Haruto woke slowly. He felt murky, limbs simultaneously heavier than anything he could lift and so light he thought they might float away if they weren't held down by an even gentle pressure covering him from neck to toes. The first glimmer of awareness faded almost as soon as it had fully formed, driving him back into formless peace.

The second time, Haruto was awake long enough to open his eyes to a familiar face grinning at him from above a turquoise vest. "I thought you were dead," he tried to say to Kosuke, but his voice wouldn't come out above a hoarse whisper, and the effort it took to speak pulled him back into the darkness. He had the briefest impression of fingers ghosting along his hair before it faded.

Three was the magic number; Haruto opened his eyes, thoughts more or less clear, and found that someone had decided it was a good idea to dump him in a hospital while he'd been asleep. He was not pleased, despite the shakiness he could still feel from having his mana drained to the literal dregs, particularly since he couldn't quite remember what had happened that he had used so much mana in the first place. His last memory was confessing to Chimera that he was in love with him and being rejected, and then arguing with the Phantom about – the bottom dropped out of Haruto's stomach as the details of the conversation started seeping back.

"Chimera knows how the abnormal Phantoms are being made," Haruto said, just to see if he could. The words came out clearly enough, although his throat was dry and it felt like there was something in it. He'd been trying to figure out how to find the Gates before it was too late, but everything after the conversation with Chimera was a blur. Haruto knew there had been something else, but he couldn't bring up details of what, precisely, it had been. He put it aside; finding the Gates was more important, no matter how little mana it felt like he had.

Trying to get out of the bed was a whole new exercise in frustration; not only had someone seen fit to drag him to a hospital, but all sorts of extraneous tubes and wires had been attached to him while he was there. Haruto started pulling them out, starting with the soft tube that was, in fact, lodged in his throat and taped to his cheek. That one made him gag twice, once during the actual removal and the second time for the scent of the bile dripping out of the far end. He dropped it on the floor with a shudder.

Getting rid of the rest of the things attached to him set off a series of alarms that brought first one and then several more people running. Haruto nodded and smiled politely and dodged the hands that kept trying to put the monitors back onto him. It was harder than it should have been, but he wasn't about to stay where he was. He knew perfectly well how much mana he could lose, and how to handle mana depletion. He'd essentially made a career out of it, and he wasn't about to let someone else tell him differently.

Haruto's statement that he was leaving brought a fresh round of protest, but he found his clothes in a plastic bag in a cupboard at the foot of the bed, and got himself dressed without incident. He was tired enough when he finished that he thought if he lay back down he would fall right back to sleep, but he wasn't about to admit it. He continued to politely and firmly tell the hospital staff that he was leaving, over their protests, until they brought him whatever paperwork he needed to sign himself out.

The phrase against medical advice gave him pause for half a second, and he looked up at Mr. Soma, you've been unconscious for a week, but none of it was going to stop him from going. Haruto had a moment of doubt when Chimera appeared in the doorway, brows drawn together and mouth compressed into a thin line, but Chimera just sighed at the attempt to recruit him into the argument for Haruto to stay put.

"Other people don't cause this much trouble," he said to Haruto, handing him a glass of water.

"How would you know," Haruto said, emptying the glass. It took most of the awful taste out of his mouth. "You don't spend time around other people."

"I spent plenty of time watching other people while you weren't here," Chimera said, but he walked Haruto out of the hospital doors and drove him back to the antique shop on the back of his bike. It felt familiar, although Haruto was fairly sure he'd never ridden on Chimera's bike before.

The shop was empty, the sign in the door reading Closed. Haruto frowned at it. "Why is the shop closed?" he asked. It was the middle of the afternoon, and it should have been open.

Chimera shrugged. "Something about shrines and New Year," he said.

"New Year?" Haruto blinked. "It's New Year's Day?"

"You were gone for a week," Chimera said, but that still didn't make the dates add up. Haruto had confessed to Chimera on Christmas Eve, he was sure of it. There was an entire day missing.

"Eight days?" he hazarded, as Chimera shut the cold air out.

"Seven," Chimera said impatiently, turning to peer into his face. "I'm beginning to think I should have left you in the hospital."

Haruto ducked away, not tripping over the step up into the shop itself only because he remembered at the last second that it was there. "Seven doesn't make sense," he muttered under his breath, and then at a normal volume, "We still need to find the Gates."

"What did you just say?" There was no intonation; Chimera's voice was absolutely flat. Haruto glanced over his shoulder to see Chimera staring at him, frozen in the act of removing his jacket.

"I said, we still have to find the Gates," Haruto repeated. "And then figure out how to stop their Underworlds from deteriorating."

Chimera paled. Jacket forgotten, he grabbed Haruto by the shoulders. Haruto struggled, but he didn't quite have the strength to break free. Chimera glared at him, looking at his eyes and touching his face in a bizarre parody of the act of seeing if someone was all right. "What's the last thing you remember?" Chimera asked, and he did not look pleased when Haruto told him.

"It's fine," Haruto said, although memory loss hadn't been part of mana depletion before. He was fairly sure he hadn't forgotten anything after he'd woken up to argue with the hospital staff.

"Nothing about this is fine," Chimera said, and all but shoved him onto the couch before telling him exactly what he had done.

Haruto started digging his nails into his palms halfway through the recitation, and Chimera's blunt description of what he had done to Koyomi hit him like a punch to the gut. He couldn't breathe for a moment, long enough that he could see Chimera start to panic. It was the unfamiliar sight that unlocked his chest, letting him draw in air and exhale it on what was so close to a shuddering sob as made no difference.

"She said it was all right," Chimera said, not unkindly.

The resting place you found for me is in the hearts of hundreds of people who will be alive because we helped them, echoed Koyomi's voice. I couldn't ask for anything better. It might have been a memory, or it might have been wishful thinking, but Haruto clung to the words until the prickling against his eyelids faded and he could breathe freely again. He resolutely put the thoughts and memories of Koyomi away. Someday he would be able to think of her without pain, and be able to honor her memory; for now, he would hold onto those feelings without looking at them.

"I'm sorry," he said, when he thought he could speak again.

"For what?"

"For – for all of this." Haruto gestured toward himself. "For making you – for all of it."

"I'm not doing anything I don't want to do," Chimera said, which, on reflection, might even have been true. Haruto shrugged anyway.

"I promised to help you," he said. "And then I told you I was in love with you instead, after dragging you halfway across the country and then back to Tokyo to deal with a major crisis, and here you are, dealing with the aftermath."

"Why is this so hard for you?" Chimera buried his face in his hands. "I'm here because I want to be here, Haruto. If I didn't want to be with you, I would already be gone."

"But," Haruto said helplessly. The words coming out of Chimera's mouth didn't make any sense.

"Nitoh Kosuke is no longer holding me here," Chimera said. "I chose to stay. With you."

"But," Haruto said again. "But you said – I asked if you felt the same way, and you said you didn't know."

"Of course I don't know if it's the same!" Chimera threw his hands in the air in a very human gesture. "How should I know what is and isn't the same? Phantoms and humans feel things differently!"

Haruto worked his mouth, trying to speak, but nothing came out.

"You look like a fish," Chimera said. "Stop that."

Haruto closed his mouth, opting to glare at Chimera instead. "I'll show you fish," he muttered, his voice choosing the wrong moment to start working again.

"Humanity is an interesting experience," Chimera said. "I've decided I'm not ready to let it go. Or you."

"You like me," Haruto said, the idea finally beginning to sink in.

"Yes," Chimera said irritably. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. And show you."

Even with everything that had happened over the past few days – weeks, Haruto reminded himself – he couldn't stop the smile that he could feel spreading across his face until it hurt. "You like me," he repeated.

"Are you sure you don't have brain damage?"

Haruto didn't think Chimera was serious. He was fairly certain. He reached for Chimera, pulling him into a kiss. Chimera met him halfway, keeping the contact brief and resting his forehead against Haruto's. "Pretty sure," Haruto said, and Chimera rolled his eyes.

"Don't you have a room upstairs for that?"

Haruto hadn't heard the door open, but the entrance of the shop was full; Wajima, Shunpei, Mayu, and Rinko all stood in a loose knot, openly watching him with Chimera. Haruto didn't move away, although common sense dictated that he should.

Mayu nudged Rinko, who had been the one to speak. "More importantly, weren't you in the hospital an hour ago? They let you go already?"

"Yes," Haruto said, before Chimera could say anything. Chimera was the one who sat up straight, turning around to see the crowd of Haruto's found family clearly.

"He's stubborn," Chimera said. "Willful. Reckless. Insistent on having his own way."

"Ah. Well. That he is." Wajima stepped into the shop first, giving Chimera a look that wasn't quite fond, but had at least traces of genuine warmth to it. As if that had broken a dam, the other three piled inside, talking excitedly and animatedly.

Haruto leaned against Chimera, the other putting an arm around his shoulders to hold him close, and kept to the edges of the conversation. It would take time, to reconcile the fragile sense of balance between the loss of Koyomi and the new warmth of what he'd started with Chimera, but he had his friends and family around him. He didn't need a physical representation of hope to be able to feel it in his heart, or to bring it to others. Haruto tucked his feet underneath himself and listened. For all that he had tried to represent hope to others, for all the times he'd stood as a bulwark against despair to protect the potential Gates, he hadn't been able to look forward to his own future. He twined his fingers around Chimera's, feeling the gentle pressure of Chimera's grip, and thought that maybe, after all of it, he was finally able to feel a flicker of hope for himself.