Tokyo Demons Book 2: Chapter 7, Part 2

Multiple trigger warnings for sensitive subjects in the rest of this chapter. Please be aware.

After hours of staring through her insect eyes in that car trunk, Ayase was convinced the Core operatives wouldn’t touch the briefcase until morning. The silence of the trunk lulled her, and she felt the exhaustion of the last few days drag her down into the darkness.

A hand rested on her human arm.

Ayase jerked up abruptly as her body shuddered. She panted, disoriented, and tried to remember where she was.

Sachi frowned at her. He sat on the floor by her side, the sheen of his glasses dull in the dim lighting of the empty hospital room.

“You need to sleep,” he murmured.

“I…nngh.” Ayase stretched her stiff arms, her back arching against the wall behind her. She jiggled her legs to regain feeling below her waist.

“The Core guys haven’t come back, right? Then get some sleep while you can.” He gestured to the empty bed with his head.

Ayase sighed. “It might not be worth it,” she muttered. “If the nurses need the room and find us in here…”

“I locked the door. And put up the ‘do not disturb patient’ sign.”

Ayase blinked. When he smiled sheepishly, she felt a tug at the corner of her mouth.

She checked her view in Kadoyuki’s room. He seemed to be asleep, bundled in a cocoon of sheets and blankets. Two I.V. lines twisted like snakes to disappear under the blankets with him.

One of those is probably tube food, she thought with a twitch of discomfort. Kadoyuki himself had told the nurses he was anorexic, which bought them all more time in the hospital. Ayase didn’t think it was true…but she didn’t want to guess, and Sachi hadn’t been touching him at the time.

She sighed. “You need to sleep, too,” she told Sachi.

“I’m okay. I can sleep on the floor.”

“Are you kidding? It’s cold and dirty.”

Sachi pursed his lips and said nothing. In the long stretch of silence that followed, Ayase averted her eyes.

“We can…share the bed.”

“Over the bedspread,” Sachi offered quickly.

“Not touching,” Ayase added. “So I’m not flooding you with…emotional feedback or anything.” She frowned. “Wouldn’t that keep you awake?”

Sachi smiled weakly. “I don’t know. I’ve never shared a bed with anyone.”

Silence again. Ayase felt discomfort roil in her gut, and it bothered her. She was way too tired for this.

She lurched to her feet, stumbling slightly on numb legs. She waved him over as she hobbled to the bed.

She gratefully crawled onto the broad mattress. The soft surface had a magnetic effect on her weary body, and she barely scooted to the far side before collapsing into a pillow.

Her eyes drooped shut. She felt the bed jostle when Sachi crawled on, the bedsprings creaking under him. She heard the tiny click and clack as he put his glasses on the bedside table.

Lips pressed against her temple. “Good night,” he whispered.

Despite her exhaustion, despite her desire to stay focused, Ayase felt blood rush to her face. She swallowed hard as her heart started to pound.

“…”

She felt him move beside her, heard the rustle of sheets. He sighed and fell back, the bed’s creak barely masking the groan under his breath.

Ayase lay there, her back to him, and tried to sleep. But her brain was suddenly sloughing off the fatigue. A nervous excitement fluttered in her stomach, spreading down to her abdomen and legs. She unconsciously squeezed her knees together.

She could hear Sachi breathing. She counted the breaths like sheep and tried to lull herself out of reality. Sleep, she ordered herself. Ayase, sleep.

She shifted her arm and accidentally brushed him.

The breathing stopped. The point of contact burned on her elbow, a phantom reminder of the loaded implications of her touch. Ayase’s heart thundered in her ears as the bed creaked again.

“Ayase?” Sachi whispered.

She kept her eyes screwed shut. No, she thought. I’m asleep.

“Ayase…?” His fingers brushed her arm.

Warmth raced from the contact, spreading up her arm to expand in her chest. Before she knew what was happening, her breathing hitched and her heart squeezed.

Their meeting in the waiting room rushed back–a simple action in a terrible moment that had sent little tendrils into her core. It felt more powerful in retrospect, like he’d planted a seed to slowly bloom in her heart.

She didn’t…usually hug people. But she suddenly, desperately, wanted to feel his arms around her again.

And he immediately obliged, his warm arms wrapping around her shoulders and waist, tucking her against his chest. He plastered himself against her back.

“It’s okay,” he breathed. “We can get through this.”

The optimism made the realities of the day that much worse. Memories returned to twist her stomach into knots.

“C-can I stay here? At the church?”

She still remembered the look in Kadoyuki’s eyes as he’d asked Sachi for acceptance. The miserable, confusing emotion in his wet gaze.

“Thank you. For not…pushing me.”

“I don’t want to be anyone’s gateway. I want them to stay out!”

Ayase swallowed bile. Sachi tucked her more tightly against his body.

She didn’t want to think about this anymore. She wanted…she wanted to escape. She pinched Sachi’s sleeve between her fingers, treating the berth of his arms like another world.

He kissed her ear.

Ayase trembled. The fog of sex pulled a film over her eyes, and her exhausted body dropped its walls. She twisted in his arms to face him.

She didn’t have to say a word; his mouth closed over hers. She kissed him as he kissed her, their mouths fumbling awkwardly. The sensation of his tongue was becoming more familiar, and she invited it as she swallowed his heat, affection surging inside her.

His groan vibrated in their locked mouths. After a few breathless kisses, he broke from her and tucked lower to open his mouth against her throat.

“Sa…”

Ayase gasped and rolled her eyes up as pleasure bloomed between her legs. It was terrifying, but the fire of lust overruled the fear. Sachi kissed his way down her neck, the action growing more desperate, then suddenly pushed her back against the creaking mattress as he rolled on top of her. She half-sobbed her desire when he sucked on the hollow at the base of her throat.

“Ayase,” he breathed. “Ayase, Ayase…”

She was so used to hearing him say her name, but never in a voice like that. She slid her hands through his thick hair and closed her eyes, listening to the rough edge of his breath as he slid a tongue beneath her collar.

Closing her eyes was a mistake. She saw a fuzzy glimpse of Kadoyuki’s room on the inside of her eyelids as one of Sachi’s hands slid up to her breasts.

Ayase stiffened. Sachi immediately jerked his hand off and pulled back onto his knees, gasping as he blinked his eyes.

“Okay,” he said quickly. “Okay. I get it.” He brushed the hair from her face, ran his fingers under her jaw. “That is probably a dumb idea.”

She stared up into his eyes, affection and fear warring in her chest. He squinted back.

“Are you crying?” he asked gently.

She opened her mouth, then stopped when he blinked again. He squinted and leaned closer in the dim light.

He was genuinely asking.

He can’t see.

She glanced at his glasses on the table. In a burst of relief, she choked out a weak laugh and wrapped her arms around his neck.

The furrow in his brow vanished as her skin slid over his. He shifted his knees to one side of her hips and lifted her to a sitting position.

The lust in her retreated, allowing the slow return of her anxiety. But he planted a quick kiss on her cheek, and her blooming affection kept some of the monsters at bay.

“Sachi…” She took a shuddering breath. “Let’s just sleep.”

He pulled one of her hands to the bed and laced his fingers with hers. “Right.”

There was still a rasp to the edge of his voice. “Are you gonna be okay?” she asked carefully.

“Of course. I just, uh…” He colored. “I might…stop by the bathroom.”

She pulled back a few centimeters, adding some space between their bodies. She pointedly avoided looking down.

He frowned, the red deepening behind his cheeks. “This is so embarrassing,” he mumbled.

She sighed. “Don’t be embarrassed,” she said, pressing her forehead against his. “We’ve been through a lot by now. This is actually…mundane.”

He smiled at that. He pecked her lips.

“We can get through anything together,” he promised. “Mundane or otherwise.”

She smiled back and tried, honestly, to believe him.

 

ka-chak

Ayase twitched. She didn’t know if she was dreaming.

click

Her hazy mind began to clear. She felt the coolness of the air slowly settle on her skin. The warm, heavy weight of an arm draped around her.

She opened her leaden lids. The blank wall of the hospital room was unchanged, and a slight twist confirmed that Sachi was asleep beside her. The door to their room seemed untouched.

fsssssh

She closed her eyes and focused on her insects’ perception. Sure enough, Kadoyuki had disappeared from his bed; his bathroom door was now closed, with a crack of light peeking from underneath. A running faucet hissed quietly from inside.

She let out a breath. She settled back in her pillow and tried to go back to sleep.

The faucet ran. And ran. When it wouldn’t stop, she felt the tantalizing pull of sleep fade away. She opened her eyes and sat up.

By the time she reached Kadoyuki’s room, he was still in the bathroom. The faucet continued its steady, unchanging stream from inside.

Foreboding nagged at her. She knocked on the door.

“Kadoyuki?”

He didn’t reply. She knocked again.

“Kadoyuki?” she asked, louder.

She heard a weak wheeze.

Alarm raced through as she jiggled the locked handle. She zipped one of her bugs under the doorway and closed her eyes.

He stood in front of the streaming sink, his head sagging from his sloped shoulders. He dragged a red-tinted gaze to her intruding insect.

She caught the metallic glimpse of a razor against his wrist.

Ayase went rigid. She pounded on the door.

“Don’t…don’t you dare!” was all she managed to shout.

Her insect buzzed up to him–and to her surprise, he turned off the faucet and held out a hand. His eyes softened.

She settled her insect in his palm. “Kadoyuki,” she said quickly. “It’s okay. We’re gonna–”

He rammed that palm into the door.

A blink of pain zapped her brain as her lenses were crushed. Her spotty vision spun above her as her bug plummeted to the floor.

Pure, unadulterated rage leaked into every cell in her body. Her vision went red.

She burst into the swarm, her anger shattering with her body. A million points of long-simmering, latent fury rolled with her as she squeezed her bodies under the narrow crack under the door.

Kadoyuki jerked back in her fragmented vision, but she saw him grit his teeth. He shakily jumped into the shower and turned the water on.

The jets of water pelted her bugs like the angry fists of gods. She was rammed to the bottom of the shower, her wings crushed under the storm, her heavy legs slipping in torrents and linoleum. She choked on water that flooded into her mouths.

She silently screamed as she retreated the bulk of her bugs. Through their eyes, she saw Kadoyuki panic; he quickly twisted off the water.

Dozens of her bugs swirled to the drain, bulking up in twitching piles as she fought to make them breathe. Her tiny legs got caught in the hair trap, her wings too heavy to fly.

“Oh, God,” Kadoyuki whispered, dropping to his knees in the shower. “Watanabe-san!”

She surged her dry insects toward the floor, molding them back into her human body. When she regained her lungs and mouth, she gasped for air.

Her left hand was missing. She dropped to her knees by the tub, stuck her stub at the drain, and reformed her hand from the water-logged insects. Water dripped from her human fingers.

Kadoyuki stared at her, his eyes wide, his hair and hospital robe plastered to his wet skin. She panted and grabbed a hanging towel to clutch in front of her naked body.

“Now you’re just being an asshole!” she snarled.

His face tightened. Tears welled in his eyes as he dropped the razor to clink in the wet tub.

“Touya…knows I’m Catholic,” he breathed. “And that suicide is a mortal sin. He was counting on that.” His brow furrowed in a mix of anger and misery as he stared down at the blade. “This…may be the only future he didn’t see coming.”

Ayase took a second to catch her breath, her chest constricting in frustration. She grabbed the razor from the tub and rolled it up in another towel.

“No,” she said evenly. “Don’t do this to Sachi. You know how much he’s given up for you.”

“I-I don’t want him to give up anything else! And as long as I’m here, Touya will threaten anyone who has anything to do with me!” Kadoyuki’s voice shook as he rubbed a fist through his sopping bangs. “As long as I’m alive, he might kill people to control me! I’m a liability!”

Ayase tightened her jaw. “Jo texted me last night,” she murmured. “Detective Nakajima sent an undercover police guard to your family’s compound.”

Kadoyuki looked up. “What…?”

“She doesn’t like you, but she’s still a police officer. She’s keeping the place under watch so no one can hurt your father.” Ayase clutched the towel closer to her body, tugging it as far down her bare thighs as she could. “And the rest of your family are all psychics, right? Is Touya really capable of sneaking in there and hurting anyone?”

Kadoyuki hiccupped. He rested the back of his head against the tiled wall.

“I don’t know anymore,” he wailed.

“Core attacked the church, and everyone got out. We can defend ourselves now, Kadoyuki. We don’t need Touya’s help or whatever help he ordered you to give us.” She leaned forward. “He can’t control you anymore. We need you alive so you can help us!”

Kadoyuki grew impossibly paler. He shivered in his wet robe, his chest spasming as he choked on his breath.

“He’ll…he’ll send you the pictures,” he whimpered, his voice high-pitched and weak.

Ayase stopped.

Huh?

“Oh, God…!” Kadoyuki buried his face in his hands. “You’re right! I-I can’t…I can’t let him control me anymore! I have to…”

“You have to help us,” Ayase repeated. “You want to help us, don’t you?”

“Of course I do!” he cried. “I would die for you!”

Ayase opened her mouth, then closed it. She swallowed.

“What pictures, Kadoyuki?”

Kadoyuki clawed at his face with shaking fingers. He moaned and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’m not scared of death anymore,” he breathed in a cracking voice. “Death can’t be worse than this waking nightmare. Touya knows how to make it worse, and he…after everything he threatened me with, with all the help he sent me to give you, with all the plans I could make to keep him from turning on us in the end…even if all of that fell apart, he still had the pictures. It was the last thing he could break me with if I turned against him.”

Ayase waited. Kadoyuki crawled to the edge of the tub and gripped the porcelain edge.

“Please…please don’t tell this to the others. Please don’t tell Sachi.” He blinked tear-kissed eyelashes. “Please. I can’t…I-I don’t know what they would say to me, and I don’t want them to say anything. I just want them to leave me alone, but they won’t if…”

He was so close to her now. His hot breath panted over her skin. Ayase tightened her first in the towel over her chest.

“Tell me.”

A tiny whine escaped from his nose. She saw his lips tremble over gritted teeth.

“T-Touya…raped me. And photographed it.”

Ayase jerked back abruptly. She felt the blood drain from her face.

Kadoyuki choked out a sob, his eyes filling with new tears. “He hurt me so badly that he had to take me to the hospital. That’s why he needed Dr. Fujito. To…to treat me while I tried to…listen to her…thoughts for him–”

“What?” Ayase gasped, her stomach clenching like a fist.

“Y-you can’t see him in the photos. He said he’d spread the pictures if I fought against him again!” Kadoyuki’s fingers plowed beneath his hair. “He never punished me before that. He threatened to, but I didn’t think he was capable of it. The day Detective Nakajima chased Nick-san to the roof of Fukuhashi, Touya knew they were coming, and brought me there to l-listen to their thoughts…and I refused. I was scared of what he’d make me do if I went along with it, and I thought he’d just abandon me, but…he dragged me back to our dorm room and r-raped me.”

Ayase pushed down the bile she felt welling up in her throat. She wanted to throw up.

“And in the love hotel…Touya told me, through his mind, to attack him when he kissed Oda-san. So he could punish me again without raising suspicion…”

“Kadoyuki.” Ayase gripped the edge of the tub, leaning closer to his tucked head.

Kadoyuki grunted through his clenched teeth. “I thought he understood me. He said he would protect me from my mother, from the world that didn’t understand us. And he…he did understand me. Better than anyone.” He rubbed a fist across his eyes. “So he knew exactly how to destroy me.”

Ayase stared at his downturned head, her heart shriveling in her chest. She was back in that hospital bathroom, watching him fall to his knees in front of her. Looking up at her barely familiar face in a desperate plea.

Help me.

Help me.

And she hadn’t. No one had.

Touya had dragged him out of that bathroom and into his own personal hell.

Her breath hitched in her throat. She reached out with a hand, then stopped, terrified of making things worse.

He dragged his head up. Those dark eyes tilted to her outstretched palm.

He slowly, carefully, pressed his face against it and closed his eyes.

For a long moment, she just let him breathe into her palm, the hot air forming new condensation on her cold, wet skin. He moaned and brushed his eyelashes against the creases in her fingers.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he whispered.

Ayase’s heart thundered in her chest. As he shivered in his wet robe, and she shivered behind her towel, she hesitantly dragged a thumb over his creased brow.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered back. “I’m sorry I…didn’t protect you.”

He huffed another breath. His fingers snaked up her wrist to drag her hand down to his jaw.

Ayase bit her teeth together, trying to force down the burning in her eyes. And she sat there, in strained silence, as he leaned into her touch until he stopped shaking.

 

She promised to stay until he fell asleep. She sat on the floor, propping her back against the hospital bed in a position uncomfortable enough to keep her awake. But her exhaustion was stronger, and the whispers of Kadoyuki’s Rosary prayers from the bed lulled her. She drifted off into blissful darkness.

When she felt the rays of sunlight peeking under her eyelids, she let out a shuddering breath. She felt something heavy drag on her numb arm and shoulder.

Huh?

She blinked away the film over her eyes. She swallowed stale breath and turned her head.

Kadoyuki was fast asleep next to her, curled up on the floor and clinging to her side. His tilted head rested on her shoulder, his quiet, shallow breaths puffing out from his lips. His Rosary beads dangled from a clenched hand.

Heat spread in Ayase’s chest, filling in the cracks chiseled out by her anger. She carefully tilted her temple down until it rested against his hair.

Sachi’s voice echoed in her head.

“We can get through anything together.”

Ayase closed her eyes.

***

BAM BAM BAM

Jo jerked up from the couch, twisting his head in alarm. The karaoke room spun around him.

“What?” he blurted. “Huh?”

Mitsuko mumbled from his chest, but then snuggled deeper into his shirt. He dragged his numb arm out from under her body.

BAM BAM BAM

“Who the fuck is that?” he snapped. His eyes flew to the clock. “It’s only…!”

11 a.m.? He closed his mouth, suddenly confused.

“Jo,” Miki snarled from outside. “The business needs that room. Get your ass to the private area.”

Jo coughed and rubbed his mouth. “In a minute,” he croaked.

“Unless you want my shoe down your throat!”

Jo waited until he heard Miki’s footsteps disappear. Then he carefully scooted himself out from under Mitsuko’s sleeping form.

He ran his fingers through his hair as he headed down the hallway. The back section, blocked with a door marked PRIVATE, muffled the sound of a voice that squeaked on the high notes.

Jo knocked. “It’s me,” he called.

The door swung open. Daniel held his mobile phone to his ear, his blue eyes wide. He ushered Jo in.

“Good timing,” he said breathlessly into the mobile. “Zayd, Jo-kun just arrived.”

Jo blinked. He stumbled as Daniel dragged him into an empty office.

“You’re talking to Zayd?!”

“Yes–he’s safe, and with his bodyguards. They just gave him back his phone.”

So it had been the bodyguards. Jo felt his latent disgust with them bubble up again.

“Zayd paid them to protect all of us,” he snapped. “Did they see Core coming and turn chickenshit?”

Daniel frowned and locked the door behind them. The office was empty, save for piles of dusty paperwork and some ugly furniture.

“Where is everyone?” Jo asked.

Daniel put his mobile on speakerphone. He turned down the volume and gestured for Jo to come closer.

“Jo,” said Zayd’s fuzzy voice. “I’m sorry. We need to remain private with this information.”

He sounded okay, for someone who’d been drugged and kidnapped from his home. Jo sighed angrily and leaned against the desk.

“Let me guess,” he said sourly. “Because this is Kiri business, and only a few of us are lucky enough to know that shit.”

Zayd murmured something Jo couldn’t make out. “I spoke with them for many hours,” he continued, “but they only speak from behind a door. I have been locked here for my own safety.”

“You’re paying them!” Jo snapped. “I thought that meant they listen to you!”

“No, Jo. This is not a simple transaction.” Zayd sighed. “My father hired them first. When things were too dangerous, they chose to honor his contract and not mine. Which is why they…protected only me.”

Jo snorted. Or they only protected you because you’re the one with the piggy bank, he thought darkly. Fucking mercenaries.

“But I have negotiated with them. They will not let me leave, but they will take in several more people. This is a new…safe house, I think it is called.”

Daniel scratched the hints of blond stubble on his chin. “I think we’re pretty safe here,” he admitted, “based on the sheer number of Byakko members within these walls, and the public front making it a more risky target for Core. Especially since it’s open at all hours.”

“The church had a public front,” Jo muttered.

Daniel wilted. He looked away.

“We must consider the options carefully,” Zayd said. “Now that Ayase has confirmed that Touya has the briefcase.”

Jo went rigid. He leapt up from the desk.

“What?!”

“Oh…you were asleep for that part.” Daniel nervously tugged at his shirt. “It was a few hours ago. Ayase said she heard an argument outside the car trunk–Touya was furious and confronting the men who attacked the church. It sounds like he had nothing to do with the siege…which means Kadoyuki-kun probably convinced him that we’re still ‘useful,’ but Touya can’t protect us from Core anymore.” He hummed. “Maybe Touya is losing influence…”

“Who cares?” Jo snapped. “We’re done with Touya. Keep talking.”

“Touya accessed the trunk, opened the briefcase, and discovered the Pitch. The men attempted to keep him from it, but Touya seems to have, ah…hurt them for it. And then he discovered Ayase’s insect on it within a matter of seconds.” Daniel sighed. “He crushed it. We have no idea what he’s doing with the briefcase now.”

Jo’s frustration exploded in his gut, sending his fist to slam into the desk. He ground his teeth together.

“Fucking fucking fuck!”

“Jo,” Zayd said, a bit gentler than usual. “Be calm. We must focus on moving past this. That was not the only Pitch in our possession.”

Jo crossed his arms and cursed.

“Aisha has enough for Shouri. Nick and Hatsumi…you have met her now, yes? They have been working on a new antagonist, and they have already produced liquid samples to test. If they do not have Pitch, it will no longer stop their study.” Zayd paused. “There is some danger to Wipe now. Nick is calculating a new treatment for him and will call me back.”

“We’ve been thinking about the information you brought us,” Daniel added. “From Kadoyuki-kun. Sachi-kun confirmed he wasn’t lying, right?”

“Nngh…yeah.”

“We’re already writing off Touya as an informant, so if he has that Pitch…he may just leave Core altogether and step away from this mess. He may be able to wean himself off with that much, after all. Wasn’t that Kadoyuki-kun’s plan? To give Touya the briefcase?”

Jo scowled. “I don’t know what the fuck Kado thought he could pull off, but no–he wanted to use the briefcase as bait. And Ayase said he lost his shit when Core grabbed it.”

Zayd and Daniel were silent for a moment. Blue eyes dragged over to Jo.

“We’ve been…discussing this new safe house. With the bodyguards.” He rubbed his arm and looked away. “It wouldn’t fit all of us, and as I said, I think this building can house most of us in relative safety. But if it’s isolated, protected, and with Zayd’s power as a final backup force…it may end up working as a good holding cell, in a way. For…questionable members of our team.”

Jo knew where this was headed. He sucked his teeth and gripped his forehead, feeling a headache building behind his eyes.

“Let me guess,” he snarled. “We’re keeping Kado.”

“He’s an invaluable resource, Jo-kun, if we can control him–”

“You can’t! He can screw with your memory!”

“Nick told us how Wipe’s power is essentially useless if you take precautions. Covering the psychic’s eyes or just not having one person alone in the room with him–”

Jo threw up his hands. “Great! He can still hear your thoughts!”

Daniel shrunk back, but Zayd’s cool voice answered for him.

“Which is why he will be with me, Jo. My thoughts are in Arabic.”

Daniel let out a breath. “If Kadoyuki-kun was looking for that briefcase while living in the church,” he murmured, “that’s the reason he couldn’t find it. Zayd was the only one who knew that, and Kadoyuki-kun couldn’t understand his thoughts through the language barrier.”

Jo opened his mouth to retort, but then resorted to a non-committal grunt. He was, unfortunately, not surprised that things had come to this. He’d gotten used to the Church’s completely lack of sense when faced with a crying teenager.

“If you wanna drag a shrieking, manipulative, psychic liar to your hideout, I can’t stop you. But don’t come crying to me when things go to hell.” He jutted out his chin. “I’m washing my hands of this shit.”

Daniel furrowed his brow. In the long silence that followed, Jo felt foreboding creep up his spine.

“What?”

“Er…there’s the small issue of transporting Kadoyuki-kun to the safe house. He can and should take a taxi from the hospital, but he shouldn’t be alone. He needs an…escort.”

“Ayase and Sachi have been handling him,” Jo said bitterly.

“Yes, but…neither of them knows the details on the bodyguards. And the Kiri implications.” Daniel splayed a hand. “It’s dangerous information, and we don’t want to spread that, if we can avoid it–thus they should stay away from the safe house for now. Do you remember how Kadoyuki-kun erased Sachi-kun’s memory? He was aware of the dangers, and limited the Kiri information to the people in the room…”

Daniel trailed off, probably because he saw the look on Jo’s face. Jo dropped his head in his hands and groaned his misery.

“Fuck my life,” he croaked.

Proceed to Chapter 7, Part 2, page 6–>