Vampire and His Pleasant Companions: Volume 1 - Part 10

The content warning is in the footnotes⁰.

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...A snipping sound, like scissors cutting, and a sharp pain jolted Al awake. A burning sensation spread from his arm down to his fingertips. He didn't understand what was causing this pain and thrashed around wildly, but he couldn’t move. A large hand was pressing his body against the floor. The snipping sound of scissors continued—snip, snip—and with each cut, a searing pain coursed through his entire arm.

“Squeak, squeak, squeak— squeeeeeak!” 

Help me, help me, it hurts, it hurts... He screamed with all his might.

“Oh, so you’re still alive after all.” 

The voice of the man who had grabbed the bat in a death grip was brimming with excitement. Sensing a moment of laxity in the fingers holding him down, Al twisted his body frantically and managed to escape from the man's grasp. He desperately flapped his wings to distance himself from the man, but he couldn’t fly. His body wouldn’t lift off the ground. The usual sensation of air wrapping around his wings was gone. When he looked at his wings, which were usually taut like a tent, they were now tattered like a broken umbrella.

If he couldn’t fly... then he would fold his wings and crawl along the floor. He tried to crawl under the desk or bookshelf, but just before he could squeeze in, the man grabbed him.

“Yep, cutting up their wings really does keep them from flying,” 

The man said as he lifted Al up and spread his wings, now looking like a broken umbrella, with a sly grin.

“Hey, aren’t you the one who was sitting on that detective’s shoulder when he came to my place the other day?” 

The man muttered as he grabbed Al’s right wing—his forearm—and bent it outward as if snapping a twig. There was a small snapping sound, and pain shot through Al’s arm.

“Gyaaah!!” 

The pain was so intense that tears streamed down his face. The man looked down at the suffering bat with a calm, indifferent expression.

“Maybe they hid a transmitter or a listening device somewhere on this thing.” 

Turning Al’s body over and examining it as he spoke, the man casually snapped Al’s left forearm as well. With both arms twisted and broken in unnatural directions, Al could no longer fly or even fold his wings.

“Well, at least there’s nothing visible on the outside.” 

...Al trembled as he was gripped tightly in the man’s grasp. This man, who looked perfectly normal and would blend into any crowd, had killed three people. He wasn’t normal. That’s precisely why he could torment an animal with such glee.

He pinned the quivering bat to a nearby table, his face twisting into a disturbingly eerie smile.

“Then, maybe it’s hidden inside your body?” 

No, no way… As this terrible thought filled Al’s mind, he felt a sudden, heavy impact on his stomach.

“Gyauuun!” 

The tip of the scissors pierced through Al’s small belly, bursting through the skin on his back and stabbing into the table beneath him.

“Just checking to see if there’s anything strange inside,” 

The man sang casually as he twisted the scissors lodged in Al’s body. The intense pain felt like his insides were being seared with fire, and Al writhed in agony, screaming. Finally, the scissors were removed, and Al thought it was over. Once he confirmed there was nothing in his stomach, there wouldn’t be anything worse to endure.

...He was wrong. The man wasn’t just checking for something hidden inside Al; he was also enjoying the act of tormenting him.

The man used the scissors to cut a vertical slit down Al’s belly. Then, as if he were pruning garden trees, he started snipping at Al’s exposed organs. Al’s whole body shook violently, breaking into a cold sweat. His throat had also been cut, so he couldn’t even scream anymore. The pain etched into Al’s body was beyond death—an unrelenting barrage of excruciating torment.

The cutting went on for a long, long time. Looking down at the convulsing, twitching bat, the man muttered, “Animals sure are tough.”

“This was pretty fun, but I guess humans are still more exciting.” 

Licking his upper lip, the man grabbed Al and stepped out onto the balcony. He threw the blood-soaked bat far into the distance, like a paper airplane.

Unable to fly, Al’s body traced an arc through the air before plummeting straight down like a stone. As he hit the ground, he felt his bones shatter and his skull fracture. His entire body felt like it was on fire—burning with pain, pain, pain, pain...

He heard footsteps approaching—crunch, crunch. He thought the man had come to finish him off, and Al, trembling with fear, began to cry.

“Oh, damn, this is...”

With his right eye crushed and only his left still working, Al saw Yanagawa looking down at him with a grim expression.

“How the hell did you end up falling like this? There’s no way you’d be this messed up just from falling. This doesn’t add up at all,” 

Yanagawa muttered, walking away, but soon returned with a cardboard box. He placed Al inside the box and, holding it in his arms, started talking to someone as he walked.

“Ah, is this Nukariya-san? It’s Yanagawa. I’m in front of a convenience store about fifty meters from that apartment building. We might be able to bring that guy in for questioning on another charge. We probably can’t arrest him, but we could bring him in for an interview... What, why? Well, I mean, animal cruelty is definitely something we can use, right? I can be a witness.”

◇:-:◆:-:◇

From inside the cardboard box, Akira lifted the towel that had been draped over it and let out a gasp.

“What the hell happened here?!”

His shout echoed through the quiet hallway of the embalming facility’s first floor. Though happy to be back by Akira's side, Al wanted to cry out, but his lungs and trachea had been severed, leaving him voiceless. His body had not yet begun to heal; there wasn’t enough blood left inside him to aid the recovery. The pain was unbearable—agonizing, so agonizing... Help me, help me, help me, Akira... It hurts all over. Al's broken jaw moved open and shut, unable to close.

“I don’t even know how things ended up like this. I only asked for Al’s help with the investigation twice—once when creating the sketch and again when following the blood trail. According to my partner, who was on stakeout at the suspect's apartment, Al showed up around nine o’clock. He started making noise on the suspect's balcony, which apparently annoyed the suspect enough to open the window and step outside. Al took that opportunity to jump into the room, but the window shut with him still inside... Twenty minutes later, he was tossed out like garbage from the fifth floor. He said he wasn’t flying when he was thrown, so he must have been injured so badly before being thrown that he couldn’t fly.”

“Why would he go and...”

Akira began to speak, but then Nukariya’s face suddenly changed, as if he remembered something important.

“I don’t know, I really don’t, but... maybe Al was trying to help with the police investigation in his own way. He was always bothered by the fact that, even after finding the suspect, we couldn’t capture him. Whatever the reason, whether he was a victim or not, I’m the one who got him involved in this case. I’m really, truly sorry.”

Nukariya bit his lip and muttered with a pained expression. Akira clenched his back teeth tightly and snatched the cardboard box from Nukariya's hands.

He gently stroked Al's head, which was crushed and misshapen, with his fingertips. Al tried to respond, but as soon as he attempted to lift his jaw, a sharp pain shot through his entire body, causing it to twitch and convulse.

“I took him to an animal hospital, but they said there was nothing more they could do and suggested euthanasia. I don’t really understand Al's body, so...”

Akira sighed.

“Even when he was injured before, his wounds were so severe that if he were human, he wouldn't have survived. But after a couple of days, they naturally healed. This time, I thought he’d heal with time too, but...”

Akira closed his eyes tightly.

“...Watching him like this is just too painful.”

Akira left work early and took Al back to his apartment, still inside the cardboard box. He gently laid him down in a basket lined with a soft towel. Being back in a familiar place seemed to ease Al's tension, but paradoxically, the pain only grew worse. He couldn’t scream or thrash around, so he just trembled violently.

As the sun began to set, he was moved from the basket to a bed covered with a blanket. Within minutes, the transformation from bat to human began. Even after shifting to a human form, the wounds did not heal; they simply transformed with him. His arms were bent, his legs twisted and shattered, his abdomen split wide open, revealing his mutilated organs. His eyeball dangled out, his jawbone fractured, and his brain was spilling out from the back of his cracked skull. Compared to his smaller bat form, the larger human parts made the injuries appear even more grotesque.

Akira, who had earned an embalmer’s license in America and was used to seeing corpses, initially turned his eyes away from Al in his human form.

While being cut up by the man, Al lost most of the blood in his body, then was thrown from a great height, further aggravating his injuries. With the little blood remaining, his body had to slowly mend itself, but the healing process was excruciatingly slow, drawing out the pain and suffering endlessly. Al screamed silently from his voiceless throat, in agony, in torment. Akira stayed by his side, watching intently as Al writhed in pain. He never left, his expression grave and unwavering.

Usually, the skin would close first, and the healing would start there, but perhaps because the wound was too large, it started from the inside, from the least damaged organs. Around ten o’clock at night, his ruptured vocal cords were repaired, but the first sound that came out was a scream.

“Squeak—”

Startled, Akira leaned in to look at Al’s face.

“Squeak... squeak... squeak...”

The intense pain made it impossible for him to form coherent words. Even though he was human, the only sound he could make was that of a bat. Part of the pain found its way into his voice, continually squeezed out from deep in his throat. Tears streamed down from his left eye, the only one still in place, pouring out from the unbearable pain.

Akira looked down at him with a pained expression. Screaming only troubled Akira, and Al knew there was nothing he could do. Yet, the pain and suffering were unbearable, maddening even. Still, there was something he desperately wanted to convey.

"...A...ki...ra... A...ki...ra..."

"What is it? Is there something you want to say?"

Even though he could speak, his broken jawbone made it hard to form words properly.

"...D...esk... inside..."

"Desk? What about the desk?"

"...desk... inside... b...loo...d"

"Blood inside the desk?"

"Nukariya... tell... him..."

Akira furrowed his brow deeply and picked up his phone. It was already past one in the morning. In just a minute or two, he finished the call.

"I told Nukariya what you mentioned. Is that okay?"

He wanted to nod, but his neck was still not healed and wouldn’t move. Only the tip of his nose twitched. Akira gently stroked his slightly deformed forehead.

"Can you even heal by morning like this? It seems like you heal faster in human form than as a bat, but your abdomen is still wide open. When you were stabbed before, the wound closed in a night, but maybe this time the wound is too big? If sewing it up would speed up the healing, I’d do it, but if not, sticking you with needles will just hurt you more..."

Akira, who had been sitting quietly by Al's side, suddenly stood up. He moved over to the closet and rummaged around for something. Then, he came back, the smell of blood pungent in the air.

Just like before, he extended his arm, dripping with blood, in front of Al. The flowing blood dripped onto Al's lips.

"N...no..."

Al forced out the words with all his strength.

"Don...want..."

"Drink it. Then you’ll heal faster, right? Just like last time."

"No...no..."

When Al tried to shake his head to avoid the drops of blood falling into his mouth, a sharp pain shot through him, and he screamed, "Squeak!"

"Don't move your body recklessly. Since we can't do X-rays or any tests, I have no idea what's going on inside you. If you were thrown down, you’ve probably got broken bones all over. I can guess most of it just by looking at you, but I’d rather not think about it."

The blood dripping onto his lips was sweet. He didn’t want to drink it, but his tongue instinctively lapped it up.

"Don...want..."

"You can’t say you don’t want it. Drink and heal your stomach, your eye, your brain, all of it."

"Aki...ra... it... tastes bad..."

As soon as he said that, Akira pressed his arm forcibly against Al's mouth.

"Don’t be picky. Drink!"

The delicious liquid flowed freely into his mouth, and he couldn’t resist. Instinct overpowered reason. His body craved it. It wanted to heal, to be free from this pain as soon as possible.

But that’s why he didn’t want it. Once he lost himself in it, he wouldn’t be able to stop. It was so delicious, he might keep drinking until Akira collapsed again. He wanted to stop, but his lips kept moving, sucking blood from the wound.

"You better stop before I’m on the brink of death... or can you not hear me anymore...?"

As Al continued to drink greedily, Akira gently stroked his forehead. Even though it didn’t hurt, tears welled up in his eyes. You don’t have to be so kind to me... even if you weren't kind... Al silently cried, letting tears fall while drinking the sweet blood.

◇:-:◆:-:◇

…In the end, Al continued to drink Akira's blood until Akira turned pale from anemia. This time, since Akira pulled his arm away from Al's mouth while he was still conscious, he managed not to collapse and didn’t need to call an ambulance. After feeding Al his blood, Akira staggered to the kitchen and gulped down milk and water.

The power of human blood was incredible; within a single night, all visible wounds had healed. The gaping wound in his abdomen, from which his organs had spilled out, was now covered with skin. The wound on his head had also closed, and his protruding eye had been pulled back in, though his bones still made crunching sounds. It seemed like the vital organs needed to sustain his body were prioritized for healing, leaving the bones for later. The bones in his back grated together, and speaking caused a sharp pain. He still couldn't move his neck, and his arms and legs remained twisted in odd directions.

The next morning, Akira carried the basket with Al inside and staggered into the center for work. Everyone was worried about Akira, whose face was pasty, even more than pale, but he insisted, "I'm fine." However, he collapsed in the break room and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.

After a blood transfusion, Akira returned from the hospital about three hours later. Ignoring everyone’s attempts to stop him, he said, "This is my responsibility," and proceeded with the last embalming of the day.

"Do you think Takatsuka will be okay...?" Maruyama asked, glancing up at the clock in the break room after six in the evening.

"I can't understand what that guy is thinking," Tsuno grumbled, sounding irritated and breathing heavily.

"If he's not feeling well, he doesn't need to push himself. Yet, he insists on doing it himself..."

"Come on now," Koyanagi gently admonished Tsuno. "Takatsuka has always been stubborn, but he could rely on us for things like this. I would have felt more at ease if Tsuno-kun had been there to assist him. I guess he was really conscious of finishing by six o'clock, huh?"

"Sure, the assistants are supposed to be done by six, but there are exceptions, you know. I think it would have been fine for me to help out today," Tsuno said stiffly, making Koyanagi smile wryly.

"Takatsuka might have been a bit on edge because of Al," Koyanagi murmured, softly petting Al’s head, which lay completely still on the white towel inside the basket on Maruyama's lap. Tsuno peered in worriedly as well.

"Was he bitten by a dog or something...?"

"They said he’d eventually heal, but Takatsuka’s expression was pretty scary when he said that. And Al doesn’t move at all, doesn’t make a sound. Watching him makes me want to cry," Maruyama replied.

Suddenly, the door banged open, and everyone in the room turned to look.

"...You're still here? It's past six," Akira muttered in a low voice, still wearing his scrubs. Koyanagi looked up at the clock in surprise.

"You’ve already finished with that body?! You went in just before four, right?"

"There wasn’t any reconstruction needed, and it wasn’t an autopsy case either..." Akira replied nonchalantly, dropping heavily onto the sofa. He glanced into the basket on Maruyama's lap.

"Did he move at all?"

"No... not at all."

With a sigh, Akira glanced around at the remaining people in the room.

"Do you all need something from me?"

Everyone had stayed because they were worried about Akira, but the insensitive man didn’t notice. Feeling their concern go unappreciated, the three of them left. It was as if Akira had been waiting for them to leave; he picked up the basket with the bat inside and headed to the CDC room. He placed Al, still in bat form, on the stretcher and collapsed into a chair in the corner of the room.

As the sun set and his body transformed back into human form, Al was given a bottle filled with blood. Unable to sit up, he lay there, sucking the blood through a tube as if it were a straw. Although it didn’t compare to Akira’s fresh blood, human blood was incredibly effective. As he drank, he could feel his spine, arm bones, and skull mending with a crunching sound. Usually, he drank a gallon, but today the amount seemed to be much more—perhaps double. No matter how much he drank, it didn’t run out. It seemed Akira had kept nearly all of the waste blood from the procedures for him.

"Your color is looking much better," Akira, his face still unmistakably pale, said with a smile, gently stroking Al's head. Al felt guilty for needing to drink it.

"I'm healed."

"Healed?" Akira looked puzzled.

"Blood...lots...bones healed...not in pain..."

"You were so weak you couldn’t even cry out, but now you're healed just like that?" Akira shouted, despite Al’s recovery, making Al apologize, “I’m sorry.”

"...It just shows how effective the blood is. Since blood is your only source of nutrition, it makes sense that you'd recover quickly with a lot of it."

Al suddenly sat up on the stretcher, looking around in a hurry.

"I...today...didn’t...massage."

Before receiving blood from a body, Al usually gave a massage, not as a payment but as a gesture of respect and gratitude. But today, he hadn’t done that. He hadn’t even looked at the face of the person who had given him the blood.

"The body that gave you the blood has gone home. I made sure to properly thank them on your behalf," Akira said.

"...I’m sorry."

Al hung his head in apology, and Akira stared at him intently.

"You don’t need to apologize to me. You should already understand that having you give a massage is just a formality. The blood extracted from the bodies is sterilized and disposed of. Whether it’s given to you or discarded, it doesn’t change anything. To put it bluntly. But, even so, I wanted you to keep in mind that it's humans who provide it."

Akira let out a wry smile. "You’re really something. You're quite a handful, you know?"

“I’m sorry.”

“But, I’m glad you’re a vampire,” Akira said.

Al’s eyes widened.

"If you were human, you’d be dead. After getting that mangled. When I was interning in America, I saw bodies in such a terrible state it felt like hell on earth, and I thought I’d never see anything worse than that. But you went beyond that. Yet, no matter how bad it gets, how much it hurts or how much you suffer, you’re a vampire, so you won’t die. As long as you drink blood, you’ll heal."

Akira sank to the floor, sitting down heavily.

"Ah, I feel awful. I don’t even have the energy to go home and eat dinner."

Al jumped off the stretcher. His arms, legs, back, head—his entire body felt no pain. Watching him, Akira’s brow furrowed deeper and deeper, a stern look forming on his face.

"It's good that your body has healed, but watching you hop around so energetically is kind of irritating..."

Al crouched down deeply in front of Akira.

"...What are you doing?"

"I carry you to break room."

"I can walk there by myself."

Akira slapped Al's back roughly and grabbed the stretcher to stand up. He gritted his teeth, and his cheeks twitched with spasms. No matter how you looked at it, he was clearly pushing himself too hard.

Al watched anxiously, wondering if he would get scolded for offering help. As Akira took a step forward, his body swayed. Al quickly reached out and caught him. This was his chance. Without warning, he scooped Akira up in his arms. Thanks to the abundance of blood, his whole body was filled with strength, and carrying Akira felt light.

"You... you idiot!"

Ignoring Akira's angry shout, Al dashed out of the CDC room, completely naked. He ran to the break room and gently laid Akira down on the sofa.

"Don’t do unnecessary things!"

Akira yelled from the sofa.

"I'm sorry."

Al kept a safe distance, out of Akira’s reach, and bowed his head. Akira clicked his tongue, wearing a deeply displeased expression, like when he saw ketchup on sashimi.

"...If you're feeling that energetic, go put away the stretcher in the CDC room and soak the suction bottles you drank from in disinfectant."

"Yes."

Just as Al turned around to leave, the break room door swung open. Tsuno stood there, and the moment he saw Al, he shouted, "Whoa!" Startled, Al took three steps back.

"Wha—who the hell are you?!"

Noticing Akira in the back of the room, Tsuno's face froze in surprise.

"Takatsuka-san, why are you...?"

Tsuno looked back and forth between Al and Akira.

"Tsuno, he's not suspicious. He's just a cleaning part-timer," Akira said, scratching his head.

"A part-timer...?"

"Yes, a part-timer."

Even after finding out who Al was, the suspicion in Tsuno's eyes didn’t disappear.

"I get that he's a part-timer, but why is he completely naked?"

Akira let out a small sigh and averted his eyes from Tsuno.

"...He was in the middle of changing."

Al looked around for something to cover himself with, but there was nothing. With no other options, he moved behind the sofa where Akira was sitting and crouched down.

"Even so, the locker room is next door, isn’t it...?"

"Uh, he just got the rooms mixed up."

It was a flimsy excuse, but Akira stuck with it. Tsuno still seemed unconvinced, but he muttered, "I see..." and walked over to his desk. It seemed he had forgotten his phone. As he was leaving, Tsuno turned around at the door.

"It's not really my place to say this, but... you should probably keep your work and private life separate. Also, don’t push yourself too hard today; go home and get some rest."

After Tsuno left, Al crawled out from behind the sofa on all fours.

"Tsuno came... surprised."

As soon as he said that, a big fist came down on him from above. The blow echoed through his freshly healed skull, and Al clutched his head with both hands, tearing up.

"This wouldn’t have happened if you had put on some clothes sooner. Now he’s definitely got the wrong idea," Akira scolded.

"S-sorry."

When Al stood up, Akira's eyebrows raised in a V-shape.

"Stop swinging that thing around and put some clothes on. And go clean up! ...Seriously, I'm so used to seeing you like this at home that I acted the same way here."

After grumbling for a while, Akira, perhaps worn out from being angry, lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. Al left the break room dejectedly, entered the locker room next door, put on his cleaning clothes, and did as he was told—cleaning up the stretcher and suction bottles. This only took about ten minutes. Not wanting to face the grumpy Akira so soon, he also cleaned the embalming table, floor, and walls. After an hour of thorough cleaning, he took a quick shower and returned to the break room.

Akira was in a deep sleep, so deep that he didn’t wake up to the sound of the door or Al’s soft call.

"Akira, go home."

Even when Al shook his shoulder, Akira just turned away in annoyance.

"Go home. Eat food."

"...Ugh, I'm tired."

"Akira, eat. Body weak."

"Maybe I should just sleep here."

“Food. Eat. Okay?”

"...Oh, right, this sofa can turn into a bed."

Akira slowly got up, lowered the backrest of the sofa, and turned it into a bed.

"You should rest too. I'm going to sleep. When I wake up... we'll go home."

With that, Akira closed his eyes and began to sleep again. He hadn’t slept at all the previous night, staying by Al’s side as he writhed in pain. On top of that, he had given Al his blood until he was nearly passed out. Even though he had received a transfusion at the hospital, it was only natural that he would be exhausted.

Al crouched down on the floor, placing his hand on the bed-sofa and gazing at Akira’s sleeping face. His beautiful face seemed slightly pale. Al felt a pang of guilt, knowing it was his fault Akira was so tired, but there was also a strange happiness in the mix. He rubbed his nose gently against Akira’s cheek, only to be pushed away irritably by Akira’s right hand.

Al wanted to stay by this person’s side forever. Yesterday had been awful—pain so intense it felt like it would never end—but with Akira there, he hadn’t been scared. Despite the pain and suffering, he hadn’t felt fear. He hadn’t felt empty or miserable.

He clasped his hands together tightly. From the bottom of his heart, he felt grateful—for the unlucky twist of fate that brought him here with a shipment of frozen meat, to Nukariya for bringing his bat form to Akira, and to the gods who had led him to meet such a kind person in this small island nation of Asia.

Even in his current state—bat by day, human by night, and surviving only on blood—Al felt that as long as he was by Akira’s side, he could live a life that was somehow, in its own way, human.

◇:-:◆:-:◇

Al slept nestled closely against Akira's back on the narrow sofa bed until dawn. After turning into a bat, he would curl up by Akira's neck to avoid getting crushed if Akira rolled over in his sleep. But half-asleep, Akira swatted him away, causing Al to tumble to the floor, where he awoke with a pang of sadness.

When he checked the clock, it was 8 a.m. In an hour, everyone would start arriving for work. Al chirped loudly, "Squeak squeak," to wake Akira up as a favor, but Akira just yelled, "You're noisy first thing in the morning!" Even though he was grumbling, Akira got up, took a quick shower, then went to the nearby convenience store to buy bread and milk, which he slowly started eating.

While he was doing that, Koyanagi and Maruyama arrived for work. Maruyama was relieved to see Al flying around energetically, fully recovered in just one night. "That's great! You’re back to your old self," she kept repeating, patting Al on the head more gently than usual.

Koyanagi noticed that Akira was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and asked, "Didn’t you go home?"

"I didn’t feel like going home, so I slept here."

"Are you okay? Compared to yesterday, you look a little better," Koyanagi said.

While Akira scratched his damp hair, Tsuno entered the break room.

"It’s fine if you stayed over, but did you get any rest?" Koyanagi asked. Tsuno shivered at the sound of his voice. When his eyes met Akira’s, he awkwardly looked away and headed to his desk without a word. Even Akira noticed Tsuno's unusual behavior and watched his assistant's back, seeming like he wanted to say something, but in the end, he didn’t.

Koyanagi and Maruyama started working on the body that had been brought in first thing in the morning, leaving just Akira and Tsuno in the break room. The silence between them wasn’t just quiet; it was uncomfortably tense. Akira, who usually didn’t pay attention to such atmospheres, seemed uneasy about this strange feeling and fidgeted in his chair.

“Tsuno.”

At Akira's call, Tsuno flinched as if startled and turned around.

“About yesterday…”

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” Tsuno apologized before Akira could finish his sentence.

“Well, uh…” Akira stuttered, thrown off by Tsuno's sudden apology.

“I was just concerned about the location; I wasn’t implying anything about your sexual orientation, Takatsuka-san. I don’t have any prejudices, I swear.”

“Like I said yesterday, it’s not like that between him and me.”

Tsuno still looked somewhat disgruntled.

“But…”

“It’s true that I’m uncomfortable around living women, but that doesn’t mean I’m gay.”

Tsuno remained silent, his expression troubled. Al was puzzled, wondering why Tsuno seemed so conflicted when Akira was just stating the facts.

“…I understand. Sort of,” It seemed Tsuno had finally come to some sort of conclusion in his mind. But Akira wasn’t satisfied.

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?”

“I just kind of got it,” Akira was clearly irritated by Tsuno’s vague response, his expression making it obvious.

“Just say it clearly!”

Pressed by Akira’s stern gaze, Tsuno reluctantly spoke up’.

“Takatsuka-san, um, you’re a sadist, right?”

After a long silence, Akira finally denied it. “I’m not.”’

Even though Tsuno replied with “Okay,” it didn’t seem like he had dismissed his theory about Akira being a sadist.

Caught in the tense atmosphere between the two, Al started to worry if this misunderstanding would ever be cleared up.

◇:-:◆:-:◇

On the day Al was severely injured, the serial killer was summoned by the police for questioning regarding an animal abuse incident. The veterinary hospital's doctor's report stating, "The bat was clearly cut up with a sharp object," the photos of the injured bat, and the fact that the person who witnessed the bat being thrown from the balcony was a detective left the man with no excuse.

After being summoned to the station, the man was kept there for half a day, being held up over trivial matters such as paperwork errors, before finally being arrested as a murder suspect in the afternoon.

While the suspect was at the police station, a "coincidental" false alarm went off on the fire alarm system in his apartment building. The manager, who was checking each apartment just to be safe, used a master key to open the man's room since he was "coincidentally" not home. There, the manager discovered bloodstains covering the table. Worried that the man might have been involved in a crime, he "coincidentally" consulted a detective who happened to be nearby. When the detective visited the scene, he "coincidentally" found several blood-stained knives in a desk drawer, which matched the blood and DNA of the victims of the recent spree of random murders...

There were so many "coincidences" because about ninety percent of this scenario was orchestrated by Nukariya. The fire alarm in the apartment building did not malfunction at all. When Nukariya whispered to the manager that the resident might be the perpetrator, the manager willingly participated in the setup. It's natural for a person to want something terrifying to be removed from their vicinity as quickly as possible and for the perpetrator to be caught. Although the manager hadn't expected to see blood all over the table—likely from where the bat had been cut up—Nukariya promptly incorporated this into his plan when he received the manager's call. Thanks to this, the entire sequence leading to the discovery of the knives went smoothly.

After successfully arresting the suspect and running around taking care of various follow-up tasks, Nukariya visited Akira's apartment two days later. He had been concerned about the injured bat and had stopped by the previous day as well, but since Akira and Al had stayed overnight in the center's break room, he hadn't been able to meet them.

Before coming to the apartment, Nukariya called Al, who had completely recovered, and insisted on "doing something to apologize." Al explained that it was his own fault for rushing in without a proper plan, and Nukariya wasn’t to blame, but Nukariya kept saying, "I won't feel right if I don’t do something." At a loss, Al thought long and hard before secretly telling him what he wanted.

That day, Nukariya brought "something" to Al as an apology gift.

"Are you sure you’re okay with something like this? I bought quite a lot..." Nukariya asked, looking a bit bewildered.

Al nodded enthusiastically.

"This is what I wanted."

"What did you get from Nukariya?" Akira asked, curious as he peeked at what was in Al's hands. Al took it out of the bag and tore open the plastic wrapping with a rip. He spread it out with both hands.

"Underwear."

Akira’s mouth gaped open. "Huh?"

"My underwear," Al said, rubbing his cheek against the soft boxer shorts. Akira clicked his tongue.

"You're such a weirdo. Who rubs their face against underwear?"

Seeing this, Nukariya hesitantly spoke up.

"Al is a houseguest, and it’s not my place to say, but... sharing clothes is one thing, but sharing underwear is a bit much."

Akira frowned as if to say he found that offensive.

"We’re not sharing anything dirty. Once it’s washed, there’s no hygienic issue."

"Well, I suppose, but..."

"Oh, socks," Al said, finding a pair hidden at the bottom of the bag. They were a nice, subdued shade of brown.

"Those are a bonus with the underwear," Nukariya explained, smiling slightly. While happily admiring the new underwear, Al suddenly turned to Akira with a worried expression.

"Don't wear my underwear."

"Why would I wear your underwear? If you don't want there to be any mix-up, write your name on all of them!" Akira retorted.

Al fetched a permanent marker from the desk and wrote "Al" in hiragana on the three white and three gray pairs of boxer shorts and the five pairs of socks. Nukariya watched him with a sympathetic look in his eyes.

"Oh, by the way, Al. I made sure to give Yanagawa a proper scolding," Nukariya mentioned.

"Yanagawa? Who's that?" Akira asked.

Al closed the cap on the marker and explained to Akira, "Nukariya's partner."

"My current junior partner. He’s not very efficient and complains a lot, which makes him hard to work with. Even when Al got severely injured, if he had seen him enter, he could have used an excuse like ‘I’m here to find a lost bat’ and barged into the suspect's house, but he just stood there, completely useless. To make sure he sharpens up a bit, I’ve got him organizing old case files, which should keep him working late for quite a while," Nukariya said with an angelic smile. Although Al could imagine Yanagawa, who hated animals, muttering curses at Nukariya while staring at a computer, he decided not to think about it too deeply.

"Akira, can I put my underwear in the closet?"

Akira’s eyebrows twitched slightly.

"You can use the bottom half of the drawer on the right side. And I mean half—got it?"

Al opened the closet, carefully placing his underwear and socks into exactly half of the bottom drawer. As he gazed at the monotone clothes filling the closet, he thought, One day, I hope at least a third of this closet will be filled with my clothes.

Footnotes

0. Content warning: a very graphic description of animal torture.

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