Fever reducer and fluids had been swallowed; the achy haze enveloping Watanuki's head and body was almost pulsing, and he knew he was coming up to a fork in the road tonight. There were still 3 more days of school this week - either he would fend it off and start to recover, possibly catching up and doing homework by Saturday - or it would turn into an epic illness, hospital visit (and likely, intravenous saline) included. Hospitals were no place Watanuki ever wanted to be, for multiple reasons. He hoped with the last bit of energy he had left to use, as he gingerly lowered himself onto the futon, that he could fight it off himself- that nothing would interfere and force him to ask for help.

He was ...walking. Walking in the rain. Someone was supposed to be there with him- no. Was he going to meet them? That was it. There was someone he wanted to see.
Head down, jogging up a long set of dark granite steps, Watanuki was distracted by the sound of his own breathing until the hem of a familiar dress and pair of shoes entered his field of vision.
Of course, it was Kohane-chan. She must have been the one he was -
"What are you doing here?"
He froze mid-step just a few feet from where she stood, slipping a little on wet sand.
"What? Ah, Kohane-chan, it's me..."
"Yes, unfortunately, I realize that. No one asked you to show up."
"Wait, what? ... I don't..."
His head swam. He was standing in her mother's dingy kitchen, near a sink piled high with dirty dishes.
"Who invited you in here?
" - Kohane-chan, I - I -"
He tried to remember why he was in her house.
Oh, that's right, he was worried, and the state of things in the building had more than confirmed his fears.
"I was worried, I just wanted to help -"
"I don't need help from someone like you. You don't care- you're only here because you want something from me."
She sounded disgusted. He tried, a little panicked, to remember- had she been so angry at him over something? The words were so familiar.
he could feel the memories somewhere just out of reach.
The details were difficult to dredge up, but the attached emotions rose like fire. These weren't her words - somewhere in the back of his head he knew that, but here she was, spitting them at him -
"GO AWAY."
Her face twisted in anger as she glared up at him, suddenly looking so much like her mother.
The shock of being on the receiving end of her antipathy was so strong it was almost numbing.
"I was fine until this annoying idiot showed up,"
She had her back to him in Baa-chan's kitchen, a phone cradled between shoulder and ear.
"WHY are you still here?"
He could feel her bristling at his presence, unwilling to even face him, and he started to feel like he was cracking in half.
"Kohane chan, what's wrong? What did I do?"
"Gah, this - " she waved her arm vaguely at him. "It's just - you- why do you keep coming back? I have nothing to give you! Get OUT!"
The stifling heat of stage lighting pulled the flush straight across his face as a cold, sick chill raced up his spine. Her impassive face froze the air between them - worse when she stiffly turned her back and walked away across the set.
Go away
I didn't want to see your annoying face
Why are you still here?
Go away

It was cold, raw and wet; half-frozen raindrops fell invisibly in the dark and stung Watanuki on the cheeks and hands, threatening an overnight storm.
He was bent over in the middle of the street, heaving around a constricted throat. He'd never known this kind of hurt, had he? Being rejected so viciously, by someone he cared about, was the worst feeling he could remember at the moment - it was foreign, like seeing your own guts after being eviscerated, and being confused at how unfamiliar they look.
It wasn't true, that he wanted anything from her. He just cared about her. He wanted her to be happy, and safe. He wanted to protect her.
And she hated him.
Go away, you aren't wanted here
Hurry up and disappear already
His legs dragged. It was difficult to even move, just to put one foot in front of the other. Every pebble in the pavement set his teeth on edge. The words hung off him like chains, like a curse setting in.
He didn't know what to do, or to think - it was painful to breathe; he really wanted to curl up and lose consciousness.
Then the dark, damp air was suddenly heavier. Purple shadows fuzzed at the edges of his vision, too familiar. He looked up to see an animate whorl of black closing in around him.
Of course - of course they'd be drawn to him so late at night, when he was weak with emotion. He was so upset it hadn't even occurred to him.
Comprehension set in slowly - the terror took a moment to spark, but when it did, in his head it flashed bright white. He sucked in a lungful of night air to call out, and choked on the bruise-black stench of the unusually strong ayakashi that was smothering him.
Doumeki!
It seemed to gain momentum after getting into his lungs, swirling faster around him. Eye-like yellow spots sharpened and blurred as they moved past his face. The thing oozed rapacious greed; his heart pounded in his throat.
Doumeki! Help!
Heavy tangles of cord-like ayakashi limb bound and dragged his body sideways and downward, offering him a sweeping view of the narrow, deserted street on his way down. His knees hit the ground hard, one after the other.
Doumeki, where are you?
The weight forced his head down, down until his palms and forehead scraped gravel.
Watanuki's throat worked helplessly against the lump of stone spreading from his heart. Panic blinded him, and he called out, again, in his head, useless eyes open wide- hoping somehow that their shared sight might alert the other to something he could no longer even see. If he suddenly saw darkness in his right eye, would he understand?
Doumeki... please...
How long had he been waiting? Where was he?
He could hear only his breath rasping, the ticking sound of frozen rain on the ground, and the name never quite ground out with every labored exhalation, a futile mantra - and the feeling of abandonment emerged a little further with every repetition.
Doume-
He wasn't coming.
Please
The road was empty. He wasn't going to be there to save him, this time.
Dou-
-meki
Dark flashes, like hanabi, began sparking around the edges of nothing around him and he knew he was fading. How was this happening? Why was he alone?
An image of the other boy's humorless face appeared in his mind, and suddenly Watanuki lost focus on his own desperate need. What if something had happened to him?
A whole new sense of panic swelled in him at the thought of that one being in danger, strong enough for his entire body to heave up and almost dislodge the ayakashi for a moment.
He got one clean breath in, and it brought a moment of lucidity- he could once again feel that other weight still draped over him. And time ground to a halt as everything suddenly became clear.

go away
why are you always hanging around?
no one wants you here
disappear
hurry up and disappear

The words cut clean through him, more painful than when Kohane-chan had spit them at his feet, because he knew them now.
They were his own.
His perspective shifted a little to the side, and suddenly, clear as day - the routine excuses, the million nasty complaints he'd churned out - that the fool got on his nerves or didn't deserve one thing or another - it was Doumeki suffering from his relentless, inexcusably vicious behavior.
How could he have done that to someone, and not realize he could be hurting them like this?
He'd never thought of himself as so cruel.
The other boy's pain was suddenly the most obvious, easily imaginable thing in the world, and it had been him, Watanuki, doing the wounding, over and over. All the hurt, confusion and sadness being Doumeki's, and his fault, passed clear as a bell through his feverish brain, simple
dream-logic, in less than a second -
He was very dizzy now, on the edge of losing consciousness under the crushing weight of the ayakashi.
He could vaguely feel it cementing his lungs, his ears, his burning eyes. He hardly cared.
oh god, i was such a bastard
i'm so sorry
Two hot tears spilled out and down his nose, onto the road as he felt himself blacking out.
One last convulsion painfully wracked his lanky frame, and his right arm whacked the tatami with a crack.

Tatami?

Gravity spun around his throbbing head, and found down, as the familiar ceiling of his own apartment, in the dim, predawn gray began to resolve.
His rib cage seemed to double in size, and slowly he realized he was breathing again, heavily, through a throat tight and hot.
His entire body ached; there was so much pain it was nearly impossible to sort out, from being sick, from guilt, from being despised, from being abandoned- fire lanced through him at the memory, still as fresh and raw as if it was real. Dizziness washed back over him in its wake.
His heart ached; the last moments of his dream, what he had just seconds ago thought were his last moments alive, wouldn't fade like nightmares are supposed to. He heard a faint, keening whine and realized it was coming from his own nose. It stung and his eyes burned, but he was too weak to really sob.
Memories of so many reasons to feel like absolute shit ticked off one after another in time with the faint buzz of the space heater. Cringing inside and out, Watanuki shuddered as fever and emotion crescendoed, and turned everything to white noise, knocking him out again mercifully quickly.

Time passed in fragments of dreams, incoherent moments of half consciousness.
He floated somewhere between the two, hallucinating at times.
It was cold - he found himself lying on the floor in Yuuko-san's shop, almost completely unable to move. Piles and piles of her kimono and dresses were layered over his body. He couldn't see them, but knew every door was wide open, and the cold winter air moved freely through. The mountain of fabric did nothing to keep him warm.
Everyone was gone. He could feel their absence- old, unhealing wounds in his reality that stretched out beyond the shop, across the boundaries between worlds. The gatagata of shoji rattling with the wind was the loneliest sound; the leaden heaps of silk were so heavy, it felt with every slow breath as if he was being buried deeper and deeper.
He tried his damnedest to shift an arm - the strain focused his consciousness enough that he suddenly came to and after a few moments of dumb confusion, recognized his own room again. That's right, he was sick. Unreasonably sick. How long had it been, now? There was a faint suggestion of light still coming in low through the veranda door - the sun had just set.
His bones even ached. He groaned, not ready to have to move, but he knew from experience that if he couldn't keep getting up, to drag water and medicine back to the futon himself, the situation would only get much worse. He turned on his side and slowly pushed half-upright through a wash of nauseating pain, trying not to overdo it. He sat waiting to feel ready for another move, and realized he was looking at an entire group of unfamiliar objects on the floor near the pillow. His eyes were uncooperative, but he leaned forward carefully - his tissue box and ...full water bottle, and the fever reducer.

He vaguely remembered putting them there, trying to think ahead while he still could. He also remembered finishing off the water.

Also, squatting among them were a two-liter bottle of Oi Ocha. Another of water. A small bottle of Pocari Sweat. ...and a box of inoffensive, bland-looking 7-11 cookies.

He'd been here. Watanuki had been dreaming about being completely, deservedly hung out to dry by that one, and he'd been here to check on him, possibly right while he was giving up and choking to death on acrid ayakashi miasma.
Hot stinging flared in Watanuki's nose and he hunched over a little, face crumpled to match the burning lump in his throat. Had he been completely unconscious? Did he wake up, talk in his sleep? Tell him to go away? Or something entirely different? He could easily have hallucinated rather than dreamed - only he was having a difficult time remembering most of them, other than that first one. A few burning tears plunked on the blanket - he didn't deserve it, but it would have been idiotic to stubbornly resist - hiccuping painful, hot, scratchy, dehydrated little sobs, he reached out, heart knotting and twisting, and dragged the bottle of water over, shakily cracking the cap loose. It weighed a ton, and he barely managed to lift and drink from it. The action felt so thick with meaning that he, deliriously, cried even harder.
A few more attempts to be responsible, rehydrate, take medicine, and feel grateful without wanting to disappear were so exhausting, that he barely had time to feel relieved that he'd managed to get half the bottle down, and why hadn't he drunk from his own, which was so much smaller and would have been easier to lift?