The Serpent Inside (A Karmagisa Fanfiction)

7: Empty

Nagisa smiled as he practically bounced back up the walkway towards the door of his home. He'd finished the job and the money had been transferred successfully with no attempts from the contractor to back out as he had to deal with on occasion. Some people thought that they would get away with their lives if they defied the basic rules, really, it made Nagisa laugh to himself often.

Finally reaching the end of the awfully long sidewalk through a garden to get to the front door, Nagisa reached out his hand and twisted the doorknob.

"I'm back!" He called, his eyes sweeping across the living room.

Nobody was in the main room. The house was large, maybe they were upstairs?

Nagisa walked upstairs but still found nothing, glancing in all the rooms as he walked past.

Okay, now he was getting worried. Nagisa walked down the hall before noticing a small piece of white sticking out from under the locked towel cabinet that he hadn't noticed in his hasty rush to find his family in the rooms. Not wanting to go grab the key, Nagisa instead pulled a bobby pin from his ponytail (he always kept some on him nowadays) and picked the lock open. Once the door was open a small piece of paper fluttered down to the floor, no longer being held up by the door.

Nagisa picked up the note and his blood run cold.

"Someone is downstairs- I don't know who it is so I'm writi-"

That was Karma's handwriting, and by the way it cut off, whoever was downstairs had come up and Karma was forced to stop if he wanted to leave any type of note at all. And if they had managed to take out Karma- even with the redhead probably distracted by protecting Iyuka, they were no joke.

Nagisa found himself letting out a hiss as he tossed the paper to the floor.

Nagisa growled out loud before running from the house. Maybe the school and Karma's office would know something.

Nagisa checked Karma's office first.

He walked up to the door and a gruff security guard stood in front of him.

"This isn't a place for kids, girly. Go home." He snapped- Nagisa felt a strange sense of deja vu at this, but had no time to recall the previous time something like this had happened.

Instead, he pulled out a security card Karma had made for him.

"My name is Akabane Nagisa, husband of Akabane Karma. Now let. me. in." He ordered harshly, showing the picture swiftly before pushing past the guard and walking into the main lobby.

There were seven people hired to be on staff at the waiting desk. Five of them were pleasant people, two of them had been put in their place by Karma after insulting Nagisa and trying to call him a commoner. Lucky for Nagisa, his favorite of the staff was on the desk today.

"Jimaru-san, has Karma come into work today?" Nagisa asked, not wasting time on greetings.

Jimaru shook his head. "Nah, he's been out all day. He sent a text in the morning but it was really weird. He said "My apologies, but I will not be able to attend work today." He had proper capitalization and punctuation too!" Jimaru sighed childishly, running a hand through his pink hair. "But Karma-san has texted really formally just to mess people up befo- Nagisa-san- wait where... oh nevermind." Jimaru trailed off as his deep onyx eyes lost sight of Nagisa's retreating figure.

That was wrong. Karma did not type like that. He didn't use horribly annoying textspeak beyond acronyms, but he didn't use punctuation, and very, very rarely used capital letters, only using them for names.

Nagisa's stomach twisted in his gut.

Instead, he was on his way to Iyuka's school- hoping, praying that Iyuka had been in, and all of this was a misunderstanding, and Karma really was just trying to be annoying since he knew Jimaru could take it with a smile without being angry.

But fate wasn't on his side, as Iyuka's teacher said she hadn't been in at all.

Right as Nagisa was about to leave, a small chocolate-skinned hand tugged on his pants.

"Is Iyu-chan okay?" The child asked, his eyes alight with worry. Nagisa smiled indulgently.

"She'll be fine Manarou-kun. She'll be back before you know it." Nagisa ruffled the child's hair before taking off again.

Nagisa's breath was slightly picked up as he attempted to force himself to stay calm, but who was he kidding he was nowhere near calm that just wasn't going to happen.

His family was gone- why would he be okay.

Nagisa slammed the door open, fuming as he stomped in- only for a speck of white and red to catch his eye as it sat upon the coffee table.

"Your precious family isn't home? What a shame- I know, how about we play a little game? Ten clues, ten locations, ten possible places they could be, but you'll never know the truth until the last clue. The first in our game is somewhere that was taken by those who killed the one who lived there~.

Have fun~"

The note was stained with red.

Nagisa felt something snap within him.