*opens door and falls into room* Hi guys! It's great to be back again. I am VERY SORRY I haven't been able to update in awhile. I have been battling it out with the beast called LIFE. For those of you who would like a more thorough explanation, it went pretty much like this:

ME: I'm so excited! I'm going off to graduate school and moving to a new town! This is going to be great!

LIFE: LOL, NOPE. Actually, the girl you arranged to live with THREE MONTHS AGO is going to decide TWO WEEKS before term starts that she doesn't want a roommate after all. Therefore, you are going to have to spend the first term of your graduate school life commuting back and forth from your family home, leaving you utterly exhausted and with no time to devote to anything besides driving, sleeping, and keeping your head above water in school. That sound good?

ME: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT? D:

So, yes. That is basically what I've been up to. Life is a huge troll sometimes. However, this tale of woe has a happy ending! I am currently writing this from the bedroom of my brand new studio apartment OF MY VERY OWN! I was finally able to find an affordable place to live, and it's only a block away from my graduate school's campus. I am inexpressibly happy right now. :) Also, I find that I have bottled up the urge to write for so long that I'm about to explode. Therefore, I am planning to edit and throw the rest of the chapters for part one of this story up here within the next 2-3 weeks. After that, we can talk about what to do for part two.

It feels good to be back! To those of you who have reviewed while I've been gone, thank you for being so patient! *re-reads reviews*

Amethyst Kitsune: YES! This story WILL continue, come hell or high water...or LIFE.

ReGG: You can do it, girl! (I'm assuming you're a girl. Please forgive me if I'm wrong.)

Minlem means mint and lemons: Thank you for reading! Your wish finally came true. :)

QueenKunieda: I always conceived of the relationship between Natsuno and Tohru to be highly complex and multifaceted, very much like the proverbial line between good and evil. I try to portray that in my writing, and you're right that it's never as simple as it seems.

*presents new chapter*

The forest around him was deafeningly quiet. Far too quiet. Natsuno gritted his teeth, pacing nervously back and forth near the collapsed part of the living room. He did not like this sensation running through the trees. It was making his pulse race and his scalp tingle. He felt like a wolf pacing the perimeter of its territory, preparing to defend against any threat. The thing that was bothering him the most, however, was the fact that he could not sense any other presence besides himself and Tohru. His senses told him they were alone for miles and miles. And yet, his nerves remained clenched like compressed steel, and his inability to pinpoint the reason for this disturbance was driving him a bit mental.

"Natsuno," a voice called softly. The jinrou turned to see his former best friend standing in the bedroom doorway, the space behind him darkened by the fallen night. "The rice soup is ready."

Natsuno huffed and turned back to watching the night-draped forest. He heard the pad of soft feet behind him as Tohru approached. "Please eat," the blonde encouraged cautiously. "I know it's not very appetizing, but it's all we have."

The dark-haired boy tried to ignore him for a few moments longer, then sighed in frustration. If he didn't acknowledge him, Tohru would just stand there looking like a dejected puppy, which was very distracting and not at all helpful to his surveillance. Giving the forest one last challenging glare, Natsuno turned and loped through the doorway of the bedroom, crinkling his nose at the bowl set out on the bedside table. For lack of an actual table, they had stacked their scavenged items in the corner near the beds, and they were currently using the giant trunk as a chair. Growling in resignation, the jinrou sat down upon the trunk and reached for the bowl. The soup was ice cold, which made it very unappetizing. They possessed the materials to light a fire, but Natsuno refused to allow it. Most of the forest had stopped smoldering by now, so a trail of smoke in the sky would draw attention where it would not have before. Now that they knew Tatsumi had survived, the two boys were anxious to do as much as they could to keep their location a secret. It wasn't only Tatsumi they were worried about. Over the last few days since they had been to Sotoba, Natsuno had detected the scent of humans in the breeze carried upwind from the village. He also heard the sounds of vehicle engines- cars, trucks, excavators- puttering slowly across the terrain during daylight hours. These scents and noises retreated at night, but each new day brought more of them. Humans were returning to Sotoba. It would be only a matter of time until they branched out from the village and began to traverse the burned forest.

Tohru sat down carefully beside him on the trunk. The okiagari's movements were tense and pained, which probably meant he was hungry. Natsuno stared dully at the soup, figuring that he would have to choke it down, digest it, feed Tohru on his blood, and then spend the rest of the night beating his head against a metaphorical wall, trying to think of something before the sun rose. Their situation grew direr by the day, but every plan the jinrou tried to make contained glaring flaws he could not work around.

Tohru shivered quietly as Natsuno reluctantly began to eat the cold soup. The jinrou watched him out of the corner of his eye. Ever since they had come back from Sotoba, a cloud had been hanging over Tohru's mind, even thicker and darker than the usual cloud. Natsuno could practically feel its presence. The okiagari wandered about their shelter like a ghost, saying little, carrying his photo board with him almost everywhere and staring at it longingly. Sometimes that longing expression turned to fear, a kind of crumbling despair which he tried to hide from Natsuno by pretending to sleep through the nights. Even though Tohru did not breathe and had no pulse, the jinrou could still distinguish between actual sleep and fake sleep in his former friend's body.

Tohru drew his legs up to his chest, staring hollow-eyed at the wall. "The humans are coming back." It was not a question. "There were even more of them today, weren't there?"

Natsuno saw no point in lying. "Yes." He drained the dregs of the bowl and walked to the bathroom to get some water to wash the taste away.

"We can't stay here much longer, can we?"

"No." The jinrou downed the glass of rainwater and flopped back onto the trunk, turning to gaze at the curled-up boy beside him. "Tohru, why are you looking at me like that?"

Tohru's startled eyes flickered toward the other. "Wh-"

"You've been acting this way for the past few days. Don't think I haven't noticed you shambling around like a zombie and pretending to be asleep at night." Natsuno gave him a hard stare. "I've got enough to worry about already, so just tell me what it is that's bothering you."

The okiagari bit his lip and bowed his head over his knees. "Well, I….I was just….thinking. I was thinking that if….if you wanted to, there's….there's really nothing stopping you from going back to the human world."

Natsuno set his glass down with a thump and narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"I know you must have thought about it," Tohru hurried on, as if afraid he would lose the ability to speak if he hesitated. "They would never have to know you're a jinrou if you didn't tell them. You can blend in as a human without any trouble. You don't need to drink blood. You don't burn in the sunlight. You can stay awake and sleep whenever you want to. Your eyes still look normal. Your skin is warm. You can breathe and eat regular food. You have a pulse. No one would know…."

"That's not true. I know of a few people who would definitely know," Natsuno replied, thinking back to the humans he had helped to escape from Sotoba and his own parents, if any hope remained that they were still alive. "And moreover, why are you saying this to me?"

Tohru flinched and dug his claws into the trunk. "I just, I just wanted….I just wanted to know….what it is you're thinking about doing when we have to leave this place."

The jinrou's features darkened. "You think I'm planning to return to the human world? Like nothing ever happened?"

The blonde boy gathered the courage to raise his eyes. "But don't you see, Natsuno? Being a jinrou gives you a second chance. It doesn't have to be all over for you. You can still have a life. You can-"

"As if my parents aren't missing and probably dead? As if my house isn't burned to the ground? As if I didn't watch my entire village get sucked dry and slaughtered by unnatural monsters? As if I wasn't killed by my best friend, then revived and forced to exist as one of those monsters?!" Natsuno's tone had progressively risen throughout his rant until he was nearly shouting. Tohru cowered before him.

"Wait, Natsuno, I'm sorry, that's not what I-"

"This is ridiculous. I'm going to sleep." The dark-haired boy heaved himself temperamentally off the trunk and gave Tohru a withering glare before storming over to the furthest bed and flinging the covers off with such force that he had to stalk across the room and retrieve them. Throwing himself upon the mattress, he cloaked himself in the blankets and rolled away from the sputtering okiagari. See how he liked a taste of his own medicine, Natsuno thought vindictively, determinedly ignoring the other boy's attempts to apologize. Eventually Tohru gave up and sighed a quavering sigh. The jinrou heard him cross over to the other bed and curl up sadly under the blankets. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but his fuming mind and the persistent sounds of Tohru's shivering kept him wide awake. "Will you stop that?"

He could practically hear the okiagari flinch. "I'm sorry. I….I can't. It's so cold. I've always been so cold. W-when I first rose up, the Kirishikis said we would get used to it eventually….not having any body heat to warm us. I know….I have to accept it, but it's so uncomfortable. It doesn't feel right at all." Tohru lapsed into several minutes of silence as his shivering intensified. "Natsuno….can I lie down with you?"

The jinrou whipped around to glare daggers at the blonde. He felt like throwing the pillow at him, or perhaps the entire bed. "I am angry with you, for god's sake! Why don't you understand that?!"

"I understand. I do," Tohru protested softly, rolling off his mattress and moving heedlessly through Natsuno's thick aura of danger. "I know you're angry with me. I know you might always be angry with me. I can accept that. I deserve it." The blonde boy sat on the edge of Natsuno's mattress, staring down at his pale, dead hands. "I….I just don't know what to do, Natsuno. I'll always be stuck like this. I can never cross back over into the human world. We stayed with the Kirishikis because we had no other world to go to. We couldn't be alive again, so we tried to carve out a space in the living world for the dead." Tohru shuddered, clutching his hands over his eyes. "But now….now they've all been killed again, and I….I….Natsuno, what am I going to do?!" The okiagari peered frantically at him through his frigid fingers. "I can't stay here or the humans will find me. But where- where can I go? I can't blend in. I can't hide. Everywhere I go, I'll be putting myself and others at risk. I don't want to kill anymore…."

Natsuno sat upright and firmly parted his former friend's hands from his eyes. "Tohru. Tohru, calm down. You're making yourself a nervous wreck. Every place in the world is not like Sotoba."

Tohru sniffled and bowed his head. "I know….I know it's not. I know there are other places out there. I've seen you looking off toward the city over the horizon. That world is still there for you." Shivering painfully, the blonde boy covered his eyes again. "That's why….Natsuno….I've already robbed you of your life once. I don't want to do it again by holding you back from the life you wanted. I….I've been too selfish already."

The jinrou blinked, letting Tohru's words settle into his mind. He realized he had jumped to the wrong conclusion earlier about what the other boy had been trying to say. Sighing recalcitrantly, Natsuno flopped back on the bed and stared at Tohru's shivering, fragile frame. "Oh hell. Just get under the blankets already."

The okiagari's eyes peeked over his fingers in surprise.

Natsuno patted the warm space beside him. "Now, before I change my mind." Tohru quickly obeyed, sliding underneath the covers and curling up next to the dark-haired boy. Natsuno had a whole mouthful of things he wanted to say, but he waited for the blonde to get comfortable and desist with his shivering. "You must not think much of me if you figure I'm just going to scamper back to the human world and forget about my purpose."

Tohru's eyes widened and he clutched at the jinrou's shirt. "Wh-? No, that's not what I-!"

"I know," Natsuno waved down his protests. "But the fact still remains. What happened in Sotoba can never be undone. And I made my decision, which I am not going to redact. My goal was, and always will be, to neutralize the threat of the Risen."

Tohru shivered again and pressed his forehead against the other's shoulder. Natsuno stiffened, forcing himself to tolerate his former friend's closeness. "To that end, I assisted Toshio Ozaki in exposing their existence to the villagers. I helped the humans fight, and earnestly tried to destroy the most dangerous of the Risen, the Jinrou." Glancing down at his body, Natsuno shook his head. "I admit that I'm not sure why I failed….neither Tatsumi nor I should still be here. But the fact remains that I am here, and because of that, you are here as well." Tohru peered hesitantly up at him. Natsuno turned his head to the side. "I was unable to kill you, due to my own weakness. That makes you my responsibility. If you were to go on hurting or killing other humans, it would be just as much my fault as yours, because I allowed you to exist when I knew what you were capable of. Saying that I have a 'second chance' at life is naïve and meaningless. As long as I live, I will follow my goal. I will be less of a monster than the monsters that brought this upon me."

A resounding round of silence followed this declaration. Tohru lay still beside him, his body moving incrementally with the jinrou's breathing. Natsuno could feel the heat from his own body pooling between them, warming the frigid skin of the okiagari. Eventually, Tohru murmured, "That's….what I was talking about earlier….being selfish. Because if it means I don't have to be alone, I'll be glad to be your….responsibility. I don't mind that at all. But it bothers me to think of how unfair it is to place that much of a burden on you, especially since I'll never be able to fit into the human world….and now that Sotoba is gone, the human world is all there is. I will always be an outsider, and I deserve to suffer that punishment, but I don't want to drag you into the shadows with me…."

Natsuno snorted and tucked the blankets more securely around them as the night breeze wafted in through the bedroom door. "Honestly, Tohru. I've never been anything but an outsider, even while I was human. Were you even paying attention back then?" He sighed, peering down at the blonde. "I always wondered why someone like you was so determined to be friends with someone like me…."

"Because I liked you," Tohru said simply, brushing the jinrou's shoulder. "And I worry about you, even now. We both know that you're-" he bit back a tiny hint of a smile- "You're, well….a bit of a standoffish lunkhead sometimes. You always act like it's such a pain to have to interact with the world. And because of that, I worry that you don't know what you're missing….or how good the world can really be."

The dark-haired boy scoffed in disbelief. "How good the world can really be? Should you really be saying something like that, especially now? Look around you!" He flung his arm out across the cabin toward the incinerated forest, the decimated village, the mounds of earth covering piles of murdered corpses. The wind whistled dry and dead through the barren trees.

Tohru closed his eyes and burrowed his face into the jinrou's shoulder. "I've lived in this village much longer than you have, Natsuno. I've known Sotoba's people since I was a baby. They were good people. They had happy lives. And they died horribly, but that doesn't invalidate the value of their happiness. It doesn't make it less real. Sotoba's goodness is gone, and it will probably never come back, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist elsewhere, you know?" Tohru paused, and Natsuno bit his lip and let the silence roll over them. "You're very cynical about people, Natsuno, and after all that's happened, I guess you have good reason. But not all people are like that….like Sunako. Or Tatsumi. Or….me. Maybe….maybe I'm not good anymore. Maybe I never really was, and that's why I found myself able to kill people to ease my hunger. But there were others who were better than that, you know?" Tohru's voice trembled like a rippled pond. "Like….like Ritsuko. Or the other nurses at the Ozaki clinic. Or your friends, Kaori and Akira. Or….you, Natsuno. There are other people out there that are brave and good like that. You should give yourself the chance to meet them."

Natsuno sighed and ran his fingers through his scruffy hair. He needed a haircut- they both did. His thoughts turned again toward the uncertain future outside of their cabin. "Tohru….after all this time, you're still such an optimist. You really are impossible. But I….I've never been able to think like that. I don't expect people to be good, and I usually get exactly what I expect. Although sometimes….I have been surprised." The jinrou gazed toward the open door, thinking that of all the unexpected actions he had witnessed in the wake of the Shiki's arrival in Sotoba, his own had perhaps been the most unexpected of all. Even now he did not fully understand why he had gone so far to protect the village he had always hated, or why Tohru was the only threat he had failed to defend against. "But even if I have to hide in the human world, I know that I can never truly belong there. I never have."

"You never tried," Tohru replied softly, glancing toward his photo board on the bed behind them.

There were a million things Natsuno was tempted to say in reply, but he found that none of them seemed to want to coalesce at the moment. In the midst of his confusion, he noticed Tohru's breathing had become ragged and shallow. The okiagari only breathed when he was frightened or trying to distract himself from his hunger. Ruling out the first possibility, Natsuno brought a clawed hand up to his neck and gently pierced the pale veneer of his skin. Tohru's eyes immediately latched onto the blossom of red. "Drink," Natsuno commanded, and the okiagari pulled him closer, pressed his lips against the jinrou's warm neck, and plunged his teeth into the tender spot over the vein. Natsuno stared out the bedroom door and watched the first threads of daylight winding through the charcoal trees. He still felt nervous, as though something was not quite right in the surrounding landscape. However, his senses still refused to pinpoint a source for this disturbance. Perhaps his powers were lapsing because he had not fed on human blood recently. He let a little sigh escape his throat, feeling Tohru's Adam's apple bobbing up and down against his bared shoulder as the okiagari drank. The issue of feeding was going to be a problem. Even with all the money he had dug from the earth around his burned house, he had no idea where or whether it was even possible to purchase medical blood packs. Something like that would have to be arranged through undercover means. And even then….

Natsuno felt the give in his skin as Tohru removed his fangs, sitting upright and wiping away a line of blood trailing from his mouth. "Thank you, Natsuno." The okiagari yawned and smiled shyly. "I feel much better now. I'm glad that….I'll be able to stay with you….no matter where we end up going."

Natsuno grunted and rolled out of bed, feeling the bite marks upon his neck scab and heal as he strode toward the doorway. "It's fine. Let's try to get some sleep now. I'll close the door."

He reached out for the handle, but something closed around him first. Natsuno choked as his airway was suddenly constricted by a hand that had come out of nowhere. His vision sparked in different colors. As he was wrenched off his feet, the jinrou caught a hazy glimpse of the hand leading to a muscled arm, which sloped down to a broad shoulder, which curved upward into the snarling face of Tatsumi.