Tokyo Demons Book 1: Chapter 8

The hospital smelled like disinfectant. It was tinged with the earthy scent of body fluids and a faint hint of death.

Jo had heard, long ago, that smells tapped into memory stronger than any other sense. He’d learned the same thing himself–it was half of the reason he smoked. The constant swirl of burning tobacco kept long-lost evenings in a living room alive in his mind. It was subconscious at that point.

But he re-learned that truth when he stepped out of the hospital elevator. The ICU was crowded yet quiet; formal voices and the beeps and whirrs of machinery filled the heavy air. The smell, subtle as it was, hit Jo like a battering ram. He stood dumbly for a minute, the elevator closing with a quiet chime behind him. His eyes flicked to the nearest room. The curtains pulled back to show an unconscious, intubated elderly man lying in a bed behind the glass. A middle-aged woman held his hand, sobbing as he lay motionless.

Jo was twelve years old again.

“Young man?”

Jo blinked. A nurse leaned over the check-in desk, a frown on her face.

Jo swallowed and dragged his mind back to the present. He jogged over to the desk, absently smoothing down his hair as he did so.

“I-I’m a visitor,” he said. “I’m here for Ban Kobayashi, Room 1809.”

The woman flipped through a notebook before her. “Are you family?” she asked.

“A friend.”

She frowned again. “He’s getting too much traffic in his room, especially considering the police investigation. We’re not allowing any more friends to see him.”

Jo paused. “Is someone already in there?” he offered.

“I’m not allowed to say. If you come again tomorrow–”

“Are you a friend of Ban-chan’s?”

Jo turned. A male nurse, barely Jo’s height and noticeably pale, clutched a clipboard against his chest. There was a softness to his features that smoothed out the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth.

Ban-chan?

Jo bowed. When he looked up, his eyes instinctively zeroed in on the ID badge around the man’s neck. Akimitsu Kobayashi.

“Yes,” Jo said formally. “I meant to see him sooner. I’m very sorry about what happened–you have my sympathy.”

The man smiled weakly. “You’re so polite,” he murmured. “Most of Ban-chan’s friends are…a bit rough.”

“Are they?” Jo asked innocently.

The nurse leaned over her desk again. “Kobayashi-san,” she called. “The Team Leader said Ban-kun shouldn’t have any more friends in today.”

“It’s all right. He’ll be the last.” Kobayashi gestured to a room down the hall. “Second door on your right. Sign in first; we need to keep visitation records because of the investigation.”

Jo hesitated. The check-in nurse turned around one of her notebooks and handed Jo a pen.

After everything that had happened, publicly recording his wherabouts seemed about as safe as eating nails. Jo signed in with the name that matched the fake I.D. in his wallet. He even flashed the I.D. at the nurse, albeit quickly.

The nurse seemed satisfied. Jo hurried over to the room before she could change her mind. He slid the door open.

An unmoving man with a shaved head lay in the bed, buried under so many tubes and bandages that Jo could only assume it was Ban. In a chair beside the bed, a cross-legged boy in patient robes, his own face heavily bandaged, tapped on a PDA clutched in a cast-encased hand.

“About fucking time.” Miki didn’t look up from his tapping. “Get in here and close the door. I’m commando under this thing and my nuts are freezing.”

Jo stepped inside and slid the door closed. He wanted to tell Miki to not sit cross-legged in his robe, but that would make Jo think about it, which made Jo want to bleach his brain.

Jo looked up at Ban’s beeping monitor. He wasn’t sure how to read the multicolored numbers and ominous blips.

“How bad is he?” Jo finally asked.

Miki tapped on his PDA. “Bad. If he ever wakes up, he’ll be lucky to wipe his own ass again.”

Jo said nothing. He clenched and unclenched his hands a few times.

Miki looked up. He raised his uncovered eyebrow as he placed his PDA on a table.

“For someone who got off with a few scrapes,” he murmured, “you look like shit, Oda.”

Jo absently smoothed down his hair again. He knew he was losing it. He could feel it. A tidal wave of panic threatened to consume him, held back by the barest floodgate constructed from sheer nerve. One of Jo’s greatest talents was hiding his fear, but even that was faltering. It was all too much–even for him.

And being in a hospital was making it worse. It was making him remember.

“Oda?”

Jo pushed down the bile that rose in his throat.

“I feel like shit,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I got more than a few scrapes.” He let his eyes trail over Miki, trying to form a coherent thought. “What about you?”

Miki stood from his chair, stretching out his skinny arms. “I didn’t break any ribs this time, at least. Those always feel like someone’s trying to fuck me in the chest cavity with a knife.” He held up the hand in a cast. “Two broken fingers, concussion, lost a few teeth. And this.” He angrily pointed to his left eye, caked heavily with bandages and tape. “Not that I’m surprised, but I’ll never see out of it again.”

Jo paused. “Did they do that one on purpose?”

“Of course they did. They were trying to get me to talk.” Miki angrily let out a breath. “Not that I had anything to tell. But they were following the Fuckwad’s Handbook for torture, so one of the first things they did was pop my eye. It usually gets the ball rolling.”

Jo’s stomach turned. Miki checked a wall clock before grabbing a small pill bottle from the table.

“Finally. It’s starting to feel like someone’s pissing fire into my eye socket again.” He popped the bottle open and shook a few pills into his mouth. He crunched them slowly, a grimace pulling his mouth.

“So,” he muttered as he grabbed an onigiri from the table. “Where’re you hiding out now?”

Jo averted his eyes. “It’s probably better if you don’t know.”

Miki grunted as he bit into the rice ball.

“What about you? How long are you planning to stay here?”

Miki grunted again, angrier this time. “The pigs won’t let me out of their sight. That Nakajima lady got me out of custody, but they threatened to strap me down if I try to leave the hospital. Besides, we lost four guys last night–and we’ll probably lose more, like Ban. This place is swarming with freaked-out parents looking for someone to bitch at.”

Jo stopped at that. “You’re dealing with parents?” he asked, bewildered at the mental image.

“Yes, I’m dealing with parents. Half our members are in high school and talk about me at home. I told you Byakko’s more like a frat than a gang these days.” Miki angrily bit into his onigiri. “These Baby Boomers think I’m a fucking youth counselor or something. And Kobayashi’s making it worse, since I crashed on his couch a few times in middle school and he thinks that makes me his stepson or some shit. He keeps corralling parents in here because he thinks I can make them feel better!”

Kobayashi. “The male nurse,” Jo clarified.

Miki swallowed a mouthful of rice. “Ban and Takeshi’s dad,” he said as he ran the back of a hand over his mouth. “And he doesn’t know where Takeshi is, before you ask. Not that I’m surprised–he’s the most oblivious fucker I’ve ever met.”

The details of the conversation were starting to make Jo self-conscious. He checked to make sure the door was shut.

“I need to…ask you something,” Jo said carefully. “In private.”

Miki shrugged. “You can’t,” he said simply. “The nurses can listen in and there are cameras and monitors everywhere. I don’t consider anywhere in this place private.”

Jo swallowed. “Can we go somewhere else?”

“Are you deaf? I already told you I can’t leave.”

Jo’s heart started to thud in his chest. This wasn’t going to work. He’d felt a faint thread of hope when he’d seen Miki was free, but it was becoming more and more obvious that Miki couldn’t help him. Miki was at arms-length yet felt a thousand kilometers away.

Jo couldn’t ask him about Touya.

A high-pitched argument from outside broke Jo’s thoughts. It sounded like the nurses…but one of the voices seemed familiar. He pulled back the curtain on Ban’s window.

Mitsuko Hoshino was at the nurse’s station, complaining loudly at the check-in woman.

For a long moment, Jo just stared at her. Some sort of slight, tantalizing relief teased at the knots in Jo’s stomach. He’d nearly forgotten she existed in the testosterone-soaked hell he’d fallen into. Even in the unflattering glare of the ICU lights, her bleached hair looked like spun gold.

Miki poked his head around Jo. Sudden interest lit up his scowling face.

“Mitsuko,” he blurted. He slid open the door and ran outside. Mitsuko seemed to notice Miki mid-snap; she dropped her argument abruptly and ran to meet him. She threw her arms around the slight boy while the nurses yelled in their direction.

The sight drained a bit more tension out of Jo. The hospital staff pushed Mitsuko and Miki off into a hallway out of the ICU. Jo took a breath, forced his muscles to unclench, and left Ban’s room.

There was a waiting room down the hall. It was strangely empty, populated with old magazines, a water cooler, and a small TV parked high up in the ceiling corner. When Jo stepped inside, he saw Mitsuko still clutching Miki, his face disappearing into the swell of her chest.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she breathed into his hair. “Do you hear me? I hate you, you little prick!”

Miki murmured something, but Jo couldn’t hear it. Mitsuko squeezed him tighter.

It was…strangely intimate. Jo suddenly felt awkward; unexpected disappointment dropped his stomach.

Miki turned his face from Mitsuko’s breasts. He seemed to notice Jo in the doorway. His face twisted into a scowl as he slid a hand up to Mitsuko’s ass.

Mitsuko slapped his hand away. “Oi,” she reprimanded.

Jo cleared his throat. Mitsuko craned her head around and lit up.

“Jo!”

To Jo’s surprise, Mitsuko released Miki. She ran over to Jo and hugged him just as tightly.

“Miki said you were hiding out!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?!”

For a few seconds, Jo just stood there, the physical contact throwing him into more confusion. Her arms wrapped around his neck, burying his face in golden hair and sending nails to gently scrape down his shoulder blades.

She was warm. The floral scent of her perfumed hair overpowered the stink of the hospital. Breasts crushed unabashedly against his chest, and Jo could feel the heat of her skin through her thin blouse.

Jo couldn’t process. Some part of him screamed to never leave those arms.

Mitsuko pulled back, her fingers still clasped behind his shoulders. “Jo?” she asked again.

Jo forced himself through the haze in his mind. “I…wanted to check on Ban,” he croaked.

She frowned at him. Her dark eyes bore into his own.

Don’t, he pleaded silently. Don’t distract me, I’m begging you.

“Did you talk to the twins?”

Miki’s dry question broke the tension. Mitsuko released Jo and turned back to him.

“Yeah,” she replied. “They’re telling everyone to stay away from Kiseki. Did you decide on a back-up meeting place yet?”

Miki sighed and fell back into a chair. “No,” he muttered. “That shitty office basement from back in the day was demolished a few months ago.”

“Then what about that old karaoke place in Ikebukuro?”

The conversation faded into white noise in Jo’s ears. His eyes absently ran to the TV, where a colorful commercial for donuts lit up the screen.

The woman in the commercial looked so happy. That kind of happiness, that sort of simple pleasure felt so…foreign to Jo now. Like being relieved to see Miki. Like appreciating the warmth of Mitsuko’s touch.

Jo had been pulled out of his life, left to hang in desperate limbo until he made a choice. A gloved hand dangled him over the abyss.

Jo closed his eyes.

“Touya only came to ask about Kiyoshi? That’s the only way you know him?”

Jo didn’t have any qualms about lying to Nick. Jo needed time to think, and Nick was an asshole. But…Kiyoshi had been there. And Sachi–who was annoying, admittedly, but was trying to keep everyone safe. Jo had taken a hard line with Sachi after learning about his psychic power; he didn’t want Sachi in his personal space, let alone in his emotional space. Sachi had promised to stop touching him and had stuck to that…which meant Jo could still lie.

Jo had never, even in his darkest moments, planned to screw those guys over. Duck out of their problems, sure–but not work against them. Lying to them about Touya was dangerously close. If Touya was involved with Core, that gave Jo a direct channel to the people who had kidnapped Kiyoshi. Nobody at the church knew what Jo knew. They were hiding out from Core, piecing together the little information they had, while Jo sat on an invitation from the son of Core’s leader.

Jo still had no clue why Touya was so interested in him. And since Touya had freed Kiyoshi for Jo, Jo was desperately grasping to the idea that his connection to Touya was a good thing. Maybe Touya was trying to take down Core from the inside? Hadn’t he mentioned something about that? How the people at the church weren’t the only ones trying to “take Core down”?

No matter how thoroughly Jo searched his memory, he couldn’t remember Touya being specific enough. He’d promised to protect Jo, but never gone into detail. He’d never mentioned Core by name. He’d never said he was trying to take down “those people.”

All of Touya’s promises had been achingly vague. And the way he’d spoken them felt like veiled threats.

Jo had the terrible feeling he was being recruited for Core. If they sometimes kidnapped recruits, then Touya’s menacing gentleness made sense. Touya could protect Jo from the enemy if Jo became the enemy.

Jo rubbed his throbbing temples. If it were as simple as that, Jo knew the answer–he would sooner leave Japan than join a group of juiced-up psychopaths. His morals definitely weren’t selective enough to let him join murderers.

But the answer wasn’t that simple. He didn’t know what side Touya was on. If Touya wanted Jo to join Core to help him destroy it, Jo could be a huge asset to everyone’s future safety–including his own. But even if that were the case, Jo didn’t know if he could handle a mission that dangerous. Yet Touya and Core were also the biggest threats against Jo, so in some ways, joining them was simulataneously more dangerous and safer than ignoring them…

Jo swallowed hard. There were too many unknowns. And the stakes, no matter what decision he made, were perilously high.

“Jo?” he heard Mitsuko ask from behind him. “Are you okay?”

Jo opened his eyes but couldn’t answer. The television station had led into a newscast at some point. Jo fell out of his thoughts as an image of Kiseki surrounded by police tape appeared on the screen.

“…local bar has left four dead and at least eight wounded, including two men under twenty who are in critical condition. Police are attributing the violence to gang warfare, a comparative rarity after the city-wide gang crackdown in 2000.” Four photos filled the screen. “Those killed by the violence have been identified as–”

Jo froze. The world suddenly fell out from under his feet.

“…”

Jo opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He just stared dumbly at the screen.

Jo had never asked. Of all the questions he’d had for Miki that day, he’d been so terrified, so focused on Touya that he’d forgotten the most basic question. The most human question, fuck it all.

Who died?

Jo covered his mouth. Afraid he would be sick, Jo stumbled out of the room, barely registering that Mitsuko called after him. He practically fell into the elevator. After cramming the button for the lobby, he backed into the corner, crouching near the floor as his knees turned to jelly. He sucked in breaths as he squeezed shut his eyes.

One of the four televised photos had been of Kenta. But another, burned into Jo’s mind, was of Seiya and his crooked smile.

****************

Ayase waited in the kitchen. There was a part of her that wanted to follow Sachi into the sick room, but she knew, logically, that a crowd would be unwelcome there. So she slumped in a chair and waited. Nakajima gathered her things to leave, to Ayase’s relief.

“Priest-san,” the older woman said as she rifled through a backpack. “When are you expecting soldier-san to return?”

Daniel shrugged as he filled a teakettle. “He went back to his girlfriend’s lab,” he explained. “He thinks it would be safer to spend some time away from here.”

Nakajima smiled thinly. “Safer for you? Or safer for him?”

“Probably both. Before Kiyoshi-kun was taken, he barely set foot in the church.” Daniel turned on the stove burner. “He’s worried about being seen here. And we need to be much more careful of that now, considering Touya mentioned us…we may be under surveillance.”

Ayase frowned. No one had mentioned Nick leaving.

“Agreed.” Nakajima pulled a radio out of her bag and checked its battery. “But the little prince thinks the church may be safer than you think. Has he explained that theory to you?”

Kiyoshi looked up from fiddling with a bandage. “Prince?” he repeated.

Daniel waved off the question. “Zayd,” he explained absently. “He’s technically part of the Saudi royal family. And no, he hasn’t spoken to me about that.”

Ayase blinked. Nakajima seemed to notice the look on her face, because she smiled icily.

“For a central member of this team,” she said darkly, “I’m surprised you don’t know who’s financing you.”

Ayase felt her hackles rise. Daniel quickly interjected.

“We didn’t want to burden the children with too much information,” he explained. “And as for being a ‘team,’ we didn’t want to have that talk until we regained Kiyoshi-kun. We haven’t given the children their options yet.”

Nakajima zipped up her backpack. “Then have your talk,” she said flatly. “We can’t move forward until we evaluate our assets.” She slid her arms through her backpack straps.

“By the way,” she added. “I may be able to help soldier-san and his lab. I made a phone call to an old contact last night. I can’t guarantee he’ll come through, but if he does…call me.”

“What contact?” Daniel asked.

“You’ve never met him, but I told him to find you. He should be able to answer your question on the street gang’s involvement in all this.” Nakajima glanced at Kiyoshi. “Your friend Oda-kun may be interested to know that. He was at Kiseki, after all.”

Kiyoshi sat up. “Yeah,” he said, hope nipping at the edges of his voice. “Yeah, I think Jo would feel better if…he knew what happened there. So somebody’s coming?”

“Hopefully.”

Before Nakajima could leave, Zayd suddenly emerged from the hallway in front of her, using an arm to steady the foreign bodyguard Jo had brought the day before. Zayd nodded at Nakajima as he led the man to the kitchen table.

“Adam!” Daniel exclaimed as he rushed to Zayd’s side. “How are you feeling? Let me help you!”

Zayd murmured something to Adam as he let Daniel take over. Nakajima caught Zayd’s eye and gestured to the hallway.

“Two minutes?” she asked.

Zayd let out a breath. “Adam needs fluids,” he told Daniel. “Prefeably soup, to bring up his blood pressure.” He nodded politely to Ayase and Kiyoshi before following Nakajima into the hallway.

The teakettle started to whistle. Daniel pulled open a cupboard and grabbed a box of instant soup packets. “Ayase-kun?” he called. “Be a dear and turn off the stove?”

Ayase obeyed. She grabbed a potholder and brought the kettle to the table, where Daniel placed a mug in front of Adam and sprinked in a soup packet. As Ayase slowly added boiling water, Kiyoshi filled a glass with water from the sink.

The man smiled. “Thank you,” he said in English as Kiyoshi placed the glass in front of him. The man said something else in English, but the only word Ayase understood was “kind.”

Ayase took a second to assess the man. When he’d arrived at the church with Kadoyuki in his arms, he’d looked like a focused zombie–sweating and bleeding but the color of ash. Emi had dragged him to the sick room immediately. Based on the number of bandages now peeking out from under his robe, Ayase believed Emi’s assessment: that Adam had been running on adrenaline alone.

“You’re welcome,” Ayase said in awkward English.

The man suddenly smiled. “You speak English!” he beamed.

Ayase colored slightly. I guess he’s feeling better, she thought.

“Very little,” she replied. “From school.”

The man hummed knowingly and swirled the instant soup. After taking a gulp, he stared at her.

“Ayase,” he said. “Right?”

Ayase nodded.

He said another sentence, but Ayase couldn’t quite understand. When she frowned at him, he pinched his fingers and zigzagged them through the air.

“Bzzzz!”

Ayase’s stomach dropped.

Daniel actually laughed at that. “Nick told him about you,” he explained in Japanese. “So I guess he retained some things from last night. We weren’t sure he would, considering the head injury.”

Ayase clenched her jaw. “Daniel-san,” she said thinly. “I wish Nick would stop telling everyone about my power.”

Daniel patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry–Adam has been an agent of the church for years. One of the tenets of our training is learning about the supernatural.”

But not shutting up about the supernatural, Ayase thought darkly.

“Why are you so shy about it, Ayase?” Kiyoshi sat down again, his half-hidden eyes focusing on her. “We’re all on the same side here. And your power is really cool.”

Ayase felt herself color again.

She didn’t like it when Kiyoshi complimented her. It made her feel…awkward now.

“By the way,” Kiyoshi added. “Are you feeling okay? I know some of your bugs got…squished yesterday.”

Ayase let out a breath. She carefully pushed up her left sleeve to expose the areas of “patchy” skin left from her incomplete transformation the day before. The patches had shrunk considerably overnight, leaving just a few small areas of thin, pink flesh.

Daniel leaned in to observe them. “Much better,” he said with satisfaction. “So it does seem like all you need is time. Well…perhaps sleeping and eating helps, since you’ve been so tired and hungry after transforming into a full swarm.”

Kiyoshi squinted. “Is that what happens to you?”

“We’ve been trying to figure out the logistics of Ayase’s power since she moved in with us.” Daniel took a seat at the table. “My best guess is each of her insects represents a certain number of cells in her body–when they’re destroyed, her body loses those cells. Cells die through normal biological processes and small injuries, so it doesn’t have much of an effect unless she loses many insects.” He gestured to her arm. “For whatever reason, her body seems to translate those missing insects as missing skin cells, hence her patches of incomplete skin. But they heal on their own, similar to how cells naturally regenerate, only much faster than skin cells on a normal person.”

Ayase swallowed. “But that’s only because I didn’t lose many,” she murmured. “If it were more, I could lose the entire arm.” She flashed back, briefly, to the time Daniel and Nick had trapped a swath of insects from returning to her.

“Whoa.” Kiyoshi sat back in his chair. “Would the arm grow back?”

Daniel beamed. “That’s an excellent question!”

Ayase shuddered. She hoped she never had to learn the answer.

Adam, who had been smiling politely through the conversation, clearly didn’t understand a word. He finished his soup and chugged down the water in one gulp.

Ayase stood. “More?” she asked in English.

He responded, but Ayase didn’t understand him. She looked over at Daniel for help.

Daniel shook his head. “I only know a few words of English,” he apologized.

“If Nick’s gone, who’s going to translate?”

“Zayd.” Daniel frowned at the door. “Where did he run off to?”

As if in response, footsteps tapped from the hallway. But the tired figure who appeared in the doorway wasn’t Zayd.

It was Sachi.

Ayase tensed. “Sachi?” she called.

He looked…deflated. The usual light behind his features had dimmed, leaving him a quiet shadow of himself. He flicked his eyes up from the floor.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

Ayase hesitated. Kiyoshi voiced her question for her.

“How’s your friend Kado?” he asked.

Sachi sighed. “Sedated,” he murmured. “Which is probably a good thing at this point. Emi-san thinks he’ll get better with the I.V.”

Ayase waited for Sachi to continue, but he left it at that.

Adam said something again, diverting Ayase’s attention. Ayase couldn’t understand his English. He kept saying some word over and over…it sounded familiar, yet strangely different. Frustrated, she started offering options.

“Food?” she asked in English. “Sleep?”

Adam shook his head and said the word again. He mimicked an arc from his body through the air…like a rainbow. It only confused her further.

“Sick?” Daniel offered in English.

Sachi frowned. He walked over and rested a hand on Adam’s shoulder. As the broad man looked over at him, Sachi released him and bowed an apology.

“Bathroom,” Sachi clarified.

Ayase translated into English, using the word “toilet.” Adam beamed.

“Yes!” he said. “Thank you!” He gestured to Sachi and said something, but the only words Ayase could understand were “I forgot.”

Daniel stood and gestured to Adam. As they left, Ayase wondered how she hadn’t understood him. She knew a number of ways to say bathroom in English.

Sachi seemed to notice the look on her face. “Nick-san says he has a thick accent,” he explained. “He learned English in the Caribbean or something.”

Kiyoshi smiled. “Then it’s lucky that we have you,” he said.

Sachi smiled weakly.

A long silence passed. Sachi pulled his glasses off and wiped them with the edge of his shirt, clearly lost in thought.

Kiyoshi told Sachi to sit, using a foot to scrape a chair closer to him. Sachi absently declined as he slid his glasses back on. Kiyoshi glanced over at Ayase and furrowed his eyebrows.

She waved him off. I know, she told him silently. I know. If Kiyoshi noticed the hollowness in Sachi’s face, then it was very obvious. Something was seriously bothering him. Ayase assumed it was Kadoyuki but wasn’t sure she should ask.

Sachi finally looked up. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He stared at Ayase for a long moment, then Kiyoshi…then back to the floor.

Wait.

Ayase’s stomach clenched. She suddenly remembered earlier, when Sachi had touched her during her (accidental) dirty thoughts about Kiyoshi. He’d made a small, sickly smile…

That was now mirrored on his face.

Panic welled up inside her. Sachi murmured something about leaving, then headed for the door. She jumped from her chair.

“Wait!” she cried.

Sachi looked back, surprised. Ayase vaguely heard Kiyoshi say something, but she ignored him. She had to ignore him. She ran after Sachi, her guilt over him temporarily crushing the guilt of blowing off Kiyoshi.

“C-can we talk?” she asked quickly, rubbing her damp palms on her shirt. “I wanted to…tell you something.”

Sachi blinked. “Sure,” he said carefully. “But there’s not a lot of privacy around here.”

“What about the room we all slept in?”

Sachi paused. “Sure,” he repeated.

Ayase charged past him to lead the way, steeling ner nerves as best she could.

Tell him, she ordered herself. Tell him it didn’t mean anything.

She didn’t plan to use those words, of course–she didn’t want to assign too much meaning to random feelings about a random sex dream. But she had to say something. After everything that morning, Ayase knew Sachi was suffering…and it wasn’t fair. He was always killing himself to ease the pain she went through. She couldn’t ignore his needs when they were staring her in the face.

And Kiyoshi in the face. Even Kiyoshi had tried to reach out to him, in his usual simple way.

Kiyoshi…

Had his presence made it worse? Did Sachi think there was something between her and Kiyoshi?

Something fluttered in Ayase’s stomach. She angrily squashed it.

A few futons still lay on the floor of the sleeping room. Ayase glanced at her futon, suddenly self-conscious about leaving it messy…but she’d folded the sheet and her robe. Sachi followed her into the room and closed the door.

Ayase swallowed. Okay, she thought. I can do this. As he turned to her and she clenched her fists, she gathered all the courage from the pit of her gut.

The look of utter rejection on Sachi’s face stopped her. He covered his mouth, his eyes suddenly glassy.

“Ayase,” he breathed weakly. “I think I did something really bad.”

Ayase froze. As she stared at him, shocked into silence, all the loaded context fell away between them. He squeezed shut his eyes as a vice squeezed Ayase’s heart.

This wasn’t about Kiyoshi.

Sachi’s sick smile was gone, replaced with raw, helpless pain. The last several minutes vanished, returning her to her first concern.

“Kadoyuki,” Ayase breathed.

Sachi bit down on his lower lip. “I know sedating him was a medical decision,” he said shakily. “But then Emi-san and Zayd-san…took off all his clothes and looked for signs of drug use, they went through his pockets. They found his cell phone and checked the history. I passed Zayd-san in the hallway afterward and he was telling Detective Nakajima about it. I think they tried to hide it from me, but…” Sachi wrung his hands. “Ayase…”

Ayase waited. He radiated unusual hesitation, and a thought suddenly struck her. “I won’t tell anyone,” she promised.

Sachi swallowed. “Nakajima gave him…handcuffs.”

Ayase blinked. “For Kadoyuki?”

Sachi threw up his hands. “I don’t know!” he wailed.

Ayase’s stomach churned. She found herself wondering, again, if the church was a safe haven.

Did Nakajima still consider Kadoyuki suspicious? She’d backed off earlier, but that didn’t mean she’d given up. Ayase didn’t know Zayd well–he didn’t talk to her much. She didn’t know what he was capable of.

Would he handcuff a sedated teenager to his bed?

Sachi rubbed his mouth. “I know Kado was acting suspicious,” he continued. “And I know he wouldn’t let me touch him, but I don’t think it was because he was lying–I mean, I don’t think he’s with Core or anything like that. When they checked his cell phone, he had all these incoming calls that weren’t suspicious. They made me think…” Sachi trailed off, swallowed. “D-don’t tell anyone, okay? Please?”

Ayase nodded.

Sachi let out a shaky breath. “They were from his mom,” he said quietly. “And when Zayd-san pressed me about it, I wanted him to leave Kado alone, so I sorta…told him about his family trouble.”

Ayase paused. She remembered, vaguely, that Sachi had mentioned possible abuse.

Sachi covered his mouth again. “I told them some personal stuff…things Kado told me in junior high. And the minute I said them, I felt terrible. I mean, Kado never talks about himself, he wouldn’t tell a bunch of strangers anything. But we drugged him and went through his pockets and I told people all this personal stuff about him…” Sachi squeezed his jaw so hard his fingertips went white.

“You saw the way he looked at me! When I said he had a power in front of everyone!”

Sachi was shaking now, the red eyes behind his glasses filled with uncharacteristic panic. Ayase had never seen him like that.

She’d wondered about his relationship with Kadoyuki before. The way Sachi talked about him, and the few times she’d seen them interact were so strained. Especially since Sachi always mentioned Kadoyuki as the first supernatural he’d met. She knew Sachi had never managed to get very close to him, and that it made him feel guilty…

But it was worse than that. Ayase could see it now.

“Sachi,” she said as gently as she could. “You were only trying to help.”

“But I didn’t!” Sachi buried his face in his hands. “I always screw it up!”

Ayase furrowed her brow. “That’s not true,” she argued. “You’re always helping people.”

He rubbed at his eyes under his glasses. “That’s not what I mean,” he blurted as he shook his head. “I could never…” He hesitated, took a shuddering breath, and closed his mouth.

Sachi didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

You could never help him.

Kadoyuki was his failure. And Sachi, always so confident and selfless, could only stay that way if he was both.

Ayase swallowed hard. Slowly, she reached out and gripped his arm.

“Sachi,” she said as evenly as she could. “Calm down.”

Sachi’s glassy eyes flicked to her.

He could feel her now–she had to stay focused. Ayase took a long breath.

“You were only trying to help,” she repeated. “You wanted them to leave him alone.”

Sachi looked away. He tightened under her fingers.

“But…I broke his trust.”

“You had to. Sometimes people have to.” Ayase clenched her jaw. “If I said…I don’t know, that my roommate was hitting me, but I was too embarrassed to tell a teacher, you would tell a teacher. Even if I made you swear not to, right?”

Sachi frowned. “I don’t know,” he murmured.

“Are you kidding? Of course you’d tell.”

Sachi stared at her, slightly hurt. Ayase’s defenses rose up as she grabbed his arm with both hands.

“You’d tell, because that’s the right thing to do,” she insisted. “Come on, Sachi. Even I know that one.”

He furrowed his brow. Gently, he nudged her hands down so he could instead hold them with his own. He gripped her fingers.

“Will you be honest with me?” he asked.

Instinctual fear clenched Ayase’s stomach. She felt his grip loosen. She scrambled to swallow that fear and steel herself, tightening her hold as she did so.

You wanted to talk to him, she reminded herself. This might be easier.

Well…except for the fact that she couldn’t filter. He’d know exactly what was she was feeling. She ignored a wave of terror and gritted her teeth.

Make him feel better, she thought. Stop overthinking this and make him feel better.

Sachi stared down into her eyes. “Ayase,” he said softly. “Would you have been…happier if I hadn’t pushed my way into your life?”

Ayase’s thoughts fell away. She opened her mouth.

“No,” she said.

Sachi blinked.

Ayase colored slightly. Her lack of hesitation surprised her. She cleared her throat, trying to ignore a new heat that spread through her chest.

“I-I might’ve answered differently if you asked a week ago,” she conceded. “But now…I mean, things are really different for me now, and I was pretty miserable before, so really…” She swallowed, willing her hands to stop shaking. “And things got worse before they got better. But they did get better.”

Sachi said nothing. As the silence between them grew, so did Ayase’s panic reaction. The weird intimacy of the moment made her want, deep down, to run away screaming.

Sachi suddenly released her hands. He blushed hard, making everything worse.

Ayase’s stomach twisted into knots. She was terrified of where this was going.

“They got better,” Sachi repeated at last. He awkwardly bit his lip. “But they got…worse before they got better.”

Relief flooded through her. Ayase latched onto that.

“Yeah,” she agreed quickly. “Okay? So don’t…jump to conclusions about Kadoyuki yet. Maybe you’ll be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

Sachi turned impossibly redder. Ayase realized, at that moment, that she was implying she felt that way.

…

Did she?

Ayase stopped. The heat in her chest burned, turning almost painful.

“Thank you,” Sachi said, breaking her train of thought.

Ayase forced her head up. A hint of his usual smile curled the edges of Sachi’s mouth as he stared down at her. He clenched his hands gently, but they remained at his side.

Ayase tried to clear her head. “Just feel better,” she ordered.

Sachi actually chuckled. He smiled again, the light returning behind his eyes.

“Deal.”

Someone knocked on the door. As Ayase tried to untangle the feelings in her heart, the door creaked open and a head poked inside.

Kiyoshi raised his eyebrows. “You guys okay?” he called.

Reality crashed down on Ayase. Her traitorous body tingled, reminding her about him.

Proceed to Chapter 8, page 4–>