A/N: Here, I use quotes and inspiration specifically from chapter 98-99! Hopefully, my use of italics is not too confusing, but I didn't want to add every "Then Kyoko said/scoffed/glared," etc because it interrupts the dialogue. [Reminder: italicize=mental dialogue (or sometimes emphasis in speech) / "italicize within quotes"=flashback or dreamland scenario]
Kanae peeked through the gaps of the shutters at Kyoko's confused figure down below. And what, might I ask, was that? she mentally berated herself. Her temper had gotten away from her again and she couldn't not say anything to such a ridiculously ignorant individual. Yes, that was obviously why she had called out in the first place. "Does she not know how to find out the simplest information like a person's name just by looking at them? She really doesn't know anything about being a witch," she exclaimed.
Not that you know so much more, her conscience nagged. What's even more idiotic is that you revealed your location. Wasn't the point of using what little charming spells you have to mask and hide yourself? Now she's going to try and visit you...idiot.
"Mo!" Kanae tsked, Jirou's words to her at their last meeting coming to mind.
"That's because you actually care even though you try not to act like it. It's something I really like about you, Kanae."
"..." She remembered how she had responded too. "My name is Renné. If you wanted another girl—this Kanae character, namely—to help you play the role of pseudo-beau, you shouldn't have asked me." She had rejected him soundly without breaking character, without breaking...
Kanae scowled. If she was really honest with herself, the minute she'd shut the door behind her she had begun to panic. Jirou lacked intelligence and wit, but he wasn't completely stupid. She could remain in this town no longer. It was only a matter of time before he caught up to her—why he was following, Kanae couldn't fathom. It wasn't her job to interpret idiot's minds.
And then this stupid Ghoul's Day business just got in my way of leaving tonight. Stupid moon, stupid Ghoul's Day! Kanae cursed silently. If she wasn't careful, there was a good chance he'd actually take the left path at the crossroads and end up running into her just as she tried to leave. As soon as the sun comes up and the ghouls are most likely gone, I will be out of this town for good, Kanae determined.
She nodded curtly to herself before crawling into bed. Dealing with another man's feelings for her was the last thing on Kanae's to-do list, but she wasn't about to risk an untimely, unpleasant death in the forest with a bunch of ghouls ringing her neck and doing God-knows what else. She was off the market in terms of love—she had made that much extremely clear to him—and he had been a fool to fall for her anyway. Men only wanted a woman to have their children and children? The little brats made life incredibly difficult already! Those twerpish nieces and nephews probably missed her only because they thought she was fun regardless of whatever harsh word she threw at them! Kanae angrily tossed and turned in her sheets at the thought. Did they know how exhausting it all was? And now she was going to go back to them in the end!
She glared into the darkness. No, this was just cowardice and she knew it. Kanae could only hope that word would not get out to her boss. He would be so upset with her. She had already suspected that the reason he let her do such questionable jobs was related to his undying plea for her to allow love back into her life. What a joke...
Kanae wondered about this Kyoko character. What had happened to her to make her powers so strong? The girl had looked innocent and ditzy enough and Kanae initially had half a mind to just tell her to get lost. That is until she had caught sight of her demons. She probably had the potential to be as strong as that Reino person, whoever he was. He had some nerve, painting "Vie Ghoul" on the side of his ship. Just what exactly was he trying to do, expose himself? Kanae supposed that if one was strong enough, one could do whatever without consequence. Or maybe it's just lack of conscience, she thought. At least he wasn't shouting it from the rooftops. Any dealings with the demon world were not exactly the type of actions that would send people shouting praises to the heavens.
Kyoko was very different from herself—she already knew that just by a glance—but—she caught herself from the treacherous thoughts tempting her to realize that she actually cared—Kanae couldn't help but be drawn to their...difference. Yes, it was their difference that caught her eye, she convinced herself. For example, Kanae had chosen this life for herself. She had no overwhelmingly tragic or traumatic experience which forced her demons out and gave her no choice but to be a witch. In fact, Kanae was not a full-fledged witch. She couldn't be. It seemed that the strongest witches came with the harshest pasts and, though she had not had the opportunity to meet that many witches or wizards in her life, she didn't think it was so farfetched to believe that Kyoko was one of the strongest. And it appeared that Kyoko had very little knowledge and control of her powers, so she was either very new or in denial—or both, Kanae added. Someone with as trusting a personality as Kyoko seemed to have would be too easy to dye any color and—Kanae clicked her tongue when she recognized the emotions surfacing in her. "Well, someone's got to make sure she doesn't get dyed just any color," she mumbled before she shifted in her bed once more and faded off into a troublesome dreamland.
Kyoko opened her eyes. Or were her eyes already open? There was absolutely nothing wrong with her surroundings, she was sure of it. But she couldn't shake the feeling that someone or something was about to rip her already fragile being to shreds.
"It's you..." her voice echoed in the hollows of her mind. "Why are you here?" She wasn't naked but she felt as if she was—totally defenseless—an encompassing presence pressing on her thoughts and suggesting that it was devouring her visually before it did so entirely and literally.
A black haze fizzed at the edges of her vision, whispering "to catch you...to catch you..."
Kyoko was so sluggish...but the tension in the air had her flight response screaming at her and she forced one foot in front of the other again and again and before she could even think, he was behind her—his breath whispering down her neck, his heat radiating and pulsating into her body and freezing it.
"Oh? What is this you hold on to so tightly?"
A flaming finger reached around and reached into her chest, intruded deeper and oh, she wanted to tense but she could hardly stand. She was dying. The black haze was growing—"Corn..." her mind pleaded as her eyes closed tight, fighting to stay conscious.
A scream. A light flashed behind her squeezed eyelids, glowing a golden bold red against her shut lids. The black was gone and she could see clearly. Whirling around, she came face to face with the one who'd tried to mark her and on the ground...Reino. Her eyes narrowed, but he was fading like a dying, dark flame. He couldn't hurt her now.
Kyoko knelt and gathered up the small notebook by her feet. She flipped the pages...a golden glow faded into the wild rose pressed between the weathering paper.
"I'm surprised that that weed is even holding itself together."
Kyoko felt the indignance rising in her. No longer was she afraid of this demonic figure who intruded her nightmares. "It is not a weed. This fragile, beautiful 'weed' just happens to be my treasure, capable of absorbing my negative emotions and—"
"Throw it away."
"Don't say nonsense!"
"That thing has absorbed too many negative emotions. It's now filled with violent energy. It's so malicious that I dropped it without hesitation."
She narrowed her eyes at him, "You just mean that it burned you." His gloved fingers twitched slightly. "I don't want to hear such a thing from you of all people. You're more malicious than anyone else! You tracked me down in my sleep and invaded my dreams, preying on me when I'm most vulnerable. Coward! And don't you dare speak about Corn in such a way—the negative emotions are mine alone—"
"Aahhh!" Kyoko wrenched herself from her sheets and tumbled onto the cold wood paneling below. She was soaked in her own sweat and when she looked down to examine herself, she realized that her notebook was clutched tightly to her chest. Grimacing, she pried her fingers loose from the binding. Somehow she'd managed to throw herself out of the nightmare. She didn't want to go back, but she was a little miffed that she hadn't finished her piece.
Haunting words leftover stirred in the back of her mind. "The little sadness you have cannot even compare. With a single touch, that child transferred feelings that are not those of a child from a normal family into it. I fail to understand how it is that it hasn't been burned to ash by now as, if that person continued to feeling that way, unable to escape his life, then by now he is most likely broken or he has already left this world."
"That doesn't surprise me anyway," Kyoko mumbled under her breath from her spot on the floor. "Corn is a fairy prince. He was never from this world to begin with." But...to think that he could possibly be gone... "Wait! I've already accepted that nightmare as fact! Such a thing...it surely can't have been real..." The skin over her heart suddenly throbbed painfully and she grabbed at it, her breath hissing between her teeth and her body curling in on itself. His curse, incomplete but lethal, was fighting its way to the surface like a bruise blooming on her chest.
She would not let him catch her. Not yet. Wait, not yet?
Kyoko ignored and forgot her confusion at her extra—not to mention unnecessary and false—admission. She pressed the pain down, chanting over and over in her head that it would not win, pulling strength from the rose pressed between the pages of her diary. To her great relief and surprise, it worked. Her grudges then chose this moment to arrive on the scene and whisper encouragements as they draped around her, trying to give her comfort, but Kyoko could hear the voice from her dream far more clearly.
"It doesn't have any holy or magical power-like feeling. But you're right in that I cannot touch you as long as you have that."
Carefully, Kyoko turned the pages until they fell in place with the worn backbone. Her finger ghosted across the wrinkled petals. There was no trace of the golden glow it had possessed in her dream, but to have persuaded Reino that he shouldn't or couldn't touch it—touch her—meant that it did have some sort of power. And did it matter if it had no power? To her, the flower was still sacred, in a sense. It was the only lasting physical reminder of her time with the fairy prince so many years ago and she couldn't shake the feeling that it had acted as a charm against Reino's ill-intentions. It had protected her. Wasn't that the same as Corn protecting her? Something wasn't matching up. Reino's words of warning seemed to contradict what had just happened. Was he lying to her?
She glanced down at her grudges who eyed the tiny flower from a distance. She couldn't quite place the emotions on their ghostly faces, but it seemed as if they were regarding it with a mix of caution, respect, curiosity, and...something else she couldn't discern at the moment. They weren't going to touch it, she saw, but couldn't that just be respecting her treasure? It hurt to admit it, but these were demons as demonic as Reino's. Reino had burned the moment he touched her treasure. Would they too burn if they approached it? Regardless of all this, they nodded solemnly when she thought aloud, "I'm going to have to keep this with me always. It seems like Reino can't do anything as long as I have this charm."
Kyoko stood. She had to leave this place. So early in the morning and she already had a bad taste in her mouth. Now that she had a choice of where to live, she was not going to stay in a place where bad memories pervaded her senses if she could help it. She was not going to be trapped and chained down to any place. So adamant was she, she nearly missed the knocking at her door.
"Excuse me, Ms. Kyoko? You have a package."
"A package? But I didn't order anything," Kyoko wondered aloud. She picked up the thin, wrapped parcel which had been pushed under her door. It was so tiny...what could it be? She examined the outside, then froze. Could it be a trap? But she didn't feel anything. Her grudges were curious, but not frantic or ecstatic. She set it down an arms-length away from her, scrutinizing it in an exaggerated manner. It couldn't hurt to be too careful—she yanked carefully, then boldly on the fraying string.
Inside lay a small and worn pamphlet. The cover was simple, brown leather that cracked in places here and there. The fading scrawl on the cover read "Guide?" Kyoko questioned. A guide to what? For her from whom?
Q/A: For those of you who may be confused, "Renné" is Kanae's alias specifically for her job in this town. (I have since added some details in the previous chapters to make it make my hints more obvious.) A man hired her to act as his lover (similar to canon storyline in the manga) and the reason she is leaving town in a hurry is that she discovers that he has developed feelings for her, something she does not need in her life. Kyoko does not currently know Renné's real name (Kanae), but she does know that "Renné" is an alias (which was revealed in the previous chapter).
There is also a reason why Kanae knows Kyoko's name (separate to the scene Sho and Kyo/Kyoko created in the marketplace back in chapter 9), but that will be revealed more clearly soon (hint #1: Kanae's quote from the beginning of this chapter: "Does she not know how to find out the simplest information like a person's name just by looking at them? She really doesn't know anything about being a witch," she exclaimed). Chapter 10 is when Renné is first introduced alongside her false beau. Also keep in mind that I'm referring to the chapters by their actual number. Because I included a Prologue, the site is counting the Prologue as "Chapter 1" and thus all the chapters numbers one number off.