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tenspontaneite · 5 years

Text

Paper Cranes (24/?)

Hikaru and a friend go visiting.

Warnings: Stress, vomiting, depictions and discussions of fictional terminal illness, and maybe a cliffhanger. This is a heavy chapter. It’s also 20k long, so be wary of that.

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Hikaru attempted to pay attention to the stones Yashiro was placing on the board. He really did. But it wasn’t the most masterful game, just another game in the Kisei preliminaries, and no one he really cared about was playing it. There just really wasn’t any motivation helping him pay the game its proper attention. In the end, the usual rush of thoughts that a pattern of Go inspired in him was unforthcoming, held at bay by the more insistent rush of giddy incredulity.

After a while, Hikaru’s lack of concrete response made it perfectly obvious that he wasn’t really paying attention, and Yashiro frowned at him, almost uncomfortably. “Are you even listening, Shindou?” He asked, finally, putting down the stone he’d held and crossing his arms.

Hikaru offered an ugly noise somewhere between a snort and a giggle. “No, not really, sorry.” He admitted, still utterly caught up in the absurdity of the situation – and, increasingly, paranoia. Some part of him was rearing its head, saying of course he doesn’t believe you, don’t be ridiculous, he’s going to turn around and tell your mother as soon as your back is turned, and it was becoming uncomfortably assertive. Hikaru pushed the thoughts away with the long practice of someone used to ignoring unpleasant emotions, and leaned back with a sigh.

Yashiro eyed him wordlessly for a few long moments, something contemplative rolling over the expressive edge of his soul. For a moment, it looked like he was going to ask a question, and Hikaru looked up at him expectantly, but…he didn’t ask anything. Instead, he sat for a while, and finally said “I guess you’ve got too much on your mind, huh.”

“I’m still not over how you haven’t called me insane yet,” Hikaru answered, in an unthinking and uncomfortably honest stream of words, and then winced. Clearly he still didn’t have his wits about him.

“Yeah, well, give me time.” Yashiro said dryly, shifting uncomfortably.

Hikaru’s eyes went unerringly to that motion, the pessimistic part of him insisting it was evidence for imminent betrayal, and his guts squirmed with annoyingly persistent anxiety. “What are you thinking about?” He asked, unable to help it. Looking at Yashiro’s soul was only so much help. He couldn’t read minds, and Yashiro wasn’t always the easiest person to read in general.

Yashiro made an odd noise and flapped his hand. “God, I don’t even know yet. Ask me tomorrow. Maybe after I’ve talked to that priest of yours.” He blew air out in an aggressive imitation of an exhalation, making the unruly bangs over his forehead puff out a bit.

Hikaru deliberately nodded, more to himself than to Yashiro, and stood up from the goban to stretch, shaking the numbness out of his seiza-deadened legs. They prickled as blood returned to them in an annoying and unfortunately persistent pins-and-needles sensation. “Well, whatever. I’ll leave you to it, I guess.” He said, and sat down on the side of the bed.

His guest inspected him, a flash of pensiveness passing over his face. “Where do you meet the priest guy, usually?”

He was very tempted to make a comment about Yashiro’s apparent inability to hold his questions in, but resisted. “Usually the shrine.” He answered, shrugging, and made a face at the most recent memories associated with that location. “I guess it’s a crime scene now, though. Dunno if it’ll be open for a while. I wonder if he’ll be assigned to another shrine?” He hadn’t even thought of that. What if it had already happened? Hikaru eyed the phone on his bedside, still yet to be activated, with alarm.

“You’d know better than me.” Yashiro noted, and followed his gaze to the phone. “Where would we be going then?”

“He’s got a flat not too far from the actual shrine. Half an hour walk from here, maybe.”

Yashiro’s eyes narrowed at that, some sort of discerning flicker passing over his soul, but he didn’t comment on whatever he’d thought of. Instead he inquired “Have you told him we’re visiting?”

Hikaru paused. “...No. I should really do that.” His eyes returned to the phone. “Not really looking forward to turning that on though. I don’t even want to think about how many messages there’s going to be.”

“…Yeah, well, I left my fair few of those and I’m probably not the only one.” Yashiro looked vaguely shifty at that. Hikaru would have had difficulty interpreting it if not for the flash of embarrassment detectable by spiritual means. Maybe he’d left some embarrassing messages. Hikaru experienced a prompt flash of interest that proved helpful for his motivation; he reached out for the phone and carefully depressed the button at its side with one of his uninjured fingers, picking it up between his right thumb and index finger to bring it into his lap. The screen flashed and it buzzed, and he watched.

Yashiro observed him for a second or two and then returned his attention to the goban, apparently done with it now that Hikaru was definitively not watching. He reached out to clear away the stones as Hikaru’s phone started buzzing with the first influx of messages.

Hikaru observed with some horror as the notifications came and came and didn’t seem to stop. There were dozens by the end of the first minute, texts and missed calls and voicemails, and in short order the number had rolled decisively over a hundred and kept going. He groaned, turned off the vibrate on the phone before it could overheat into combustion or something, and tried to look through his drove of texts for anything from Utagawashi.

There were fewer from him than from other people, presumably because he was more informed about things than most of the people Hikaru knew. Still, there were a few, and Hikaru scrolled through them with mild discomfort.

‘Shindou-kun. I’m not sure when you’ll see this, but the honourable Yonbi-san has told me that you are safely at a clinic and may be moved to a hospital. It has aided me in taking our mutual acquaintance to my home to recover. I hope to hear from you soon.’

Utagawashi, naturally, had not heard from him soon. To that effect, there was another message, timestamped two days later, reading ‘I’m growing concerned about your silence, Shindou-kun. I’ve not spoken to any foxes recently and have had no updates. Please respond when you can.’ The third message was days later, apparently after Setsu had gone visiting, as it said ‘The Setsu-san informs me that you are conscious and have undergone surgery on your hands. I admit I hadn’t realised your cuts were bad enough for that. I wish you the best in your recovery.’

There was only one more message, two days after the third. ‘I understand you won’t have access to your phone until you are released from the hospital. Please contact me as soon as you are able. I am worried about our mutual acquaintance.’

Well, that wasn’t ominous at all. Hikaru thought uneasily of the pain that was staining the air nearby, and held the phone carefully in his two-fingered grip. He glanced across the room at Yashiro, who had by now cleared the goban and put the bowls atop it, and looked to be making a move for his laptop.

Hikaru’s left ring finger, one of the only two usable on that hand, hovered uncertainly over the ‘call’ button. Yashiro knew, now. There was no reason not to call Utagawashi when he was around. But…he still felt residually secretive. Paranoid, even. As though he still had some critical secret to hide.

…Well. He kind of did, didn’t he? There was something important he’d not said. Something that would be very, very hard to hide if Yashiro came with him tomorrow.

He shook his head, as if to summon some sort of resolve, and pressed down. Carefully, he held the phone up to his ear, the grip rather tenuous. The call tone sounded once, twice, thrice, four times – and then there was the clattering sound of a call being picked up in a hurry. “Hello?” Utagawashi’s voice came through, caught somewhere between thrilled and anxious. “Shindou-kun?”

“Who else?” Hikaru asked, garnering Yashiro’s attention. He looked over and blinked at the sight of the in-use phone, sitting back on his heels to observe. Hikaru made a face at him. “Sorry it’s been so long. I only got out of the hospital today.”

“It’s a relief to hear from you. I’m glad you have recovered enough to go home.” The man’s voice was quiet, but sounded genuinely relieved. “How are your injuries?”

Hikaru had a moment where he wasn’t certain whether he was being asked about the physical or the spiritual. He hedged his bets, saying “My hands are pretty fucked up. I got some cut tendons and stuff, so not great.”

Utagawashi made a sympathetic noise over the phone. “I’m sorry to hear that. I suppose that’s what the surgery was for? Will they recover?”

“Mostly, probably, but it’s going to take months. I’m stuck in these weird brace things for ages.” Hikaru shrugged as he spoke, casting another stink-eye at Yashiro, who was utterly unashamedly listening to the audible half of the conversation, laptop unopened at his feet.

There was a span of silence that Hikaru didn’t really notice until it ended, since he was half-glaring at Yashiro, but when Utagawashi spoke next his voice was solemn enough to neatly recapture his attention. “…And…the state of your spiritual injuries?”

Hikaru stilled, and swallowed. The pronounced pause before he responded probably said more than the response itself. “…Not great, either.” He admitted, in a colossal understatement. “Good bit worse than before, so, you know, get ready for that.” He pushed through Utagawashi’s grave silence to continue. “That’s kind of why I’m calling tonight, actually. If I can get my mum to let me out of the house, I was thinking I could visit tomorrow.”

Utagawashi was silent for a few seconds more. “That would be appreciated. There haven’t been any foxes visiting in days, and Kaminaga-san is…I’m not sure what to do. I hope you’ll have some insight.”

He nearly flinched, but suppressed it to a small wince instead. “Insight, like what? What do you think I can do?”

“I doubt you’re the most spiritually wounded person alive any more, but you might still be the most sensitive. And you’ve had more friendly experience with spirits. I don’t know how to call the foxes beyond praying, and it has still been days. I don’t know.” He sounded…frustrated. A little desperate. “Please. Try your best to visit tomorrow.”

“I already said I would.” He grumbled, gut twisting at the unspoken implications all over this conversation. Hikaru knew Kaminaga couldn’t be in a good state, knew, but… “I’ll let you know once I’ve asked, alright? Mum’s gonna be pretty protective of me for a while, probably.”

There was the sound of a sigh over the phone. “Thank you.” Utagawashi said, and left it at that. His voice was uneasy. “I hope to see you tomorrow, then.” A pause. “We’ll talk further in person.” He paused again, as if to give Hikaru the opportunity to say something, and then hung up.

Carefully, Hikaru lowered the phone back to his lap, glad the conversation hadn’t been any longer than that. His fingers were aching a bit.

“That the priest?” Yashiro asked, clearly very interested.

“Utagawashi, yeah.” He nodded, and sighed, looking at the screen of his phone. The call screen had vanished, revealing the somewhat staggering number of notifications he had yet to look at. Hesitantly, he opened his texts and just looked at the names of the people who had contacted him. Touya, Waya, Isumi, Yashiro, Akari…all expected. But there were others. Many others. People he hadn’t heard from in a long time, or who he almost never heard from. Mitani, Kaga, Tsutsui, Akari’s Go club friends, Kadowaki, Kawai…the list went on, including a few numbers that apparently weren’t in his contacts.

He swallowed, a part of him feeling conflicted at the list of names in a way he couldn’t quite put words to. Humbled, maybe, or guilty, or surprised… “He wanted me to visit soon, so tomorrow is fine.” Hikaru said abruptly, to follow up on the actual topic of conversation, and put the phone back in his lap. He wasn’t sure he could face all of those messages right now. Certainly not at once.

“What’s got worse?” Yashiro asked, and Hikaru’s mind was occupied enough with the breadth of the list that he didn’t quite process the question.

“What?” He asked, distractedly, eyes fixed uncertainly on the device.

“You said something was worse than before.” The other boy said, and Hikaru’s eyes snapped towards him, widening a little. “It sounded important.”

Hikaru’s mouth opened, and closed again. For a moment, the weight of his knowledge pressed so heavily on him he couldn’t find the words to reply. The moment after, Hikaru breathed, and acknowledged that in the morning, he would be taking Yashiro with him to visit two people who were both very likely to discuss this topic. One of whom was…certainly not in a good state. Hikaru cleared his throat, and looked away, heart fluttering oddly in anxious apprehension. “…It’s spirit stuff. I thought you didn’t want to talk about that anymore tonight.”

Concern flashed in the movements of Yashiro’s soul, perfectly clear even though Hikaru wasn’t looking at him. “I did say that.” He agreed, slowly. “But…”

“But what?” Hikaru snapped, the anxiety bubbling out to press tension into the line of his shoulders. “You’re – going to find out tomorrow anyway. So it doesn’t matter.” His eyes flashed to Yashiro, for a moment, and he looked worried now.

“…Sounds like it matters, to me.” The boy said finally. “It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it tonight, though.”

Hikaru nodded jerkily, and exhaled a breath that sort of shuddered out of him. He stood up and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Yashiro inquired, voice mild, posture shifting as though to get up and follow.

He’d mainly just needed a reason to get up and out of the conversation, but…there was something he needed to do. “Ask mum for some sake for the shrine.” He said, decisively, and left the room. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Yashiro came with him, looking downright inquisitive.

“What, for your kamidana?”

“No, the house shrine.” He said, and found his mother in the kitchen, apparently at work on their dinner. “Hey, mum-“

“Oh, you’re awake.” She interrupted, warmly, looking him over. “Yashiro-kun said you’d decided to have a nap. Are you feeling any better?”

“Kinda.” Hikaru shrugged. “Look, I want some of that sake for the house shrine again.”

She blinked, and her face rearranged itself into something shrewd. “Again, Hikaru? I know I said you should pay respects to the house shrine a while ago, but this is more than I expected.”

He hesitated, but in the end was too tired to mince words much. “I nearly died, but I didn’t. I figure I should say thanks for that.” He said plainly, and watched the stricken look that overtook her face. “Can I have the sake?”

As expected, she really didn’t have any objection to that, and let him go off with the sake in the saucer with only a warning not to take too long at the shrine, as dinner would be ready soon. Yashiro took the saucer for him, since that was kind of tricky for Hikaru to hold at the moment, and trailed wordlessly behind him until he reached the house shrine, and then spoke up.

“So…uh…you actually pray to proper kami, too? Not just the…god of Go?”

“Yeah, a few times. I need to do it regularly now, really.” Hikaru said, directing Yashiro to a particular spot on the whole arrangement. He watched as the boy carefully placed the saucer of sake down, reaching for where the lighter and kaya incense had been moved to. Prying a stick of it out from the box was easy enough, but with only the thumb and forefinger of his right hand properly usable and the rest of his fingers hanging awkwardly in the way, it was tremendously difficult to ignite it without burning himself. He was doing better than he had earlier, at least.

“I can do that, if you want.”

“No, it’s fine.” He denied, stubborn, and carefully played the stick of smoking incense into the burner.

Yashiro made an impatient noise. “Let me do the candles, at least.” He demanded, and held out his hand. Hikaru glared at it for a second, then nodded, and passed the lighter over. Yashiro managed it significantly faster than Hikaru would have, and then the house shrine was lit with candle-flame, a thin line of smoke wafting upwards, illuminated oddly by the flickering light.

Hikaru breathed out, slowly, and sat carefully in seiza in front of the shrine. Yashiro thankfully went quiet, and after a second of hesitant wavering, sat down with him. Hikaru doubted he’d actually pray, but…it was good enough.

He closed his eyes, and felt the ache in his wounds keenly, in the swollen lines on his neck and hands. Felt, even more strongly, the omnipresent ache of his soul, a grief that was physically painful, that now seemed heavy in every inch of his flesh. For a moment, he felt it too strongly, the pain of the wounds feeding back into a loop of despair that was almost dizzying, and difficult to emerge from. He gasped a shuddering breath, and with long practice, extricated himself. He breathed once, twice, and reached out.

The spark was there in the shrine, subtly different to Sai’s in more ways than one. It was alive, not quite attentive yet, but certainly awake – but there was a feel to it that Hikaru was starting to recognise. He remembered it in the ofuda, in the foxes, in the flood of power that had saved his life. Inari’s spark here was only a hint of that vast strength, but...he recognised it. He remembered, powerfully enough that he nearly felt it, the light of a god rushing through his soul.

There were no words strong enough to thank Inari for what he’d done. There wasn’t anything he could offer that was equal to the weight of his existence – or of Utagawashi’s, or the foxes who had survived. It felt wholly, horribly insufficient to sit here, in front of a shrine, as if that could even come close to the thanks the god was owed. But he didn’t know what else to do.

Hikaru bowed his head, and reached out to the spark. The moment he touched it, it…shifted. He felt it more strongly, now – the sensation of a vast, mighty power turning its eye towards him from impossibly far away, staring straight into him. He shivered, terrified in the way a mouse would be in the path of a dragon, and tried not to outright start shaking. You saved my life, he told the spark, the conduit to the consciousness of a deity, and hoped that something of his desperate gratitude made its way through.

There was a pause, a second that rolled like the turn of a planet, and then something pressed dizzyingly into his consciousness. A hint of soul-flame, the Gobi’s, burning itself out. A hint of desperate prayer, written in the voice of one-who-is-mine. A hint of desperate pleading, called out in despair. Sacrifice, breathed the Spark of Inari, and burned into him the barest, most distant hint of what it felt like for a god to die. Sacrifice, for a worthy cause.

Hikaru’s hands trembled in their braces, his body shaking freely, and he tried to remember how to breathe evenly. I’m sorry, he thought, unthinkingly, almost incoherently, at that horrible feeling of finality, so utterly beyond his comprehension.

He gasped in something like pain as the weight of the god’s communication pushed forwards again, a flurry of soul-concepts that were so bright they burned. Threat to one’s own, it said, and blood spilled on holy ground, and the prayers of the desperate and the dying. Then, in a flare of power that made pain explode into his skull, the Spark said three things: NECESSITY, SELF, INEVITABILITY.

It hurt enough that it was an enormous struggle not to break the contact, to snap back from the spark in the shrine. His energy quivered with the intent, nonetheless, instinctive terror and pain bursting into it like blood from an artery. Hikaru couldn’t even think of trying to understand what the kami was trying to communicate – it was too vast, too powerful, too bright-

Some whisper of recognition, of pity, filtered through into his soul. The Spark dimmed itself, as though trying to lessen its overpowering impact. More than a mortal soul should see, it said, burning smaller, but no less bright, no less loud, for all its trying. It hurt.

A breath, like understanding, flickered along the edges of…something. Where the Spark’s conduit led, beyond his ability to feel. Gratitude, was the last thing it set alight in him, and then the god’s eye turned away. The presence in the shrine receded, and it was just a spark again. Nothing bright, nothing unknowable, nothing of the agony it had spread by its mere existence a moment before – just a spark, resting quietly within a kamidana.

Hikaru gasped for breath, feeling like he’d not breathed in minutes, and found room in the world for sight and sound and touch again. There was a hand on his shoulder, a voice in his ears, his eyes snapped open and the incense had burned out and Yashiro was leaning across his front, calling urgently.

“-indou. Shindou, can you hear me? Say something, dammit-“

“I’m fine,” He choked out, in a quick rush, and doubled over. His whole body hurt, the world seemed too-bright, and there was a headache burning behind his eyes that was beyond almost anything he’d ever felt. His energy was quivering erratically in the wake of it, and he couldn’t quite hold it still.

Yashiro’s hand came up to his face, actually pulling one of his eyelids back, before Hikaru managed to weakly and ineffectually slap it away. Alarmingly, his energy followed the motion, only just falling short of the boy’s soul. “Shaking all over and crying and going unresponsive is not fine, Shindou!” He hissed, and Hikaru realised what the cold wet on his cheeks was. “What the hell happened? I almost thought you were having a seizure!”

Hikaru looked at Yashiro’s scowling, worried face, and then looked away again. Looked up at the shrine, and the candle-light flickering there. “I…just wasn’t expecting it.” He said shakily. “Last time wasn’t like that. I don’t know what changed.” He was more injured now, and more sensitive. It surely made some difference, but he couldn’t have expected how it would amplify the experience of connecting to the spark in the shrine.

“What are you even talking about?” Yashiro demanded, voice still more forceful than usual from the strength of his concern, and he wouldn’t stop fussing. He tried to lay his hand over Hikaru’s forehead, the skin feeling surprisingly cool in the seconds before Hikaru pushed it away – and then stilled, realising too-late that the vast tide of his power was still confusedly following the motions of his hands, sweeping out in an uncoordinated sheet of light.

It was nothing like it had been with Touya, when he’d lost control. Nothing but a vague and meandering flap of his energy on the edge of Yashiro’s soul. But it was nonetheless alarming that it had happened, and…by the way Yashiro flinched, he thought he’d felt it. He didn’t react nearly as much as Touya had though, and just kept on scowling at him, so Hikaru tentatively relaxed.

“Stop fussing.” He grumbled, eyeing the boy’s soul warily. “It’s just more spirit stuff, anyway.” He looked back at the kamidana, uneasy, and conducted a quick check of his wounds. He didn’t find any new damage, and the donated chunks of fox were still properly in place, but…it had hurt. It still hurt, and his energy was still jittery and moving without his conscious control. Praying at the shrine hadn’t been anything like that before, and the experience had thoroughly shaken him.

“Spirit stuff makes you look like you’re seizing?” He pressed, and his voice wasn’t really helping the headache. Hikaru winced at him, and carefully, started to pull himself out of seiza, clamping down tightly on the movements of his energy. He didn’t want to fall over, and he certainly didn’t want to kick anyone in the soul.

“Sometimes, apparently.” Hikaru answered irritably. “I’ve had worse, it’s not a big deal. I’ll ask Utagawashi about it tomorrow.” Or…Kaminaga maybe, if he was in a state to answer questions.

Yashiro did not look particularly appeased by his words, which just sucked for him. Hikaru swayed in place a little, briefly closing his eyes against the pain of his head, and staggered to his room in search of painkillers. He managed to dig out a packet of half-used paracetamol from one of his drawers and stared at it critically, remembering that he was on kind of a lot of painkillers and anti-inflammatories already. He wasn’t sure it would be alright to take more.

Grimacing, he put it back. Yashiro, following as always, tracked the movement. “You’re not taking any?”

“I don’t know if it’s alright with the other stuff I’m on.” He admitted, and gritted his teeth. “It’s alright. I’ll deal. It’s just a headache.” An absolute dick of a headache, maybe, but he was used to pain. He could manage. At least the full-body pain wasn’t lingering too badly, or the spiritual disturbance for that matter.

Yashiro scrutinised him, but eventually nodded, albeit reluctantly. “Alright.” He said, warily. “But I think you should avoid any more…spirit-things. For today, at least.”

Hikaru snorted. His every living moment pretty much constituted a spirit-thing, now. “Yeah, whatever.” He agreed, vaguely flopping his orthosis-clad hand, and watching carefully to make sure his energy didn’t follow it. It didn’t. It had settled down quite a bit already, now only feeling residually sore, and more prickly than usual, but…even that small loss of control was worrying. “Let’s go downstairs. It’s probably not long till dinner.”

---

Dinner was a thankfully quiet affair, Yashiro apparently picking up on the ongoing persistence of Hikaru’s headache and promptly telling his mother about it, after which all dinner conversation was conducted in a very bearable muted tone. Hikaru felt rather grateful for it, but wasn’t sure how to express it other than by making a bit more effort to be polite.

He couldn’t use chopsticks, and had to resort to using a spoon like a child. He barely even managed to do that much, and needed both hands to hold it. He ignored the offers to help as fiercely as he could and steered the conversation elsewhere.

A topic that did come up was his plans for the next day. Hikaru hesitated, shared a look with Yashiro, and said “I was going to go visit a friend, actually.” His mother blinked, and he knew her well enough to read the automatic and very protective denial she was about to produce, so hastily cut it off with “And Yashiro’s coming with me, so it’ll be fine! He’s…” Hikaru stopped himself from saying ‘a complete fusspot’, since he was trying to be a bit more polite out of gratitude, and lamely finished “…responsible.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, her surveying stare slipping sideways to Yashiro for a moment, who straightened reflexively at the look. After a moment, she relented. “Yashiro-kun does seem to be very sensible.” She allowed, not appearing wholly convinced.

Yashiro cleared his throat, and volunteered “My parents made me do a long first aid course before they let me move out. If anything happens, I won’t be useless.”

“Oh.” She looked slightly more mollified at that. “Hm. Well, then, maybe. Where was it you were planning to go? Do you need to get the train?”

“No, they live not too far from grandpa.” Hikaru elaborated.

“Oh,” She said again. “I didn’t know any of your friends lived nearby. Who is it?”

Yashiro watched for his response with interest. Hikaru kept his face very even and lied “Setsu. Remember, I was telling you about…him? I haven’t known. Him. Very long.” It was weird to try using gendered language for Setsu, no matter that it apparently didn’t care about how it was referred to.

“Then why visit him first?” She asked reasonably.

“He’s closest.” Hikaru said vaguely, and answered a few more questions in as bland and round-about a way as he could manage until she finally acquiesced to the outing.

“Alright, Hikaru. You and Yashiro-kun can go out. But you’ll tell me when you leave, and if you’re out for more than three hours you need to call me to tell me so.” His mother decreed, and that was perfectly acceptable, really.

By the end of the meal, Hikaru was feeling exhausted enough from the conversations and the ordeal with the house-shrine that he excused himself at the earliest opportunity, Yashiro following him upstairs just a moment later. “You’re going to sleep already?” He asked, surprised, as Hikaru delicately extricated some pyjamas from a drawer.

“I’m exhausted.” Was Hikaru’s answer, as he took the pyjamas to the bathroom to attempt to navigate clothing and brushing his teeth on his own. He vaguely managed the toothbrushing by holding the brush just behind the head, but it was clumsy and ineffectual at best.

Similarly, he managed to navigate his way out of his clothes, and into the pyjama bottoms, but getting the buttons done up on the nightshirt proved pretty much impossible. He had a thumb and forefinger to work with, maybe, but without the other hand in useful commission it was absurdly difficult to get anything done. He’d picked the one with buttons because he’d already learned that getting into a non-buttoned t-shirt was much harder than getting out of one, but the buttons were even more impossible. He’d hoped these would be easier than the one on his jeans, but…in the end he scowled and just walked back to his room shirtless.

Yashiro raised his eyebrows at the sight of the apparently neglected shirt over Hikaru’s arm. Or possibly at Hikaru’s torso. He didn’t really care which.

“Buttons.” Hikaru snarled at him, by way of explanation, and dumped the pile of clothing in a corner of his room. He was usually tidier than that, and Yashiro certainly looked affronted, but…he just didn’t have the energy.

“Do you want any help?” His guest asked, after a moment. “It’s cold, after all.” It was a fair statement. Japanese houses were often optimised to deal with the stupidly hot summers, and tended to get unfortunately cold in winter. Hikaru probably would get cold, sleeping without a pyjama shirt. He wavered, torn between being sensible and the humiliation of needing a friend to help dress himself. “It’s really not a problem, Shindou.” Yashiro told him, as if reading his mind, and Hikaru scowled.

“Ugh. Fine.” He muttered, and set his jaw, bending to pick up the abandoned shirt. He pulled his hands in their orthoses carefully through the sleeves, which was about all he’d managed by himself before. Yashiro’s face was carefully neutral as he stepped up and matter-of-factly fastened the buttons for him, and thankfully, there was no hint of judgement or anything similar in his soul, either. Maybe a bit of sympathy. It was alright. Hikaru still felt humiliated, but it was alright. “…Thanks.”

“No problem.” Yashiro asserted, and easily stepped away to go fetch his own bed things.

Hikaru blinked at him. “It’s still pretty early, you know. You don’t need to go to sleep just because I am.”

“No harm in an early night.” He replied easily, and headed down the hall to the bathroom. He was so weird, sometimes.

Hikaru huffed out a disgruntled breath, still vaguely embarrassed, and got himself into bed, laying down on his back. It was pretty much the only position he could sleep in, with his hands the way they were. It took some getting used to. He slept on his back sometimes, sure, but all the time? It was probably at least partly why he’d slept so poorly in the hospital.

Gingerly, he pulled the duvet up over himself, and closed his eyes. Yashiro came back in not much later, and made a bit of noise setting up the futon, but it wasn’t long until the light had been turned off, and Hikaru could finally drift off into sleep.

---

As he’d sort of expected, Hikaru didn’t sleep particularly well that night, either. The tension surrounding the day’s visit followed him into unconsciousness, and he kept slipping in and out of sleep with the vague feeling of I wonder if I should get up, yet. In most of those cases, it was still utterly dark outside, and he fell asleep again. Eventually though, there was light through the window, and it took a lot more effort for Hikaru to make himself fall back into fitful slumber.

In the end, Hikaru groggily peeled himself from bed at around nine in the morning. Yashiro’s futon was already made and folded, the boy’s presence ensconced downstairs, but his mother seemed to still be in her room. He warred with himself a bit, frustrated and yet-again embarrassed, but eventually conceded to the inevitable and went to ask her for help with bathing.

Hikaru spent the next hour or so being assisted with a shower, and then carefully walked through his exercises, and then finally having breakfast. The upcoming visit to Utagawashi loomed unpleasantly in his mind throughout, and Yashiro certainly noticed how quiet he was.

Eventually, there was no good reason to put it off, and Hikaru went with Yashiro to the door to get his shoes and coat on. He needed help with that, too. In the end, it was a very tense Hikaru who left the house-wards, Yashiro apparently feeling free to ask questions once they were out of earshot of his mother.

“You don’t seem very happy to be visiting your priest.” He commented, glancing down at Hikaru as they crossed the road. It was a cold morning, and their breath puffed white into the air, but it at least wasn’t raining, even though the skies were grey. Hikaru’s fingertips varied on whether they felt cold or just numb.

“I’m not. It’s going to suck.” Hikaru said bluntly. Grimly, even. He looked at Yashiro and bit back an unhappy noise, distinctly not pleased that the boy was going to get a direct insight into things he wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about. He looked up at the overcast sky, breath coming a little quickly from distress, and stopped near a neighbour’s garden wall to get himself together.

Yashiro slowed, and hovered near his shoulder. “Shindou?”

Hikaru’s fingertips twitched, unable to clench into a fist. He struggled for words and eventually managed something. “…Look. Yashiro. If you come to Utagawashi’s today, you –“ He stopped, frustrated. “You’ll hear…things.”

“Things.” Yashiro repeated, neutrally.

“Depressing things.” He clarified, scowling. He deliberately did not look at the boy beside him. “You don’t need to come. It’s just going to be…” It was a futile effort. He knew it was. But… “It’ll suck.” He finished, lamely. “You won’t like it.”

Yashiro regarded him, inwardly obviously worried, but his expression just sort of firm. Resolute. “I’m coming with you.” He informed, with absolutely no room for compromise.

Hikaru jerked his head down in a poor imitation of a nod, and kept walking. He hadn’t expected anything else, really, but even so…

Thirty minutes was a fairly long walk in the cold, especially when you’d been bedridden for the better part of two weeks. Ordinarily, Hikaru might have daydreamed, losing himself in thought as his feet walked a familiar path. But…this time, it was less than five minutes before he started to feel the sourness in the air. He could ignore it, at first. Another five minutes passed, and then ten, until he was gritting his teeth and grimacing at the ground, his most functional fingers trembling horribly.

“Shindou?” Yashiro prompted, concerned, when they were half way through the walk. “You look a bit…” He trailed off.

“I’m fine.” Hikaru bit out, and kept walking.

Pain was alive in the air, blanketing the world like a sickening mist. It swept and spiralled around him as he walked, as he and his massive energy passed through it, spreading into him and through him and staining him with its touch. Nausea began to press delicately around his throat, every step taking him closer and closer to its source. By the time he was ten minutes away from the house, he had to stop to gasp for air, pressing a hand to his neck to try to quell the urge to throw up, and waving off Yashiro’s concern.

It got worse. It got a lot worse. Kaminaga was close, now, and he was steeped in pain and horror and the kind of awful guilt that nothing in the world could console. Hikaru shuddered, forcing himself to step onwards, feeling the trauma of demon-borne injuries raked through the soul of him, feeling the sickening violation as it took him and choked him and ate him whole. He’d killed him, killed him, tore his throat open and watched him die with steel in his throat, he’d killed him-

Hikaru stumbled and nearly fell, saved only by Yashiro, who grabbed hold of him and dragged him to a nearby wall to sit down. “Hey, hey, hey, careful, Shindou. Are you feeling sick?” He said, still somehow sounding perfectly calm.

Hikaru opened his mouth to try to reply but gagged instead, barely managing to hold back the vomit, and struggled to his feet. “I’m fine.” He managed, his own voice sounding distant around the pounding in his ears, the stutter of his breath, the sick beat of his shuddering heart – “I’m fine. Just – need to get there. It’s. Fine.”

“Shindou.” Yashiro complained, following quickly at his heels, hovering close in a clear attempt to be available to catch him if he fell again. “You are stupidly, obviously not alright-“

A fresh burst of pain and horror washed over him, as though projected straight from the source, and Hikaru stumbled again. Tears welled in his eyes in an instant and were falling the next, leaving cold trails down his cheeks. I killed him, Hikaru thought numbly again, and it wasn’t his thought but he couldn’t think around the sheer horror and pain forcing its way down his throat. He managed three more steps before it overwhelmed him and he collapsed to his knees, the world going red and senseless with agony.

He’d killed him, killed his oldest friend, felt the flesh of his throat part around a blade, felt his friend’s helpless soul swallowed down like blood into the steel, felt the teeth and the thorns that gripped and bit deep – felt the horror that ripped out of him, out, out, out, until there was nothing human left of him-

“-dou! Shindou, for fuck’s sake!” Hikaru’s awareness returned, hinging crazily on Yashiro’s voice and the pain in his limbs and the tears on his face and the burning in his throat- “Shindou! Can you not hear me again? Hikaru, I swear to god-“

He shuddered, and replied dazedly, automatically “’Hikaru’?” He managed, voice suddenly croaky and strained. He coughed, and something nasty splattered on the floor. He looked down and found himself a short distance from a puddle of vomit. Well, that explained that. “Calling me by my first name out of nowhere, Kiyoharu? This is so sudden!” He mock-swooned into Yashiro’s arms, which wasn’t hard to do, because Yashiro was right there and Hikaru was in fact very dizzy.

“…Well, you’re probably not dying, if you can still be a little shit about things.” Yashiro commented, calming down now that he’d got some response out of him, and pulled him up to his feet. “Come on, we’ll just go sit down over there for a bit, use your legs, you wuss.”

“You’re a wuss.” Hikaru muttered sullenly, voice still feeling awful from, presumably, hacking up a load of acid. He allowed himself to be led to the nearest low wall and sat upon it, shuddering as another wave of bleak agony threatened to overcome him again. Trembling, he pulled his stained fan from his pocket with two fingers, holding it as a focus more than anything. He certainly couldn’t swing it, but…

Hikaru focused, pretended very hard that he was swinging the fan, and swept out his energy to clear and burn through the taint that had spread into the air around him. Or…not the air. Obviously not the air. Energy? It had to be, but it was so thinly dispersed, it was nearly undetectable…

“I think you should call off the visit. Maybe go back to the hospital for a check-up.” Yashiro said, digging about in his pockets until he found a screwed-up tissue of some sort. It had clearly been there a while, but Hikaru wasn’t about to pass it up when it was offered to him, and wiped around the edges of his mouth immediately, though he had to put his fan in his lap first.

“I’m not sick.” Hikaru croaked, after he’d cleaned himself. Yashiro gave him an incredulous look, and gestured expressively at the nearby puddle of horrible vomit. “It’s – it’s not me. It’s Kaminaga. He’s…fucked up.” To put it mildly.

Yashiro went very still, and Hikaru realised that...he’d not actually told him exactly where Kaminaga was, had he? “…Kaminaga is with your priest friend?” He asked, very quietly.

“Yeah. Don’t be weird about it.” He instructed, and closed his eyes to try fending off the next wave of choking shame. He was only partially successful, and hunched forwards abruptly to gag again, not bringing anything up this time, but his eyes starting to water again profusely as his body shook. Hands immediately came to rest on his shoulder, Yashiro leaning over to rub awkwardly at his back.

“Not sure how I can ‘not be weird’ about going to visit a killer, Shindou.” He said, his soul looking deeply conflicted.

“What, I’m Shindou again now?” He asked mockingly, as he tried to gather his thoughts together.

“I can call you Hikaru if you like that better.” Yashiro’s voice was very dry now, which was at least an improvement.

Hikaru’s nose wrinkled. “No, that’s weird.” He complained, and broke out coughing again. Apparently not all of the acid had come up the right way.

Yashiro waited patiently until he was done, and then spoke. “Why the hell are we going to see a murderer, Shindou? And what does that have to do with you being sick?”

Hikaru stared at his hands, quiet, and tried to think of the right words. “…People’s souls can be hurt. Kaminaga got possessed by the demon, and that fucked his up a lot. I can feel it.” An understatement. He hoped that his own injuries didn’t do the same thing – was he leaking grief and pain and despair into the air like a burst pipe, like Kaminaga was haemorrhaging shame and horror and agony? What a horrible thought.

Yashiro was silent for several moments, an instinctive scepticism passing over his soul, muffled a second later by a considering sort of feeling. “And that makes you throw up?”

“First time Kaminaga met me, he threw up.” Hikaru said unthinkingly, and then instantly regretted it. Sure, there was no way today was going to end without Yashiro finding out about the fucked-up state of his soul, but…

He ignored the concerned, evaluating eyes on him and reached out to shakily clear the air again.

“Kaminaga’s hurt more than anything I’ve felt before. It’s…really shitty, to feel it.” He shuddered again, and tried to stand up, Yashiro immediately at his elbow. “It’s not going to get any better, so I just have to deal with it.”

“I’m still not sure why we’re going to see him in the first place.” Yashiro said flatly, and Hikaru made a frustrated noise.

“I just need to talk to him, okay? And Utagawashi thinks he might need my help. None of the foxes have been around for a while and I’m the next best bet.”

“None of the what?”

Hikaru ignored the incredulous words and determinedly staggered onwards. Not long to go now, and periodic use of his energy helped keep the haze of pain at least mostly at bay. His body ached and clamoured with it, jittery and weak, but…he walked. One step at a time.

By the time he reached Utagawashi’s small building of flats, Hikaru had pulled his energy inwards into as concentrated a shape as he could manage, trying to keep too much of the ambient suffering from reaching him. He was obviously somewhat successful, since he wasn’t hunched over on the ground any more, but it was distinctly not easy.

He breathed, in and out, and reached out to buzz Utagawashi’s flat. He was lucky he remembered which one it was, really, since he’d only been there once before.

A short, strained exchange over the intercom got him in, and Hikaru pulled himself down the hallway to Utagawashi’s door. The man was waiting there, eyes running over him anxiously, and then settling with surprise on Yashiro. “…Shindou-kun.” He said, stare flicking between his two guests. “It’s good to see you. You brought a friend?”

Yashiro stopped beside him, and politely, said “I’m Yashiro. We’ve talked before, I think.”

It was either the name or the overwhelmingly obvious Osaka dialect that clued Utagawashi in. His expression flashed with recognition as he said “Oh, you’re the friend from Osaka.” He looked to Hikaru, startled. “I wasn’t aware Shindou-kun had told anyone about…well…”

“Spirit things?” Yashiro prompted, dryly.

“Well, yes.” The priest admitted, hovering nervously in the doorway. He hadn’t let them in yet. “I…well, that is to say, do you know who you’re visiting today?”

“I know Kaminaga is here, if that’s what you’re asking.” He didn’t sound happy about it. Which…well, it was fair enough. He’d only found out about it ten minutes ago at most.

Hikaru twitched, and walked forwards until Utagawashi had to back into the flat to avoid him. “Come on, I want to get this over with.” He insisted, ignoring the priest’s weak protests.

“Shindou, you rude shit, wait to be invited in.” Yashiro said indignantly from the doorway, and a moment later was waved in by Utagawashi. Hikaru didn’t bother replying, though. His attention was elsewhere.

Sat in seiza in a corner of the floor was Kaminaga.

He did not look well.

Hikaru exhaled slowly, and stepped forwards. By now the enduring horror of Kaminaga’s demon-borne energy felt like a constant barrage, as though it were in some way as aggressive as what it had come from. But it wasn’t. It was just senseless, thrashing agony. Kaminaga was sat there on the floor, looking superficially unharmed, but trembling like a leaf and breathing too quickly for it to be normal. His expression was twisted, his eyes open and flicking around without resting on anything, without seeing anything. He looked…genuinely terrified.

Slowly, the other two stepped up beside him. Hikaru wasn’t sure what Yashiro was thinking, as he stared down at the man, but Utagawashi cleared his throat and spoke. “He’s…he’s not responsive. Not since a while after the foxes left. He does what I tell him to, if I repeat it enough, but…it’s like he’s not really hearing me. Or seeing me. Sometimes he’s briefly lucid, but it never lasts. And he feels…” He trailed off.

“He’s fucked up.” Hikaru said, voice feeling oddly flat. Faraway, even. The intense concentration it took to fend off Kaminaga’s aura of pain at this range made it hard to focus on anything else. But he tried.

Kaminaga’s energy was curling inwards, inwards, spiralling around his brutalised soul in a frenzied motion of ongoing terror. Hikaru could almost see what it was doing. The energy itself was stained with pain and guilt, and as it went by it set off the light of the soul, set off the energy clinging to the tattered edges of it, lighting up in horror horror horror again and again with every passing second. It was…it was like those months Hikaru had spent trapped in grief, wallowing in it, unable to move on from it or find anything worth waking up for. It was like the moments that kept almost happening again, if he focused on it for too long, if he didn’t avoid thinking about it.

But worse. Kaminaga’s injuries were worse, and…really, by a certain reckoning, the emotions were worse too.

Hikaru breathed, slowly, deliberately resisting the energy-borne impulse of terror that wanted to set in and quicken his heart and prepare him for fight-or-flight.

Grief was horrible. Loss was horrible. It was an aching pit that never felt like it would get any better, a profound lack in the world that made everything bright and enjoyable seem stained and worthless. It was a true breed of suffering, but…a heavy one. It was a slow, oppressive sort of suffering. It propagated lethargy, and depression, and apathy.

Terror was another thing entirely. Terror, and horror, combined with the pain – they were a very insistent, very demanding combination. They consumed the mind, if you let them. Kaminaga was more injured than him – noticeably so, but not calamitously so – but the emotions lighting up in him…

“I’m going to try something.” Hikaru heard himself say, distantly, as he gathered his energy. He had to be careful. Strong, but careful, he looked so fragile-

“Shindou?” Utagawashi said, worried, but he paid him no mind, nor Yashiro, nor anything else.

Hikaru lashed out and scattered the mire of pain twisting around Kaminaga’s body. The man gasped, eyes opening wide, almost focused – Hikaru reached out with his energy as if with a hand and clawed at what was there, at the shroud of foreign power that the man had trapped himself in, pulling at it and tearing at it and shredding it into the air. He didn’t touch the soul at all, but – Kaminaga choked, eyes finally settling on Hikaru, horrified recognition wakening in them as he shook and shuddered and then hunched over. He retched, and Utagawashi was very quick with retrieving a nearby mop bucket. Kaminaga vomited into it, wretched and shaking but finally aware.

But only for a minute. Before Utagawashi had even finished rubbing his back and murmuring to him and tending to him, the remaining energy was already swirling in, already lighting up the mindless terror again, moving with almost purposeful direction. Hikaru gritted his teeth, and snapped “Stop thinking about it!”

Kaminaga staggered up straight again, staring at him. Numbly, he accepted the tissue from Utagawashi and wiped his mouth, then croaked “What?” He sounded hopelessly confused. As though….well, as though he’d woken from a nightmare to find a weird teenager yelling at him.

“Don’t think about it.” Hikaru repeated, the words feeling strange on his tongue, like an internal mantra that had come loose into the air. “Or you’ll get – stuck. Like you were.”

As Kaminaga stared, there was a brief, powerful flare of energy, so strong Hikaru could almost see what it was connected to – a gaping throat, metal sliding between layers of flesh, blood burbling out around it as quickly as water from a faucet. Hikaru reached out and slapped it away, and the man flinched back. “It’s…difficult not to think of this.” He said, after a moment, each word slow and measured and deliberate. He was starting to get his breathing back under control, by the looks of things. “It is…very intrusive.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Hikaru muttered, and looked down at him. For a moment, the parallel of it was…dizzying. He stood over a man knelt in seiza, and had power over him. A man who had, with their positions reversed, held cursed steel to his neck.

For a moment, Kaminaga’s breath went shallow again, in time with the way his energy began to curl instinctively inwards as though summoned there – but then, mercifully, Utagawashi did something Hikaru hadn’t really expected, and set the bucket aside to put a hand on Kaminaga’s shoulder.

“Breathe, Kaminaga-san. I know you’re capable of meditating.” He said, quietly, and the man looked at him. The expression on his face was exceptionally hard to read, but at the distraction the mess on his soul did calm a little. He breathed.

“I was the one who taught you to meditate.” He huffed, voice still gravelly from disuse, and more than slightly distracted-sounding besides.

“Then prove it, and see about clearing your mind a little, if that’s what Shindou-kun thinks will help.” Utagawashi told him, surprisingly firmly, and Hikaru’s eyebrows went up. He waited for Kaminaga to make some sort of cutting remark, like he had while he was under the demon’s influence, but there was nothing. The man snorted quietly, then sighed, and closed his eyes. His breathing took on the sort of forced regularity that suggested a struggle to calm it.

Hikaru watched, oddly fascinated, as first the lines on the man’s face furrowed deeply in a pained scowl, preceding his attempt at attaining some sort of balance. The tension was forcibly exhumed from those very features, the muscles in his face loosening, then his shoulders, then his arms and hands, every line of his body settling into something less awfully strained. Hikaru hadn’t realised how tense the man had been until he so deliberately relaxed, and that was all the more noticeable for how the frenetic and pained energy around him reacted to it.

It settled, somewhat. It was jerky and distressed and churning with guilt and pain, and given Hikaru’s experience, he didn’t think that would ever go away. But it wasn’t actively reinforcing itself, now. It wasn’t far off it – but Hikaru didn’t think he’d have to reach out to slap it around at a moment’s notice, which had to be an improvement.

For Yashiro, who couldn’t sense that spiritual undercurrent, it must have been a pretty weird experience, standing there watching a killer try to get himself together via a particularly aggressive attempt at meditation. Hikaru glanced over at him, and found the familiar thinking-scowl back in place, the boy evidently befuddled and just as evidently tense.

It became a little awkward for a couple of minutes. Hikaru didn’t want to speak or move too loudly for fear of disrupting whatever tenuous balance Kaminaga had found, and apparently neither did Utagawashi. Yashiro didn’t move or speak either, but Hikaru wasn’t sure how awkward he was finding the situation, because by the looks of his soul he was doing some serious thinking. His scowl was more pronounced than usual, too.

After a while that probably wasn’t as long as it felt, Kaminaga’s exhalation came out in a heavy sigh, and he moved, bringing a hand up to his face to rub at the heavy grit at the edge of his eyes. “What a mess.” He murmured, quiet and exhausted, as he opened his eyes. They lingered on Hikaru, briefly, then flickered to Yashiro with a light frown. Then he looked away. “We’ll need to talk about this.” He said, sounding oddly lost, oddly frustrated. “There were….things I was supposed to tell you, Shindou-san. It’s so very difficult to think of now.” The way his hand moved to rub at his temples suggested that there was a pretty bad headache underway.

“I think you should probably clean up a little first, Kaminaga-san.” Utagawashi suggested, gently, and carefully reached out to pull him to his feet. The man went willingly enough, and frowned at him. “I imagine your mind will feel a little clearer then.”

Kaminaga stared for a few moments, then acquiesced. “Oh, very well. I can’t look better than I feel, I suppose.” He grumbled, and with a last reluctant glance at Hikaru, headed for one of the doors, which turned out to have stairs behind it.

Unexpectedly, Utagawashi followed him. This apparently prompted some commentary from the now out-of-sight Kaminaga, filtering quite clearly down the stairwell as they receded from view.

“What, you’re coming with me?” was followed by the reply of “I hardly want you to pass out as soon as you’re upright for five minutes, do I?” and then a surprisingly merciless comment of “Besides, it’s not exactly new for me, after the past two weeks.” After that, the voices faded into indistinct murmurs, and faint creaks of movement on the floor above.

Hikaru felt himself relax a little, unbidden, once Kaminaga was out of view. He could still feel him, energy seeming precariously on the edge of more of its vicious cycling, but he wasn’t there in the room. He should have expected it to be stressful just to see the man, but he’d been thinking of other things.

He sighed, and staggered over to Utagawashi’s dining table to pull out a chair. He collapsed into it and was half-way to bringing up his hands to his face like Kaminaga had when he remembered the orthoses. “Ugh,” he expressed, and planted his face on the table instead.

There were footsteps, and the scrape of the chair beside him being pulled out. Yashiro settled into it, and said “That was…something.” He paused for a second, as if waiting for a response, and Hikaru grunted at him. Then, in the absence of any more sophisticated reply, he went on: “So. I’m maybe ready to hear about spirit-stuff now.”

Hikaru groaned, and sat up. Yashiro’s face was still in the thinking-scowl, but less aggressively so than it had been a few minutes ago. “Well that’s just great.” He sighed, and set his hands in their hell-instruments onto the table. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You could start by explaining what just happened there?” The boy suggested, which was…probably the easiest place to start, honestly. A lot easier than starting at some hypothetical ‘beginning’.

Hikaru mulled over the words, pondering how ridiculous they sounded before they were even voiced, but in the end was too exhausted to quibble much about how stupid everything was. “Kaminaga was possessed by the demon, which seriously fucked over his soul,” He decided it was as good a starting point as any. “So he’s spiritually mutilated now. When that happens…I think what happens is the energy leftover in the injuries soaks up whatever you were feeling? And it ends up in this….vicious cycle, I guess. I broke him out of it.”

Yashiro stared as if he were trying very hard to find a way to call bullshit, but uncertain of where to even start. Hikaru was fairly adept at interpreting that expression on people, which was why he recognised it so keenly. “That sounds completely ridiculous.” He said, finally, and made an extremely disgruntled noise. “But – fuck, I guess ridiculous is just the new normal, now, okay. Are you going to have to do whatever you did again?”

He'd just…accepted it, apparently. Just like that. For a brief, unexpectedly intense moment, Hikaru really appreciated that uncomplicated acceptance. He exhaled, looking up at the ceiling, and considered the state of the energy. “He’s…kind of on the edge, so maybe. He’s managing okay for now though.” His eyes flickered downwards to his hands. “If he keeps his mind off it, he should be alright.”

“That’s great.” Yashiro said unenthusiastically, and groaned again, clearly baffled at the unlikelihood of the situation at large.

Hikaru offered a sympathetic hum for that, and the silence stretched for a few seconds, allowing the muffled voices from upstairs to filter through. Utagawashi said something in a sharp tone, but Hikaru couldn’t hear the words. Kaminaga’s energy stilled a little from its perpetual turmoil, so it was probably in aid of something positive.

Finally, Yashiro sighed, and spoke again. “How did you even get mixed up in all this spirit stuff in the first place? How long has this all been going on?”

Hikaru snorted, very softly, as the quiet stretched around the words that had been hung there. “Ha.” He said, humourlessly, and thought of the many possible answers to that question. “The Kaminaga problem only started like…a month ago. I met Utagawashi back in…I think June? Yeah. But…”

He stared at the table for a long time. Yashiro, thankfully, seemed to have put his patience-hat back on, and sat there wordlessly waiting for him to get his thoughts together. It reminded him a bit of Akari, actually, and he wondered if that meant they’d both just individually figured out it was the best strategy for managing his reticence.

“For me, the spirit-stuff started when I was twelve.” He said, finally, and didn’t look at Yashiro. His fingers were trembling again. It wasn’t as if he was telling someone like Touya, who might immediately recognise the significance of the age, the name…. “I met a ghost. He…His name was Sai.” He exhaled, heavily, trying to exhale the nerves with the air. It didn’t really work. “He’s...the reason I started playing Go. My teacher, I guess.” He breathed, and breathed, and couldn’t quite seem to make himself say any more.

Yashiro just…watched him. Hikaru didn’t look at him, but could feel that subtle edge of understanding, the edge of sympathy, settling onto his soul. “I guess he’s not around anymore?” He asked, almost gently. Really, he was just…stupidly intuitive, enough so that Hikaru briefly felt terribly exposed to be talking about this where Yashiro could see him.

“Nope.” Hikaru agreed, trying for a flippancy that didn’t especially work.

The boy sighed, and it was a fairly sad-sounding one too. “Sorry, Shindou. That sucks.” He said, apparently able to read Hikaru well enough to know that that was the thing that needed saying. “I bet he must have been a good teacher, if you only started playing when you were twelve. That’s hardly any time at all.”

“He used to be a Go teacher when he was alive.” Hikaru said, almost without thinking, and had to rein in a strange, bubbling laugh at how quickly those words had come after years of secrecy. “To an emperor, even.”

“…Emperors have Go teachers?” He asked, baffled, and Hikaru did laugh at that. It was short and stilted and didn’t sound much like a laugh, but he couldn’t hold it back.

“Back in the Heian era, apparently.” He said, glancing over, and coughed out another unhappy laugh at Yashiro’s incredulous expression. “He was…an old ghost.” He fell silent, turning back to stare wordlessly at the table, and then down at his hands.

Yashiro shifted beside him, the movement reflected in the creak of the chair and the rustle of clothing. Eventually, he said “I guess you’ve been keeping this all secret for a long time, if no one else knows what was really going on with Kaminaga.”

Hikaru hummed in agreement, but couldn’t find any words in him to elaborate. He inspected the harsh lines of his orthoses, trying his best to ignore the grief that was all-too-ready to engulf him if he let it.

A moment later, Yashiro made an odd noise, like he’d suddenly realised something. “That ghost is who you’re praying to at that kamidana in your room, isn’t it.” He prodded, speaking with an abrupt kind of certainty. “The ‘Kami of Go.’”

He jerked his head up to look over, in a movement quick enough it felt like flinching. “Where the hell did you get that from?” He demanded, pulse quickening for reasons he wasn’t certain of. It was…unsettling, maybe, to be so transparent, to have personal things just understood like that. He exhaled carefully through the sudden flash of defensiveness and tried not to wait too keenly for Yashiro’s answer.

“It just…makes sense, I guess.” The boy hedged, blinking awkwardly at him. He looked almost surprised at Hikaru’s reaction. “You were so cagey about that kamidana, and the whole incense thing – it had to be something important. And if that ghost is gone now-“ He hesitated at something, eyes settling on Hikaru’s face, and stopped. “It just makes sense.” He concluded, looking unusually restless. Concern was written on his soul, and it made Hikaru feel even more pathetically exposed, like an open book daring people to read him.

“Yeah.” Hikaru said, using the word less as an agreement and more as a blunt force object to wedge the topic closed.

Yashiro opened his mouth, frowned, and then closed it again. It was almost visible on his face, how he thought of different things to say and then dismissed them, eventually apparently deciding to steer the conversation to less sensitive ground. “What I don’t get is how things with that ghost – Sai? – led to all this…” He waved his hands vaguely as though to indicate the room. “…bullshit. With you being targeted by a demon. How does that work?”

Hikaru felt some horrible tension that had collected in his shoulders relax a little at the latter words of that inquiry, just to have the pressure off. Kaminaga, despite having nearly caused his death, was a lot easier to think about than Sai was. “…I was looking for someone who knew things about ghosts.” He said finally. “That’s what I went to Kyoto for back in May. I didn’t find anything, but a while afterwards I found Utagawashi. He’s spiritually sensitive, and he was Kaminaga’s student for a while, so he knew some things. But like – his advice…” He tried to find a good way to describe Utagawashi’s advice. “…wasn’t good for me.” He decided, in something of an understatement. “So he called Kaminaga to come and help, but it turned out he had a demon problem, and it all went from there.”

Yashiro stared at him, brow furrowed. “That….doesn’t really answer the question.” He said, slowly.

Hikaru straightened a little, unexpectedly indignant. “How does that not answer the question?” He demanded, his defensiveness prickling again. “That’s how it all happened!”

“Yeah, but why were you looking for someone who knew about ghosts?” Yashiro asked, all-too-reasonably, his own voice raising just a little to match Hikaru’s. “Your Sai – I guess something happened to him? What were you actually trying to do?”

He stilled, the half-formed ire draining out of him, and looked away. He felt, more than saw, Yashiro going quiet and patient again, waiting for a response.

Hikaru stared out at the opposing wall, the thought of Sai twisting painfully and relentlessly in his gut. He’d just been trying to get answers. All he’d wanted was to find some hint of hope to cling to, some sort of substantial goal. But instead… “Mostly, I just wanted to find out if there was a way to….find him again. Get him back.” The deep well of grief in him cracked open at that, and his breath hitched and then shuddered on the enormity of it. It had been months. Months and months of pain, of mistakes, of worsening his own injuries and then a month of being hunted, and still...

Yashiro watched him carefully, eyes too-perceptive. “Was there a way?” He asked, the tone of it even but…careful. So controlled.

Hikaru’s breath hitched strangely on the inhalation, that oh-so-careful prompt almost following the thread of his own thoughts. It was suddenly all too much. “I don’t know!” He snapped, as though the words had been knocked out of him, voice cracking on the sheer frustration of it all. “Utagawashi didn’t know, and Kaminaga was too busy getting possessed by a fucking demon, and-“ he breathed, and stood so abruptly he half-knocked over his chair in the process, suddenly restless and angry and brimming over with fear. “-and, I still have no fucking clue. I’ve just been – trying not to die. I don’t know.” His hands twitched in the orthoses. The wounds ached. He wanted to hit something, to kick something – instead, he exhaled, the breath so heavy he almost had to force it out, and stomped aimlessly across the room.

He found himself, somehow, in front of a bookcase with an ofuda adhered neatly to its door. Numbly, he reached out, and drew his hanging fingertips carefully over it. With Kaminaga here, it was strangely difficult to feel, but…there were wards here in the walls. The brightness of it was clean. Familiar. He reached out to the light and tried to ground himself in it, inhaling, exhaling, letting his hand fall again. He closed his eyes and breathed, but it didn’t seem to slow his heart down at all.

Yashiro didn’t say anything, or try to approach, which was a small mercy. He just waited, soul twisting conspicuously with worry and a forced patience, for Hikaru to get himself together. Hikaru huffed at himself, frustrated at his outburst and even more frustrated with the turns his life had taken, and not sure what to do about any of it.

In the end, he stopped standing in front of a random bookcase like a madman, and turned abruptly on his heel to approach and sit at the table again. “Sorry.” He said, gruffly, as he fell heavily into the chair, determinedly not looking at Yashiro.

“’S’alright.” Yashiro said easily, sounding honestly unbothered. “Seems you’ve not had much luck lately, huh.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Hikaru grumbled to the table, and leaned back in the chair with a heavy sigh.

“What are you gonna do now?” The boy asked, and weirdly enough, the question felt strange and novel as Hikaru’s mind automatically considered it. “Are you going to ask Kaminaga about it? Since now he’s not – you know. Trying to kill you.” His voice was vaguely dubious at that.

Hikaru snorted. “I don’t think so.” He said, mind loosening a little to consider the answer. He’d avoided asking before, and had justified it by needing to focus on survival, but now… “I guess I’ll just have to ask Setsu,” He decided, unhappy, a knot of apprehension forming in his stomach. “Next time I see it.” He felt the questioning spike of motion in the soul beside him, and glanced over to see the thinking-scowl set into a confused cast. “Setsu’s a fox.” He elaborated, and in spite of everything, watched with interest for Yashiro’s reaction.

The other boy’s expression contorted into an admittedly amusing wrinkling of resigned scepticism. It was an unusual look. “A fox.” He repeated, flatly. “What, like a fox-fox, or a shapeshifting folklore fox?”

“Folklore fox.” Hikaru clarified, with the slightest twitch of the corner of his lips. “I know a few, but Setsu’s the strongest. Four tails and everything.” Abruptly, the memory of the more powerful fox – five tails strong – cast a pall on his hint of good humour. He pushed the recollection away with every ounce of willpower he could muster. “Inari sent it to protect me.” He added, with forced cheer, and was gratified to watch Yashiro’s expression becoming even more hopelessly befuddled.

“Inari.” Yashiro repeated, apparently having lost the capacity to do anything other than echo the idiocy coming out of Hikaru’s mouth.

“Kami are real.” Hikaru informed him, and that elicited a rather pathetic groan. “Yeah, I know. Trust me, it gets weirder.”

Yashiro rubbed at his eyes, and then glanced upwards as though trying to solicit mercy from one of the beings they were discussing. “Does that have anything to do with that fit you had at your house shrine yesterday?” He asked, finally, and looked back just in time to see Hikaru wince.

“…Yeah.” He admitted, begrudgingly, and felt his headache briefly worsen at the memory of the pain of it. “I dunno why that happened. It was never like that before.”

“Maybe you can ask a fox about it?” Yashiro suggested, voice a little strained. “It should know, if it’s an Inari fox? Maybe?” He made a frustrated sound and gestured helplessly with one hand. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about kami or spirits or ghosts.”

Same, Hikaru almost said automatically, but bit the word back at the thought of Yashiro’s likely reaction to that. And, really, even with what little he knew, that was still a lot more than most people had. “I’ll talk to Setsu.” He repeated, and tried not to be too conspicuously terrified of that looming prospect.

Yashiro acknowledged that with an awkward nod, and after a while cleared his throat, glancing up in the direction of the muffled voices and then down again. “What do you think Kaminaga wanted to talk about, do you think?” He asked, with the edge to it that spoke of someone desperately trying to change the topic. It was a poor question, if that was his objective.

Hikaru shifted, about five different unpleasant topics immediately coming to mind. “Nothing good, probably,” He answered, and wasn’t sure whether he dreaded that or the current awkwardness more.

Either way, he did feel an instinctive flash of relief when he realised that the footsteps upstairs seemed to be moving more, and the presences he detected were decisively making their way out. It meant he’d have to deal with Kaminaga, maybe, but he clearly wasn’t at his best. Maybe it would be alright.

Both of them fell silent as they waited for their host and his unfortunate guest to show themselves, which didn’t take long. Kaminaga looked fresher and less horribly dishevelled when he reappeared from the stairwell, but the bags under his eyes remained immense, and he walked with an odd stiffness that didn’t seem entirely natural.

“We’re back.” Utagawashi offered, somewhat needlessly, as he emerged as well, fluttering briefly and then deciding on something to do. “Would any of you like drinks?”

“Some water, maybe.” Hikaru said, still too-aware of the taste of acid in his mouth.

“Uh, yeah, water, thank you.” Yashiro agreed, and Utagawashi disappeared into the small kitchen while Kaminaga, slowly, stepped forward and took a seat at the table, each of his motions unusually careful. Hikaru leaned back a little on instinct, and suppressed an inappropriate laugh when he saw that Yashiro had done the same.

Kaminaga was silent for a second or two, and then he turned to Yashiro. “I don’t know you,” He said, quietly, his voice still rough, but less so than earlier. “I suppose you already know that I’m Kaminaga Keiji. I apologise for the poor circumstances.”

“Do you?” Yashiro answered, sounding conspicuously on-edge, and Hikaru did a double-take at how unexpectedly confrontational it was. He looked over, and Yashiro was scowling, but this time it actually looked hostile. It was remarkable how much it changed his bearing. Hikaru was suddenly reminded that Yashiro was in fact very tall for his age, that fact at once strangely more noticeable than it had been before.

Kaminaga blinked slowly at him, and there was a brief flurry of the ever-present shame in his energy, somehow hidden completely from his face. “Yes.” He said, frankly, with such a tone of gravity that Hikaru couldn’t help but straighten at it. “My carelessness has cost lives, and that is not something I can ever change. Believe me when I say that I’ll regret that for the rest of my life.” A shadow flashed across his eyes at the words, and Hikaru thought he could guess why.

Yashiro’s eyes narrowed, and he sat back, crossing his arms. Hikaru didn’t say anything, and just watched, oddly fascinated by the confrontational bearing of his friend. He had his hackles up, and that wasn’t something Hikaru had really seen before. “I thought the man in Yokohama was the only one you killed.” He said, not-quite neutrally. The tone was a bit too condemning for that, the edges of the words bristling with a quiet hostility.

Kaminaga looked at Hikaru, then, and despite there being no hint of that demon-driven haze remaining there, it still made him flinch. “I count the spirits. Do you?” He asked, tone deceptively calm against the guilt and fear and horror that kept moving, again and again, in the energy around him. He had a better grasp of it now, but it was there. It was unmistakeable.

Hikaru swallowed. “Yeah. Of course. I just –“ He looked at Yashiro, whose outward hostility had loosened a little as he looked over as well. “I didn’t tell you yet. There were foxes at the shrine with us. A lot of them died.”

Yashiro stared at him seriously, brow furrowed, and exhaled. “Shit.” He expressed, finally, and his shoulders slumped a little. “I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do.” Kaminaga said, and sat back. “And there’s more than that to apologise for, as well.” The man’s eyes snapped back to Hikaru’s again, and it was all he could do not to stiffen up at the mere glance. As it was, his heartrate immediately quickened past its already-fast pace, a spark of adrenaline loosed into his system from ingrained fear. “I hunted you.” He admitted quietly, and in Hikaru’s peripheral vision, he saw Utagawashi stop in the kitchen doorway, steps stuttering at the sound of the words. “I followed you and hunted you down and would have killed you if you hadn’t stopped me.”

“…It wasn’t you.” Hikaru said, voice a little strangled, and fought the urge to shuffle back and get out of Kaminaga’s line of sight. “I could feel that from the start.”

“Even so.” He insisted, and…there wasn’t any point in trying to convince this man that he wasn’t completely at fault. That he, personally, hadn’t been responsible for the deaths. The weight of the guilt on him was utterly immovable, and looking at him, Hikaru understood the futility of ever trying to change that. It would be as pointless an endeavour as trying to convince him not to be upset about Sai. The shame and horror were written into him, etched into his being like words into stone. They wouldn’t leave until he was dead, and maybe not even then.

Hikaru swallowed, carefully not thinking about that, and nodded slowly. “It sucked.” He agreed, voice subdued. He had no heart for the idea of saying much more. There was nothing in him that felt angry at Kaminaga now. Maybe he had been before – angry he’d not been careful enough, angry that he’d not listened – but now…it was wholly and horribly evident that Kaminaga did not exactly need to be prompted into feeling penitent.

He looked away, just in time to see Utagawashi resume walking again, setting the glasses of water on the table and taking his seat beside Kaminaga. It was strange to feel the two of them in proximity. Two souls, one hopelessly mauled, one merely grazed. But Utagawashi hadn’t escaped from the ordeal unscathed, it seemed – the edges of one part of him had eroded a little, as though eaten by acid, and there was energy clinging to the wound left behind. Hikaru thought he had to be a lot more sensitive now.

It surely had nothing on Kaminaga, though. Hikaru winced at the sickening mess of the man’s soul, the tattered edges of it deteriorating almost visibly as they spoke. It was more than slightly horrifying to watch.

Kaminaga must have said something, but Hikaru had become preoccupied – he didn’t notice until Yashiro nudged him in the shoulder, saying his name. “Shindou,” He prompted, patiently, and leaned back as Hikaru blinked and looked at him. He nodded in the direction of the man whose soul he’d been beholding.

“Sorry, what?” He asked, distracted, and looked back at Kaminaga, taking care to focus more on the man than the soul.

Whatever Kaminaga had said, he didn’t seem to have much interest in repeating it. Instead, he regarded Hikaru for a few seconds, and asked “How does it look to you? The damage, I mean.” He smiled humourlessly, adding “It’s somewhat hard for me to tell.”

Hikaru shuffled awkwardly. “…Not great?” He offered, and grimaced. “Worse than me. Not sure how much, but worse.”

“I’d say you’re somewhere around a tenth more mutilated than Shindou-kun, Kaminaga-san.” Utagawashi interjected, a familiar grimace over his own face as he looked between them. “It’s fairly pronounced.”

Kaminaga looked appraisingly at him, and seemed about to make a comment when Yashiro interjected.

“Excuse me, but what.” He said, politely, but with an uncompromising flatness to the words. “Mutilated. Mutilated what?”

Hikaru felt his stomach sinking almost as if it were a real physical occurrence and not a piece of fanciful imagery. As one, all three of them looked at Yashiro, and then Hikaru became the recipient of the stares.

“He didn’t tell you?” Kaminaga asked Yashiro, an eyebrow raising. “That his soul is considerably more injured than most people who are able to live to tell about it?”

Hikaru flinched as Yashiro’s eyes shot his way, heavy with wary frustration. “You sort of hinted, I think, earlier.” He said to him. “About how he threw up when he met you.”

“Yeah,” Hikaru agreed, helplessly, hunching down a little in the chair. His throat closed oddly, as though responding to how very little he wanted this to be a topic of conversation.

“That’s true. He was terribly injured before I even breathed in his direction, though I can only have made it worse. Tell me,” He spoke directly to Hikaru, with a sort of commanding imperiousness that felt familiar. So that part of his personality hadn’t been all-demon, after all. “Are you much worse now?”

He shifted resentfully in the chair, the wounds on his hands aching conspicuously. “Can’t you tell?” He demanded, irate. His eyes flickered to Yashiro, whose expression had gone near indecipherable. His soul, however, flickered in an unhappy, suspenseful pattern of concern. There was the shape of slow, wary anticipation there, too.

“No, I’m afraid not.” Kaminaga admitted, and Hikaru’s eyes snapped up to him. “If this delightful new level of injury will give me greater sensitivity, it hasn’t happened yet. All I can detect is-“ he waved his hand in the air, and Hikaru was perfectly able to infer the reference to the haze of pain and fear his energy propagated. “-this.”

Hikaru twitched, and remembered distinctly how much practice and mental adjustment it had taken to be sensitive to anything other than the pain and despair of his injuries. “You get used to it.” He offered, after a moment. “After a while you’ll be able to feel other things.”

“Helpful to know, I suppose.” The man sighed, and leaned back. “And on the note of injury….I’ve got important information for you. Utagawashi-san, do you have a pen and paper?” He turned, and the man beside him fluttered into motion, still looking profoundly bizarre out of the kariginu.

“Of course,” he said, and returned in the space of thirty seconds with a pad of post-it notes that looked like some sort of free hand-out from some company or the other, and a ballpoint pen. Kaminaga accepted them carefully, and as he wrote, Hikaru noticed that his hands were shaking.

Kaminaga looked up and regarded Yashiro. “I still don’t know your name, but you should be aware that what I have to tell Shindou-kun now will be quite serious and upsetting. And personal, as well. If he doesn’t want you here for this conversation, I think you should respect that.”

“No offence, but I’m not leaving him here with you and someone I don’t even know.” Yashiro replied instantly, scowling fiercely, and then looked over warily at Hikaru, as though he might disagree.

Hikaru considered it. He really, honestly considered it. He was pretty sure of what was about to be discussed, and it was exactly what he’d feared Yashiro overhearing. Maybe he could just…make Yashiro leave. Not have to deal with it. He debated it for several depressing seconds, and sighed.

It wasn’t an option. Not really. Yashiro would be all hurt and pissed off about it even if he did agree to go, and…

His fingers shook, fighting the urge to clench. Hikaru exhaled, and resigned himself. He really, really didn’t want Yashiro to know. But, at the same time…

“It’s alright.” He said, finally, and Yashiro relaxed a little.

Kaminaga nodded, and slid the piece of paper across the table. Hikaru took it warily, Yashiro leaning over his shoulder to read, and saw four lines of writing – one in kanji, one in some sort of Romaji that didn’t look English, and the third again in kanji – a name. The last was a phone number.

Kaidan Shokogun, the first line read. The second, Kaidan’s Multiple Sclerosis. The third, Dr. Sato Hitomi.

“Ghost story syndrome?” Hikaru asked, incredulously, focusing on the first line for now. Kaidan did indeed refer to a ghost story – but an old kind. The sort that were steeped in folklore and spirit-tales. It was an old word, and not one he’d exactly heard a lot, outside the mutterings of superstitious old people.

“One of the reasons you originally contacted me was to learn about what drastic spiritual injuries do to a person.” Kaminaga said, and his voice was very calm now. Hikaru envied that, a little – that ability to sound so well-collected when there was so much writhing beneath the surface. “In my years as an exorcist, I’ve dealt with several people with injuries either not quite as bad as yours, or…in a few few cases, as bad as mine are now. I’ve learned a few things that may help you.”

He reached out to tap the first line, and then the second. Hikaru’s eyes followed the motion unerringly.

“Kaidan syndrome, or in the Western term, Kaidan’s Multiple Sclerosis, is the name given by medical scientists to the physical consequences of trauma to the soul.” Hikaru wasn’t sure what passed over his face at those words, but it brought a grim and unhappy smile to Kaminaga’s lips. “In the modern day, of course, the doctors don’t associate it with actual spiritual encounters. They merely list complex hallucinations as a common and noteworthy symptom of the disease. But they study it nonetheless, and if you need it, they can provide treatment for you.”

“Treatment,” Hikaru repeated, voice oddly shaky. “What sort of treatment.”

“Steroids and painkillers for the most part, to deal with the main physical symptoms.” Kaminaga sighed and sat back. “I believe some current research is investigating the use of drugs that suppress the immune system as well, but that’s unlikely to be available for people like us for a long time. They might offer some medications to help with the emotional disorder of our condition. Antidepressants, for example.” Hikaru grimaced strongly enough to elicit a huff from the man. “It’s an option, at any rate. You don’t need to take it, but it’s only right I tell you that it exists.”

Hikaru was silent for what felt like a very long time, thinking. Yashiro stayed silent beside him, and the adults across the table as well. “…What does happen, with this?” he asked, finally. “Setsu said it would get worse, but it didn’t know about the…actual disease stuff.”

Kaminaga regarded him heavily. “You’re getting worse?” He asked, and his voice was…strange. Half-resigned, like he’d already suspected, but not confirmed. He didn’t wait for a response, apparently reading it in the silence, and sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.” He said, and the words had all the weight they deserved. The heaviness of them struck him dumb. I’m sorry, he said, exactly like someone offering condolences for a fatal prognosis.

For a moment, Hikaru forgot how to breathe. “What’s going to happen?” he asked, again, and ignored the heavy churn of suspicion and sickening dread building in the soul beside him. He didn’t want Yashiro to hear this. But he’d warned him. He’d warned him. He’d decided to stay. And Hikaru needed to know.

“Multiple sclerosis is a disease where the nerves in the brain and body are broken down slowly over time.” Kaminaga said, graciously moving on at the prompt. “I’m no expert in it, but I understand that chronic pain, tremors, muscle spasms, and difficulty walking are all very common. In later stages you may have problems with important body functions, like breathing and digestion. I’d suggest looking into information on the disease if you want to find out more. I’m afraid I never had significant motivation to learn more than the basics, before now.”

Hikaru stared down at his hands. “Wouldn’t this have happened to me before, then?” He asked, numbly. “It’s been years since I got injured.”

Kaminaga tilted his head, as though to consider it. “I imagine it did, at least mildly. Perhaps you were in unusual pain, or felt weak or shaky, but dismissed it until it got better.” He said, after some thought. “I understand that in isolated cases of soul trauma, the physical damage does eventually heal. That’s no longer applicable to you or I, though.”

It was possible. He’d been in enough of a numb, apathetic haze during those two months that he might have overlooked any number of things. He’d certainly felt terrible, but it was hard to remember the specifics now. “I’m going to get worse slower than you.” He said, abruptly, and felt very keenly the pieces of other souls that were holding him together. Two foxes, and Sai. “I’ve got…some of the foxes gave pieces of their soul to me, to help. It’ll slow it down.” He opened his mouth to suggest maybe you can do the same thing, but…hesitated.

He suddenly doubted very, very strongly that any foxes would be willing to give up a piece of themselves for Kaminaga.

Kaminaga blinked at him, as though pleasantly surprised. “Oh, well that’s very good to hear.” He said, and the sentiment sounded genuine. “Did the foxes tell you how much difference it will make? How long do you have?” It was…very much a question one asked of someone who was dying.

Beside him, and across the table, there were twin sharp inhalations. The dread in the seat next to him reared up, chokingly powerful, and Hikaru couldn’t look. He couldn’t. He stared straight down at his hands. “Setsu said,” His voice wavered, cracking briefly. He cleared his throat and managed to finish. “Setsu said thirty years, maybe.” He could almost feel the shocked eyes burning into his skin, so contrary to the near-relief that was coming from Kaminaga.

Someone’s breath had gone harsh and forced. Someone was trying to control it, trying to rein it in, trying to exhale through the mess their emotions had become. And for all that it was a terribly familiar sound, one that he was intimately acquainted with…that breathing did not belong to Hikaru. He clenched his eyes shut, and didn’t look.

“Incredible,” Kaminaga said, his honest delight utterly incongruous to the mood of the room, and yet Hikaru understood it perfectly. “That’s far better than I would have thought.”

Something gave way. There was a heavy, shuddering ripple of the human soul beside him, and then the too-loud sound of a chair screeching backwards over the floor. Hikaru looked over in reflex, seeing Yashiro standing, fists clenched at his sides, head bowed, eyes hidden behind a mess of grey hair. “Excuse me.” He said, tightly, through clenched teeth, and turned and practically ran for the door.

Hikaru’s mouth opened, as if to stop him, and fell shut without a sound. Yashiro reached the door of the flat and stepped through it, and the slam of its closing echoed too-loudly in the quiet room.

The silence rang as his presence receded down the hallway, and Hikaru didn’t know what to do.

A restless distress itched under his skin. He wanted to go after him, but the thought of the inevitable confrontation was nearly unbearable. He quivered between the two impulses, helplessly torn, limbs feeling heavy and unpleasantly tingly with the intensity of the stress. “Shit.” He muttered, under his breath, and finally looked up at the others at the table.

Utagawashi’s face was white, starkly pale and crestfallen, but not surprised. Evidently he’d heard something of Kaminaga’s prognosis from the foxes, and had had at least an inkling that it might also apply to Hikaru. It hurt to look at, but not as much as it did to consider Yashiro.

Kaminaga’s expression had settled into a resigned, sympathetic frown. “Perhaps you ought to have told him more before you came here.” He said.

“Don’t.” Hikaru bit out, and exhaled in a quick, unhappy puff. “I should – I should go after him.” He muttered, frustrated, fingers twitching uncomfortably. Every motion pulled at the swelling of the wounds. Yashiro had stopped outside the building, upset written all over the soul of him, and it made Hikaru’s stomach churn and twist nauseatingly.

“Please wait a little, unless he’s going somewhere. There’s only a little more to say.” Kaminaga requested. “Is he leaving?”

“…No, he’s just outside.” He admitted reluctantly, and relented to the urge to rub at his face with the palm of one hand, however carefully he had to do it with the orthoses on. “Shit.” He said again, because it bore repeating.

Kaminaga eyed him carefully, and nodded down to the piece of paper again. “The name on there is of a doctor and medical researcher. She works on our disease specifically.” He waited until Hikaru managed to get some of his attention onto the paper before continuing. “The phone number there would get you through to her office. She knows my name – I’ve sent patients her way in the past – and if you mention it she could likely get you through the process of being diagnosed much more quickly than if you went through your doctor. She’d want to use your information in her research, but it’s well worth it for most people.”

“…Does she know about spirits?” Hikaru asked dully, staring at the number.

“No. She merely thinks that as a ‘so-called’ exorcist, I tend to run into people with the tell-tale symptoms frequently.” Kaminaga smiled wryly at that.

“…I don’t think I’m going to talk to her, but thanks.” He said eventually.

“Don’t discount it so easily.” The man cautioned. Utagawashi was looking between the two of them as they spoke, quick anxious movements. He looked close to wringing his hands. “Like any decent medical professional, she respects confidentiality. No one has to know if you end up on medication, except possibly your parents.”

Hikaru jerked back at the mere notion without even thinking about it, any willingness to consider the idea gone in an instant. “Um, no.” He said, very insistently, and scowled.

Kaminaga snorted. “I don’t know what the legality of it is. Maybe she wouldn’t be obligated to tell your parents, but I haven’t any idea. I suppose if you’re that opposed to the idea you can always wait until you’re an adult, if you’ve still thirty years ahead of you.” He looked, briefly, very conflicted.

“Maybe.” Hikaru said noncommittally, mostly to try to get done with the conversation.

The man regarded him for a moment, and then sighed. “Keep the information safe, at any rate.” He said, resigned, and then reached into a pocket on his haori to extract something, and slid that across the table as well.

Hikaru beheld it with utter confusion. “That’s a phone.” He said, uncertain of what else to point out.

“That is the phone I use for my work as an exorcist.” Kaminaga said, and Hikaru looked up at him incredulously. Surely he wasn’t going to suggest- “Tonight I intend to turn myself into the law, and whether or not they manage to convict me before I die, I won’t be in any condition to continue my work. If you are truly going to live so much longer…” He exhaled. “Of course, it’s completely up to you. But there are very few people in Japan capable of dealing with some of the spirits that cause problems.”

“You’ve got to be joking.” Hikaru said, flatly.

“Frankly, Shindou-san, you’ve already killed a demon god. I can’t imagine much else will trouble you after that.” Kaminaga’s lips turned downwards. “I hardly have any ability to force you. But it is a source of income, if you want it.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m already a professional Go player, but thanks.”

“Yes, I…we were aware.” Kaminaga said, and his eyes went briefly distant. The energy churned sickly around him. “In any case, I’ve said my part. Do what you want. Then there’s only one thing left to mention – the katana.”

Hikaru stiffened. “The what.”

Utagawashi shifted uneasily and spoke. “The physical form of the demon blade still remains, Shindou-kun.” He said, delicately, and then hastened to speak again when some sort of involuntary, awful noise emerged from Hikaru’s throat. “But it’s not a problem! There’s nothing alive left in it. It’s only a powerful spiritual artefact now – the Yonbi-san confirmed it, if you trust its word.”

He hissed out a breath through his teeth, uncomfortably aware at how quickly his pulse was racing. It hadn’t exactly been slow through any of this – the various turns of conversation had all been pretty stressful – but now he felt liable to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Maybe once I hear it from Setsu myself.” He said, voice distinctly on-edge, and looked warily around the room. “Where is it?”

“Hidden upstairs.” Utagawashi assured him, frowning worriedly. “It’s honestly not demonic any longer.”

“Does it have ofuda on it anyway?” Hikaru demanded, pain aching in hot lines along his hands and neck. His pulse thrummed against the swell of the cut over his jugular.

“…Yes, actually.” The priest admitted, and he allowed himself to relax slightly.

“I intended to offer it to you, if you wanted to use it.” Kaminaga said neutrally, and Hikaru wanted to laugh in his face.

“Thanks, but no thanks.” He denied, heart still refusing to slow. “Maybe it’s not alive now but it still nearly killed me. I don’t ever want to see that thing again.”

“…I don’t blame you.” His once-tormentor admitted, exhaling slowly. “I feel much the same. I suppose it’ll rest in your keeping, Utagawashi-san.” The priest did not exactly look thrilled at this, but he nodded agreeably enough

“…Is that everything?” Hikaru asked, on-edge and jittery and exhausted, and still far-too-aware of the awful mess of emotions seething in Yashiro outside.

“I suppose it is.” Kaminaga said, and Hikaru didn’t need any prompting to get up from the table. He hesitated, and very carefully picked up the glass of water between the palms of his hands, and took a couple of gulps before he turned to head for the door. “Shindou-san,” The man said, and he stopped. “I expect you’ll be asked to testify against me.”

“…yeah?” Hikaru looked at him suspiciously.

“Please do precisely that.”

Hikaru’s eyebrows shot up, startled. “…Alright?” He agreed cautiously, and received a plainly relieved nod in turn. “I don’t really see the point, though.” He said, after a moment. “It’s not like you’ll be in jail for long.”

“I’d rather not spend the rest of my admittedly short life in hiding, if you’ll excuse me.” The man said, quite dryly, and sighed. “I’ve committed a crime and I intend to be convicted for it, if I can.”

Hikaru eyed him, and then the state of his soul, and determinedly did not argue. “Alright.” He said, finally, and edged towards the door. “Can I go now?”

“Take your paper. And the phone.” Kaminaga told him, indicating the items on the table.

Reluctantly, he shuffled back and stuffed the bit of paper awkwardly into his pocket, along with the phone. He stared at the two adults at the table, uncertain of what to say, and then in the end just nodded at them. “I’ll see you some other time, Utagawashi.” He decided after a while. “And Kaminaga…good luck, I guess. I don’t know if I’ll see you again.”

“Good luck to you as well, Shindou-san.” Kaminaga said, his voice and the lines of his face both sombre. “I’m sorry to have taken you down with me, so to speak.”

Hikaru wanted to say stop it, get him to stop self-flagellating so flagrantly when it didn’t help anyone, but there probably wasn’t any helping that. Shame was a part of Kaminaga now, as much as his flesh and blood were. Hikaru exhaled heavily, and nodded, and headed for the door.

He approached the exit of the building more slowly than he could have, hyper-aware of Yashiro’s presence loitering outside. When he left, and looked around, he found the other boy sitting on a wall, hunched forwards a little, hair spilling over the top of his face. Hikaru lingered for a second, desperately reluctant to approach, but forced himself forwards.

Yashiro must have noticed him in his periphery because he looked up before Hikaru had quite reached him. For a moment, his expression was open and helpless and utterly lost, looking so very young. The rims of his eyes were red and his cheeks were wet, and the very sight of him sent some complex and sickening emotion surging down Hikaru’s throat. Guilt, maybe. Misery, for certain.

The too-vulnerable expression didn’t last. His face screwed up awfully, in a gesture Hikaru recognised as a futile attempt at self-control, and a couple more tears leaked fitfully from the corners of his eyes. Hikaru wavered where he stood, feeling utterly stricken at the sight of such obvious, unmistakeable distress, and covered the remaining distance if only so he didn’t have to look directly at it any more. He sat heavily on the wall and stared ahead at the quiet street. By some mercy, there wasn’t anyone around, except for the cars that passed carelessly along the road.

He held himself there, horribly tense, with no idea what to say. Yashiro’s breath came in unsteady, wet-sounding gasps, and everything about it was awful to listen to. His unusually expressive soul was by no means helping.

In the end, it was Yashiro who managed to say something first. “You’re dying.” He said, thickly, and the sound of the words out loud forced Hikaru’s eyes closed against the dizzying emotion they provoked. His pulse thrummed shallow and thready against his skin. “That’s what – that’s right, isn’t it? That’s what you were talking about.”

Hikaru’s breath quickened with its own distress, and he couldn’t particularly help it. “…Yeah.” He agreed, voice hoarse, and shuddered at having admitted it. It was horrible. It was awful. It was an unimaginable relief. His shoulders shook and he wasn’t sure which emotion was causing it.

“Fuck.” The word was utterly raw, and when Hikaru opened his eyes to look over there were fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. In some awful reciprocal reaction, he felt his breath hitch again, eyes burning. Yashiro’s mouth opened and failed to speak for several more shuddering, gasping seconds, and that was horrible too. “When did you – how do – when did you find out?” There was a half-numb, half-horrified shock in his voice that was uncomfortably familiar.

Hikaru raised his arm to wipe the first hints of water from his own eyes with his sleeve, trembling all the way. “Not long. A few days ago, maybe.” He croaked, eyes predictably blurry. “Setsu visited me in the hospital and – told me.”

“How does the fox know, though?” Yashiro asked, words increasingly matching the edge of desperation on his soul’s pattern “Could it be wrong? Can’t you – heal the soul stuff, or something?”

“Setsu isn’t wrong.” Hikaru said, hollowly, and felt the edges of his wounds more keenly than ever. “And I can’t heal my soul unless I die. That’s just…” He trailed off. “That’s it.” He finished, more quietly. His cheeks were wet again.

“Thirty years,” Yashiro exhaled, the sound of it like it could have been torn from Hikaru’s own agonised thoughts, and hunched forwards again helplessly, bracing his hands against his knees. His shoulders absolutely shook, and he was crying and wasn’t even trying to pretend otherwise, and Hikaru teetered precariously on the edge of doing the same.

He choked back the threat of a shuddering sob, and held some facsimile of control tight in his gut. His eyes were watering and his shoulders shaking but no more. No more. He couldn’t. Not here – not anywhere – but especially not here. There weren’t even any people around to see, it was just him and Yashiro, but – he couldn’t. His breaths hitched and stuttered as he held himself away from the precipice of collapse, and all the while Yashiro made no such effort whatsoever. He was sobbing and choking on tears, the shape of him shaking with every awful sound, every breath, every second.

He tried at least three times to say something, to try to get some sort of direction back into the pit of absolute misery the two of them had generated between themselves, but every time he opened his mouth felt like it he was issuing an invitation for a calamitous breakdown. So he stopped each time, took in more long, shuddering draughts of cold air, and felt the headache behind his eyes soar more spectacularly with every passing minute. Hikaru breathed and Yashiro cried, and that was all either of them could manage for a horrible, timeless stretch of wordless misery.

It was a long time before Hikaru was able to speak. Eventually, finally, when he was getting so dizzy he wouldn’t have been surprised to pass out, he managed to say “This is…part of why I want to try finding Sai.”

Yashiro lifted his head, face absolutely soaked in tears, and cleared his throat. “Yeah?” He managed, in a particularly miserable voice, and raised his hand to wipe at his face again.

“Sai’s the reason I got injured.” He confessed, finally, something about the tears and the raw distress passing between them that made it possible to speak. “He didn’t mean to. He didn’t know anything about how spirits worked, or souls, or – but he – he did possess me.” Yashiro blinked, some hint of clarity pressing its way through the abject unhappiness. Hikaru trembled and couldn’t stop but did manage to continue. “Not like – not like the demon on Kaminaga. He was just…hanging onto me, I guess. Following me around. He wasn’t hurting me. It’s just – when he disappeared…” He cleared his throat, heart aching, and grounded himself desperately into the too-fast thrum of his blood. “…I guess he took a huge chunk of my soul with him, and that’s how it happened.”

Yashiro’s next breath shook and shuddered, but didn’t give way to a sob. He exhaled. “So what, you’re hoping if you find him again, he can give it back?” He asked, voice raw enough to crack on some of the words, but perfectly understandable.

Hikaru looked up at the sky. It was appropriately grey. “I don’t know. I guess.” He sighed, and for the better part of a minute, they sat there, both of them becoming vaguely more composed. Hikaru’s heartbeat still felt too-fast, but honestly he didn’t blame it. It had barely had any opportunity at all to slow down today.

Yashiro shuffled on the wall and raised a hand to rake his hair back out of his face, expression still distinctly bothered. He didn’t try to say anything, or try to prompt Hikaru to say anything. He just stared ahead, with a kind of overwhelmed numbness that Hikaru intimately recognised.

“Really, I’d do everything I could to find him, even without the…” He cleared his throat twice, because once apparently wasn’t enough. “The dying thing.”

His friend made an odd noise beside him. “The dying thing, Shindou, really. What a way to put it.” He sounded exhausted.

“Well, it’s not wrong.” Hikaru said, and one after the other they coughed out laughs as ugly and humourless as a mouthful of phlegm.

“…Why is it so important to you?” Yashiro asked, after another long pause, and Hikaru didn’t need to ask what he was talking about.

He stared at the grey haze above him. “…He was important.” He said, wearily, once he’d found the words. It was oddly easy to speak them now. As though whatever part of him that usually held back these thoughts had succumbed to exhaustion too. Still, every word hurt. “He was just…so different. And he was my friend. And I was a brat the whole time I knew him. He was Sai. I just…” His thoughts felt hopelessly confused, the words that fell from his mouth just as hopelessly disorganised, but just as honest too. “I just…really fucking miss him.” Hikaru said, finally, and shook all over like a leaf at how starkly, terribly true it was.

“I’m sorry.” Yashiro said, and he really sounded sorry, like he meant it, like he understood how important it was. “That really sucks.”

Hikaru shook again, the tremor passing over his body in another dizzying second. He gasped in another quick breath, shoved down the encroaching wave of grief and tears, and exhaled again. Breathing was a good thing to focus on.

While he was breathing, Yashiro hauled himself steadily to his feet, and then spent a few patient moments pulling his clothing and hair into order. He rubbed heavily at his face with both hands, as though to exorcise the upset the day had held, and sighed.

Then, plainly exhausted, he held out a hand and gestured to him. “I know your hands aren’t exactly working at the moment,” He said. “But give me your arm and I’ll pull you up somehow.”

Hikaru huffed, and didn’t even bother arguing, he held an arm up, and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet by the outstretched wrist. His head swam as he found himself upright again. “Ugh,” He muttered, steadying himself. His pulse was still too damn fast.

“You alright?” Yashiro asked, somehow still finding the energy to worry about him.

“Just dizzy, I’m fine.” He insisted, and nudged Yashiro’s still-present arm in the direction of the road. “Come on. I want to be back home like, now.”

Agreeably, Yashiro did begin walking, and Hikaru stumbled along after him, head aching and swimming as he walked. The November air was too annoyingly cold to be walking in after all that drama, even with a coat on.

They walked for the most part in silence. Yashiro, for his part, seemed extremely thoughtful, his expression and soul both fluctuating between a hundred different hints of feeling. Hikaru was feeling considerably less introspective, because he was completely exhausted, and in a distinctly unpleasant way. He felt liable to pass out as soon as he sat down again, and not metaphorically.

Steadily, as they walked, they receded from the area of Kaminaga’s sprawling, painful influence. It was far less extensive than it had been, now that he had it somewhat in check, but there was something about pain that seemed to ripple out a very long way, even far past where his energy reached. Like blood in the water. Hikaru thought dizzily of sharks, wondering at metaphors, and wondered if the water in this scenario was the spirit layer. It seemed to make some sense, at least.

He shivered in the cold air, and considered the spirit layer. Before Setsu had told him about it, he’d never noticed anything of the sort, but…when he thought about it, how exactly did he detect faraway things like the demon approaching? Or Setsu? A lot of the time he’d felt things coming before his energy was touching theirs, and he’d never really thought about why.

“Fucking spirit layer.” He muttered to himself. “Of course it was.” Things travelled in the spirit layer. Things travelled across the spirit layer. Things like ripples from demons and pain from humans and who-knows what else…

“What?” Yashiro asked, and Hikaru blinked at him and considered the idea that he might have said that out loud.

“Nothing,” He assured, flapping an arm ineffectually to dismiss the inquiry, and felt strangely dizzier for the motion. He shook his head a little, and shivered again.

It occurred to him, suddenly, that his pulse was still weirdly fast. It had never slowed down. That was weird, right? They weren’t walking especially fast. He wasn’t upset anymore. Was it weird?

He swayed a little on the spot and cursed, vision swimming. He encountered what he assumed to be Yashiro’s steadying hand half-way through falling over, and leaned into it, thoughts running in strange and vaguely incoherent loops behind his eyes. “Shindou, you alright?” The voice questioned, and yep, it was Yashiro. He was all worried again.

“Uh.” Hikaru considered it, his pounding headache, and the way the world seemed distinctly less stable than it usually did when there wasn’t an earthquake in progress. “Dizzy?” He suggested, and didn’t attempt to move. He looked up, and Yashiro not only looked concerned, but suddenly very alert.

“Shindou, you actually don’t look that good.” He said, and Hikaru was considering making a quip of some sort when the boy reached out with his other hand to feel his forehead. The hand felt alarmingly cold, and Yashiro hissed. “Shit,” He cursed. “I can’t tell if you’ve got a fever or if my hand is just cold. Hang on.” He pushed his sleeve up, and switching the hand he was holding Hikaru up with, pressed his wrist to Hikaru’s forehead instead. That felt cold as well.

“I’m probably just tired.” Hikaru offered. “Probably.”

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s a fever. Fuck.” He unceremoniously shoved two fingers of his free hand at the un-scarred side of Hikaru’s neck, eliciting a wordless complaint from him, and held them there for a few seconds.

“You could maybe warn me before going for my throat.” He grumbled, but felt himself getting genuinely a bit worried at the seriousness on his friend’s face. “…Um?” He inquired, and Yashiro produced a stressed-sounding huff of air.

“I am a bit worried about your heartbeat too, it’s…a bit fast.” He said, slowly, and stared worriedly at the direction they were meant to be walking in. “How far are we from your house, now?”

“Uh.” Hikaru looked ahead with him. “Not long. Five minutes?”

“…That’s probably fine then.” He said. “Come on.” Supporting Hikaru, he nudged him onwards, and Hikaru walked. It wasn’t as though he were too unsteady to stay upright at all, so that was mostly fine. He shook his head but it didn’t dispel the dizziness. “Seriously, Shindou, after all that today you think we need more drama?” He grumbled, without any real ire.

“What are you so worried about?” Hikaru demanded, a bit more than slightly concerned, and Yashiro shrugged helplessly.

“I’m probably just being over-cautious.” He hedged, urging them onwards a bit more quickly than was comfortable. “You’re probably just getting sick with something. Stress doesn’t help with that. People always get sick when they’re stressed.”

Hikaru glared at him. “Or?”

“Or if you’re really unlucky your infection could be like, getting bad.” Yashiro voiced, deliberately blithe, as though not to tempt the possibility. But.

Hikaru stopped moving. “Oh, shit.” He said, less in a tone of dismay and more in the way someone would say ‘oh, now I remember.’

Yashiro stopped with him, now looking decidedly anxious. “What?”

“Uh.” Hikaru extended his energy, and tried to feel for the presence of any nearby foxes. There were meant to be some around, right? “Well, Setsu did say to call for it if my infection got any worse. So, um. Maybe that’s a problem.”

Yashiro stared at him, then stared into the distance. He exhaled, short and quick. Then, sounding both exhausted and worried in a way Hikaru could entirely relate with, he said “for god’s sake, Shindou.”

“What? It’s not my fault.” He protested, and felt something like movement in the air – the spirit layer – in one area. He followed it.

“Not completely, maybe, but seriously.” Yashiro was rummaging in his pocket for something now – a phone? – but Hikaru was more focused on his own search. “Getting septic is not a good idea, Shindou. Don’t do it.”

Hikaru didn’t exactly know much about sepsis but he could infer that it was, indeed, not a good idea. Finally, his search prevailed upon something that felt both foxy and also decidedly alarmed to be followed by him. Before it could escape he sort of…well, held it down a bit, and he did feel guilty for that, but it got over its fright and calmed after a second, maybe as it recognised him. “I’ll try not to.” He said distractedly, and carefully shaped get Bestows-Obscure-Knowledge quick in his faraway energy.

Yes-agreed-okay, the fox said, a little fretfully, and he let it go. It circled on the spot, soul exuding a half-terrified and half-delighted sort of mood. Will go-searching-fast! It proclaimed, and then shot off extremely quickly. He hoped very hard that it was telling the truth.

“I called a fox.” He said, finally, and closed his eyes. “It’s going to go find Setsu.”

“That’s nice, Shindou.” Yashiro said, and when Hikaru looked at the phone, he could see that he was half way through his contacts list and just getting to Hikaru’s mother. “But just in case the fox doesn’t get here soon, I think we should maybe get you to a hospital.” He pressed a button and held the phone to his ear. It seemed a bit superfluous when they were only minutes from the house, but what did Hikaru know about sepsis? Not much, is what.

He tried not to get too worried, because he was dizzy enough as it was without getting panicked on top of it, and made a disgusted noise. “I literally only just got out of the hospital.” He lamented, apparently to no one, because Yashiro was already on the phone to his mother.

He turned around to stare into the distance, feeling very keenly that getting out of bed that morning had been a truly colossal mistake.

---

End chapter.

Notes: This was, by far, the most difficult chapter I’ve ever written. I have never, ever been fought so hard by a piece of my writing before, and I can guarantee if it wasn’t for all the support and enthusiasm from all of you I just wouldn’t have bothered. This chapter was pain. I hope it hurt you too. If you can muster the energy to give feedback on any chapter, please let it be this one.

Seriously though my acknowledgements list for this chapter is long enough I’ll have to write it up and make a tumblr post for it. Special mentions, though – the new Paper Cranes Discord and its inhabitants, in particular noip13 and Bellachrome. And, notably, Kurohaai, whose art practically gave me life at more than one point and overjoyed me at several more. Also esama, who recommended some soundtracks which half-wrote the chapter.

Chapter specific note: This is the longest Paper Cranes chapter yet, coming in at nearly 20,000 words. The next closest was chapter 19. In my opinion it’s also the emotionally heaviest yet. I wrote the last 6.5k of it in one day, two days ago, and it wrecked me. Trivia: this chapter takes place on 16th November, only one day earlier than today! Albeit fifteen years in the past of a fictional universe.

Disease note: Multiple Sclerosis does not have complex hallucinations as one of its symptoms. In-universe, that’s a characteristic which strongly distinguishes Kaidan’s MS from the other varieties. In general, my reading list for MS and dysautonomia is very long, and I’ve written segments of an in-universe academic paper on KMS as well. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I’ll likely make my reading list public at some point.

Sepsis: sepsis is a life-threatening condition that happens when you get an infection and your body gets disproportionately worried about it. It is emphatically not nice, and generally has a mortality rate starting at 30%. That said, I don’t consider this a particularly important cliffhanger, so don’t be too worried.

If you want to join the Paper Cranes discord, here is the new invite link: https://discord.gg/ZeGECd

This will expire on 18th November 18 at 20.30 GMT-0, but there will be other invite links in the future.

#paper cranes chapters #hikaru no go #shindou hikaru #yashiro kiyoharu #hikago

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