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Some would call in instinct and others a hunch, but Kagami couldn’t really define the purpose of his journey as anything more than a gut feeling. As he strides towards the end of the corridor, footsteps echoing in the otherwise silent hallway, the knot in his stomach gradually grows tighter.
It had indeed been a hunch at first, but when his first leads led him to a dead end and Tadokoro had paled at his question, Kagami knew he was onto something. Whether it was sympathy or a last abuse of power on his final day at ZECT, Tadokoro had done some digging and told Kagami where to go and when, providing him with a note with special instructions that Kagami didn’t bother reading.
So now Kagami finds himself walking down a familiar hallway, shaking his head as though to rid the chilling feeling he always gets when visiting the ZECT office’s private morgue.
The officer on duty let him in and Kagami passes on the letter from Tadokoro to the man who silently reads it while Kagami’s heart beats painfully in his chest- he barely hears the man acknowledge the letter between the pounding in his ears. Swallowing, Kagami watches as the man moves to his desk to retrieve some keys and asks that Kagami follow him. The walk into the cold morgue is a short one but Kagami is certain that his legs are ten times heavier by the time they reach the small room.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath as the man unlocks two lockers and he hears the sliding of metal. His lips curl in and a lump forms in his throat as the other man leaves the room, muttering about how he’ll give Kagami a minute and he closes the door softly behind him.
Another moment passes before Kagami is able to bring himself to opening his eyes. The two bodies are still covered by a thin white sheet and Kagami reaches out to place his hand on the sheet, whispering one final pray to no one in particular that his gut feeling is wrong.
He tightens his grip and pulls the sheet back. The knot in his stomach turns into a stone and drops so hard that for a moment, Kagami is sure he’s going to be sick. A wave of dizziness comes and goes and Kagami’s eyes focus on the body in front of him.
Kageyama Shun.
The grip on the white sheet tightens until Kagami feels his own fingernails digging through the sheet and into his palm. He dares to look back down at Kageyama’s pale form- the scar across his cheek was new, something that Kageyama certainly didn’t have at ZECT and Kagami hadn’t really noticed during their encounters since. Still and pale, Kageyama looks a lot younger than he had back in SHADOW. Kagami remembers painfully that Kageyama was in fact a year younger than him.
“Kageyama-san,” Kagami chokes, letting out a shaking breath as he tries to compose himself.
The identity of the other body is hardly a mystery but Kagami walks over to reveal the face of Yaguruma Sou underneath the second white sheet all the same. He bows in his head in sorrow and staggers over to the wall, sliding down and hitting the ground with a thud. He draws his knees into his chest and buries his face into his hands.
After the battle with the Natives, the world had seemed like something out of a fairy tail, and it hadn’t been for a couple of days before Kagami remembered that Kageyama had taken so many of the necklaces he himself had so foolishly handed out. He brought this up with Tendou who quickly brushed it off as though he was avoiding the topic- at the time, Kagami assumed it was Tendou being his usual, disinterested self; now, he wondered if Tendou had known more. It was true that since leaving ZECT, Yaguruma and Kageyama had hardly been known to keep in touch, but Kagami was unable to deny the bad feeling that had started rising inside him.
The lack of results for any recent unclaimed bodies had been a relief at first, but something had urged Kagami to check with his senior officer to see if there were any that ZECT had not released the reports on.
Sometimes, Kagami wished his gut wasn’t so good at investigating.
Tadokoro had mentioned that there were a pair of bodies found recently in a secluded dock and that the bodies had been identified to be persons related to ZECT, but they remained unclaimed. The sympathy in Tadokoro’s eyes, at the time, had told Kagami that he wouldn’t need the names to confirm his theory.
Now, Kagami found himself sitting on the cold, morgue floor, a short distance away from two officers he had once called Captain. From the first time Kagami had met them, he recognised the bond that Yaguruma and Kageyama had- it had looked like an act of fate when both were rejected by ZECT only to be reunited in some twisted hell, that to Kagami’s knowledge, involved a lot of leather, chains and strange laughter. The guilt of not having been able to save them from that hell was something that bothered Kagami on occasion; he had respected both men as his superiors and as equal members of SHADOW, even if Kageyama used his life as bait that one time. To know now what had become of them… it felt suffocating.
There is a hollow knock at the door before it opens and Tadokoro walks in, glancing around and spotting Kagami on the floor. The older man drops quickly to his level and places a hand on Kagami’s shoulder, earning a soft hum in response. Tadokoro sighs heavily and gives Kagami’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze before moving to stand against the adjacent wall.
“We found their belts, but not the zecters,” Tadokoro says, keeping a professional manner about him, but Kagami sees the way he’s looking at Yaguruma’s body and remembers that the two had once worked together.
Kagami nods his head briefly as he processes the information. The zecters all had minds of their own, the hopper zecters had been a mystery from the very beginning, and as ridiculous as it sounded, Kagami silently hoped that the two small creatures were somewhere safe. He wanted to ask about any other personal effects that may have been found with the bodies, but he knew Tadokoro was the last person he should be asking.
“Kageyama died a human,” Tadokoro continues and Kagami looks up, his eyes widening in surprise. “You don’t have to tip toe around me, Kagami. We did find the necklaces on him, so it’s very likely was turning, but cause of death was trauma or shock, coroner wasn’t able to pin point it exactly. It doesn’t look he suffered.”
“That’s… good,” Kagami mutters, feeling the rock sitting inside him shift ever so slightly. “I’m glad. That he didn’t suffer, that is.”
“Yaguruma’s the mystery, no necklaces, no signs of mutation, looks like his body just shut down,” Tadokoro’s voice softens as he moves to wrap a hand around the plate Yaguruma is lying on.
Neither men say anything for a long moment, each mourning men they knew had done a lot of good, and a lot of not so good, in their lives. Tadokoro breaks the tension first, his eyes swimming in a mix of guilt and grief.
“It’s being ruled that Kageyama was a victim to the Native and Yaguruma just fell to natural causes- from what we could tell, they weren’t living by the healthiest of habits,” Tadokoro says softly when he turns away from Yaguruma’s body.
“No, they probably weren’t,” Kagami says with a bitter sweet smile, remembering his brief encounter with the self proclaimed brothers when he and Tendou had reached out to them for help. “They didn’t deserve this,” he tacks of helplessly.
“They didn’t,” Tadokoro agrees. “But there’s nothing you can do for them now.”
Tadokoro reaches out, offering Kagami a hand up but the younger man is off in his own world, eyes distant and voice hollow.
“Is that it, then? No one so much as comes to see the bodies? Couldn’t we at least arrange a funeral? Just something small, within ZECT.”
“Kagami…”
Kagami shakes his head but doesn’t continue his argument. He can’t bare the idea that Yaguruma and Kageyama were going to just be forgotten like this, but in truth; would they have wanted a funeral? A gathering of people they’d hurt, betrayed and fought against muttering about their ill memories of them? But what about their time at ZECT? Were their lives so deep in the darkness that no light could ever touch them again?
“Right, no, I mean, I know,” Kagami says, his shoulders slumping. “I just… that can’t be it, can it? They’re dead and there’s no one to mourn them? No one to remember them? That doesn’t seem fair. They weren’t saints but they’ve done good things too, it just seems… it seems so unfair that there’s no one to …”
“You came, and you’re far from no one, Kagami,” Tadokoro says sternly. “Besides, you know that they wouldn’t have accepted an official ceremony or anything like that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Kagami murmurs, taking Tadokoro’s still extended hand and getting hauled to his feet. “They wouldn't have.”
“Look, I knew Yaguruma when he was as green as you, and you knew Kageyama when the two of you were in SHADOW together. Whatever happened to them after ZECT, was their business.”
“Yeah,” Kagami mutters into the direction of his feet, still dissatisfied with what looked like the end of his journey, with the results of what his strong gut feeling had produced. “Could I have a look at their personal effects?”
Tadokoro frowns at him momentarily but nods in understanding, walking out to speak with the other office. He returns soon after with two clear, plastic bags and lays them out on a table against the wall.
The bags didn’t have much in them, most obvious objects being the two ZECT belts and then an odd mix of jewellery; Kagami spots with a pang of guilt, the necklaces Kageyama had snatched from him just a couple of days ago. He picks the bag up and shakes it slightly, examining its contents.
“What are you looking for?” Tadokoro asks, a hand on Kagami’s shoulder.
“Nothing,” Kagami mutters, though he sounds concentrated and distant. “I just… what’s that?”
The older man leans in to look at whatever it is that Kagami is poking and sees a sheet of crumpled paper. Kagami lowers the bag to take the sheet out, smoothing it roughly against the wall before looking at it again.
“A postcard?” Tadokoro questions, looking at the paper from over Kagami’s shoulder.
“Maybe, I’m not sure,” Kagami murmurs in reply, turning the postcard around to examine it further. “It looks like that phenomenon, midnight sun or white night I think it’s called, when the sun is visible even in the middle of the night. It doesn’t really happen in Japan, more in countries further north.”
“Why would these two have been carrying something like that?”
“Don’t know,” Kagami admits with a hint of disappointment in his voice.
He isn’t sure what he had expected by going through what the brothers had been carrying. They were, as Kagami knew in life and now in death, an enigma that someone like him could never really understand.
“May I keep this?” Kagami asks Tadokoro, holding the postcard with a pleading look in his eyes.
The older man seems to have an inner debate with himself at first, but soon he exhales and shrugs a shoulder.
“You may as well.”
“Thanks,” Kagami bows his head and carefully folds the picture into his pocket.
The feeling in his gut is still squirming as though there is something left he can do for his fellow Riders. The weight of the picture is heavier than he expects, as though Kagami had just placed a piece of iron into his pocket. It shifts around, prodding him, making its presence obvious and somewhat irritating.
Kagami hears Tadokoro summon the officer to lock up the room as he turns back for one last glance at his former comrades. He racks his brain for something to say, a way to say goodbye, to close the book on the lives of Kageyama Shun and Yaguruma Sou; but nothing comes to him.
No matter what I say, Kagami thinks with a soft smile, they would have said I was laughing at them and beaten me up anyway.
That night, Kagami comes home from Tadokoro’s farewell party tired and sore, his mind having travelled elsewhere for a blissful couple of hours. He falls on his bed with a happy sigh before emptying his pockets, placing the photo on his table by an open window.
A breeze brushes past his curtains and throw his hair, the postcard held in place by the alarm clock that Kagami places on top of one corner. He looks at the photo of the midnight sun and out into the sky where the moon shone in the middle of a sky of bright stars.
“Kageyama-san, Yaguruma-san,” he murmurs to himself, sitting on the bed and watching the night sky. “Whatever you were looking for, I hope you found it.”
With some effort, Kagami lifts himself from the bed to get changed. His shirt is over his head and obstructing his vision when he hears it.
A familiar whirring accompanied by approaching pings as metal bounced through his windowsill. The unmistakable sound of chirping zecters draws closer and Kagami could swear that the chimes sound almost happy. By the time he’s able to toss his shirt aside and whip around though, the postcard of the white night is gone, leaving no evidence of itself or of the hopper zecters that claimed it.