Chapter Text
You'd always regret that your last word to your dad was an angry reply after he told you on the phone that you should meet his assistant.
Only a few hours later, another phone call had informed you of his death in mysterious circumstances — the police agent could only tell you that they'd found his dead body lying next to the corpse of his young assistant on the outskirts of the forest, and that an object seemed to be missing.
The agent had asked you if you had any idea what the object could be — having talked to your dad only a few hours before his death, you were the last person in his phone record.
You had an idea of what it could be, and you despised it — the disgusting object and the fact that it had eventually led to his death.
"I told you to not play with the supernatural," you muttered in front of his grave.
Hiding your chin in the thick scarf wrapped around your neck, you contemplated the slate in front of you as the sharp freezing wind chastised your cheeks.
You were shaking from the cold — just from the cold, you insisted to yourself, even though your dad had died days ago and you were still in shock, trembling every time you realized he was forever gone.
He had been too young to die, and you were too young to lose a dad.
It was unfair, and you cursed under your breath. That damn Yellow Hand had taken your dad away, cursing everyone around him.
Thinking you were alone in the cemetery, hearing steps next to you startled you. They were soft and respectful steps, approaching you carefully, but you were still too jumpy — you couldn’t shake away the feeling that you were now cursed as well, the next in line to suffer a horrible death.
After jolting, you turned around to see a young man, probably in his early twenties, standing but a few steps in front of you. In his hand he held an improvised bouquet of flowers — they looked wild, rather than bought in a shop, with a certain roughness in the stems but freshness in their petals. From your stance, narrowing your eyes, you were almost sure that they were chrysanthemums.
The man pressed his index finger against the bridge of his black glasses, pushing them closer to his face, only for them to immediately slide down his small nose one more time.
“Are you perhaps Professor (l/n)’s child?” He asked in a low, calm voice.
As you nodded, he raised the bouquet in his hand and explained:
“I came to pay my respects. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He asked for permission with his dark eyes and you stepped aside to allow him to deposit the flowers in front of the grave.
“I’m (l/n) (f/n). And you are…?” You asked.
“My name is Akaashi Keiji. I’m a student at your father’s seminar — he was my favorite professor. It won’t be the same without him now.”
“So you took his spirituality classes too.”
“ History of spirituality in the cultures across the world,” he rectified, once again pushing his glasses against his nose. “A fascinating subject.”
You nodded again and returned your gaze to the slate, longing for privacy. But the man didn’t walk away as you wished, instead standing by your side, making you face confronted feelings — you needed to be alone, yet you welcomed some emotional support, which you hadn’t had in the last days.
A stranger was better than nothing.
“I know you’re mourning, (l/n), but I wanted to talk to you,” he said after a couple of silent minutes. “There have been… rumors. At university.”
“Rumors?” You raised your head, meeting his eyes. They were blue, you now noticed.
“Yes. It’s said that your father carried the Yellow Hand with him when he died, and that it disappeared.”
“You know about the Yellow Hand?” you snapped, and immediately regretted being so rude to a stranger, but the topic got on your nerves.
“I do,” he continued, unfazed. “Professor (l/n) would talk about it every single day in our seminars. He was obsessed with it.”
You took a deep inhale, wishing you didn’t have to ask the following question:
“And did you ever see the hand?”
“I did. Once.”
“Damn.”
Akaashi narrowed his eyes and you rushed to explain:
“I’m sure that hand is cursed. Listen, I don’t believe in the supernatural, but that hand is cursed. Whoever is around it will suffer bad luck, and whoever touches it…”
You left the sentence hanging, a shiver crossing your body. Akaashi nodded.
“Your father insisted that the hand was cursed because it had been stolen from the place where it belonged.”
“Yes, the temple in the forest.”
Your dad had been so obsessed with the topic in the last months that every time you’d talked on the phone or had coffee together he’d ramble about the Yellow Hand for hours. It was still hard for you to understand why his eyes had shone with such excitement over a cursed object, but you had memorized the entire story by now.
“I keep thinking we should do something about the object,” Akaashi said.
“ We ?”
“You’re Professor (l/n)’s child. Who’d be better than you?”
“Why would I want to get involved with a cursed object? It has already ended my dad’s life and ruined mine. That stuff… it mustn’t be touched or seen. If it disappeared, maybe it’s for the better. It’ll stop interfering with our lives.”
“But we don’t know where it is! What if the thieves who stole it are cursing everyone’s lives now? That hand needs to be returned to its rightful owner — the temple where it belongs — or it’ll keep cursing everyone!”
“Thieves?” You asked, eyes widening. “Nobody said it was stolen.”
Akaashi shook his head slowly.
“Why else would it be missing, (l/n)? Did the police find it lying around the crime scene?”
“How do you know it was a crime?” You hissed.
The police had found the two bodies with signs of violence, but they had only revealed that information to a couple of people in your family.
“As I told you, there are rumors at university. We know the police are investigating a potential murder and robbery.”
You pressed your lips tight, fists curling inside your coat pockets, and wished this conversation would end now.
“Well then, let the police solve this and retrieve the cursed object. I don’t want anything else to do with it — it has given me enough problems.”
You walked past him and away from the cemetery, leaving behind your dad’s grave and the damn student.
Yet, as you walked under the winter gray sky, you knew this was far from over.