarm clock to 5 a.m. and had gone to bed right away.
She reminisced about what had happened, as trees and houses rushed past her in a blur outside the window she was staring out of. The train was as silent as she had imagined on these early hours and so it left her with nothing but her own thoughts. She had tried to distract herself with music at first, then with a podcast, but neither seemed to work. The sounds of her headphones simply blended into the background as memories of her time in Kyoto forced their way into the spotlight.
They were not all bad memories. Some of them were happy, even. Moments of laughter, of tears, of intimacy. They were of times when she still allowed herself to openly show her emotions, because she knew there was someone who accepted them, with whom she could share them with. Yet, they caused a fog to gather in her mind, plunging her thoughts into melancholy, because every time she saw the eyes of the first person she ever loved, she saw the eyes of a dead woman.
Occasionally, the face of that girl overlapped with another one, one that she barely remembered, slowly transforming into it. It was the face of a young woman, one not much older than she herself was now. She could not make out a lot of details, though she always saw the same blue spots underneath bloodshot eyes. Whenever these two faces started to overlap, a dark blue began to surround her, only a thin light shining through from above. It barely illuminated the face of that woman, but despite that, she could always see clearly that it was filled with the kindness one would expect from a mother.
Just as she reached out to embrace that woman, that endlessly warm figure that felt so very much like home, a force pulled her away. She tried to fight back, but she was too weak, and when she opened her mouth to protest, no words came out. She felt like a child who's lungs were filled with heavy water, anxiety filling her mind as her breathing became harder and harder . Right as she felt she would suffocate, she took one last look back. The face of that woman was blurry, as if it was blending together with the one she had seen before. For an instant, she could make out the details on both faces. The older one was pale with a bluish tint, its eyes sunken and its lips the color of death, while the other one was covered in blood, eyes and mouth still wide open, as if it was screaming in silent terror. Seeing both of them so clearly, Takina too tried to scream, but again, no sound escaped from her throat. Instead, all she felt was her lungs finally caving in, collapsing under the weight of pain and sorrow.
Before she could die from suffocation, before she was allowed to join those two faces in eternity, she was pulled out of the room of dark blue, above into the light. As she turned around, she briefly saw the face of a young woman with short, blonde hair and strands of red ribbon floating on the water's surface beneath her.
Then, with a loud, heavy gasp, she woke up sitting inside the train, cold sweat running down her forehad. Still breathing heavily, she touched her cheek and felt a cold trail there as she saw a single tear fall down onto the skirt that covered her thighs.
"Here you go," Chisato said with a smile as she handed one of the few customers inside LycoReco the cake they had ordered. It was a slow day, one of those on which she had to force a smile while working. Usually, customer service came naturally to her, but today was different. There were some minor annoyances, like the dreary, cloudy weather or the fact that a car driving through a puddle of rainwater had gotten her skirt wet, but more than that, there was something major weighing on her mind.
She turned around and walked back to the counter. For the fourth time today, she saw that Mika was holding the phone to his ear, standing there in silence, his fingers tapping impatiently on the wood of the counter. Apparently, it was the fourth time that the person he had called had not picked up, though considering how long he had already been standing there waiting, the call must have went through.
Chisato put the tray down on the counter just as Mika hung up the phone. "She didn't pick up again?" she asked.
Mika shook his head. "Nothing." He sighed. "That was the fourth time already. I'm starting to get worried."
"Me too," Chisato said.
She knew what the problem was of course, and she very well knew that it was this circumstance that was weighing down on her mind. Takina had not shown up to work. In itself, this was nothing special. Takina had been absent from work before because of illness or because she had an important appointment. But every time she did, she had called in beforehand to let Mika know that she was not going to show up for work, so it did not surprise Chisato that he was worried. She was worried too, after all.
Usually, Takina arrived before her and by now Chisato had gotten so used to greeting her first thing in the morning, for them to get dressed together and for Takina to help her do her hair, that a day without her was always a bit gloomy. However, up until now, she had never been worried on days like these. Sometimes, she had expressed the desire to accompany Takina on an appointment or to care for her when she was ill, but she was well aware that her partner was capable all on her own. So, as long as she knew what was going on with her, worrying about Takina was simply unnecessary. Now, on the other hand, every thought in her head was hyperfocusing on her partner's well-being. It was like the image of her being in trouble or having been in a serious accident was keeping her other thoughts locked behind bars.
At least the accident hypothesis seemed pretty unlikely to her by now. It had been three hours since Takina should have arrived at LycoReco. If she had been in an accident, the hospital surely would have called either the phone inside the café or Chisato's number, as these were listed in Takina's emergency contacts. At the beginning, Chisato had thought that maybe there was simply a delay somewhere on Takina's usual route. She had immediatly checked the Tokyo Metro website after arriving, but had found no indication that anything was wrong, so that hypothesis had to be thrown out as well.
Now, the only real possibility that was left was that Takina had gotten into trouble somehow. Intrusive thoughts rushed through Chisato's head. What if Takina had been kidnapped? What if someone had assaulted her? As much as these thoughts brought her immense fear, she had to remind herself that they, too, were unlikely. While Takina was not as adapt at hand-to-hand combat as Chisato was, she was still a trained Lycoris, so anyone trying to kidnap or assault her would probably soon find themselves in trouble of their own. So then, she thought, what was going on with Takina?
"Why not send someone to her apartment, to see if she's at least home?" Mizuki said from the side. She was sitting on one of the stools at the counter, idly scrolling through social media on her phone.
Mika nodded. "Good idea." He turned to Chisato. "Chisato, it's a slow day anyway, so why don't you go and check on her?"
Chisato nodded, though without her usual enthusiasm. "Leave it to me, Sensei."
Mika frowned at her. "Just make sure you don't stay away too long, I don't wanna worry about both my daughter and my best worker."
"Don't worry, I'll be alright. I'll be back as soon as I can."
As she went to the back to change back into her street clothes, a light hope went through her head. Perhaps, she thought, Takina was not in trouble. Pehaps she was depressed or something bad had happened in her personal life. Maybe, if she showed up with the genuine concern she was already carrying inside her, Takina would open her feelings up to her. That is what she really wanted in the months since returning from Hawaii, since their ordinary lifes had begun again: to have a heart-to-heart talk with Takina. She just wanted to know so much more about her partner. She wanted to know about her feelings, about her dreams and her ambitions. But most of all, there was something that had been lingering in the back of her throat since they had returned to Japan. It was something that she desperatly wanted to tell Takina, because she knew that in their line of work, any day could be her last chance. Still, it seemed, she would have to wait and be left in uncertainty once more.
Stepping out of the station, Chisato opened up her umbrella. Just like yesterday, a light rain had begun to fall, making small drops of water splash down onto the narrow streets from the awnings of the little shops and stores that lined its sides. There were only few people around and those that were out and about on a rainy monday noon were either senior citizens or housewives, neither of which were Chisato's prefered crowd.
It was odd for Chisato to wander these streets at times. There really were no people like her or Takina here. She sometimes wondered if she would have ended up a beggar if D.A. had not taken her in. Maybe it would not have been that different. Just like now, if she were a beggar, the government would have done anything to hide her existence from the public. As far as the people walking around were concerned, she was just an ordinary school girl, when nothing could have been further from the truth.
She had never gone to school, she had never had an ordinary family or upbringing, there was not even an ordinary heart beating in her chest. And yet, even though she felt like a ghost at times, seen by others only in a transluscent light, it had stopped bothering her too much. It was okay to be different, even if the people in charge of this country seemed to think otherwise.
She was glad she got to grow up with Mika as her father. Having a man who stood out so much in Japan, someone who could still stand tall with pride despite many people considering him 'abnormal' or even 'disgusting' for being who he was and for loving whom he loved, had made Chisato much more confident in her own skin and in her own 'abnormalities'. Even though she carried a gun the government provided her to kill with, she had sworn herself to never kill anyone again. Even though this country expected young women to get married and to bear children, Chisato was fine without a boyfriend or a husband. That did not mean she was against pursuing love. The opposite, in fact, was true. She had long considered herself a romantic, the right person had just never appeared – until recently, that was.
After a few more minutes of walking through the narrow streets of Tokyo, Chisato arrived at the newly built apartment complex that Takina lived in. Even though it was new, it was far from luxorious. Rather, it was one of the few low-end apartment buildings that had recently been built in Tokyo, with simple, minimalist apartments. Chisato knew from their time living together that this style suited Takina just fine. Her partner was not a very demanding person when it came to living spaces, something Chisato was quite happy about. It also meant that keeping the place clean was much easier and she knew from experience just how important that was to Takina.
As she mused about their time living together, she walked up the broad stone steps that led to the entrance of the building, which was sheltered from the rain by a stony overhang. Right next to the large entrance door, there was a board of names and numbers embedded into the wall, with a metallic number pad and a speaker next to it. There were about fourty names on the board, so it took Chisato a moment to find 'Inoue', but after a while, she found the three digit number code that was associated with Takina's apartment. She typed the numbers '307' into the number pad and pressed the call button, then waited.
With every moment she spent waiting, her faint hope of Takina simply needing someone to talk to vanished more and more. She was not sure if it was the gloomy weather that darkened her thoughts or if it was the fact that all of this was just so unusual for Takina, but something felt distinctively off about the whole day. Intrusive thoughts reached her mind once again, and for a second she thought that she had missed her chance to tell Takina about her feelings. Perhaps, Takina had secretely been depressed about her life in Tokyo the entire time and had simply decided to leave everything behind. Maybe she was fed up with the way D.A. was treating her or her job at LycoReco. Chisato turned around and lowered her head, watching as the rain fell down into puddles on the stony ground in front of the steps. If any of this was true, then it was her fault for not paying proper attention to Takina's feelings and for instead indulging in her own insecurities and worries. If she could not even see when Takina was sad or depressed, then how could she ever even manage a romantic relationship with her? Hopefully, she thought, all of this was just in her head and Takina would answer the doorbell any second.
After three more minutes of waiting, that hope died down too. Maybe she really was a terrible partner.
She sighed and, with a hung head, was about to leave, when the entrance door opened up. Her hopes of seeing Takina were short-lived, as she instead saw a young, college-aged man with messy hair wearing a yellow rain jacket walk past her. She looked after him for a second, then turned her gaze back to the large door that was slowly closing in front of her. Quickly looking around to confirm that no one else was there, she took a big step forward and put her foot in between the door and the frame, just as it was about to close, managing to scurry inside the building in the nick of time. It was a good thing that there was no one in the lobby either.
Inside, she hurried up the steps to the third floor, where Takina's apartment was located. As she did, she thought if what she had just done counted as trespassing, but then she had probably done much worse in her life anyway, not to mention that she did all of this for Takina's sake, which, at least to her, made it an ethically fine instance of trespassing one way or the other.
Taking two steps of stairs at a time, Chisato soon made her way to the third floor. She quietly scurried along the hallway until she reached apartment 307. It was on the left side of the hallway, meaning that it looked out onto the backside of the building. The only noticable thing outside of Takina's apartment was a doormat with a penguin on it and a small wooden sign that said 'Takina Inoue' on it. Chisato smiled when she saw it. It was cute how much Takina liked penguins. Of course, ordinarily, all of this effort would have been a waste since she could not enter Takina's apartment anyway, but her and Takina were not ordinary, so they had thought of a situation like this beforehand.
Chisato took out her purse and removed a small key from it. She had kept the fact that she carried around the spare key to Takina's apartment a secret. It would probably send the wrong message to the others, especially Mizuki. Exchanging spare keys was usually something couples did when they still lived apart from one another. In truth, the two of them had exchanged spare keys for rational reasons: in case one of them had been kidnapped, or attacked or held hostage somewhere, it would be easier to enter the other's apartment this way in order to get information. Now, whether or not Takina had been kidnapped was still unclear, but Chisato thought that they had exchanged keys for a moment precisely like this, so she unlocked the door and entered Takina's apartment.
It was a small apartment. She had only been here two times, but she still remembered most of it. On the right side of the entrance, there was a shoe box and a hatstand that Takina used to hang her jackets and coats on. Right now there was only a dark blue rain jacket hanging there. The long, elegant black coat that Takina had bought on a shopping trip with Chisato recently and that Takina seemed to be oddly proud of was nowhere to be seen. Similarly, there was only a single pair of shoes in the shoe box. The boots Takina usually wore during autumn as well as the shoes they wore together with their D.A. outfits were missing.
Right next to the shoebox and hatstand was the door that led to the kitchen. The door was half open, as if Takina had left in a hurry and forgot to close it. That, too, was an unusual thing for Takina to do. When they had lived together, Chisato had noticed that Takina always tried to keep every door closed. Sometimes, she felt Takina did so out of compulsion, but apparently, it was more of a peculiarity of hers.
Back then, she had generally noticed that Takina valued privacy quite a lot. Often, Takina had sat down in the kitchen instead of the living room in order to read, just because she could close the door there, even though there was a perfectly comfortable couch right in the middle of the living room. There were times, though rare, when Takina was fine with sitting on the couch to read as well, even when Chisato was lazing around on it. She treasured those moments a lot. They were a glimpse of what an ordinary life with Takina could be like. There were even a few times when Takina allowed her to put her head on her lap and even though Takina was uncomfortable at first, it seemed to Chisato like she was slowly warming up to to those little bits of physical intimacy along the way.
Of course, she had respected Takina's boundaries back then. There was no way she was ever going to force her to do something she was truly uncomfortable with. Sure, there were times when Takina needed a push, but their time living together was so relaxing and so wonderful that Chisato wanted to do nothing more than to keep it that away. Yet, even knowing that Takina was not overly comfortable with physical intimacy, Chisato could not bring herself to entirely supress her own desires. They were only subtle gestures, small signs of physical intimacy that Chisato thought even Takina would be fine with. Putting her head on Takina's shoulder while she cooked, or on her lap while she read, sometimes carefully cuddling up to her when the two of them slept on their futons next to each other. There were times when Chisato shuddered internally, thinking she was secretely imitating some of the scenes she had seen in movies and TV shows, but how else was a Lycoris supposed to learn about intimacy?
Forcing her thoughts back into the present, she took her shoes off and entered the kitchen. Everything seemed ordinary, except for the small plate and cup that were on the countertop next to the sink. There were a few bread crumbs left on the plate and a small amount of tea left in the cup. Another unusual thing. Takina always washed her dishes, even if they were barely dirty.
Frowning, Chisato exited the kitchen. On the opposite side, there was the bathroom. It was a small bathroom, with a toilet that stopped the door at an exactly 90 degree angle. Opposite of the toilet was a sink and a cupboard with a mirror on the front, in which Chisato presumed Takina kept her hygiene products. She was unsure if Takina ever used makeup. She had never seen her wear any and while they were living together, she had never seen her put it on either. She had an urge to look into the cupboard to check, but stopped herself before doing so. The believe that Takina's beauty was entirely natural was more alluring to her, even if it might have not been entirely true. Instead, she looked down to the sink. Next to the faucet was a toothbrush and an opened tube of toothpaste. Another unusual thing for Takina. She always put her things away in a neatly fashion. Additionally, the curtains of the bathtub that doubled as a shower were crudely drawn together in the corner next to the sink, all crumpled up. Occasionally, a drop of water fell out of the showerhead, providing sound in the otherwise silent apartment that now felt more like a forgotten relic than a home. None of these irregularities carried much weight on their own, but when put together, they created an atmosphere that was eerily alien to her memories of the Takina she knew.
Leaving the bathroom, Chisato walked through the narrow corridor between it and the kitchen until it opened up into a larger room. This doubled as both Takina's living room and bedroom. On the far side, there was a medium sized window that was still tilted, while on the windowsill beneath it, there was a single flowerpot with a miniature cactus inside of it. Looking to the left side of the room, Chisato saw Takina's western-style bed, its headrest leaning against the wall that seperated the living room from the kitchen. The bed was unmade, with blanket and pillow both crumpled up and thrown to the side, while her body pillow was laying diagonally across the bed. It was another sight that was unlike Takina. While Chisato had barely bothered to make her futon in the morning, Takina's had always looked neat and tidy.
Her gaze traveled from the bed over to the right side of the room. Resting against the bathroom wall was Takina's dresser. In front of it, Chisato saw some clothes strewn around. Shirts, pants and even underwear had been crudely thrown to the ground. Opposite of the dresser was Takina's desk and between the two of them there was a bookshelf lined with all kinds of books, from philosophy, to classics and even light novels. There were some names there she recognized, like Plato, Hermann Hesse or Yukio Mishima, but also many she had never heard of before. It was always impressive to her how much Takina enjoyed reading even complicated literature. She had heard that going to school meant having to read authors like Hesse or Mishima and that it made many school children in Japan detest these authors with a passion, so it was all the more impressive that Takina enjoyed reading them in her free time. It made her proud, to know that her partner was not just great with a gun, but also great with her head. Though, it seemed, Takina enjoyed her fair share of romance and fantasy as well, judging by the amount of light novels and manga that appeared in between the large tomes from olden times.
Moving on from the long bookshelf, Chisato's eyes wandered to Takina's desk and the old office chair in front of it. Some foam was visible through cracks in the fabric of its seat. She had thought about getting Takina a new chair as a present. Maybe a small couch would be nice as well, if they could somehow fit it into her apartment. In her mind, she imagined the two of them lazing around on it, resting her head on Takina's thighs while her partner read one of those complicated books Chisato could never really understand. Still, turning this fantasy into reality hinged on Takina being safe and able to return home in the real world, so Chisato focused and looked over to the top of the desk.
On it were some notebooks and writing utensils, but most importantly, this was also where she found Takina's laptop. It was an old model with a penguin sticker on the backside of the display. It was not completely closed, so Chisato opened it up. Unsurprisingly, it was turned off. Even if she tried, she would never guess Takina's password, but if there was any information on where Takina went, it would be on this device, so she decided to take it back to the café to have Kurumi take a look at it.
Right as she was about to pick it up, Chisato hesitated for a moment. She knew very well that this was an infringement on Takina's privacy, something she had tried her hardest to refrain from doing. It was clear to her from first-hand experience just how much Takina valued her privacy. On the one hand, Chisato understood this very well, they worked for a government organisation after all, yet on the other hand, it was also immensly frustrating to her. She wanted to know so much more about Takina, to truly delve into how she felt, to know where she had come from and to understand where she wanted to go. Yet, all of her attempts so far had proven mostly futile. An emotion there, a feeling here, yet she was still a long time away from completing the puzzle that was Takina Inoue. Frustration and curiosity won out in the end, and so, swallowing the moral dilemma, Chisato grabbed the laptop.
With Takina's laptop under her arm, Chisato walked back to the entrance and put her shoes back on. Before she opened the door, she turned around one more time to look at Takina's apartment. Even if it was a little dirty and even if, in individual moments, it felt more like a relic than a home, it looked lived in. It reminded her of how her apartment had looked when they had lived together. Takina had kept it as clean as she could back then, but there was always one thing or another that served as a reminder that, even if just for a short while, there was not one but two people living in it.
Magazines and books on the coffee table in front of the couch. Two cups in the sink, one with a sunflower on it, the other with a spotted garden eel. Two futons laid out next to each other, one of them made more neatly than the other. It was little memories like those that always evoked a sense of longing in Chisato, like little treasurs buried in the back of her head. She would like to make Takina's apartment more comfortable and pleasant to live in. For it to be a place that would really feel like home to her. But more than that, she wanted her own apartment to feel like that for Takina, for them to share each other's lifes again.
A melancholic sigh escaped her lips as she opened the door and a realization crossed her mind: She wanted nothing more than to live together with Takina again, though perhaps as more than just roommates this time.
Takina stared at the large ice cream bowl that the waitress placed down in front of her. It was filled with an even number of white and green scoops of ice, topped of with a red sauce, fruits and waffles.
"Please enjoy," the woman, clad in traditional Kyoto clothing, said with a smile, then bowed and left the table.
Hinata had invited her to a traditional Kyoto ice cream shop and so Takina had not let the chance slip to indulge in one of Kyoto's finest specialties for the first time.
"Thanks for the food," Takina said, then digged into the dessert with a long spoon.
Sitting opposite of her, looking at Takina with a curious expression and a chuckle, was a young woman with medium-length black hair and a soft, round face. "I thought you hated sweets?"
It was true. For the longest time she had considered eating sweets a waste of time. They were filled with sugar and without any nutrition, entirely useless for an ambitious Lycoris. But all of that was before she had met Chisato. Before she had learned to enjoy life a little.
She swallowed down the mocha and citrus ice cream, focusing on the taste and letting it linger in her mouth and throat for a second before she answered. "Things have changed. I'm not 14 anymore."
Hearing those words, Hinata chuckled. "It's usually the other way around, you know? I get it though," she said as she digged into her ice cream as well, a gentle, yet downcast expression appearing on her face, "none of us are kids anymore."
Hinata had been in the same team as Takina back when she still worked as a Lycoris in Kyoto, though she was a year older than her. Even back then, Takina knew her as the quiet, shy type of girl who everyone got along with, despite her limited abilities in combat. They had never talked much beyond their interactions as team members, but Hinata had nonetheless cemented herself in Takina's memories as one of the only Lycoris at the Kyoto branch whom she liked and even respected.
"You're 19 now, right? Are you still a Lycoris or did you retire?" Takina asked as she put another spoonful of ice cream in her mouth.
Hinata shook her head. "Neither. I work in intelligence now, though I'm only a low level intelligence officer."
Even though she knew that intelligence was a much better fit for Hinata than being a Lycoris, she still could not help herself from raising an eyebrow. "Really? When did you swap over to intelligence?"
"Shortly after you left," Hinata said, then cleaned the corners of her mouth with a napkin. "I was never really a great Lycoris and after what happened to Yoko I knew I had to change something."
There it was again, that name. It brought up memories she tried to lock away. But that was what she came her for, was it not? To confront herself with those memories, so she could finally return to Tokyo in peace, where there were people waiting to welcome the new her with open arms. Perhaps she should have told Chisato and the others what she was doing, but how would she have done that? None of them even knew that she had originally come from the Kyoto branch. She had never talked about her past with anyone, not even with Chisato. After all, her original goal in transferring to Tokyo had been to forget about all of it, not to have old wounds resurface.
But, perhaps, that had been a mistake. Maybe it was inevitable for those wounds to reopen, for them to start gushing blood again, pumping the type of adrenaline into her heart that would make her act irrational again, just like she had done in front of everyone in Kyoto. She had sworn herself that she would never let that happen again, to never lose control over her emotions ever again, but as she remembered that, she also remembered that she had allowed herself to be irrational once more since then, on top of that old radio tower, when she had buried her teary eyes into Chisato's uniform.
"Takina?" Hinata said with a hint of worry.
"Ah, I'm sorry," she said as Hinata's words snapped her mind back to the present. "I woke up early today to catch the train, maybe I'm still a little tired." Another spoonful of ice cream found its way into her mouth, filling her cavities with sweetness. "So, what do you know about the people who killed Yoko?"
From the look on Hinata's face, she could tell just how much anger and hatred was evident in those words. She wished that she were able to restrain herself more when she spoke of her old team leader, but she knew it was an impossible task, so she had learned to just let go. If anything, Hinata must have understood her anger. After all, she had been quite close to Yoko Kanamura as well.
Hinata cleared her throat. "Apparently, they are some rather high-ranking Yakuza members. I heard that the Yakuza were doing a weapons deal with some foreign mafia back then and that Yoko, Akari and Tachibana along with Urumi-sensei were sent out to deal with it."
Takina frowned, trying to hide the anger that bubbled up inside of her at the mention of the other names. "What do you mean 'some foreign mafia'?"
"Perhaps there is more information on them hidden somewhere, but I only ever heard about them in very vague terms. For all I know, it could have been anything from a Cartel to the Albanian Mafia or even a Chinese Triad."
Takina remembered back to her basic training in Kyoto. While Lycoris never received regular education in subjects like literature or mathmatics, they did receive education on topics relevant to their line of work, such as knowledge about different types of guns, physics, language courses in numerous different languages - Takina herself could speak English, French, Mandarin and Russian - or even acting classes, next to their general training in hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, team communication and fitness. Among this assortment of peculiar courses was a year-long course that aimed to give an overview over organized crime in the world. It covered everything there was to know about modern organized crime, ranging from the Yakuza to the European mobs and mafias all the way to the drug cartels of South America.
"I'll keep that in mind," Takina said, not wanting to derail Hinata any further. "Go on."
Hinata nodded. "Their cover was blown somehow and the Yakuza laid a trap out for them. Yoko... was apparently the first to get shot and managed to buy the others enough time to flee the scene." Takina balled her first. She had heard that story way too many times. "The mafia that was supposed to be ther never showed up for all I know and I guess... you know the rest."
Takina felt the tides of anger rise and swell again in her chest as she watched Hinata hang her head, but she knew that lashing out with undirected rage in an ice cream shop of all places would solve nothing. She had to think rationally about this and retain her anger for those who deserved it. Others might have thought differently, but to Takina, there were some people who definitely deserved to die. Usually, she was happy to abide by D.A.'s judgement on who to kill and who to spare, but in this case, she suspected that D.A. itself might have been involved.
She had doubted the official story that D.A. had told them about Yoko's death pretty much from day one. Yoko had been a great team leader because of her sharp thinking and efficient communication, not because of her skills in marksmanship or her survival instincts. It was simply unlikely for a single Lycoris to be able to buy this much time for three others in a shootout if their cover had already been blown. Chisato might have been able to, but Yoko was not Chisato - no Lycoris was like Chisato. The fact that it was the Yakuza making a deal with a foreign mafia and that this supposed mafia never showed up only made things seem more and more suspicous.
Instead, it had dawned on Takina little by little that Yoko's companions on that day had somehow been involved in her death. While they had appeared to be sad on the day of Yoko's announcement and Urumi-sensei had even tried to protect Yoko's legacy from the rumors that followed her death, Takina had always felt a weird coldness coming from all three of them. To her, it seemed like there was an ulterior motive hidden in their sorrow and concern.
However, those were only suspicions. Even after all these years, she still had no proof that Akari, Tachibana and Urumi-sensei were involved in Yoko's death. She had tried to gather leads at the beginning, but too many trails went cold and when the chance to be relocated to Tokyo emerged, she had completely stopped focusing on her investigations and had instead concentrated on her training. In Tokyo, of course, there were way too many things that had distracted her and from the moment she had met Chisato, she had all but forgotten about Kyoto and Yoko - until the day Hinata had called her.
Now, there was a lead, an opportunity to bring closure to all of this. She knew that even though she had bared no conscious thought on her past since her relocation to Tokyo that it nonetheless still weighed on her mind subconsciously and that it impacted her relationships with those close to her. Often, she had caught herself wanting to say something to Chisato, only for the words to get lost somewhere in the labyrinths of her mind. It was easy enough for her to speak her mind when it came to work or when she questioned the decisions at D.A., but the moment something became a personal matter, she could barely open her mouth.
After Yoko's death, she had been forced to go to therapy. Of course, being as young as she was, she had ignored all the warnings her therapist had given her back then and had stopped going once her mandatory visits were over. She wished that she would have stayed and listened for longer, maybe then, all of this could have been avoidable. Maybe then, what she was doing now would not have been the only way to get closure on Yoko.
But then, what would have happened if she had gone back to therapy? Perhaps, if she had stayed and listened, she would have never left Kyoto or if she did, then she would have had a better relationship with Fuki and would have never been relocated to LycoReco. Then, she would have never met Chisato, the person who now meant the most to her and with whom she wanted to spend so much more time.
She knew that what she was doing here, to just up and leave out of nowhere, was selfish. She had seen the many phonecalls that she had been too afraid to pick up, a fear that she felt recoil in the very depths of her stomach. The last thing she wanted was for Chisato to come to Kyoto and to tell her that revenge was the wrong way or that she could just forget about all of this and come back to Tokyo. She was afraid because she knew Chisato would be right. Revenge was nothing more than an act ouf of affect, an impulsive decision driven by nothing more than hate and anger. She knew full and well that it was wrong. It was also true that she could just go back to Tokyo, forget about all of this and continue her work at LycoReco, to return back to normalcy.
But none of that would have been real closure. If she did nothing and returned to Tokyo, then she would still see the images and hear the voices of her past whenever she would try to talk about her emotions with Chisato, whenever she would to try to give voice to the feelings that had been festering inside her chest ever since she had first met her. If she wasted this opportunity, if she let this chance at closure slip out of her hands, then she would just repeat the same mistakes she had made with Yoko back in her Kyoto days. She had already nearly lost Chisato without being able to confess her feelings for her once and she was not going to let that happen again.
"Can you send me the data on those Yakuza members? I'll send you a message with my email adress."
Hinata looked up in surprise, then wiped her eyes in a futile effort to hide her tears that were stained with Takina's unseemly reflection. "Of course," she said with a quivering smile. "They're on my laptop, so I'll send them to you later, when I get back home."
'Home' Takina repeated in her head. What was home to her now? Was it still Kyoto or had it become Tokyo? Did she consider HQ to be home? Her apartment? LycoReco? She had lived in so many different places throughout the last few years that she felt like she had lost all semblance of what a 'home' even was. Was it the place she spend the most time in? Was it the place she felt connected to the most? Or was it the place where there were people who welcomed her with open arms, even during the worst of times? She recalled the memories of all the places she might have once considered home, but none of them fit any of her definitions. They felt too artificially constructed to be true. It felt as if they might have been definitions found in a dictionary, never quite able to fully encompass what a home really was.
As she reveled in memories, there seemed to be a semblance of home in some of them. However, she quickly realized that she did not associate them with a singular location. Instead, they were all over the place: on a crowded street, on a beach, in an aquarium, in a high-end bar, on the ruins of a lofty tower, inside a café, inside someone's apartment. As the memories became clearer, she felt the surroundings blend more and more into the background, slowly becoming an unrecognizable mess of colors and shapes. Instead, what they all had in common was an unclear shape of comforting light that slowly started to become the focus in all of them. Even though the shape's features remained blurred, Takina felt its warmth and the tenderness of its touch clearer than anything else.
Finally, her memories stopped racing and came to a halt on a particular one. It was a warm summer day inside someone's apartment, sunlight streaming in through a window. It was a place she had lived in, if only briefly. She was sitting on a couch, reading a book that seemed unintelligble to her now. All she could focus on was the beating of her heart and the soft, warm sensation that seemed to nuzzle up against her bare legs. Looking down, she saw that shape of light laying on top of her lap, transluscent, yet ever so present. She put down the book and carefully reached out her hand towards it. As she did, a sensation of comfort and calm washed over her. She tried to focus again on the restless beating of her heart, only to find it replaced by a tender feeling of warmth that spread from her chest all throughout her body.
And it was this warmth that was there, by her side, during so many times of uncertainty and worry in her life. When her mind had lost all sense of direction, it had taken her hand and guided her through the streets of Tokyo, out of that maze of self-pity. When she had felt like she had nowhere left to belong, like she was sinking into the mud, never to return, it had lifted her off her feet in front of a fountain of self-pity and had shown her a path towards tomorrow. When she had no one to turn to, no one to comfort her, it had let her rest her head on it in front of the soft light of an aquarium. It was there when she cooked, when she ate, when she slept, when she woke up, when she worked, when she relaxed - it was there in all these little moments and in each of them, it had made her feel at home. It made her feel like she belonged, like she was safe and secure, enveloped in its loving light, showered with warmth and affection.
Perhaps, Takina thought, the idea of 'home' could overcome such trivial matters as space or time. Perhaps, it was only bound to unmeasurable things, like feelings or emotions or sensations. Perhaps, she thought, it was bound precisely to this tender warmth in front of her, to this beautiful yet fleeting feeling of calm that sometimes coursed through her mind and body. Tokyo, HQ, her apartment, LycoReco, none of them were home and yet they had all been home at one point, if just for a briefly eternal moment.
Still, whenever she felt like she could grasp the true shape of that light, the true form of this 'home', it slipped through her fingers, because each time she did, there was a sense of dread that pulled her back, that made her freeze right in front of it. Each time she fought with all her strength against this anxiety, against this invisible force of self-hatred. She struggled and struggled, yet with each push, with each tug, it only made the light dim more in front of her, until the world around her darkened and she could no longer breathe, when all sense of that light became lost to her.
However, there were some memories in which she saw a different shape of light, yet still considered home at one point. In those memories, she could grasp the light's shape and observed how it transformed into a beautiful, tall girl with black hair and blue eyes, with a smile that eluded a warmth similar to that of the light she could never quite grasp in her other memories. It was a colder warmth, one that did not burn as brightly, yet it seemed to burn for eternity, reaching deep into her soul and overwhelming it with calm compassion and certainty that drew her into a sense of belonging like no other feeling had before.
She remembered sitting in that girl's lap, laughing with her as she braided her hair. As her memories raced, she remembered how close that girl had held her, how intensly intimate their moments together were and how that girl always managed to ease her mind and to make her stop worrying.
Eventually, those memories also stopped at a particular one. It was the night before her first mission. She had dreamt the dream she had dreamt so many times before, of being surrounded by a deep dark blue, reaching out to a young woman with bloodshot eyes. Back then, there was no blurring of faces, no girl covered in blood, screaming in terror. There was only that young woman with the bluish skin and the face of ghastly death. Neither was there someone who pulled her from the blue chasm, away from that terrible image of that woman marked by death, and so she never awoke covered in sweat and gasping for air. Instead, she always awoke with a heavy sense of dread, a certainty of what she had lost, that quickly turned into an endless amount of tears and the pitiful sound of a young girl's sorrowful weeps.
In the quiet of the night, she had made her way over to the room of that girl, finding her asleep in bed.
She remembered saying the girl's name as quietly as she could so no one else would heard her, yet loud enough so the girl would wake up.
"Takina?" the girl had said with a moan, wiping her eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Can I sleep here tonight?" she had asked. Her voice was so pitiful, trembling and weak, yet, there was no disgust or aversion in the other girl's eyes. All that Takina could see in them in the dim moonlight was compassion and warmth.
"Sure," the girl had said with a soft smile and a tender voice. She had held out her arms, inviting Takina to lie with her. "Come here."
Carefully, Takina had accepted the girl's embrace. She remembered how she just silently cried for minutes on end in her arms, her tears soaking into the fabric of everything around her. All the while, the girl was gently stroking her back, whispering sweet words of compassion into her ear. It was the first time in her life that someone had truly cared for her, and it was also the first time that she ever fell in love with someone. From that night onwards, after she fell asleep in that girl's arms, she had no more nightmares – until the day Yoko Kanamura died.
"Takina? Are you alright?"
Hinata's concerned words pulled her mind back to reality.
"What? No... I'm alright. Why would anything be wrong with me?"
"Because... you're crying."
Bewildered, Takina wiped underneath her eye and felt something wet there, on her cheek. She looked at the remnants of a tear on her fingers. Again and again, when she woke up from the dream, when she remembered back to that fateful day that forced her away from Kyoto, had she seen the same image, the same pitiful reflection staring back at her. Even now, when she was so close to putting an end to those haunting memories, all she could see was that miserable young girl staring back at her.
"Takina?"
It needed to end. All of this. The memories, the dreams, the tears. She wanted it all gone. All she wanted was to just go back to Tokyo, to the café, to her apartment, to that fountain, to the aquarium, to that bench on the hill. She wanted to go back home. But it was that home which scared her, because for all she tried, for all her effort, she would never be able to truly let herself accept its warm embrace – not as long as that horrible image of the two-faced woman still haunted her mind.
"I have to go," Takina said as she got up.
"Now?"
"Yes," she said before pulling out her wallet and putting some bills on the table. "You can keep the change."
As Takina turned to walk away, she heard Hinata's voice one more time. "Wait."
She did not want to turn her head back. Hinata had opened enough wounds as it was and she felt herself slipping further and further into them with each word the girl spoke, with each gesture she made. But she knew she owed her something. Hinata was one of the only people who had still supported her, even when the rumors had begun to spread, even when every other Lycoris in Kyoto had looked at her with disdain. So, she turned around and looked at Hinata one more time. What she saw, however, was far from the timid, kind girl she had seen back then. Instead, there was a silent rage that had emerged on the girl's face, a rage that was obfuscating fear and sadness the same way it had always done for Takina.
"I know it might not be my place to say this, because I'm too much of a coward to ever do anything myself, but... you'll avenge her, right? You'll avenge Yoko?"
Takina nodded. "I will."
With those words, she turned back around and walked out of the store onto the open streets of Kyoto that she had walked so many times before. As she looked up into the autumn sun, she too felt her anger transform into what it truly was: a fear that clouded her mind.