• CHAPTER 148 - UNTOUCHED

    Everything looks the same...

    Taking my first steps into the old house, my heart fluttered like mad. I gripped Kai's shirt tighter as he turned on the light to the house. The first thing I noticed were the millions of specks of dust dancing in the air. The kitchen looked exactly the same; the dirty dishes were still in the sink from our last meal. The colors of the kitchen were dull from the years of dust.

    Taking several more steps forward, we stood in the living room. Everything was still coated with a fine blanket of dust; it hadn't been cleaned once since that night. Akatsuki ended up going his own way in the house, leaving Kai and I alone. I continued to look around the living room and noticed some of the windows had cardboard over them; what were they for?

    "It's still the same," I commented with a weak smile. "I'll be that, if I turned the television on, it will still be on Aya and mine's favorite channel..."

    "It's very homey," Kai complimented.

    I looked up at Kai and he looked down at me for a moment. I smiled, "It's the place I was loved at most," Of course I was loved by others, but they could never love me as much as my real family.

    "You lived here your whole life?" Kai asked, looking around.

    I nodded, "For sixteen years. I never imagined living anywhere else."

    "Now you're stuck with me," Kai chuckled. "Maybe we could move in here eventually."

    I shook my head right away, "No, I can't life here, not in knowing my parents were murdered here."

    "Do you want to leave?"

    "No," I rejected. "I want to keep looking."

    With that, Kai and I turned down the hallway and started walking. There was a closet on the right, bathroom to the left, then Aya and mine's room to the left as well. We opened the door and stepped inside, still overwhelmed by the amount of dust. The light turned on and there it was, all messy and unkempt as the day I left it. The comforter and sheets on my bed were still messed up from me waking up after hearing mom's shriek. Aya's bed was still tidy and perfect, as it had been after she passed on. I never touched her bed again after she died.

    "I can't believe nothing has changed," I mumbled, touching the sheets of my bed. "I hadn't returned since the night my parents died."

    "Wouldn't you have to have come to gather clothes for the orphanage?" Kai asked.

    "Somebody else did for me,"

    I reached up towards Kai after a moment and he helped me off of the bed. There were as many dust particles in the air as the kitchen and living room combined. I patted the dust off of my bottom from the bed and the particles joined the other dust specks in the air of a dance ceremony. I glanced at the beds and smiled, remembering.

    "Aya and me would sleep in the same bed if one of us was sick," I commented, my heart weighing heavily on my chest. "Or if one of us had a bad dream." Unfortunately, I couldn't do that when Aya was in the hospital...and that was all I had were bad dreams during that time.

    "Where is Akatsuki?" I asked, looking around the bedroom.

    "I believe I saw him enter another bedroom," Kai notified.

    "Oh," I realized. "The guest room."

    With one arm around each others waists, we left my old room after I bed farewell to my beloved twin. After shutting that door, we stepped to the end of the hallway to the guest room. The door opened slowly and Akatsuki was lying on the bed. His eyes were fluttered shut and he seemed relaxed, as though he were dead. The guest room appeared as perfect as always since nobody ever really slept in it. The only times somebody slept in it woul be when Aya's friends would come over, though she still decided to sleep in our bedroom to be near me.

    "What are you doing in here?" I asked Akatsuki.

    "This bed," Akatsuki chuckled, "this bed is where Aya and me, um, you know..."

    I blushed a little, "Oh," so the guest room really did have a purpose. It was hard to believe Aya lost her virginity so long ago at a young age. How would she and Akatsuki be if she were alive?

    "I miss her," he mumbled. "I was never able to have a relationship before her because of my job."

    "I miss her too," I agreed. "Come back out when you want to."

    At that, Kai and me left the bedroom. After a few more steps, we halted ourselves in front of a bedroom door mildly wrapped in caution tape. There were small specks of blood on the wooden floor that appeared to be dry and almost faded. My heart rate was uneven; it would beat too fast one minute, then slow dramatically the next. If the rest of the house was untouched, then wouldn't mom and dad's blood have permanently soaked into everything? Kai held me a little closer to his side and reached for the door handle.

    "Are you sure about this?" Kai looked down at me.

    The only reason he asked was because I was trembling like a leaf. I nodded confidently, "Yes,"

    Barely touching the doorknob, Kai's hand flinched after a shock and pulled back, "It's sealed off; I can't open it."

    "I would imagine that Necromantic Hunters have a bigger part in this investigation than the police," Akatsuki appeared. "They don't want the killers returning, so they sealed it off to Vampires and Werewolves."

    My heart jumped at the "killers" part and I looked down. Kai rubbed my shoulder, "We should depart,"

    I wanted badly to go into the room; I wanted to see if it had changed over the past two years. I grabbed onto the doorknob and, as soon as I did, the images violently infiltrated my head. Screaming, I dropped onto my knees with my hands gripping my hair. They were reiterating again; I couldn't physically see anything. Kai and Akatsuki lowered themselves next to me. Akatsuki wrapped one arm around my shoulders and Kai cupped my fever-induced face.

    "Arisa, what's happening?" Kai asked.

    "I see it--I see it again," I hyperventilated. "The murder..."

    "What is she talking about?" Akatsuki asked, worried.

    "I never mentioned it, but Minoru showed Arisa what occurred," said Kai. "Everything."

    "I want to leave," I whispered. "I don't want to be here anymore."

    Kai helped me onto my feet and we rushed out. I stopped Kai on the driveway and turned towards the house. I dropped to my knees once more and gradually started crying. I was time to pay tribe to the family I lost at a young age.

    "I...I don't even know how I should start..." I mumbled to the ground.

    There was a small rumble of thunder again in the background and I started again, "I wonder if you guys saw what Minoru did to me this morning," I whispered. It was hard to believe it had only been a few hours since Kai and me saw Minoru. "I really wish I didn't have to see that...

    "Even though there would be no physical way I could keep you from dying, I wish I could have at least gotten some kind of warning. It's...it's a real weight on your shoulders when your twin and your parents die six months apart.

    "I wish I could have set up a funeral for you," I sighed. "But I was in the hospital and you guys were having your organs donated. I could never truly put you to rest like you should have been. I often wonder what you guys do together with Aya.

    "Even though I'm at my happiest I've been in two and a half years, I still feel incomplete...I can still feel that inferno in my chest every time I think of any of you. Kai is a sole witness; he's had to shake me out of my nightmares I have of the murder. He has to hold me whenever I end up crying after missing all three of you. I can be such a burden but he's always there for me.

    "I..." I buried my face in one of my hands and cried a little. "I don't know what to do anymore; even though I have so much support now, I still feel lost. I fell like there's a huge part missing in me that can't be filled, not even by Matsuda and Orihime...or even Kai. Kai added a new part into my heart, but he couldn't fill the void.

    "I won't ever be the same, not since Minoru showed me what happened." I mumbled. I focused my attention. "Aya...Akatsuki misses you so much...almost as much as I do. You're my other half, and, when you died, half of me died too. I don't know if that's normal for twins or not, but I could surely feel half of myself deteriorate after you died."

    I bowed my head, "Kai and I want to get married eventually. I just wish you all could be there...I wish you could walk me down the aisle, daddy." I choked on a lump in my throat. "Mom, I wish you and Aya could help me get ready, playing with my hair and trying to adjust my dress. But, at the rate things are going with the contract, I don't think there will be a wedding."

    I wiped a tear away, ready to finish up before it would start raining again, "I'll be seeing you guys soon..."

    After that, Kai helped me onto my feet, and gave me a loving, long embrace. Akatsuki merely looked over at my in sympathy, probably thinking about Aya. I was under the impression that Kai didn't appreciate the very last thing I said, but it was true. I wasn't far away from meeting mom, dad, and Aya again.

    Kai kissed my head and pulled me back, "Shall we leave?"

    I nodded, wiping away my remaining tear, "Yes," I sighed heavily. "I don't ever want to come back."

    Kai paused for a moment and nodded, "Okay,"

    I hated to say that, but I couldn't bear to be near the house that my parents were murdered in. Every time I looked at the house, or even thought of the house, it would all come back to haunt me. It scarred me emotionally and even physically. My own life almost ended that same night. But if it wasn't Minoru and Kaiba who killed them directly, then who was it?

    "We'll find out," Kai smiled at me reassuringly. "Let's leave."

    I beckoned goodbye to the house I lived in for so long, wishing I was still living there. The happiest years of my life were in that house--of course I was happy with Kai, too, but that was my family in that house. It was a lifestyle I could never go back to; all I could live off of now were memories. With my heart lodged into my throat, I seated myself in Kai's car. As the car was slowly driving away, I looked out the back window, almost in tears, until it disappeared in the distance. The house was nothing more than a memory at that point...a bloody, shrieking memory.