Code:
Wafting incense smoke and the cheerful greeting of the most cheerful of the various cheerful young ladies that worked here assaulted Hajime as he stepped into Forest of Four. He'd grown accustomed to the first - apparently no self-respecting follower of shallow mysticism would set foot in a store that did not reek of incense, and he recognized the need to appease the customer base - and, to be honest, he didn't mind the smell too much. The second, however, was consistently jarring.
"Good morning, Mr. Saitou!" the clerk chirped. When he nodded at her, she went on, "He's with another client right now, but you can wait for him over by the hall." She pointed to the area in question, with which he was familiar enough, and he nodded again.
The chairs against the wall beside the corridor leading to the employees' area were, to all appearances, designed for people waiting for friends in the fitting room. Hajime didn't appreciate being mistaken for the companion of someone that would shop a place like this, but had little choice; fortunately, Aoshi usually didn't keep him waiting too long. Aoshi didn't care much for people - living people, at least - and even this circumstance of having two appointments on the same morning was unusual.
It would be an even more unusual circumstance if the medium had three appointments on the same morning, but a young man sat crookedly in the chair closest to the hallway very much as if he too was waiting to talk to Aoshi. This was a little irritating; now Hajime would be forced either to sit beside this stranger, one of whose legs was drawn up so that the foot protruded under the armrest onto the next chair over, or take the seat closest to the fitting room. Disliking both options, he decided to remain standing. He did give the young man a dark, somewhat annoyed scrutiny, though.
The guy didn't really seem to fit here. He didn't sparkle, for one thing. He didn't have that empty-headed look Hajime had seen on the faces of so many patrons of this establishment - the look that promised to believe (and consequently purchase) anything at all that said 'cosmic' somewhere on it. Actually, the best word for this kid was 'punk' - assuming Hajime had his subcultural terms straight, that is; he was fairly sure that was what the absurd hair, excessive jewelry, spikes, and chains signified. In general this strengthened the impression that the young man was here to see Aoshi and not to shop.
The young man had been mirroring the examination, and now asked lazily, "Exorcist?" He gestured casually to the sword in Hajime's hand.
Hajime nodded, his guess confirmed. Nobody that was just here for an 'I do believe in faeries!' bumper sticker would have made the connection between his weapon and his profession.
Removing his foot from the chairs and stretching spiky-black-jean-clad legs out in front of him, the young man said, "You can sit down... I don't know what's taking him so long, but he's gotta be finished soon..."
Tacitly declining the invitation, Hajime glanced down the hall at the closed door of Aoshi's office. "You'd think with as much as he prefers to be left alone, he wouldn't schedule appointments so close together."
The young man laughed. "You've met him, huh?"
"Many times."
"And here I thought I knew all his regulars." The young man, Hajime found when he turned back toward him, was gazing thoughtfully up at him. "I must just have missed you every time. You come here a lot?"
"Sometimes." Hajime's tone was slightly skeptical at the prying question. He didn't really care who or what the guy was, or he would have looked into his head by now, but he couldn't help feeling a little curious about a punk teenager he'd never seen before that seemed to know Aoshi as well as he did.
"He dig up for work you," the kid was wondering, "or what?"
Hajime raised a brow. "None of your business."
The young man scowled faintly, coiling back into a less relaxed position. Hajime was interested to see a slight aura appear around him at this, but it faded along with the scowl as the young man shook his head. Then he reached out. "I'm Sano," he said.
Wondering why they were doing this, Hajime stared at the extended hand for a moment before shaking it and giving his own name.
"I see red," Sano explained unnecessarily, stretching his legs out again and putting his hands behind his head. "Aoshi keeps me medicated." His grin turned somewhat harried. "I especially don't need to be dealing with this shit this week; I've got papers to write and finals."
Hajime nodded his understanding. Sano, he guessed - actually, it was more of a sense by now than a guess - went to the local college, and angry shades were undoubtedly distracting at the end of a semester.
"You really can sit down." Sano patted the seat next to him.
"I have no desire to sit on your dirty footprints," replied Hajime.
"Wow, fine." There was that aura again, flaring up with Sano's annoyance. "Jerk."
Hajime smirked. "You don't just see red," he observed.
"No," Sano replied, a little wearily. "I absorb 'em for people sometimes; good way to make money, which you probably know, but then I have to find a way to get rid of it all."
With a disdainful laugh Hajime said, "Stupid of you to absorb anything when you knew you had finals coming up."
As he'd expected, Sano flamed again. "Hey, I'm not just going to-" he began, but his anger faded as he realized Hajime had done it deliberately. Then he seemed torn between mild appreciation and continued anger at being manipulated. Eventually he settled on a low simmer, his angry aura minimal and his face merely resigned.
"Just doing my job," Hajime murmured complacently.
Sano snorted.
At that moment, the door at the end of the employees' hallway opened, and they heard someone saying, "Thank you very much, Mr. Shinomori!" in a tone that was far too bright for Mr. Shinomori to be likely to appreciate. Sano stood and watched the cheerful customer emerge from the hall. Then he turned to Hajime and smiled slightly. "Well, it was good to meet you," he said with a wave. And for some reason he actually seemed to mean it.
Hajime hesitated, then nodded. He saw no reason not to, since he would probably never run into the guy again.
1
To dial the number he'd been given, Sano found himself a little hesitant. The man hadn't exactly been pleasant to him when they'd met before, after all. What eventually convinced him was the reflection that the worst that could possibly happen was Hajime being rude to him again and perhaps hanging up on him without listening to everything he had to say - whereas the best that could happen was getting rid of this little problem. Sano glanced over his shoulder, grimaced, and hit the 'send' key on his phone.
"This is Hajime," came the voice he'd expected after only a few rings.
"Hey," Sano began. "You probably don't remember me, but I met you at Forest of Four, like, last December..." He cleared his throat. "My name's Sano... I see red... You were there with a sword..." He paused, waiting for Hajime's acknowledgment. Hajime, however, said nothing, and eventually Sano went on. "Well, Aoshi says you're good, and I've got a problem... There's this shade that's been hanging around for a couple of weeks now - I mean hanging around me, specifically, not just around somewhere where I go or anything; it's like the damn thing is haunting me, but I have no idea who it came from or why it would be - and I can't get rid of it."
"Red?" Hajime asked.
"That's the thing!" Sano turned to face the shade, which was still drifting around his living room. "It's perfectly red! I should be able to deal with it, but every time I absorb it it just comes back! It's weird, too; it's not... solid... like they usually are. There's this empty shape of a person, and the red's around that like an outline."
Hajime's tone sounded completely different than before as he asked, "When you say you absorb it and it 'comes back,' what exactly do you mean?" He seemed far more interested all of a sudden.
"I mean the same anger comes back," answered Sano in some aggravation. "It's like it never ends; no matter how much I absorb, there's always more! And I can't just keep taking it in, or I get so mad I start destroying stuff!"
"And this shade follows you around?"
"Yeah."
"No matter where you go?"
"Yeah... to school and everything."
"Do you know the park off 32nd street?"
"Uh, yeah?" Sano was fairly certain he did, anyway. "The one by that toy store?"
"Can you meet me there in half an hour?"
"Um..." This was not what he'd expected at all. "Yeah, sure." Of course, he'd been basing his expectations on the one brief conversation they'd had and Aoshi's warning that Hajime was neither a people person nor likely to want to do any kind of work for free.
"I'll see you there, then." And Hajime ended the call.
Sano's car being a piece of shit, he didn't greatly appreciate having to drive to a park twenty minutes away, and from the suggestion of locale he guessed that Hajime didn't live in the Asian district. He hadn't objected, though, since he was the one essentially demanding favors in this situation. He did wish Hajime had named a longer space of time, however; he could have taken the bus.
The place had a playground, a field with a backstop, and its own parking lot. Here Hajime was waiting, when Sano arrived, beside a really nice car. Although individual jobs tended to pay fairly well, being an exorcist was still an uncertain profession at best, given the inconsistency of the work, and Sano wouldn't have thought anyone in that trade could afford such a nice vehicle; Hajime must have some other source of income.
As when they'd met at Aoshi's store, the exorcist was wearing a suit and tie; it looked great, but Sano had to wonder if he dressed that way all year round. March wasn't too bad, but in a month or two most days were going to be far too warm outside for a suit coat. Hajime was also carrying a sword again, though Sano wasn't entirely certain it was the same sword.
Hajime didn't bother with a real greeting, only asked, "Where's the shade?"
Sano had been absorbing so much angry energy lately, thanks to his unusual visitor... it was good to have an object on which to release some of it. "Hi to you too!" he said in annoyance, and stalked out of the parking lot toward a bench near the playground. Hajime followed, and as Sano took a seat he informed him with less indignation, "It sometimes takes him a while to catch up when I go somewhere unfamiliar. I tried to lose him that way for a while, but he always found me again."
"'He?'" echoed Hajime.
"'He' like 'aitsu,'" Sano shrugged, citing a pronoun that, while it carried a masculine connotation, was not necessarily limited to it.
Hajime nodded. So obviously he belonged to the relatively large segment of the city's population that spoke Japanese, whether or not he lived in the Asian district. Not that this was a great surprise, given his accent.
"So what's your deal?" Sano wondered somewhat idly, slumping down so as to lean his head against the back of the bench. "I mean, what do you see?"
"Everything," was Hajime's brief answer.
Sano sat up straight. "Really? That's awesome!" Those that could see shades of all colors were incredibly rare.
Hajime seemed to add, "In white," almost against his will - as if he felt compelled to be honest but was as irritated at the compulsion as he was at the fact.
"Oh." Sano sat back again. That made it less significant. Still must be fairly convenient for exorcism, though.
"So tell me about this unusual shade," said Hajime in a somewhat dictatorial tone.
"He showed up, um..." Sano had to think for a moment.
"You should take better notes on things like this," Hajime broke in derisively. Sano was fairly certain that this particular statement was meant to be provoking. He didn't mind at all. If Hajime could handle his anger, it was definitely a relief to let it out.
"I'm not a pro, OK?" was his irritated retort. "I only take notes at school. Anyway, I think it was just at the end of February... the twenty-fifth, I'm pretty sure. So it's been almost exactly three weeks - not long enough for him to get used up... except, like I told you, I've used him up I think five times now."
"What were you doing when he showed up?"
Sano scratched his head. "Homework? I think. No," he corrected himself, "I think I'd finished what I was working on and was just messing around online."
"Porn?" asked Hajime, without apparent implication.
"What?" Sano was more surprised than anything else. "Is that supposed to make me mad? It was just normal websites and shit." Who really got their porn from the internet, anyway? That stuff was brutal; no amount of anti-virus or spyware-killing software could make that sex safe.
Hajime smirked, and continued with his interrogation. "Had you done any magic any time beforehand that might have attracted the shade?"
"I don't really 'do magic,'" replied Sano, scratching his head. "So, no. Least not that I'm aware of."
"No friends at your home casting spells? No recent séances?"
"Nope."
"Have you tried the medicine you get from Aoshi? Does it inhibit your ability to see this shade?"
"Yes and no. I usually don't take the stuff except when something's going on I really need to concentrate on, because..." Actually there was no real reason to get into that; Hajime undoubtedly wasn't interested. "Anyway, yeah, I tried it; it didn't work. I mean, it worked a little, but not enough. This shade's pretty strong; I could still feel the anger."
Hajime nodded, and then unexpectedly asked precisely what Sano had just been thinking he wouldn't be interested in knowing.
"Oh," replied Sano with a shrug, "I don't take it when I don't have to because it makes my head..." He gestured vaguely to the organ in question. "Fuzzy. Blurs my magical senses, I guess, is the best way to put it."
"And that bothers you, even though you don't really do magic?"
"Yeah, it's like... it's like having a sinus infection: there's this unpleasant feeling that maybe doesn't actually stop you from doing anything, but you can't ignore it."
Again Hajime nodded. He was about to say something else (possibly criticize Sano's incomplete description of sinus infections), but at just that moment Sano felt washing over him the anger that had become all too familiar these days. "Oh, ****," he growled, interrupting his companion. "Here he comes."
