Chapter 38 - Daiki SuzukiWednesday, October 18th "Stress of midterms?"

  Ayumi's question lingered in the air, but it didn't take long for me to dismiss it.

  "Top students," I reminded her. "Eiji's always top three, and the student council guys are no slouches either. Liu's... well, he's a work in progress."

  Ayumi's giggling only irritated me, and I fought the urge to pout.

  "With your tutege, I'm surprised he still knows which way is up," she teased.

  Without turning my head, I flicked my index finger against her forehead.

  "Shut it," I retorted, her ughter fading as we continued down the street.

  Today had been strange. Rumours of Liu and Kurogane swirling, and then Eiji skipping? I didn’t even get the chance to pick her brain about the Chemistry exam.

  During lunch, Yumi, Haruto, Sakura, and I puzzled over the strange behaviour. Eiji especially. She's always preaching about academics, then she skips? Not to mention "Scarlet Stallion" Nakamura was missing too, which definitely didn’t help the whisperings already floating about thanks to –

  "Thinking of me again?" Ayumi crooned, leaning closer. "Even when I'm right next to you?"

  I groaned, but didn't resist her pull.

  Our conversation meandered, as it often did. Yumi's relentless matchmaking dominated the discussion. According to her, Nakamura and his new fme, Junko, were doomed from the start. I disagreed, but Yumi had prophesied long ago that Nakamura belonged to someone else, and she wouldn't hear otherwise, no matter how unrealistic it seemed.

  As we approached my house, our movement stopped abruptly Yumi's expression mirrored my surprise until she followed my gaze and froze. It felt like our pns for a cozy sleepover had shattered into a million pieces.

  He was sitting by the dusty concrete steps to my front door. I couldn’t tell if he’d seen us or not, but an awful nausea began to swirl around in my stomach; if not for Yumi’s forceful pull, I might’ve just turned back the way we came.

  She was first to break the silence as we approached, her expression hardening.

  "Hey," she greeted, offering a small wave. "I hope you hadn't been waiting long. Daiki here was just walking me to the station."

  I felt my anticipation defte. I'd been looking forward to this for weeks, but now... Yumi gnced back at me, her apologetic frown adding to my frustration.

  "I'll be okay from here. See you tomorrow, 'kay?"

  Before I could protest, her lips brushed my cheek, and she vanished into the night.

  For a while, silence hung between us. Liu broke it with a cheeky comment.

  "Interrupting something?"

  Suppressing the urge to sh out, I sighed and gnced in his direction.

  "You owe me, dude," I muttered as I unlocked the door.

  As I fumbled with the keys, I could've sworn I heard him whisper, "I know."

  Liu and I weren't exactly known for our lively conversations.

  Sometimes, he'd throw out a snide comment about a character on TV, or inquire about snacks. But mostly, we shared a comfortable silence, punctuated only by the dynamic spshes of whatever we were watching at the time.

  Funnily enough, the only real conversation we’d had was when we met for the first time.

  I instantly knew back then that he wasn’t really the forthcoming type; which is why I was surprised when he told me everything that he did.

  Since then, though, he’s kept his dialogue comically short, borderline monosylbic.

  Sometimes, I wondered if he really regretted saying all that he did before, and was sticking around out of obligation.

  But today…

  Today, the silence felt suffocating. It was like sitting in a pressure cooker, waiting for the lid to blow.

  "How long were you out there for?" I finally broke the tension, trying to alleviate the discomfort. He toyed with his food, rearranging it as if it held the key to the universe.

  A few seconds had passed before he eventually looked up and regarded me.

  “Since I got sent away from school.” For a moment, his eyes were so vacant I questioned whether I was talking to a real person, or some mannequin with my buddy’s likeness.

  "Nowhere else to go..."

  His head dropped down, attention fixed back onto his dinner pte.

  Before I could control myself, I had risen to my feet and rekindled the fmes I had previously extinguished.

  “You didn't think to call me?" I blurted out, frustration bubbling beneath the surface. “What if-“

  I managed to catch myself before I let the chemical cocktail of anger and bewilderment take over. As I was taking a deep breath, and counting to twenty, I felt his eyes wander back up to me.

  "I left my phone at home," he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "And they wouldn't let me back in..."

  And just like that, the fury had been exorcised from my body like water from a kettle. On any other day, he would’ve stood up too and gave some snarky, sarcastic reply.

  On any other day, he wouldn’t have let me lecture him like I was his parent.

  So why did he seem so small and frightened now? Why did he seem so… lost?

  "What happened?" I pressed, my voice steady but my heart racing. "Why did you get into it with Daisuke? Was it about the cigarettes?"

  As expected, silence. I sighed and settled back down into my seat, arms id out on the table.

  "Look, being your friend is exhausting," I confessed, feeling a pang of guilt. "I can't help if you don't talk to me."

  It was just the slightest flinch, but the movement was there. My words were getting some sembnce of a reaction; and at that point, I would’ve taken damn near any kind of response, positive or negative, so long as it reanimated whoever’s corpse this was sitting in front of me.

  "You have to talk about it, Liu," I urged, my voice pleading. "Otherwise, you'll..."

  I trailed off there, allowing him to finish that thought.

  My eyes stayed trained on the top of his head, his jet bck hair looking more thin and wiry than st I’d seen it. Just yesterday he was completely fine!

  I remember catching a gnce of him with one of Nakamura’s friends, the orange-haired one, and thinking how strange it was to see the two of them together.

  …Come to think of it, he wasn’t at school today. Neither was Nakamura. Had something happened to them? What if they were being harassed or bckmailed into committing a crime?

  I was deep in my ruminations when Liu muttered a single sentence that froze my blood.

  “…What?” I muttered inanely. “Liu, what do you mean you ‘killed him’ ?”

  As his gaze met mine, a chill swept through me, freezing me in pce. In his eyes, I saw a storm of emotions - anguish, hatred, sorrow - swirling with such intensity that it sent shivers down my spine. I reached my hand into my bzer pocket.

  “…As far as jokes go, that’s a pretty shitty one and you know it.” I ughed, desperate to diffuse the situation and get to the bottom of what he was trying to say.

  But he just sat there, staring at me.

  “You can’t be serious,” I denied. “Liu, you’re not a killer, alright? Stop egging me around and just be straight with me already.”

  “I am.” He replied ftly, his speech no longer a mumble but a decration, as though he was starting to believe his own words only as they left his mouth.

  “Daiki, somebody died because of me.”

  Instantly I could no longer pass this off as some kind of sick joke. Liu never called me by my first name.

  “H-Have you…are the police aware?” I rattled, suddenly concerned for my safety.

  He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “The police can’t help with this one,” He expined gravely. “And neither can you. I’m the only one that can fix this.”

  As he said those words to me, his body nguage was a study in stillness and firmness, his eyes wide as though gazing into some undeterminable point in space.

  The tension hung heavy in the air, suffocating me with its gravity. Who was this person sitting across from me, and what had he become?

  Just who on earth did I invite into my house – into my life?

  As I stammered, my eyes shifted to the ndline in the living room, resting innocently on the oak coffee table. It was a gift from one of our aunts, but right now, it seemed like a silent witness to my anxiety.

  "A-Are you in some kind of trouble?" I managed to squeak out, my voice betraying my fear.

  As I gnced back, Liu now stood beside me, silent as a statue in the dimly lit room.

  I hadn't even heard him move.

  "No, Daiki," he said, his voice chillingly calm. "Not a word of this to anybody. Understand?"

  Was I reading too much into this, or were his words heavy with unspoken threats? It wasn't just the sudden appearance or the chilling confession that froze me in pce.

  It was the absence of emotion in his voice, the void that swallowed any hope of reasoning with him.

  In an instant, his hand was on my shoulder, guiding me back into my seat with a strength that made my knees buckle. The frost in his gaze reminded me of the dangerous game I was pying by not answering his question.

  "Alright," I whispered, barely audible, my heart pounding in my chest. "Okay."

  He nodded, a silent promise of protection. "Just trust me. I'll take care of it. I'll take care of everything..."

  For a fleeting moment, a hint of a smile crossed his lips, but it didn't reach his eyes.

  "Think I'll head off first. Still got the sleeping bag underneath your bed?"

  I nodded, my throat tight with unease.

  "Okay. See you in the morning."

  I watched him vanish into the darkness of the staircase, his presence lingering like a shadow in the room. I clutched my phone like it was the only lifeline in a world that had suddenly been filled with danger at every turn.

  Even though I heard the door to my bedroom upstairs close, I could feel his eyes still watching me as I turned off my phone's voice recorder.