Warning. This chapter contains sensitive content. Read at own discretion.
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One more step along the road, one more step towards his end; only, there was no road.
Tegata Kage took heavy step after heavy step underneath the canopy at dusk. His head bowed in fear or reverence—the shadows made it hard to distinguish—but his shoulders rolled forward all the same. The clouds and the twilight cast solemn glare through layers upon layers of mottled, decaying leaves clinging to their twigs and wilting branches: a coalescence of purple and brown that coloured the mist swirling thick around his ankles. Cruel wind whistled between the trees. The breeze bit at bare, bleeding forearms. Crimson tears stained his hands, oozing and diffusing across the skin until all was raw. He wiped at heavy eyes, leaving smears of red to soak into his cheeks. He took another step, and felt the undergrowth give way like a bog—but he had to keep moving. If he stopped for even a second, then—
“Deny me no longer, or face me as a thrall.”
The chilling whinny in the distance made him freeze. The ground softened underneath him, and his eyes flashed wide.
Run.
Mud splashed up his legs, feet pounding on the cruel earth intent on swallowing him whole. Pitching forward, arms flailing, eyes darting, he had ran faster many a time, but never so desperately. Thickets and roots caught his toes with every other footfall, turning each step into a stumble and recover. All the while, the thunder of hooves grew louder and clearer still.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t let it catch you.
But it would catch him.
A sleek shade darted through the thickets. The trees twisted and warped out of its way. The bony outline was swathed in a dark, leathery, liquid carapace. Four powerful, umbral legs moved in eerie synchronicity, leaving a destitute trail of ink behind. The nightmare’s long face, warped in malice with eyes glowing and piercing, shook itself from side to side and let loose a breathless snort, a cloud of hellfire scorching the night sky.
Faster. Run faster. Don’t let it catch you.
But it would catch him.
There came a point his addled, broken body couldn’t move any faster. Tegata’s breath began to fail, his broken stride began to falter. His legs and lungs were seizing up. The drumbeat of the hooves pounded through his head: louder and louder, faster and faster, until he jerked upright. The rush of blood leaving his head nearly made him pass out again. Tegata inhaled then choked on a mouthful of hair. He spluttered. Ripping it from his gullet, he suppressed the urge to vomit. Rivers of sweat evaporated at the point of exit, a delta running into a volcano, sending tremulous shivers over his skin.
The forest was gone. The mud was gone. The hooves were gone. It was gone.
He curled inwards, and unearthed a choked sob into the duvet.
A flutter of wind lifted the curtain, and a glimmer of first-light illuminated the sickly crimson that had soaked through his bloody sleeves and into the linen. They must have opened up again. Tegata winced, and wrenched himself from his near-tomb. Yet more sweat stuck his shirt to his back, as he teetered across the pitch-black bedroom and stumbled into the ensuite. Ripping the shirt up over his head, he stuffed the bloody fabric into his mouth and jammed both forearms under the cold tap. It was only for a moment, but a river of red flowed down the drain. Seizing some tissues, he gingerly pat the forearms dry.
He couldn’t bare to look, but forced himself nonetheless. Tegata raised both arms above, his mouth hanging slightly open as he exalted the harsh light. Fresh red bubbled in the slits the metal had torn. It was his punishment, after all. His reminder. Old scars mourned the rending of fresh skin, clean cuts in diagonal patterns like an inmate scratching days into the walls of his cell. The alcohol wipes and sutures brought with them fresh agony, but he had no choice. If he just left it, everyone else would know. After fifteen minutes of careful attendance, any strength in his shaking legs had since evaporated. Tegata lay back against the wall, both arms flopped out to his sides, all trace of his sin hidden beneath layers of bandage. Heavy diaphragmatic breathing wracked his chest, along with several attempted dry heaves.
This could not go on.
He’d been in bed for four days now, practically comatose. His eyes hadn’t had the strength to see, let alone his limbs the strength to move. Yet, he had somehow found his way back to that razor. The pain helped, in some cruel way. It helped offset the null. No sense, no taste, no sight. All that could get through to him now was this. He had been careful so far, only doing it in places he could control, where no-one could see, but he’d become too fervent, too careless. Now, his bedclothes were stained. If he didn’t do anything about it, everyone would know, and he would have yet more to answer for in Hell.
This could not go on.
It had gone well beyond the point of battle recovery. That accursed tick, tick, ticking in his chest meant his life had never been in any danger. The surgeons at the hospital had patched him up extremely well, and his experience with this kind of physical trauma meant his recovery was second to none. He had endured worse in the cells. To anyone else, the knife wounds would have been fatal. His vow, however, incarnated into cold metal pulsing in his chest, didn’t let him go so easily. The others had brought him food, let him rest. In an attempt at courtesy, Rin had moved out of the bedroom to give him space, but Tegata knew the true reason. Rin surely couldn’t stand the sight of him like this, but that was good. That was how it should be.
Keep going, Rin. Go far away. Shine with the others. Please laugh and cry and move forward without me. Don’t let me leech from your dream any longer.
Tegata rose from the floor. He bundled up the bloodied shirt and left the bathroom behind. Stripping the sheets from his bed in swift order, he dressed in thick clothing, cargo trousers and a woollen jumper with sleeves. Just as light crept through the shutters and blinds, an oblivious sun rising beyond the horizon of these freezing Chiba suburbs, Tegata crept in complete silence to hand-wash the sin out of Granny’s kindness.
He’d take care of this problem, his drain on all their lives, permanently.
* * *
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One of the perks of designing the house where you and your companions—brought together by sheer chance—would eventually live, was always knowing the best spots to sleep.
Rinkaku Harigane had never been able to sleep in the same place for too long. He would often fall asleep at one end of the bed, and wake up slinked halfway down the stairs with a discarded curtain draped over him. Once, Rin had fallen asleep at his desk, pen in hand, and had woken up at noon the next day, halfway through the lunch period, with absolutely zero recollection of any event in the lapsed time. They were letting almost anything be an Olympic Sport nowadays: if he didn’t currently have a psychotic supernatural cult organisation after his head, he might bothered to submit “sleepwalking” to whichever board of bureaucrats would listen.
After Tegata came home from the hospital, Rin had thought it best to leave him undisturbed. Fortunately, he had just enough self-awareness to know that his erratic sleeping patterns and habits weren’t conducive to any kind of patient in recovery, and so had willingly taken his pillowfort and migrated to the airing cupboard on the third floor landing. He had purposefully positioned the cupboard right above the central boiler, such that one always had a blissful flow of warm air from underneath. The cupboard was usually used for drying clothes, wet coats and such, but those had all been shunted to one side to allow Rin, the de facto man of the house (he had designed the damn thing, for heaven’s sake) free real estate to cose in blanketed luxury. Morning had broken a while ago which, according to his disrupted circadian rhythms, meant it was prime time to go back to sleep for another few hours—or at least until someone dragged him out of bed.
“Wake up!”
The rapid pounding on the closet door gave him just enough pause to recognise the voice, before the door was yanked wide open. A rush of cold air made him squirm.
“Rin, wake up!”
A pair of small, swift hands closed around his shoulders with surprising force. They wrenched him from his fortress of ultimate comfort, and into the day without his consent. With a soft groan, Rin shielded his eyes from the blinding lights with the back of one hand.
“Yeah, hi. Good morning. Nice to see you too. Yeah, I slept well, thanks. How are you—” The boy mumbled a string of blurred pleasantries, eyes flitting just barely.
Juusei Kanon yelled in his face at top volume, “Tegata’s gone!”
“What.”
“He’s gone missing! I can’t find him anywhere!” She had pulled him so close, fists clenched so deep into his nightshirt, their faces were inches apart. Hot tears from the girl’s eyes splashed onto Rin’s cheeks as she let out little hiccup-y sobs. He recoiled at the sensation, breaking free from her grip and tumbling to the floor. Juusei clutched both hands over her chest, her black bob messy, heavy black eyeliner from her and Kinuka’s late night experiments smudged into blotchy cheeks.
Rin sighed and pinched his nose. What the hell? None of them had heard a peep from the guy since his return. They’d offered food, and come to collect it when it had gone cold. He still had a pulse—they had made sure of that much—but it was difficult to know how much space the guy needed.
Fretting, Juusei wrung her hands. “You don’t think JPRO could have—”
“No. They don’t know about this place—” or so he hoped. Rin knew what it felt like to want to be left alone—or had thought as much. He had been the one to suggest they give him space, to not overcrowd the boy as he recovered. His stomach dropped through the floor, as his mind went to the worst places possible. It would have been his fault, if—
“An hour ago, I went to see if he wanted something to eat, but he didn’t answer! I checked all over the house, but no sign of him. I knocked again, and went into his room, but it was empty!” She warbled. “I’ve checked up stairs, I’ve checked downstairs. He’s absolutely nowhere! Come on, come see!” She bleated, tugging on his shirt.
Sure enough, there was no pale hide nor pink hair of him anywhere. His bed was freshly made, clean sheets with hospital corners. The alarm bells grew louder. Having whipped the boy up into her frenzy, he and Juusei barrelled back down the stairs towards the girls’ room, nearly caving the door in with their bullet-train approach.
The inside of the room had been peaceful. Kinuka was preoccupied fixing her cuffs and hair in the mirror of the dresser; Ruri preened the nemophilia flowers on the windowsill. Both started at the sudden entrance, and caught the anxious vibe immediately. Neither had the slightest clue. Soon enough, all four teenagers were ripping apart the upper floors of the house and crying his name with increasing desperation. Trying to locate psychic signatures in this place with “House Rules” suppressing their powers was a fruitless exercise.
They met back up on the landing, sharing horrified expressions.
“Anything?”
Three resounding negatives only mounted dread. All were at a frantic loss, and were on the cusp of moving into further desperate action, until the most delicious smell wafted up from downstairs and froze them in their tracks. The angry clatter of an old woman’s shoes mounted the staircase. Primordial fear ran down their spines.
“What are you all stampeding around for?” Granny’s reprimand was swift and sharp. All four winced and yelped in pain, as their arms twisted and locked behind their backs, forcing them to their knees. “If I wanted to have a bunch of monkeys running around in my house, I would have had Rinkaku build me a zoo!”
“But, Granny!” Juusei protested, but yelped as her bindings tightened.
“No buts, silly girl! If you have enough energy to be horsing around at such an early hour, you jolly well have the energy to come downstairs and eat some of the delicious breakfast that he’s made for you. After that, I have a long list of cleaning that needs—”
Kinuka’s jaw dropped— “He?”
Sleepwalking didn’t need to be an Olympic sport anymore. All four of them would have tied for gold in the “fastest down a flight of stairs, nearly knocking over an old woman in the process” competition. They followed their noses to the kitchen, where the infamous pink dark boy was frying up a storm over the gas stove. Delicious smoke hung in clouds around his flushed face, as he frantically flipped sizzling greens in a wok the size of a television satellite.
“Tegata!”
Rin seized Juusei by the collar just in time to stop her from bowling the boy over and potentially ruining part of their breakfast.
The boy turned away from his cooking, wiping his brow. “Good morning, everyone!” His cheery voice was laced with tin. His pupils were large, nearly eclipsing his irises. Normally burning yellow, they had faded somewhat. Shadows hung heavy about his eyes, the edges blurring. He looked through all of them.
Rin reached out a hand. “Hey, you’re—” Looking well? He wasn’t exactly. “Are you alright now?” He was about to step closer, but a warning flashed in the boy’s eyes. Rin froze.
“Apologies if my racket in the kitchen woke you all up.” Tegata cupped a sheepish hand behind his neck, taut cheeks yanking his mouth into a statuesque smile. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d pay you all back for being so kind and looking after me these past few days. I’m not very experienced in the kitchen, but I did my best.” He cast a glance around at the cavalcade of dishes strewn wildly across the countertop. You could give him a prize for effort, but not presentation.
“Idiot! Where were you earlier?!” Juusei cried. “I was so worried. I looked everywhere!”
“Sorry,” he chuckled, an alien noise without a hint of timbre, “I was taking out the bins.”
Juusei burst into tears and buried her face in Kinuka’s chest. The older girl cupped her head with one hand and stroked softly to soothe, guiding her out of the way to give everyone a little more space.
“For someone who has so narrowly escaped death so recently,” Granny commented from her position at head of the table, “Tegata has been remarkably industrious, and put the lot of you to shame.” She clapped her hands, commanding the full attention of the room. “Now, everyone, please sit down before I make you. I have a full programme in mind, so let’s start off today on the right note!”
A cumulative sigh settled on the floor like spring dust. Hopefully they wouldn’t need to sweep that up as well.