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2
Hiei was lost in thought from virtually the moment he woke and went to the cramped little bathroom to brush the unpleasant taste of morningbreath from his mouth.
He had to blink his bleary eyes a few times as he watched the toothpaste blob out of the half-flattened tube onto his brush. He stuck it in his mouth and glanced up into his own tired scarlet eyes in the mirror as he put the toothpaste away. There was a smudge of dark purple and heavy lines under each one, and they refused to open up all the way, as if he ought to be going to bed now instead of just waking.
God, I really look like s**t, he thought with an inward groan, and used both index fingers to stretch down his eyelids until two red crescents showed under his eyeballs and he looked like a groggy ghoul with a yellow plastic toothbrush sticking out of its mouth.
‘Hi-chan, you’re such a dork! Hahahahaha!’
Hiei let his face snap back and started to brush his teeth without putting any real effort into it. He stared at his tired looking reflection; right in the eye, as if he could see directly inside himself to where the problem was. But he knew the problem already. It was all in his head and he just couldn’t get over it.
She had always laughed and called him a dork when he made that face.
He stared at his reflection hard in the mirror. Why hadn’t he believed her when things started to fall apart? How could he have doubted her? Right when it counted...
Damn it....
Hiei spat forcefully into the sink, mildly realizing that when you were in a mood like his, brushing your teeth could almost be called therapeutic. Hiei spit again, putting some real oomph into it this time, and then went out to the kitchen to see what there was for breakfast, still half lost in thought.
How long had it been?
Almost a year, he realized heavily. Tomorrow would be the anniversary of her disappearance.
Kazutaka was at the stove, frying up eggs and bacon, as Hiei came into the section of their apartment marked as “the kitchen” by the tiled floor. He flopped haggardly into one of the chairs around the tiny kitchen table. A year sounded a great deal shorter than it felt. Now that he thought about it, it had seemed like a sizable chunk of forever had passed since Ma-Lyn had first been reported missing.
The scrape of the spatula in the skillet announced that the food was done as Kazutaka transferred the eggs and strips of bacon to plates. One of the plates hovered just beneath Hiei’s nose until he blinked, and then looked up at Kazutaka’s pleasant expression.
“Morning. Did you get enough sleep?”
“Yeah,” Hiei lied, and immediately yawned.
He took the plate with a scowl and a mumbled “Thanks”, and shoveled egg into his mouth without waiting. Kazutaka set a mug of black coffee in front of him and stirred in a heaping spoonful of powdered chocolate.
“Any races today? Kitchen’s closed, so I’m off work.” Hiei looked up from his eggs and noticed the coffee. “Mind if I come watch?” Kazutaka asked as Hiei picked up the steaming mug to take a sip.
“I don’t care.” Hiei said, as offhandedly as always, and drank some of the coffee. His eyebrows rose up in mild surprise at the mug beneath his nose, and as soon as he finished drinking said, “Good coffee. What’d you do to it?”
“Nothing.” Kazutaka replied quietly, turning back to the stove to hide the small smile that touched his face.
It was just a slight, happy curve of the lips, but it faded a little sadly as Kazutaka glanced out the window above the white countertop. He couldn’t really blame Hiei, it was just part of how he was. He couldn’t expect him to remember something as small to him as what the weather had been on that day. Even so, he didn’t know why he let it bother him. Hiei seemed to have honestly forgotten. And Ma-Lyn, even a year later, was still as close to his heart as she had ever been, he thought, remembering the dozens of tiny black gems hidden in the box on his dresser.
Kazutaka started to stack the dishes in the sink and run the hot water as he listened to the subtle sounds of Hiei finishing the breakfast he had made for him. It just wasn’t fair; even though she was long gone, she would probably always mean more to Hiei than he would.... No, Kazutaka corrected himself; it wasn’t supposed to be fair. Life was not fair. He had known that even before he’d met Hiei or Ma-Lyn.
He sank his hands into the scalding hot dishwater, and almost chuckled a little bitterly to himself at this. Back then, even when he’d broken every rule in his way, he still couldn’t get what he wanted. And he had wanted it so badly.
But those were the days of Muraki Kazutaka, not ¹ Mitsukeru Kazutaka. And there was no point in letting a cup of under-appreciated coffee get to him, eventhough it was selfish, and therefore just the sort of thing he would do. It didn’t matter in the larger scheme. It was just a damn cup of coffee. What mattered now, to Mitsukeru Kazutaka, was not quite getting what he wanted, but keeping it. By whatever means necessary.
Hiei’s chair scraped across the tiled floor as he got up from the table with his empty mug and plate.
Yes... I already have so much of what I want, Kazutaka thought as he watched Hiei place the dishes on the counter next to the sink.
It wouldn’t do to ruin a good thing just because I want more.
Hiei’s footsteps receded into his room to get dressed while Kazutaka stood with his hands in the dishwater. He glanced over at Hiei’s empty mug: not a drop remained in the bottom of the cup. The slight curve of his lips returned, and he continued to scrub the skillet clean under the soapy water.
Hiei was always such a test of his self-control; always so callous and blunt. And god, Hiei could be dense, but Kazutaka wasn’t ever quite sure whether he was glad of it or not. He didn’t think anything good could come of Hiei realizing even half of the things he was currently not aware of. Everything was for the better with Hiei oblivious. It didn’t matter how it made Kazutaka feel; if he let anything slip, if he was reckless like he had been before, then everything he had done would be wasted. Everything he had painstakingly controlled and covered up and taken care of would go straight to hell, exactly like before.
It was what he told himself every time he was tempted to do or say anything that might jeopardize the carefully constructed niche Mitsukeru Kazutaka had carved out for the two of them; himself and Hiei. He was content to work quietly behind the scenes as a puppetmaster pulling strings, and he would not let his old ways—Muraki Kazutaka’s old ways—ruin what he had worked so hard to keep. Kazutaka often had to remind himself that he was not like that anymore; he was Mitsukeru now. Muraki had had his chance, and it had landed him and the one he wanted in the middle of a black inferno.
Hiei, now fully dressed in jeans and his leather jacket, crossed to the door of their apartment with his shiny, pitch-black helmet under his arm, and called over his shoulder, “The races start at noon. On the stretch of road behind the old parking garage. Don’t die getting there.” Hiei said shortly, as close to a goodbye as he would ever get.
“Don’t die.” Kazutaka responded, as the door closed.
His hands became still in the foamy dishwater as he stood still and listened to the sound of Hiei’s racing-bike revving up and motoring away down the boulevard, no doubt far over the speed limit.
“Yeah... don’t die....” Kazutaka mused quietly into the empty apartment, and allowed himself to think back to that time when he’d changed. When he gave up taking the direct approach to get what he wanted and put cruel Doctor Muraki in the dark, supposedly for good.
That was the day he had become Mitsukeru Kazutaka, and started to blur the line between pretending and becoming something he was not. But he would have been a fool to think that Mitsukeru was entirely real and Muraki was entirely gone.
What he was now, Kazutaka could not really say.
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*Japanese Translation notes:
¹ ‘Mitsukeru’ means “to find”
