Strewn on the ground was someone he’d never thought he would see again. A Youkai. His friend. Shocked as he was, Reinhardt approached her and, after taking her pulse, picked her up.

“Mark, she was being eaten by the leech. If we hadn’t expelled it when we had she might have…”

“Died?!”

“Yes, and I think she was the one that attached herself to you. She probably knew that you would save her. Anyways, we need to get her somewhere safe. The inn?”

“Of course, let’s go.”

Somehow Reinhardt hadn’t brought more than his return portal with hi, so they were forced to jog back to the inn. When they arrived, only Mitch and Elaine were in sight. It seemed that Oku was asleep upstairs, Lawrence had a late class and Hato was flying around outside. They didn’t seem to know where Inari was either, but they laid Koko out on the couch.

“Where the heck you find her?”

Reinhardt wiped his sweaty brow and accepted a drink from Elaine as he responded.

“She’s the one. One Mark thought killed his parents.”

As Mark attended to her with Elaine, the two men talked.

“So she’s the reason that he…”

“Yeah, been scared shitless of em all this time. Because of her.”

“Well can you really blame him, a young man walking in his house to see a blood covered friend of his standing over the bodies of his parents. We both would have thought the same thing as he did.”

“Of course, I don’t doubt that at all. I’m just saying that he may finally be able to get some closure on it now that we’ve found her.”

He gestured towards the weak Youkai with his cup as he finished his sentence. Elaine was putting a cool cloth on her forehead, telling Mark to get something cool to drink should she wake up soon. Reinhardt hadn’t noticed this before but she wasn’t wearing traditional Youkai clothing. It seemed like Youkai normally wore Eastern clothing, whereas this one simply wore a loose fitting white t-shirt and dirty ripped jeans. Her long light brown hair was tied back with who know’s what, and she had a fraying cloth bracelet on one wrist. She looked like a homeless woman.

Reinhardt took another swig from the cup. Homeless wasn’t far from the truth.

“Will she be ok Elaine?”

“I think she’ll be fine Mark, just as long as we give her space and make sure she says healthy.”

Reinhardt chimed in once again.

“Her spiritual energy was vastly depleted from the leecher. It might take a few days before she regains enough to even wake up. I wouldn’t be worried though, Youkai are very resilient.”

“Are you sure uncle?”

“Hmm? Suddenly care about Youkai now?”

“Of course not. I simply never heard… I never heard her side of the story.”

“Bwahaha, that’s the same as caring though isn’t it? Hmm, perhaps somewhere deep down you would love to be an exorcist…”

“Gah, get out of here old man!”

Reinhardt laughed jollily and gave the cup back to a smiling Mitch.

“Alright alright, you’ve convinced me. I need to get back to Byzanague anyways, this was a bit of an unscheduled trip. If you need anything you always have my number Mark!”

Reinhardt gave a mock salute with one hand and ducked through the portal which he had opened up at the counter. A few seconds later and Mark was left with an unconscious Youkai woman and his foster parents. What a developement.

Elaine was first to break the awkward silence.

“So, your uncle mentioned that you know her? Who is she?”

“Just… an old friend.”

Mitch gulped down a beer in a few tips of the can, responding to Elaine.

“She’s that one that the boy thought killed his parents!”

“She is?!”

“Mitch how the hell did you know that!”

“Reinhardt just told me.”

Mark put his fingers to the corners of his eyes. That was likely the reason that Reinhardt had wanted to escape so quickly. He’d known he would get quite the earful from Mark if he’d been allowed to stay. Damn him… Back to the more pressing matter at hand.

“At least the old man told us she would be fine in a day or two.”

“Yep! And we definitely need the help around here with Seph gone and Koichi moved out.”

“Koichi actually moved out?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“He said he’d be back, but he’s got a lot to attend to after all that just happened. The place he worked for was put in dire straights after what they’d pulled or something.”

“I see…”

Koichi’s Defense Force team had been instrumental in getting everything set up for the case, and that had surely taken a lot of their time, not to mention a lot of the government’s trust in them. They’d basically gone against the king’s agenda, even if what they were doing could be soon as digging for justice. It was a dangerous thing to do.

Mitch began chugging another beer.

“She can stay in his room then!”

This snapped Mark out of his thoughts.

“What? You don’t even know her name, never even heard her speak and you want to hire her? Give her a place to live?”

Elaine smiled at him.

“Oh Mark, you’ve already given us a stunning review of her!”

“How so?!”

“Anyone that you come running here with on your back this late is pretty damn special in my opinion. Not to mention the constant care and worry you’ve been expressing this entire time.”

“I haven’t…”

Mitch shrugged.

“Sounds like a damn good review to me. Elaine, did you see to that one guest? Mr. Pratchett?”

“Ah, yes I did. I made a nice seafood platter for him.”

“Thank you, just making sure.”

“Are you two ignoring me?!”

Both looked to him with half smiles.

“Of course not m’boy, we simply aren’t worried!”

“With a strange person in your house?”

“Mark dear, we trust you. If you trust her so do we. I think it’s about time we all went to bed though, we can fret about her in the morning, alright?”

Mark looked from Mitch to Elaine, dumbfounded. They trusted him that blindly? They did have a point however, it was getting late, and no matter how he felt she wasn’t going to wake up for quite a while. It would be better to just wait until she did. There was no use in wasting time arguing while she was knocked out.

“Alright… we can discuss this in the morning. Just make sure she doesn’t wake up and escape.”

Mitch held up his third beer, half empty.

“Of course!”

A rock solid promise from a half drunk man.

The next morning Mark ran downstairs as soon as he had woken up. Unsurprisingly, this was no fantastical morning, and she was still asleep as expected. Sighing, he went back up and began to get ready for his morning class. Luckily it was one of his shorter days, and his job was here. He could keep a fairly close eye on her if he wanted to. His class was economics and thankfully the boring professor chose to talk about production today, something he was vaguely interested in. Even though economics wasn’t his favorite class, he did enjoy when the professor talked about the production community, the factories and businesses that created goods for the consumer. It was better than consumer habits by a landslide.

After the moderately interesting class had finally ended he bundled up his jacket and quickly bought a bite to eat at the place Lawrence had used to work at. Of course Lawrence had quit for the job at the inn, but he couldn't deny that he did like their food. Burritos… They certainly had their moments. After downing a fairly stuffed burrito he headed back towards the inn. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he was in a pretty solid mood. Mark did not want to attribute any of that feeling to his rediscovery of his childhood friend, but some part of him knew it was true. He didn’t mind admitting it to himself at least. He hadn’t seen Koko in so long. Honestly, he’d thought that that terrible day at his apartment would be the last time he would ever see her, and it almost was. As Reinhardt had said, any later and the leecher may have killed her. Fate or luck? It was certainly strange.

In a few short minutes one of the many circuit busses that helped students get to and from campus had dropped him around a two minute walk away from the inn. One of the many perks about the college was the bus routes, they were stunningly good. Not only that, but they were free and the inn was almost right next to one. No getting up an hour early for a bus you had to walk twenty minutes to!

Suddenly another thought hit him.

“I don’t live alone…”

Oku, Hato, Inari and Lawrence… all of them more than able to ask him stupid questions about the girl on the couch… He was in for a lot. Almost walking away from the door, he was caught by Hato as she alighted on the ground next to him.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Oh, hi Hato. Me? Nothing, just going home!”

“You were walking away from it though…”

“Not at all, I just thought I saw something over there, but it’s gone now.”

“Oh, alright… by the way, what’s with the girl on the couch?”

Damn that was faster than he’d thought.

“She’s a Youkai that was almost killed by a shadow leecher. She’s just resting and should be back on her feet soon.”

“Oh, ok! Wait, did you help her out?”

“Is that so strange?”

Hato just whistled and walked into the inn section. Though it was all technically the inn, there was a section of the inn which was the employee area, where they all lived. They called the inn section the inn, and the employee section the house.

“Your lack of response irritates me.”

He heard a giggle, but no response followed, leading him to sigh and throw his bag on the counter. He didn’t ask for much, just respect and a bit of motivation from his friends. Otherwise he’d fall into the depths of cynicism. Sadly, the more he envisioned his friends making fun of these most recent developments the easier he could see himself falling into the depths of despair. It would be their fault after all.

Sighing, he glanced at the couch. Elaine had just changed the cloth, as it seemed, so Mark did little more than glance as he passed by. Nothing had changed from yesterday.

“So who is she?”

“Lawrence!”

“Did I startle you?”

“Not at all, who?”

“The girl there. According to Mitch you know her, right?”

“Well… from a while back yeah. But not anymore.”

“Ohhh, a bit of a romantic interest then?”

“Shut it Lawrence.”

The hole of despair grew wider until an angel came to save him.

“Lawrence, are you talking to Mark to get out of work again?”

“What? Elaine I wouldn’t do that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, c’mon.”

Elaine, winking at him, took Lawrence by the collar and led him into the inn section, carrying a bucket and some rags in the other hand. Mark smiled after them, they did work there after all, and it was a real inn. They couldn’t just expect to work whenever they wanted to. Mark walked upstairs to ready himself for his shift, which started in an hour. He wanted to take a shower after the daily work. Even though he’d only had one class today the weight of homework on his shoulders would take at least two hours after work, and he wanted to relax a bit before then. After his shower he put on the white employee clothing Mitch had given him. Spinning slowly in his chair, he looked at the ceiling. What was he going to say to her when she woke up… Would he be that romcom character that says something cliche like, “I’m sorry.”

No no, he wouldn’t stoop down to that level. He’d be himself, calm and collected. Just say whatever came to his mind, better yet, he would wait for her to say something and continue the conversation off of that. Now that he was skilled at.