K side red, p.2
K Side Red, page 2
As he just sat there with his chin propped in his hand and watched disinterestedly, Suoh suddenly lifted his gaze.
He glanced behind him.
“Oh, my,” Honami raised her voice in a bit of surprise. “Anna…”
The expressionless girl she had brought with her stood behind Suoh, staring at him as if she’d seen something rare and unusual. Even though she received a glare from him – or, more rather, a look so sharp it could have sent someone staggering – Anna didn’t seem to cower at all, and just conducted her ‘investigation’ with fixed eyes.
Without saying anything, Suoh also continued to look at her for a while.
A slight awkward interval passed.
Everyone around them fell silent as well, absorbed in that strange atmosphere.
Just as they were finally remembering to breathe, Anna abruptly turned on her heels.
Moving away from Suoh with calm, even steps, she headed for a corner of the room and sat down on the floor, not really caring her dress might get dirty as she pulled some marbles out of her pocket and started to play by herself.
“Now, that’s rare. For Anna to be interested in someone…” Honami said, glancing back and forth between Anna’s back and Suoh with slightly wide eyes.
“Well then, that’s a strange kid.” Kusanagi narrowed his gaze to look at Anna who still sat on her corner of floor.
Maybe because it was so unusual for them to see a little girl here, everyone gathered in the bar was also watching her with definite interest from a distance.
“So, what’ll you have?” Kusanagi finally asked all of a sudden as he noticed he hadn’t served anything to Honami yet.
She took a look at the black menu board.
“I think I’ll have some specialty curry,” she then said, calling gently once more to the seated girl on the floor. “Anna? Do you want to eat curry?”
Without turning to look, nor saying anything, Anna just shook her head. Honami forced a smile.
“Guess she’s not hungry,” Kusanagi said from the pot as he prepared Honami’s serving of HOMRA’s Specialty Tomato Chicken Curry.
“She doesn’t really eat much… But, will you prepare a little anyway? I’m sorry if it gets left over, though…”
“S’all fine, don’t you go worrying ‘bout that.”
Kusanagi pulled out a small plate and placed a bit of curry for Anna on it. Honami stood up to get it, but someone else’s hand forestalled her.
“I’ll bring it to her. Honami-sensei, you just keep talking to King.”
Before the woman could reach it, Totsuka picked up the small plate. Wearing a sweet, amiable smile on his face, he carried it off and headed for Anna.
“So what’s the matter with you today?” Kusanagi inquired as he lightly leaned on the counter. “Bringing that small kid ‘n here.”
Honami smiled somehow sadly as she scooped up curry with her spoon, and opened her mouth.
“It’s Anna’s day of temporary leave from the hospital.”
“Hospital? Something wrong with that kid?”
Turning his back on Honami for a bit, Kusanagi glanced at Anna. Totsuka had set the plate of curry down next to her and was saying something, but the girl didn’t even as much as look up at him and only continued to roll the marbles around on the floor.
“According to the doctor, there’s something wrong with her brain. It’s apparently a serious illness, so she needs to undergo examination and treatment at a special facility.”
Honami looked down, and some hair slipped from her shoulders. As he observed her downcast state and stared at her long eyelashes, Kusanagi frowned.
“Sounds tough. What’s she have?”
“The illness doesn’t have a clear name yet. She’s usually normal, but at times she’ll hallucinate and wake up with a headache, it seems. According to the doctors at the facility, if this disorder in her brain is left untreated, it could even endanger her life.”
“Hey, she’ll get better for sure, right?” Yata, who’d been listening on the side, nervously asked.
Honami smiled gently at him and Yata instantly turned red in the face, mouth twitching awkwardly.
“Yes, I’m sure she’ll get better. The doctors are doing their best to find a way to cure her, too.”
Doing their best to find one, which meant, in other words, it couldn’t be done with the currently available methods of treatment.
“She’s still so little, but she’s hospitalized all the time and barely gets one day of leave like this… She’s become a girl who won’t show her feelings on her face at all. She’s always brooding like this at home too, so I don’t even know what to do anymore…”
“She have any parents?” Suoh suddenly opened his mouth to speak after he’d remained silent so long.
He still looked just as lethargic, but it seemed like he’d been paying proper attention to Honami’s story regardless. The woman blinked in surprise and looked at him.
“You went to pick her up and you’re looking after her. Where’re her parents? …They dead?”
He did speak carelessly, but the way he said it wasn’t particularly cold. Honami let out a slow, deep breath and then nodded.
“It was last year. …My brother and his wife passed away in a car accident.”
Not only was she ill, but she’d lost both her parents as well. Anna was a really unfortunate girl. No wonder she had the stiff, expressionless face of a doll, and eyes like marbles that wouldn’t express any emotion.
“Oh, dear… now I almost feel like crying!”
As if to try and shift her feelings back into gear, Honami lifted her face and tried a bright smile again.
“This is Anna’s valuable day of hospital leave, so… Let’s set such gloomy talk aside for now. Hey, since this is such a rare chance, I wanted to take her out some place, but could you please give us some directions for this area?”
“I-I can give you a tour of Shizume City if you want…!” Yata offered, tripping over his words as he avoided looking Honami straight in the face.
When Honami gently thanked him, he became completely overwhelmed. Observing all of this from the corner of his eyes, Kusanagi finally spared one last look to Anna.
What a tough case to crack.
Faced with Anna, who wouldn’t even turn to look at the tomato chicken curry, much less address a single word of reply to whatever he said to her, Totsuka found himself at a loss.
The wooden boards must have been cold, but the girl only continued to sit there on the floor and prod at the scattered red marbles, rolling them around with her finger. To Totsuka, it didn’t seem as if there were any particular rules to this mysterious movement of balls, so he couldn’t tell what kind of game she might have been playing at all.
For a while, he only patiently watched. But, as his curiosity got the best of him in the end, he finally reached out a hand. Testily, he poked one of the marbles on the floor with his finger. Much like a game of billiards would play, that one rolled into another, clashing against it, and further propelling it into others which scattered about.
As her marbles were thrown into complete disarray like that, Anna stiffened for only a moment. After that, she slowly lifted her head in Totsuka’s direction.
Since disturbing her game had finally gained him the chance to lock eyes with the girl, Totsuka childishly gave a bright smile.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Anna was silent for a while. And, as she kept quiet, she stared at Totsuka. Her general expression didn’t really change, but maybe – just maybe – she might have been glaring.
“…I was looking.”
“Looking? At what?”
Lowering her eyes once more, Anna grew quiet again.
Totsuka studied her face in silence.
Although she looked very young, her eyes somehow showed an unusual trace of maturity. It wouldn’t seem as if the reason she spoke so little was because she had any form of shyness or a fearfully withdrawn personality.
Those were eyes which seemed to have seen too much, or had maybe given up on something.
A gut feeling told Totsuka he might be on to something.
“…So you can ‘see’ things other people can’t?” he gently asked.
Anna slowly lifted her gaze.
Those lightless eyes found a focal point on Totsuka’s face. But, although he was being intently looked at, somehow Totsuka didn’t really feel that way. Those eyes seemed to be aimed someplace else.
“How do you see me, then?” he testily said.
After watching him in silence for a bit, Anna slowly picked one of the marbles up with her fingers, and held it to her left eye.
Their gazes met through the red sphere.
And, that instant, a strange sensation assaulted Totsuka.
It felt as if, through the marble, the girl’s gaze could lay his insides bare.
Just slightly, he almost flinched.
Still expressionless, with that near-mechanical gaze, Anna continued to ‘look’ at Totsuka. The odd impression the girl’s eyes gave off had him experiencing something maybe akin to the restlessness of fear, but Totsuka kept still and stayed peering fixedly at her.
Suddenly, Anna’s body gave a jolt of surprise. She abruptly released the marble she’d been looking through, letting it drop from her hand as if its temperature unexpectedly rose and it burned her.
The red marble bounced to the floor, rolling away.
As if in a daze, Anna followed it with her eyes. Finally, her emotionless facial expression showed a small change.
“What’s… wrong?” Totsuka asked, swallowing tightly before he realized it in response to her distressed reaction.
Despite how her face still didn’t reflect any emotion, Anna now slightly furrowed her brows, and she bit her lower lip as if holding back something. Keeping silent, she started to gather the scattered marbles from the floor. As she did so, she kept opening her mouth as if to say something and promptly biting her lip, repeating the same process again.
Totsuka held his breath for a while, waiting to see what she was going to say, but then suddenly the tension lifted from his shoulders and they relaxed with a slouch.
“…Won’t you eat? It’s really good,” he said as he held out the plate with a smile, causing Anna to lift her head in surprise. “I don’t really get it, but… If you don’t want to say it, then you don’t have to.”
Dropping her gaze to the small plate of curry he offered, Anna slowly shook her head.
“You can just eat, you know,” Totsuka said as he tried to peer at her.
But Anna only stubbornly shook her head again.
“Alright, then. …Ah, how about these?”
Leaving the plate of curry on a table nearby, Totsuka pulled a jar of candy from a shelf instead. Rattling it a little, he emptied some of the candy into his hand. The three that rolled out were a transparent lemon yellow, a light green melon, and a minty white.
Totsuka held his hand out and offered the candy to Anna.
“What color do you want?”
Anna didn’t reply.
Staying silent, she stared fixedly at the candy in Totsuka’s hand.
“Oh, I’m really sorry,” a voice came suddenly from behind. “Anna can’t see colors.”
Totsuka turned to look over his shoulder and was greeted by an upside down image of Honami’s face, as the woman had closed in on them at some point and was smiling wryly a little.
“Can’t see colors?”
Turned as he was, Totsuka tilted his head as Honami came to crouch down beside him. Picking up the jar of candy, she emptied more of its contents into his palm. From there, she picked out a pink-colored strawberry one that had come rolling out.
“She’s color-vision deficient. The only color she can distinguish is red. If it’s this sort of nuance… She should at least be able to vaguely make out this candy.”
Looking fixedly at the deep pink, almost red candy, Anna nodded quietly once.
Honami held the strawberry candy in front of her face, and, after showing only one moment of hesitation, Anna finally obediently opened her mouth to accept it.
“I don’t know if it’s because she can’t see the colors,” Honami said sadly, “but she doesn’t eat or drink very much… Sorry.”
Eyes slightly wide, Totsuka shook his head.
“Well, all this might be related to her illness, too.”
“Illness?”
“This girl was in the hospital,” Yata chimed in. “She’s got temporary leave today or so.”
Totsuka looked up at Honami.
“Where’s the hospital?” he asked.
“In District Seven.⁽¹⁾ Usually we just go home from the hospital and then back, but today we ended up asking Yata-kun and Kamamoto-kun for a tour of Shizume City.”
As Honami spoke, Yata scratched the tip of his nose in embarrassment.
“Yeah, Kamamoto and I’ll be taking ma’am downtown,” he said, using his thumb to point at Kamamoto standing behind him.
Yata often dragged Kamamoto along to the game center downtown, so he probably knew the area there like the back of his hand.
“You coming too, Totsuka-san?” he asked.
After thinking a little, Totsuka smiled lightly and shook his head.
“No, I’m good. You make sure to show sensei and Anna-chan around properly. Don’t just take them to the arcade.”
“…Ah. What’s there besides the arcade?”
“There’s a lot of popular clothing stores for girls, and this one really famous café. The parfaits there are really cute, I’m sure even Anna-chan will eat one with Honami-sensei.”
“Huh? You want me to go into girly shops like those…!?”
As Yata visibly sulked about that, Kamamoto made a resigned face behind him.
“Yata-san? You do realize we’re escorting a little girl, right?”
Laughing, Totsuka evenly divided the candy still in his hand, and pushed half of them onto each of Kamamoto and Yata as he pulled himself up.
Yata and Kamamoto had a relationship similar to that of the leader of a gang of preschoolers and his henchman. Yata had barely joined Homra a short while ago, but their previous relationship from all the way back then seemed to have revived. Although, while he did follow Yata around all over the place, Kamamoto was the type who cut down wherever he needed to cut down, so to speak, and was overall pretty good at handling Yata and keeping him in check. If Kamamoto tagged along too, Honami and Anna were sure to properly have a good time.
With folded arms, Yata scrunched up his face and seemed to be reconsidering the course on which he should guide the two women, while Kamamoto had politely taken their luggage to carry. Overseeing all of that, Totsuka nodded contently to himself. As he watched Honami’s back while the woman put on her coat and made ready to leave, he started to eat the curry Anna hadn’t even touched in the end.
Spoon in his mouth, he spaced out thinking of Anna.
And then, suddenly, he felt a weak tug at the side of his shirt.
When he looked down, he saw that Anna had grabbed on to his clothes.
“What’s the matter?”
Anna gazed at Totsuka with her large, cat-like eyes, and then slowly turned with agile moves to indicate Suoh, who still sat at the counter.
“Hm? Something about that man over there?” Totsuka said as he brought himself down to Anna’s level, matching her gaze.
With the dignified, austere air of a priestess who made a prediction, Anna opened her mouth.
“If you stay by his side,” she said while looking at Suoh, “you won’t live very long.”
Totsuka’s eyes opened wide.
He didn’t understand right away what the girl was saying.
For a while, he simply spaced out, just gazing at Anna until finally he remembered her earlier, ‘looking’ at him.
“…You ‘saw’ that?” he asked. Anna didn’t reply, so he continued. “Can you see into the future?”
Anna lowered her gaze a bit as she thought, seeming caught between both nodding and shaking her head.
