"Where the hell have you been?!" Kido grabbed Kano's arm as he slid past in a futile attempt to sneak into his room, her fingers catching in the crook of his elbow where his sleeve ended. For a second, she marveled over how thin he'd become, her lips drawing into a tight little line as she jerked him back around to face her. But it was in that second that a folded paper tumbled from his jacket pocket and onto the floor, landing between his boots.
Kano's face, half-caught between joking excuses and a faked whine of pain, froze in something like horror, and he lunged for the little square of white. Knowing it had to be important, Kido did her best to knock him away, and she must have misjudged her strength because he hit the wall with a hollow thud, crumpling the ground and holding his head in both hands. She didn't have time for the wide-eyed stare he was giving her as she fumbled with the paper, smoothing it flat, expecting— she didn't know what she was expecting. An arrest warrant, maybe. Fake flyers he'd been putting up for a joke. Anything, really, besides neatly printed hospital stationery and words with far too many syllables.
The text was small but the relevant words stood out to her all the same. The paper crumpled in her fingers but she didn't care, she couldn't concentrate on anything other than the terror roaring through her, the desperate disbelief, the inability to understand.
She'd lost so much family already. He couldn't do this to her. He couldn't—
The paper was torn from her grasp, ripping unevenly down the middle as Kano yanked it away from her, his facial features shimmering and shifting as he cycled through fake expressions to find one that fit. His incongruous laugh filtered through the air, sounding strained and fake and she almost hit him again just to make him stop.
"You really fell for it, huh?" he said, his face finally settling on a wide smile that stretched from ear to ear and made her feel sick to look at it. "I made it up, I made this paper mys—"
Her palm striking his face shut him up, and she dug her fingers against his chin and lips in a desperate attempt to make him stop talking, to make him stop lying. To her surprise, her eyes were full of tears that burned hot and made her vision waver and blur. The rest of her was cold.
"When were you going to tell us?!" she demanded, squeezing his jaw so tight it was no wonder he couldn't reply. He grabbed at her wrist, but rather than pulling her hand away, his own just stayed there, fingers curling around the bones of her forearm. She shook him off, seizing his wrists instead, pinning him to the wall. As if he'd tried to escape now, even though she'd already found out. The two of them were crouched in the hallway now, crumpled into a corner, and maybe her brain misread that as privacy because her tears started to fall, searing trails down her cheeks.
She couldn't wipe them away because doing so meant releasing him, and she didn't want to do that, didn't want to let him go ever again. How many months had the paper said? That wasn't enough. It wasn't enough time. "How dare you," she breathed out through a furious sob that stuck tight in her throat, though her words came fast and sharp like pounding rain. "How could you lie to me like that?"
Kido no longer was covering his mouth but Kano still didn't speak, his eyes darting across her face in search of answers as his mouth opened and shut, jaw working uselessly. Even when his lies were uncovered, rocks turned over to expose squirming grubs and worms to the sunshine, Kido still knew him well enough to know he was scared. He was scared of her, but even more he was scared of dying, of what was happening to him. Of what was going to happen to him.
She tried to draw in another breath to shout some more, but it caught in her throat and she couldn't keep going. They stared at each other in mutual terror, tears blurring her vision and dripping onto his light-colored shirt, his teeth clenched so tight she was sure it must hurt.
And then she gave in and hugged him, pulling his bony frame to her chest as he broke down into her jacket, grasping at the fabric and sobbing into her shoulder. If she opened her eyes, she wasn't sure if she'd be able to see him crying, but she could definitely feel it, feel his thin shoulders trembling in her arms, and she squeezed him tight, their sobs echoing throughout the front hallway.