@kRisZ:
and another one!
@Yuki: I missed hearing from you in this thread! heads will roll soon... get some tissue and cold water for yossui, please...
@JFC: yeah... good thing they're die-hard loyal to yossui too... I hope May gets it...
@takagakifan: woo~ a new reader!!!! i'm so happy!!!!!! i hope you enjoy reading this fic!!!
@sweeety: ... i won't say...
@all readers: thanks for sticking around... this fic is constantly changing in pace, in style, in tone, in everything... i hope you can bear with that... i'm a nutcase and i can't keep focus for long periods of time...
for the regular commenters in the recent updates (tito, Yuki, lollipopgirl, JFC, sweeety, kRisZ, strawb3rrykream and everybody whom i missed to mention(i didn't mean to not remember)): thanks for the comments, even if it's just to let me know that you're there... i still love reading comments... thank you so much...
constructive criticisms are still welcome...
... even not-so-constructive ones...
hey, lurkers... i know you're there... drop a comment every now and then... even just for kicks...
i am my 6066th reader... wooo~~~
a very short one... really short one... my thesis is eating up my vocabulary...
UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Third waited patiently in hiding at the house on Southwest Avenue. According to the schedule, her target is going to arrive soon. She has watched him closely for more than three months but there was nothing suspicious about him except that he was living in a house way beyond his means. That could prove the original suspicions right-- that someone else paid for it. The question now is, which of the two suspects is it?
Entering this house was very tricky. Even Mars would have found it difficult to squeeze into this place undetected. Third had to disguise herself as a housecleaner a couple of times to plot down where all the security alarm triggers and security cameras were installed. She didn't like that part of the job but bugging the entire house and his car made up for the unpleasant experience of cleaning the target's mess.
Third didn't like waiting in closets. It was dark, it smelled weird, there's not much room to move and the clothes were terribly out of fashion. Despite her dislike of this part of the house, this was the most strategic place to hide. The target always goes straight to his room (right next to the closet) after arriving from work, there aren't security cameras in here, and he is least on-guard in his room.
Third heard the jingle of keys on the door. The target arrived right on time. She heard and felt his footsteps. A few seconds later, the doorknob to the room clicked. The target was just about to undress when he was suddenly gagged from behind.
"If you want to live, don't make a sound." Third whispered to her target, brandishing a hunter's knife.
The guy's eyes widened at seeing the knife. He didn't run away from jail time in Japan 15 years ago just to die alone in the hands of this girl in a foreign land away from his family and friends. He wanted to plead with her but any sound would cost him his life. Third made that clear.
"Now... Let's play a game..."
The guy knew this would happen. He just didn't expect it to happen now. He was starting to get complacent and less careful already. It's been 15 damn years! Would he still keep his silence? It was bought for a rather large sum of money. But is that amount worth more than his life?
On the other hand, if he speaks now, he could end up in jail too. The very thing that he was running away from all those years ago.
"... I'll show you some pictures... and tell you a story... I just want you to confirm if I got the story right... And then I'll ask you some questions... failure to answer will earn you points... and each point corresponds to a kick... the more points you earn, the more kicks you're going to receive... Are we clear?"
With the last morsel of pride he still had in him, he did not answer.
"You just earned your first point right there... Anyway... to my story..." Third took out a picture of a large house. "Once upon a time, there was a house in Saitama... Do you know this house?"
He looked away. He was ashamed of what he did. He tried to forget but couldn't and this little game reminded him more of what he had done. For his lack of response, he was rewarded with a kick on the shin. He fell to the floor after losing his balance. He was too terrified to fight back.
"... you look, you listen and you answer... next picture..." Third took out an old family picture with the father missing from the picture. "... in that house lived a family... There was ka-san... and the kids... to-san didn't make it to the picture-taking session..." She pointed at the picture, introducing the characters to her story like a kindergarten teacher.
"Now a big bad wolf came to their house one night... while the kids were away... Do you know who that big bad wolf is?"
He nodded just to get things done and over with. The sudden over exposure to the past desensitized him from the guilt that he carried all those years. He pointed at himself.
"Good... isn't it a whole lot better when you cooperate?" Third removed the gag from his mouth. "Tell me. Who paid you to commit murder?"
"... It wasn't supposed to be murder... she just begged me to kill her!"
"That's not the point now, is it? ... but if you want to be so politically correct about it, who paid you to rape this woman?" Third pointed at Tsukiko's picture.
The target wept. Seeing the picture of the woman whose life he took with his hands, he wanted to kill himself. "I don't know his name!"
"Well... I still got three pictures here... two are of the mugs of whom I suspect... Is he either of these two?" Third took out two pictures. In each of the photo was a man. They were about the same age, both looked like business men.
He nodded and pointed at the picture on the right. "It's him..."
Topic: Runaway from the Past (Read 376849 times)