Chapter Text
Heiji's head hurts, and he can't see.
"Hey, Campari, lookit here... we got ourselves a spy." Hard hands have a grip on his arms, in his hair, dragging him stumbling to pitch onto his knees.
A soft, annoyed sound. "So take care of it." Behind his head, a hammer cocks, the soft click twisting like ice in his guts, but the second voice snaps, "Not like that. Not here. We can't afford that kind of mess; try that new stuff."
Cold chuckling, and calloused fingers shove something small into his mouth, poking deep until he nearly chokes, then his mouth is full of water and he has to swallow, can't breathe--
He still can't move, dark mist is in the way now and he's hot, hot, too hot--
"What on earth--?"
"Dammit, she must not have tested it enough."
"Inexplicable pile of clothes my ass. I'll go raid the lost and found. We can't sneak him out looking like that."
Those same hands, much larger now (large enough to cover his full face, what is going on?!) yank cloth away, and he stares up into the steely blue eyes of two identical faces. Gods... they aren't any older than him.
One calloused hand claps over Heiji's mouth, shoving him flat onto his back, while the other clamps down over his neck. "Say goodnight, now," the man says, a sharp smirk on his face as his messy-haired twin vanishes into the descending blackness...
Heiji has only vague impressions after that, all of which end with a cloying scent and something cool over his mouth and nose. Tugging at his clothes. His hat on the messy twin's head. A warm jacket over his back and a heartbeat under his ear. The clatter of a train.
A door slams shut, and one crooked knuckle tips his chin up. The movement sends Heiji's head and stomach spinning. Someone whistles. "Man, aniki, the bruises are already coming up. Think you did brain damage?"
"I wonder if it would be better," comes the reply. "Recognized him yet?"
"Eh? Should I?"
"Amari." Whoever is holding Heiji up abruptly spins him to face out, one arm tight around his chest and the other clamped under his chin, his legs dangling. Heiji's stomach roils. "Meet Hattori Heiji. Detective."
"... Oooh."
Heiji vomits all over their shoes.
He tries, weakly, to fight the flurry of hands grabbing at him, but the twins are too good (and outnumber and outweigh him besides), and by the time he heaves a second time he has his head over the toilet and his wrists tied to his ankles.
They're buckling something around his neck when a cell phone buzzes. Both twins freeze, and the phone buzzes a second time into the silence.
Then one twin practically vanishes from the cramped toilet cubicle, and the world spins and Heiji is smacking hard against the porcelain back. "Not a sound," Amari hisses, grip just shy of choking Heiji out again.
Heiji bares his teeth anyway, and Amari leans hard against his small chest.
"Test To Destruction," Amari adds, eyes glittering like ice under his shaggy bangs. The threat is enough to snap Heiji's mouth shut again, stay quiet and still even as Amari's gaze slips away, focuses watchful and wary through the wall.
Out in the apartment, comes a calm, "Patience, patience." The other twin -- Campari, Heiji thought he'd heard the name Campari in that dazed moment before the drugging and confusion -- sounds like he's teasing someone. "She just didn't mention how much of a stink that new stuff puts up. Part of the report, recommend agents get the heck away from the scene if they use 4869. It works great but it's quite risky walking through town smelling like a missing person's pile of clothes."
There's a pause.
"Shower," Campari answers. "Anyway, reporting in. The trade-off went fine, and we set off the explosives in the suitcase at 4:39 pm. We also had to eliminate a witness." Me, Heiji thinks. "Some guy was sneaking around trying to spy on us, and we used 4869. It's pretty fascinating to watch it work, actually; definitely one of her more creative inventions." Creative! Burns like hell, I've somehow shrunk, and this lunatic thinks it's creative--! And now Heiji's lip stings; he can taste blood. "Yes, Grandfather. We'll be more careful next time, sir. Add Hattori Heiji's name to the list of deaths, please?"
I'm not dead! Gods and ancestors, if these psychos are afraid of their grandfather (I might rather he think I am dead). Test-to-destruction, is this guy a Professor Hojo or what? Coupla twin Sephiroths? (Man I play too many video games...)
Campari hangs up.
Amari's eyes snap back to Heiji, sparkling dangerously, but suddenly the pupils dilate. And then there's a fist in his hair and a tongue licking deep into his mouth.
What the fucking sicko pervert--!
The door swings further open, and Campari merely raises a brow. "We have a new assignment," he says simply, as Amari slides free. There's a thin streak of blood on his lower lip, which he licks blatantly before winking. (Okay, not a pervert? Or not a shotacon [I'm shrunk and not a dwarf I'm a little kid what the hell] but a bloodlicking kind of ew perv?) Campari adds, "Did you explain?"
"Not yet."
"Ah." Campari leans down, just the slightest bit, the corners of his mouth quirking up sharply. "It's very simple. If Grandfather finds out about you, we will be compelled to relinquish you." A pause. "One way or the other."
Amari chimes in, "If he finds out enough, it's straight to the labs. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. If he doesn't," one hand springs up, index finger out and thumb up to shape a gun, and pops it right in the center of Heiji's forehead, "At least we'll make it quick."
They haul Heiji out of the bathroom after that announcement, ignore his snapping teeth and flying fists as they release the ties on his wrists and ankles, knotting the rope into a complex harness around his torso, deft hands dipping under his clothing. They then sling him cheerfully at the foot of the couch, pull the trailing end of the rope out from under the back of his shirt, and loop it around the sofa's heavy wooden leg and tie it off in the jangling rings of the dog collar. Heiji chokes a bit, the heavy couch squeaking a centimeter across the floor, and then the twins flop onto the cushions and he can't get a second squeak of motion.
Their legs are tucked up under each other on the cushions, Amari sprawled more over Campari than not, so he can't even bite them from here. He's stuck flat on his side on the floor.
"So. New assignment?" Amari asks, which is enough to make damn sure Heiji's going to listen while he picks at the knots.
"Data sabotage, frame the section head, convenient suicide." The way Campari says it, he means murder.
Amari hmmphs. "Grandfather is such a stick in the mud."
"Risk assessment."
"Bleh."
"I agree."
"One of these days..."
The pause this time is more considering. Shifting on the couch above, then a distinctly measuring look meets Heiji's seething stare. "... Perhaps this day," Campari says.
Amari lights up. "Dibs on Tequila!"
"Yes, yes." Campari ruffles a hand affectionately through Amari's messy hair. "But what do we do about Shi-neechan?" He says the 'nee' almost quickly enough to slur it into 'shi-ne'. Dying-chan. Lovely, a woman nicknamed Death. "She'd be good to have available."
Both eyes slide back to Heiji. "... We can probably cut a deal," Amari muses. "It's not like she really gives a fuck about anything but Ake-nee. What about Baachan?"
They grin at each other, and then Amari makes a mock-spooky 'woooo' sound and raises his arms ghoulishly. "Zombie-baachan is huuuungry," he moans, looming over a snickering Campari's lap, fingers wiggling threateningly towards undefended ribs. "Zombie-baachan wants braaaains. Tasty, nutritious, tender young brains! With a side of REVENGE!"
Pillows fly.
Heiji manages to squirm out of the way, curling backwards half-under the couch, before the pair roll off onto the floor. His teeth already bared, he has a split-second to decide -- bite or avoid notice? -- before his fingers are caught in a crushing grip.
"Excellent," Amari purrs. A slight tug at one loosened bit of the knot sends a causes a faint vibration through the collar, as if the guy's stroking the scant centimeter of bared rope. "You managed to get a start on one of my knots."
Well. Since he's gotten the jerk's attention anyway... Heiji jackknifes and snaps at Amari's arm. (It's only after he tastes blood that he remembers what's already happened with blood in his mouth.)
But Amari just grins like he doesn't even feel it, two fingers smacking firmly across Heiji's nose. "Bad puppy."
Oh, now it is on. Heiji growls, and it's not that he wants to... okay, yes, he wants to beat the lunatic into the dirt, but he's kind of lacking in shinnai and freedom of movement and oh yeah about a meter of height and forty-five kilos of muscle, and if he rips a chunk out of the crazy guy's arm it's not because he has any other options--
Amari's other hand tucks up under Heiji's chin, thumb and forefinger digging into the hinges of his jaw, and slowly, painfully, forces Heiji's mouth open. He slides his arm free, eyeing the bleeding bite mark with a glint of something sharp and brittle in his eye. "That's going to take some makeup to cover."
"It won't get you out of the assignment."
"Awww."
"Here." Campari tosses a small bottle at Amari's head. "Iodine."
Amari grumbles as he treats the bite, and Campari settles in next to Heiji, out of biting range. And then Campari strips Heiji's pants off.
"H--hey! What the fu--NO!" The loose underwear's gone with, and Heiji is bare from the waist down. Campari coolly hikes Heiji's oversized T-shirt up under his armpits, one large hand pinning his wrists to the floor, and begins tracing the planes of thin muscle with unmistakable intent. "GET OFFA ME! I'll rip it off, I swear I will--"
"You bit Amari."
"AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN," Heiji howls.
"Then we'll just have to make the consequences unpleasant enough to deter that." That calloused hand drops to lightly cover Heiji's groin. "Unless you offer something else."
Heiji's never felt so sickened or cold in his life. What else does he have? Chances are they won't give a damn about the details of his cases, and they've already cleaned out his wallet.
Amari pokes at Heiji's temple. "First hint's a freebie: promising not to bite is a good starter offer."
"Starter," Campari repeats pointedly. His fingers squeeze lightly. "But you've already bitten once."
"Yer so subtle," Heiji hisses out. Can't show the panic. Can't show how utterly, horrifyingly, ice-in-his-veins sick the threat is making him. (Are they really physically capable of raping what looks like a child? How could they even know?) "Don't hagglin' involve makin' counteroffers that're too high or somethin?" (Give me a hint that ain't sexual.)
Amari smirks. "True, true. Let's see... how about complete obedient docility?"
"You'd be bored in a week and then I'd get shot," Heiji manages to snap. "No thanks."
"He knows you so well already," Campari murmurs, his smirk a shade darker and more knowing than his twin's. "No aggressive moves?"
"Which lasts right up until one of you startles me. On purpose, I'd bet, too." Neither twin denies it. Heiji exhales noisily, blowing his sweaty bangs out of his eyes to buy time. Think, dammit, think! "How about... I won't try ta kill 'r maim you, and you don't molest me?"
Amari holds up his arm. "Is this maiming?" he asks, mock-innocently.
"If I'd taken a chunk out, yeah," Heiji admits. "So... maimin's permanent, 'n molestin' is naked grabby stuff."
"We reserve the right to claim medical necessity," Campari replies, taking his hand off Heiji's crotch with a smooth (chilling) caress. "And we'll extend 'molesting' to include the groin and inner thighs over clothing."
"An' no fakin' medical necessity," Heiji says.
"I'm willing to agree to that. Amari?"
"Deal." Amari tugs the T-shirt back down to Heiji's knees. Then he unbuckles the collar and scoops Heiji off the floor. "And now, bedtime!"
"WHAT?!"
Campari snickers as he opens up the couch, springs creaking. The sleeper mattress is already covered in tucked-in bedding, sheets and knitted blanket both in a suspiciously dried-blood shade of brown. Amari drops Heiji to bounce right in the center of the bed, catching up the loose collar and ducking to buckle it somewhere in the metal frame, and then a small mountain of pillows lands on Heiji's head.
"I AIN'T SLEEPIN' WITH YOU!"
Amari yanks the shirt off over Heiji's head, and Heiji dives for the blankets. Nononononono-- Then he spots a fresh shirt poking out of the pile of pillows. Mine.
By the time he pulls the new shirt firmly on, both twins have stripped down to boxers. (Amari's wearing Hello Kitty boxer briefs.) Heiji's brain can't take any more: he sits numbly as the twins step around the corner, into the kitchenette-foyer. He can hear low murmuring, the rush of water in the bathroom, some soft wet sounds that he does not want to recognize.
They come back with their eyes bright and almost soft, and clamber into the bed on either side of Heiji. Campari slings an arm across Heiji's chest, Amari's hand lands heavy atop Heiji's head, and they shove Heiji flat into the pillows.
Heiji growls.
"Floor's not an option," Campari says, yawning. "You'd go for the knots in an instant 'n try to escape. 'M not putting up with that tonight."
"This way, we'll feel you move," Amari agrees, flopping practically on top of Heiji. Campari presses in against Heiji's other side, and it's like being squished in a scary (mostly-)naked twin sandwich. (Amari's right, Heiji won't be able to move without waking them, unless they roll apart in the night.) "Night, aniki."
"Night," Campari mumbles back, and then he's clearly out like a light. Amari's breathing evens out and slows, and minutes later he seems to be asleep too.
Heiji stays awake long into the night.
-0-0-0
Except it's not as long as it could be. He wakes up at some silent hour before dawn, pallid orange streetlight streaming in through gap in the curtains, aching with the need to pee.
Aw crap.
Going in the bed is not an option. It would serve the twins right, but who knows what they'd do in retaliation if they wake up with their only mattress soaked? (Also, the idea's disgusting.) Which leaves only...
Yeah. Because if Heiji can slip out of bed without waking them, he's going to use the toilet instead of escape. Right.
... Of course, there's nothing that says he can't use the toilet after he escapes.
Slowly, Heiji edges himself towards the head of the bed. The twins' arms are heavy, sliding loosely upwards with him as he moves; he carefully, so carefully, settles his fingertips on their forearms, pushes lightly as he eels his way infinitesimally free. Campari's hand drags over his butt -- Heiji barely manages not to flinch, and he knows he would've jerked away and probably woken them had Amari's hand settled against him instead of the mattress -- and then the twins' arms lay crossed over his legs. It's far easier to scootch back sitting up, easier to fold his legs out from between them and let their arms rest in the warm divot left between them.
He's almost loose. The rope harness, knotted in the middle of his back, trails one end down between the couch back and the bed. And whereas it would be a bitch and a half to try to untie himself, the other end is simply a collar buckled somewhere in the framework, and that any idiot could undo in the dark.
... It's got to be a trap. A bell, a drugged needle, an electric shock, something. But he's got to take the chance. (He needs to get out! And pee. His bladder's starting to hurt something fierce.)
He reaches down into the workings of the couch, feeling carefully, blindly, down the soft rope rather than chance patting around possibly-booby-trapped struts. (He wants out, he needs out, he can feel the twins' slow breathing against his ankles and -- he reaches the end of what rope he can reach kneeling up -- he has to bend over to get at the collar.)
Fuck the bastards for making him paranoid. They're asleep. They won't see him bend over crouching between their heads and stretch for the collar and get too-small fingers on the buckle and two hands clamp down on each ankle auuuuuuugh.
"And where are we going?" Campari asks.
Heiji's heart is still flapping somewhere up near the ceiling as he turns his head. The bastard still looks dead asleep to the world. Both of them do, even with one hand each like steel manacles on his legs and tiny smirks playing at the corners of their mouths. "... Toilet," Heiji snaps sullenly.
"With a side of escape, I'm sure."
Heiji won't dignify that with an answer.
Campari shoves himself up, hand heavy on Heiji's leg, and rolls out of bed with a catlike stretch. Then he reaches down between Heiji's arms, large fingers fiddling deftly next to Heiji's own, and pulls the collar out. He tugs, Heiji follows (Amari's grip is suddenly as loose as water) and his feet land on the cool floor.
"Thought you'd have made me bargain," Heiji says warily, though he hurries ahead as far as the leash -- call a spade a spade, yeah? -- will let him. Toilet, toilet, toilet now--
"Uh huh, right," Campari replies, sleepy and sarcastic as Heiji half-dances into the bathroom. "Because sleeping in a wet bed is just what we always wanted. You don't have to bargain for that." He shuts the door behind him, and Heiji freezes. Campari's eyes brighten with amusement. "Privacy, on the other hand..."
"Oh shut up and tell me what I gotta offer ta get ya out."
"Can't trust you that far yet, sorry." Campari's poorly-hidden laughter and bedhead makes him a perfect match for Amari, not that that's so difficult for twins. He reels the leash shorter and yanks Heiji's shirt off. (Heiji's hands snap instinctively over his crotch.) "Toilet, bath, and then BREAKFAST," he yells towards the bedroom. "Since we're up already."
They can't molest me. (Not without breaking the deal, and I'm getting the idea that they have some pathological thing for bargaining. The psychopath's rules of the game or something. Should've read more psychology crap.) ... If they did there's no stoppin' them anyway, not like this. Heiji's stomach churns, but he gamely turns his back on Campari (ignoring the half-panicked itch between his shoulder blades and on the back of his neck) and does his business.
"So," Campari says when he's done, and Heiji twitches. "Now that you aren't distracted by more pressing matters," Heiji turns back around quickly, hands settling over his (unnervingly small) groin once more, "I think you'd like knowing a bit more about the situation, hm? And to wash off the smell of apotoxin." He rolls open the pocket door next to the toilet, then circles around Heiji to close the toilet lid and take a seat on it (and on Heiji's shirt). One foot pointedly settles into the doorway, resting against the pocket door so it can't close.
Heiji suddenly feels (and smells) the thin film that seems to have almost seeped into his pores. (More like out of them, actually, in a flash of intuition and half-remembered putrid steam.) It smells faintly of rotting lemons and he needs to get it off. Now. (Fuck it all to hell it's the grease from his own decaying body auuuuuuuugh--)
He bolts for the bath faucet (I have seen worse I have fallen in worse I will not show this bastard the weakness of throwing up on him again!), and grabs a washcloth off the shelf, soaping it up without even waiting for the water to warm. Scrub with ice water. Scrub again with quickly-warming water. Scrub a third time with water almost too hot to stand, knocking the plug into the drain to start filling the tub properly.
"Shampoo's on the second shelf," Campari offers mildly.
It's some brand Heiji's never heard of, advertising no scent and a deep clean, and it froths thickly in Heiji's hair.
Water splashes onto Campari's bare feet and legs, out over the tiled floor of the toilet stall (Heiji can see it out of the corner of his eye), but Campari is ignoring it. "As you hopefully have noticed by now, Amari and I like our little deals," he says. "Maybe you'll try deducing why, maybe you won't, doesn't much matter either way. But you'll learn that we're... fairly scrupulous about sticking to our word." A pause. "It should be ironclad once we've finished our next project."
And that's not worrying at all, that apparently their word isn't ironclad right the fuck now.
"Anyway," Campari continues. "Here's how it works. Basic survival's stupid to negotiate over -- if we wanted you dead we'd have done it already -- so you don't have to bargain for food, water, medicine, clothing, or use of the bath and toilet." Heiji dares cast a dour glance out from under his soaked bangs, and Campari's mouth quirks up in a grin. "We do have to smell you."
"... I'd argue the point, but I like being clean," Heiji admits grudgingly. He also likes being alive instead of shot through the head, so he's not going to say stupid snarky things about being let go. He rinses the shampoo out, white suds swirling around his feet and down the drain, and checks his arm with an assessing sniff.
He almost slips on the lingering bubbles when Campari abruptly moves. Plain blue boxers land on the wet tile (yike he's big), and Campari crowds Heiji into the corner of the washing cubicle -- the only way to get space is to topple-splash into the tub, and then Campari winds the leash tight so that Heiji can't get back out and reach the doorway.
(The way Campari's eyes are glinting, the jerk totally did that on purpose. Heiji ducks chin-deep into the hot water and watches warily, fingers white-knuckled on the tub's rim, but Campari simply settles onto the shower stool and reaches for a fresh washcloth.)
Watching Campari wash up completely ruins the point of using the tub. Heiji's not going to relax, despite the demanding heat, and ignoring Campari when he's so close (and naked) is not happening, deal or no deal.
Campari shuts off the water, stands, and grabs a towel. It's fairly evident that he's going to skip a proper soak, and -- as he tugs on the rope, the harness heavy and loose with water, but no more escapable for that -- that he's not going to let Heiji stay in alone.
Heiji pulls himself back out of the tub, catches the towel Campari tosses at his head, and wraps himself up like a mummy. (The towel is large and thick, a snowy white that doesn't have a whiff of bleach to it. Campari's towel, Heiji notices, does have the scent.)
Outside, the room's lit by a single, pallid light over the sink, Amari half in shadow at the stove. Heiji can smell American pancakes -- he spots a stack of them half-hidden by the mixing bowl -- and is that...?
"I hope you didn't put chocolate chips in ours, you heathen."
Amari flashes a grin over his shoulder. "Nope, only mine. You got blueberries."
"Allergies?" Campari asks.
"Googled him," Amari answers cheerfully. "If he's got any, the fans don't know it."
"I'm allergic, all right," Heiji mutters, stretching out to the end of his leash to grab a plate. "Allergic to psychotic blue-eyed teenage twin kidnappers."
The twins burst into near-identical giggles, Campari's stifled behind a hand. Then Amari piles pancakes onto Heiji's plate, and flips the last batch onto his own.
The couch has been closed away during Heiji's bath, a low table (already set with jam and hot black tea) set out before it and the curtains along one wall pulled open. Behind a narrow strip of balcony and its thick guardrail, the streetlights burn gold and white against a slowly-blueing sky. They're easily fifteen stories up, and whatever buildings are on the other side of the road are lower than this one. Definitely no escape that way, not even a chance of having a neighbor see into the apartment and call the cops.
Campari spoons preserves onto his breakfast, sips deeply at the steaming tea, then says, "We never accounted for this in our ideas." Bright, amused eyes flick towards Heiji.
"New plan?" Amari asks.
"New plan." More tea, then Campari starts to eat. "Without Baachan and the sisters," he says between bites, "thirteen."
"Lucky thirteen," Amari says wryly. Then, "Head down. Hands in."
"Right or left?"
Amari actually hesitates at that, a split-second that Heiji wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't come with a flicker-flash of light shaken from Amari's fork. "... Both would be faster."
Campari goes soft, almost stricken. "Amari. No." Amari's face goes painfully mulish, and Campari's own shifts to match. They stare each other down for a long moment -- Heiji's own eating slows with the instinct to not catch the predators' attention -- and then Campari's gaze slides back to Heiji and his mouth relaxes, smug. "We can't. Not with him along."
Amari looks at Heiji too, an airy smirk like a mask slapping back up over his face. "Oh, I don't know," he says, stroking his fingertips over Heiji's face (Heiji smacks his hand away). "He'd look lovely in blood splatter."
Wait wait wait, "What?!" Heiji yelps.
"Chibi-chan," Amari coos, hooking a hard hand under Heiji's chin, "the best way to protect you from Grandfather is to kill him."
Campari nods -- they're talking about their grandfather, how much of a scary Hojo bastard is he?! Test to Destruction, they'd said last night... "And if we kill one of them, we have to kill them all. They don't take well to agents eliminating each other without orders."
"So we've been dying for an excuse," Amari finishes.
Heiji suddenly isn't hungry anymore.
Breakfast ends quickly after that. Heiji's set to washing dishes that Campari dries, while Amari showers, and then they dig into the closet. Out come shirts and exercise shorts, jeans and slacks, two large rolls the size of gym bags, and Amari flips down an ironing board as Campari opens one roll. It turns out to be full of makeup and colored powders and brushes and sponges; Campari spritzes his face with something clear, then pulls out a tube of dark tan cream and begins rubbing it all over his face.
Amari, meanwhile, has opened the other roll to show sewing supplies. He pulls out a pair of flimsy, far-too-revealing exercise shorts in red. "Hold this," he says, holding them up against Heiji's waist and pressing Heiji's hands firmly over them. A few quick tugs, a marker following each one, and Amari tosses them at the ironing board. He repeats it with a T-shirt that's probably a size too small for either twin, and Heiji gets passed back to Campari.
Campari now looks very nearly the same color as Heiji. He catches Heiji under the chin, peering closely at him. The makeup sponge swipes over Heiji's throat, leaving a thin layer of velvety gunk. Ick. "Hm." Pinching at his own blackened hair, Campari spikes it forward, sharpens the cowlick in the back, and suddenly there is a reasonable facsimile of someone who could well be Heiji's cousin sitting there. "Got it." And he switches places with Amari.
Amari's got the shorts with him, and they now look like something a real kid would wear. "In," Amari says, holding the shorts open for Heiji to climb into. At the side seams, Heiji can see the fabric's been folded, some sort of glue strip still warm against his fingers and waist.
Then Amari goes for the spritzer and tube of tan makeup, and Campari hauls Heiji out of the way. He sits back down on the floor in front of Heiji, an empty shoulder holster on over his undershirt.
"All right," he says, pulling the towel off of Heiji and beginning to work on the harness knots. "Here's how this works. We're going to be armed." Obviously. "You fight, you yell for help, you try to run off, we start shooting. If there's no crowd around, which is highly unlikely, we'll go find one and start shooting."
"Boom. Headshot," Amari contributes.
"Maybe you'll get away. Maybe the police will take us down. But before that can happen, we have twenty-four bullets per magazine, two guns, extra ammo, and we haven't missed a shot since we were six." He doesn't need to tell Heiji to do the math.
The rope harness slithers free of the shorts, and Campari lets it lay where it falls. "Shirt should be cool enough to wear now," he finishes, tipping his chin towards the ironing board as he stands. Heiji grabs the shirt, Campari grabs two guns from the top shelf of the closet, and Amari grabs jackets.
While Campari is hiding ammo cartridges in cargo-pant pockets, Amari rolls up the makeup and sewing supplies again, stuffing them into backpacks. Heiji gets his own pack, a sunny yellow thing which looks suspiciously like one of those mini-backpack purses that Kazuha's said are retro-chic, whatever that means. Amari tucks a few yen in one pocket, an opened box of candy in another, and a manga magazine in the main compartment.
They pause in the genkan to put shoes on -- Heiji hadn't seen it, the night before, but one of the twins must've stolen a pair of lost sneakers for him. They even almost fit. -- then Amari's expression twists, subtle movements of muscle that, for a moment, shift the planes of his face into something very like Heiji's mother's. And then he smiles. "Ready to go, Aniki?"
Campari's grip on Heiji's hand is unbreakable. "Let's."
-0-0-0
There is something really fucking sick about how much little kids don't get noticed. Heiji knows his poker face is shit, that he cannot possibly look at all like he's cool with his company (and that when the twins bought tickets on the train to Tokyo, he paled drastically because yeah okay the chances of being recognized as himself in Osaka suck donkey dong but they don't exist at all in Tokyo, nobody knows him in Tokyo). But he got dragged through ten blocks of commuter-packed city streets, past easily thousands of people, and every single look he got skated right over him to bounce off the twins' presence. It was like some sort of subconscious checklist, is that a kid, check, does he have adults, check, is 'look at his face and possible abject horror' completely absent from the list, check!
He forces himself to smile at the girl selling bento at a tiny counter in the station, the girl who beams and here-you-go-bozus and doesn't fucking look at him, the girl who's too busy giggling and flirting back with Amari. He can barely eat the bento when lunchtime rolls around (at least the twins didn't get him one of the hideously kawaii kiddie ones), but he's faced kendo matches and high school exams and his mother after breaking his leg doing stupid shit on his old bicycle, and he knows he needs to keep up his strength.
Tokyo is, somehow, worse. Maybe it's how everyone's managing to look frenetic while walking just that tiny bit slower, so that the twins' weight is dragging on Heiji's hands enough to notice (more). Maybe it's how many more people there are in downtown Tokyo, or how they're all speaking funny and not giving so much as a 'wtf' glance at the twins' Kansai-ben.
Amari disappears into the crowd for about five minutes, and comes back wearing a black baseball cap and a bluetooth earpiece. "Clear."
Campari leads them to the crosswalk at the end of the street, and then they double back to a high-rise apartment with tidy green hedges on either side of the entrance. The lobby is empty at this time of day, quiet and cool and bland, as is the elevator to the third floor. He expects one of the twins to pull out keys or lockpicks -- they seem the type to melt down or hide door keys so they don't get stolen -- but instead they silently drop backpacks and press their backs to the wall on either side of one apartment door.
Campari's hand clamps over Heiji's mouth again. This is getting annoying.
Knock-knock-knock. Knock. "Neeeeeee-chan," Amari calls. "Come out and play with us~" His voice has flattened out, sharpened into Tokyo dialect.
Heiji can't see who opens the door, but Amari presses into the doorway -- Heiji hears a heavy metallic click, not loud enough to be a gun cocking, he's guessing the safety's off now -- and a woman asks flatly, "What do you want?"
"Aw, can't we come visit our favorite neechan?" Amari teases. A pause, then, "Oh, wait, nope! You got us. How about... you get to live, and keep Ake-nee's little love nest secret. If we get silence, two weeks there, and a checkup."
"Oh, for..." There's a rustle of movement, all the tension gone from the woman's voice. "What have you idiots done to yourselves this time? Come in."
Campari shifts his grip on Heiji and pushes him into the apartment. ("Hey!") Heiji stumbles over Amari's shoes in the genkan, lifts his head up, and the woman is staring at him with eyes gone wide and rattled.
"What have you done?" she asks.
"Aw, so quick to blame us!"
"It's almost as if she knows us," Campari says. He smiles slightly, knowingly. "However, the question, Shi-neechan, is what have you done."
Shi-neechan? So this is Death. Heiji narrows his eyes at her. She's nineteen, maybe twenty, tall for a woman. Her tea-blonde hair is cut to her jaw and permed, and her clothes -- a dark purple sweater and brown slacks -- look expensive. There's a designer purse on a coat hook, the shoes next to the door are all the same size of women's, all in the same blend of practical and professional. From what Heiji can see of the apartment behind the woman, it's large and airy for urban Tokyo.
Not a mobile assassin agent type like the twins, then, but something very high-paid and stationary. And called Death. And... checkup?
Straight to the labs, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. The question is, what have you done.
"You made the drug." Heiji didn't mean to say it. Death's eyebrow quirks, and Heiji can't help but add, "The poison. Number 4869." He thinks that's the number he heard.
Campari rests one arm heavy on Heiji's head. "Interesting side effect, isn't it."
Death blinks. "Well." A slightly shaky exhale. "Well. That depends. Is it a side effect?"
"Yup. Fed him the apotoxin myself. Watched him--" And here Amari makes an illustrative gesture, as if compressing a large sphere, "-shyoop! Right down to pocket-size."
Heiji growls.
"Let me get my kit," Death says, turning and leading them deeper into the apartment. It's sparse and neat: gauzy curtains, bookshelves, kotatsu, laptop. A mug of tea's been left next to the laptop, and Amari whisks both of them off into the kitchenette. He returns with a cheap outdoor tablecloth, cotton-backed blue vinyl with tiny brown and white flowers, and spreads it over the kotatsu.
"Medical necessity!" he cheers, and oh hell no. "You promised~" He makes a mock serious expression, all huge puppy eyes and somber pout. "Who knows what the apotoxin did? Maybe it's still working. Slowly eating you away, cell by teeny-tiny cell, and we won't know until you turn necrotic and fall down as dead as a flambéd zombie."
"Or maybe you're still shrinking," Campari adds. "Getting smaller and weaker," and damn, do these guys know how to push buttons or what, "every muscle losing memory until... diapers."
"FUCK YOU NO."
"Alternatively," Death says, thumping a heavy black leather bag down next to Heiji, "The sudden catastrophic loss of mass could've left severe scarring, nutritional deficiencies, metabolic imbalances, free-floating emboli, aneurysms, and that is merely what I can think of off the top of my head. Strip."
... Fuck. Even Heiji can't argue that's not medical necessity. He grumbles under his breath as he peels off the shirt and shorts, spares half a second to wish for underwear, and plops down on the sticky vinyl with the shirt over his lap.
She snaps on a pair of latex gloves and runs through the same thing Heiji's doctor does every year -- cold stethoscope, thump for reflexes, blood pressure cuff, poking a light at his eyes and ears and nose -- then taps his mouth open and peers in. "Feel crowded in there?" she asks. "Any ache about here?" Cool fingers press at the hinge of his jaw.
He'd figured that was the bruising from when they'd knocked him out at the park.
"Don't ever take him to a dentist. He's too young to have twenty-eight teeth yet." Yeah, screw you too, Death-chan. "Unless you'd like me to pull those back molars. He'd be more comfortable afterwards, but there's a risk of infection, and a good chance they wouldn't grow back when he matures once more. It'd be easier to just keep children's painkillers on hand."
She manipulates his joints after that -- neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists and fingers, touch toes, toes and ankles, knees, and Heiji balks when she reaches for the shirt in his lap. "... Ah." Her head tips ever-so-slightly back. "If they take this opportunity to be perverse at my patient, I will take the next opportunity I have to require a core temperature."
The twins are suddenly not looking their way at all.
Death allows Heiji to use one hand to hold the shirt over his privates, while she lifts and circles each leg. "Were you athletic before the apotoxin?"
"... Kendo."
"Then I can't tell if you've been left more flexible than before. I'll need X-rays. And MRI scans," she tells the twins. "Within the week, if you would." Then she gets out a strip of pale rubber and turns her attention back to Heiji. "I'm assuming you've eaten within the last twenty-four hours, so I won't check glucose or triglycerides," she says, more to herself than him, as she swabs the crook of his elbow with wet cotton. She snaps a tourniquet around his bicep, thumps at the cold-wet spot with her knuckles, and then out comes a needle like a freaking lance.
Heiji swears the air blue when she slides it home. She tapes the needle in place and clicks the first vial into the needle's base to break the seal.
"This would have been much easier if you'd delivered him to the lab." Death's words fall like glass and shatter into a sudden, deafening silence.
"... You're fishing." Death watches the blood flow smoothly into the vial, so carefully attentive that it turns right back around into hypervigilant, like Campari's going to blow her brains out with the next twitch anybody makes. After a long moment, Campari sighs, shoves one hand in his pocket and rubs the other through the back of his hair. "You want Gin's head?"
Death goes very, very still. Then, "It's amazing how much I don't hear when the people not saying things are you."
Amari snorts. "We'll bring you his hair. It's not that bad a color, you can knit a scarf. It'll be really stylish."
She rolls her eyes, swaps vials. "Where did you get the idea that I knit?" she asked rhetorically.
Heiji doesn't hear whatever response she gets, because that's when the world greys out.
When it returns, he finds himself blinking up at a twin who is managing smug, amused, and annoyed in about equal parts. (Amari's warm and deceptively comfortable, his slacks washed downy-soft and his arms firm with muscles.) (Oh good gods he's lying on Amari's lap.)
"I'm pretty sure I saw a bodice-ripper cover like this once," Amari tells him. "Add about three miles of strategically-slit frilly skirts, a corset that could put a heaving bosom on a six-year-old..."
"Go choke on a codpiece and die," Heiji replies. This is why he hates getting blood drawn. (He's kinda been dinged a lot in cases. And kendo. And stuff.) Not that it happens every time the vampire docs come after him, but enough that he'd really kinda hoped it wouldn't this time. "And let go."
"Let me think... no."
"I did tell you," Death says, an edge to her voice that hints at impatience. "Not an uncommon response, high adrenaline and a dip in blood pressure, that's all." Slim fingers snap the vial free, press dry cotton firmly over the tip of the needle and slide it neatly out, then she flattens the cotton under a wide strip of tape and folds Heiji's arm over his stomach. "Narita, Hanasaki 3 76-2, apartment 8. Give him some juice and you can let him up in twenty minutes." Then she stands, stripping off her gloves, and leaves Heiji's field of vision.
He can hear the plastic rustle of a very light weight dropping into a trash can, the muffled pat-pat-pat of slipper soles on the hardwood floor, heading towards the front door. A pause, a louder tap of high heels on linoleum, and the deadbolt rattle-thunks open.
Death leaves without a word.
A mug of juice materializes practically on top of Heiji just a moment later, and geez he didn't even hear the fridge fucking scary assassin-silent... um... assassin. Yeah. At least Campari hasn't been a jerk enough to put in a straw.
... He probably couldn't find one in Death's house.
Amari sits him up a bit with a knee in his back, then takes the mug and offers it.
"Yeah, no. Gimme my shorts."
Maybe the threat of core temperature readings still lingers, because Campari simply scoops the shorts up and drops them on Heiji's stomach. Heiji manages to twist into them without either flashing the twins, falling off Amari's lap (aaaaaaaa), or knocking the juice all over everything.
The twenty minutes pass quietly. Amari shifts to the floor pillows, gives Heiji sips of the juice -- (more like he presses the rim of the mug against Heiji's mouth, "spill on purpose and we're sharing the tub", so Heiji drinks) -- and Campari cleans up. When he's done replacing everything, and he's dumped out the dregs of the drink and washed the cup, and they've put on their shoes, the apartment looks just like it did when they arrived, like no one but Death's been in it all day.
"Same deal, stick close or people get shot," Campari says, and they head back out into the busy Tokyo afternoon.
-0-0-0
The apartment in Narita is shabbier than Death's, all the furniture cheap and some of it secondhand, but it's also a little larger. They're only there long enough to drop off the backpacks, before Campari disappears and Amari takes Heiji to a secondhand store three train stops closer to the airport.
Wearing other peoples' old clothes is c-r-e-e-p-y. Most people, older ones usually, think it's psychic vibes. That something has to be new or it'll have the imprint of someone else on it.
Which, well, is true enough. But for most of 'em, it's subliminal. It's the wear pattern and occasional stain -- dribbles of mysterious colors ingrained into the thread at seams and hem -- which make it disturbingly like wearing the ghost of another person's skin. Or something like that, Heiji couldn't really explain it if he tried. But when Heiji's alert... when he's freaking out, or in that zen space where the exact opposite of tunnel vision happens, or on a case... he notices things that would be subliminal for everyone else.
Like how thinning fabric between the legs of a pair of jeans make the posture of a painfully shy kid, trying to be small and invisible with limbs tucked in close at all times. Or how, on other pairs, frayed cuffs match up with ripped holes in the knees: iron-on patches on one pair tell of a mother with the same hurried nature, precise mending on another speaks with a more prim voice, how many times have I told you to calm down? Stop running in the house. Have you torn those again? Honestly child...
Amari holds a Masked Yaiba shirt up against Heiji's shoulders. "No logos," Heiji says. This one's still vibrantly colored on cheap fabric, barely worn, I never liked Yaiba and my relatives send obligation gifts instead of get to know me and I had no one who shared my interests.
Some of those aren't conclusions he should be able to get from a piece of old clothing. There's good reason Heiji carries... used to carry... an omamori.
"Hey."
"Hm?" Amari looks up from where he's checking the tag on a plaid buttondown.
"Do you..." Right, like they won't make him negotiate for it. "Nevermind."
Amari's mouth quirks upward. "Now you've made me a little curious."
"'S nothing." Heiji grabs a random piece of fabric -- a denim-blue romper, almost imperceptibly greener on the back and sides, rough and tumble in the grass -- and checks the fit against himself. It goes on the 'okay' pile.
"It was enough to mention."
"Just drop it, wouldja?"
"What'll you give me if I do?"
And Heiji pauses. The conversation's somehow flipped -- looking at Amari's amusement, he knows Amari's perfectly aware of that, too -- and now Heiji can ask without negotiating for...
Wait, no. "I won't give you anything." He can use their own curiosity against them. Or against Amari. Sort of. Does it count as a weapon if they know he's using it? "In fact, I wouldn't care if you spent hours bugging me about it. But maybe if you promise me an honest answer..."
"Done."
That was way too easy, but he can't see the catch. Yet. And who knows what they'll do if he breaks a deal? Heiji turns away and shrugs, heaves the pile of 'okay' clothes into the cart. "Just wonderin' if you kept the omamori I was carryin'."
"Oh. That. Campari's got it."
Maybe it's failing him as hard as it failed Heiji. Or maybe surviving the poison is the best it could do. "Can I have it back?"
Amari gives him a level stare, eyes gleaming. Then he jerks his chin towards the end of the aisle. "Pick a toy and you can."
"... What."
"Little boys have little toys," Amari says brightly, and Heiji instantly wants to punch him in his 'little toy'. Or his toothy smirk, Heiji's not picky.
He crosses his arms. "I want the baseball bat."
"No weapons, kendo-ka."
Heiji completely fails to be surprised. At all. He stalks over to the sorry little bin, shoves a few plushies and baby toys out of the way, and grabs the first thing that looks like it won't be a complete embarrassment: a plain red yo-yo with a little chip at the edge, wound with a gray-tinged string. It's nowhere near heavy enough to do more than bruise, and that's only if he gets lucky.
"Mm, strangulation. Fun," Amari says, and tosses the yo-yo in the cart.
Heiji tries to kill Amari with his mind the entire way through the next store, where Amari buys socks and six-packs of boys' underwear (thank GOD, even if they are covered in cartoon characters), and in the grocery (rice, dashi, sauce, eggs, root vegetables, coffee, who the hell needs this much chocolate at once?).
Campari's still gone when they get back to the apartment. Amari sets all the bags on the counter, pulls out the rice, and drops it on Heiji's foot.
"Ow!"
"Catch it, then." Amari points to a cabinet by the fridge. "It goes in there."
Subtle Amari is not, Heiji thinks, as he catches and puts stuff away, then helps with dinner for two. He's obviously being kept from investigating interesting features in the apartment, like the door, windows, and balcony.
The collar makes its appearance again after dinner, when Amari plops onto the couch with the tv remote and hauls Heiji in next to him. He clips on an actual leash, threading it and the collar rings with a different, long-shafted combination lock, then switches on the tv and channel-surfs until he finds anime. (Heiji thinks it's a magical girl show, until the violet-gray magical girl pulls out a bazooka and blasts gory holes into the cutesy magical animal.)
The lock sits cold and heavy on Heiji's shoulder.
Hours pass. The not-a-magical-girl show is followed by one featuring goth-loli nuns wielding chainsaws, then schoolgirls with guns. (Heiji is sensing a theme here.) Then it's movies on-demand, and they're most of the way through a classic vampire movie when the lock on the front door clunks.
Amari instantly scoops Heiji up with a hand over his mouth, presses them both silently to the floor, and pulls his gun.
"Just me," Campari says from the genkan. Amari doesn't move. "Hell is boring work," and that brings Amari levering them up off the floor.
"How'd it go?" Amari asks.
"You'd have hated it," Campari replies. "I didn't even have to move the body." Heiji goes cold. They've killed someone already. "He was staking out someplace from atop a crematorium. So just..." He flicks his fingers in a little pushing motion.
"Pop down the chimney and fire away?" Amari pauses, fingertips brushing the lapels of Campari's jacket. "Seriously?"
Campari smiles. "I wouldn't lie to you. Although--" his hand smacks lightly against Amari's, dislodging it from his jacket. Heiji's omamori flips to the ground. "Apparently you'd steal from me."
"Just practice. And I promised it back."
"Good price?"
"So-so."
"You're slipping," Campari says teasingly, and Amari sticks his tongue out and -- Heiji can't quite see what he does, but somehow the omamori puffs into existence and lands on Heiji's lap.
"There you go, one not-particularly-effective lucky charm."
Heiji's going to pay for this, he just knows it. But he can't stop the question from coming out. "Who... who'd you kill?"
Campari slides his arms around Amari from behind, hooks his chin over his twin's shoulder, eyes heavy and assessing. "You actually care about the answer," he says after a moment, as if it's some sort of surprise.
"What the hell makes you think I wouldn't?!" Heiji snaps, and the twins blink.
"Normal," Amari mutters ruefully, barely audible. Then, more loudly, "Right. You'll owe us for this, we'll tell you when payment's due, price is negotiable."
"It's too late to hash out more than that," Campari agrees. Then, after Heiji finally gives one short, jerky nod, he shrugs. "It was an assassin called Irish."
"No tenure and bad at networking, so he wasn't as high-ranked as he could've been." Amari leans into Campari, almost purring. "Damn smart, though. Catching us all would've been one heck of a promotion, and he had the brains to do it. So." Pop goes the gun-hand.
So. Another killer, then.
He really doesn't know what to think about that.
-0-0-0
Click-click-click-tap.
Click-click-click-tap.
Click-click-click-tap.
Click-click-click... kachunk. The combination lock comes loose in Heiji's hands. He freezes, listening -- nothing. The tiny room he's been given is silent, nothing but his breathing and the nearly subliminal hum of power and plumbing in the walls. He can't hear anything from the twins' room.
Slowly, so slowly, he turns the lockbox over, freeing the U-shaft, and eases the chain links off one-by-one. He's already wrapped a corner of the sheet around the headboard, so the chain doesn't rattle against the bars there. Then he slides the lock's shaft out of the collar rings.
He's loose.
(He wants the collar off so badly he can almost taste it. Freedom, freedom, mwahaha... only the collar is evidence. Rrgh.)
Carefully, Heiji slips out from under the covers. The floor doesn't creak under his weight, his feet falling silently on the thin bedroom rug. Decision time. Risk the apartment, where he doesn't know the layout, doesn't know where to step silent and what might get knocked over... or risk the window, which might be too high?
He's got a bedsheet and weighs practically nothing. Window it is.
A careful examination of the window shows no telltale sensors around it, and he hasn't seen an alarm system in the apartment -- those usually have number keypads next to the entrance, after all -- but he still bites the inside of his lip as he eases the window outward as far as it'll go, poking his head through to see what he's got to work with.
Flat stucco, a single window below him, and then the building butts right up against a steep-sided canal. No wonder they let him have a separate room: if he survived the fall, he'd drown. Can't swim too well with broken bones, after all.
However, there's a drainpipe bolted to the corner of the building, and that might... might... be in reach.
(The twins probably don't think it is. They have to be expecting him to sneak through the apartment. It's far too obvious a trap for them not to be awake and lying in wait. But Heiji has to try.)
Heiji climbs up onto the narrow windowsill, holding onto the frame, and presses testingly into the gap. Exhale, try again. He's lucky he was a thin little kid, and returned to that, but he still can't - quite - fit.
He slides back into the room and examines the window's hinges. The locking mechanism is on the lever bar at the bottom, and the screwhead is visible.
The desk drawers provide a wide variety of neatly organized office supplies, including a letter opener. (The twins can't know about this. It's not theirs -- they're more the 'slice open letters with their own stabby knives' type -- and they would've taken it if they'd found it.) Lucky~
It takes several minutes, inching the screw free a quarter-twist at a time, but eventually the screw falls silently into the canal far below. And now Heiji can wriggle out, and... not reach the drainpipe. He grabs onto the window itself, leans out again, and scrabbles at the rough wall. He needs just a few more centimeters...
He slithers back into the room, pulls the sheet off the bed, and scrambles back into place. Looping the sheet around the window, he can lean out considerably further. One hand on the drainpipe, let the sheet take his full weight, scramble-kick against the wall in a fiery scraping of knees and toes, and he just manages to catch the pipe with his other hand and get both feet on the bracket before the sheet falls free and drifts away.
After that, it's easy as anything to monkey down the pipe. The pavement, when he lands two-footed with relief rising in his throat, feels like grit and sandpaper and freedom.
Heiji bolts into the night. The streets are deserted, here in residential Narita, but the airport's close enough that all the kobans should be manned around the clock. He'll find one, get help from the officer, the twins will surely not risk attracting the notice of the cops to get him back.
Finding a koban is more a matter of instinct than anything else. Better-lit, wider, downhill: each street Heiji turns onto brings him closer to the center of activity, closer to where it makes sense to put services.
Still, he nearly runs right past it when he gets there. Across the street is the distinctive sign, KOBAN, glowing red over a single lit window on a narrow, two-story building jammed between two larger office blocks. Heiji darts across the road (jaywalking but who cares?), and by the time he's reached the sidewalk the officer is hurrying out.
"Kid, kid what are you doing?" he asks, dropping to one knee and catching Heiji by the shoulders, half-lifting him out of the road. His eyes go wide as he spots the collar, the scrapes and dirt on Heiji's hands and legs, the man's T-shirt serving as nightwear.
Heiji shoves at the cop's grip. "Inside, inside, I need help--"
The man's left eye explodes in a shower of blood.
A split-second later, Heiji hears a sharp crack, as the cop slumps to the ground at his feet. The back of his head is gone, gore splattered across the sidewalk and koban windows.
Shot. He's been shot. Heiji spins -- no, no, it can't be, they can't have -- as Amari melts out of the shadows behind him. The gun, barrel heavy with a silencer, drops to the twin's side.
Amari's eyes are flat. "Bad puppy."
-0-0-0
They leave Amari handling the scene, and Campari carries Heiji back to the apartment in silence.
Heiji's stomach feels cold and cramped. If it'd been an icy silence, or a stony silence, or some sort of emotion at all eminating from Campari, he's sure he'd be terrified. As it is, Campari is utterly blank as he carries Heiji through the empty streets and into the apartment building, and Heiji is so far past terrified he doesn't have a word for it. Shock, maybe.
The apartment is dark when they enter it. Campari doesn't bother turning on the lights in the hallway, simply bumping the door closed behind him and entering the bathroom. He hits the light switch with his elbow, bright white light blazing painfully into Heiji's eyes, and sets Heiji down on the sticky-cool linoleum.
His face shows no signs of life as he wets a washcloth one-handed, crouched before Heiji. "'You fight, you yell for help, you try to run off, we start shooting,' is not a one-time deal," he says quietly, the words falling as gentle as cherry petals in still air, as blood drops off a blade. The washcloth scrubs at Heiji's face, icy and soapy, and comes away streaked red.
More red is streaked across Campari's shirt, over his shoulder and the right side of his chest. Except, Heiji realizes, it's transfer from his own shirt, which is sticky-wet across his front, the officer's blood splattered across his face and chest.
Heiji starts to shake uncontrollably. Fuck fuck fuck, he can't stop it, he can't hide-- "You set me up," he bites out, teeth chattering.
"And you took the bait," Campari replies levelly. He folds the cloth over, scrubs at Heiji's hairline. "So now there is a family who thinks their son ran away. Left his post, emptied his accounts, and flew to a foreign country to start anew." Campari may as well be reciting the weather report, and it's somehow more unnerving than if he'd pretended empathy about it. "They'll never know what happened to him," Campari muses. "Perhaps they'll soothe themselves with the idea of him bumming around tropical beaches, perhaps they won't. But they'll spend years... decades... the rest of their lives slowly dying of hope." His voice changes, rises to a more womanly pitch. "'Maybe they'll find him today. Maybe they'll find him tomorrow. Maybe they'll find him by this birthday, by this Obon, by this New Year's...'" His voice drops back to the empty register, dead eyes landing on Heiji once more. "But they never will."
Then Campari's mouth quirks into a sharp, piercing, knowing little smile. "So. Will we have to do this again?"
There's really only one answer. Unless and until Heiji finds a way out, there's only one answer he can give. "... No sir."
"Good boy."