Itomori's train station possessed only a small waiting room, its narrow confines home to three benches, a vending machine, and a ticket window. As Yusuke and Kuwabara accosted the worker hidden in the booth, Kurama led Michi to a seat along the far wall and eased down beside her. Hiei trailed them, his focus on some faraway place, doubtless running from the wretched grief strung through his Loom in streaks of wire-sharp mauve.
On the long trek back from Ryota's cottage, Kurama had kept hold of Michi's hand—or maybe she had kept hold of his. Either way, their hands remained laced together even now, resting between them on the metal bench. His thumb stroked across her knuckles with slow, steady pressure, repeating without words the assurances he'd continued uttering since the moment Hiei's sword pierced Ryota's guts.
Now, though, silence reigned, and he let his thumb speak for him.
Yusuke and Kuwabara rejoined them minutes later, tickets in hand. There was a forced jauntiness to Yusuke's step, an over-exaggerated pep as he swept up to the windows overlooking the train platform and stared out at the tracks. "Train'll be here in ten. Not totally crappy timing, all things considered. Maybe today isn't complete shit just yet."
"Can the jokes, Urameshi," Kuwabara answered without heart. His threads hung about him like a mourning shroud, tinged with mauve sadness and magenta disappointment, his heart hurting for souls he had never even known.
Hurting because two humans were dead.
Because Ryota was dead.
Dead.
She kept reliving it, an endless loop inside her mind. Not the instant when Hiei's intent changed. Not the second when he cleaved the life from Ryota's body. But the haunting, fractured moment that followed instantaneously after—the dissolution of Ryota's Loom.
The pinprick of its absence still hovered at the edge of her awareness, never coming quite into focus and yet refusing to meld out of existence either. It was but a pixel upon a vast screen, one tiny, disobedient fleck of light, a singular star gone from the constellations of the universe.
"Michi," Kurama said softly.
"Hmm."
"I recognize the futility of this advice, but to whatever extent you can, try not to dwell. Try not to let what's transpired today consume you."
She squeezed her eyes shut, blotting out the view of Yusuke as he stepped closer, his gaze darting to their joined hands, then flitting away. "Easier said than done," she murmured.
"And yet the only task that needs doing."
Clearing his throat awkwardly, Yusuke said, "We'll get you home to Mushiyori tomorrow, Michi." Her name. Not kid for once. Why was that what brought fresh tears stinging to her eyes? "Thanks for being flexible."
She hadn't wanted to be. When Yusuke had announced they were done burying the dead and that it was time to truck over to Genkai's, she'd tried to find the words to argue. As long as it harbored Taki and more of those poisonous white threads, the shrine was the last place she wanted to be.
But then Kurama had informed her in that careful, coddling tone he'd adopted that Asato had come out to the compound for the weekend, and even though she was mad at him—even though she might never forgive him for volunteering her for this wretched kidnapping—the thought of seeing her cousin froze any arguments dead in her throat. Because Asato would get it. He'd get it like no one else would. Not Runa, Nanako, or Yurie, who knew nothing of her territory. Not Kurama, for all his efforts.
Still, she hadn't let them in on how desperately she needed a comforting face—because frankly, Kurama didn't truly count; not these days—and she wasn't planning to clue them in now. Instead, she stuck to the same lie she'd spun before: "Genkai will want to hear what I saw firsthand."
A beat of silence answered her. Desperate to fill it, she let her gaze rove until her eyes settled on Hiei and the hilt of the katana jutting from the back of his strange cloak. Without thinking, she asked, "Why don't people notice you're carrying around a sword?"
He turned to her. A flicker of lime surprise zagged across his tapestry of raging regret. "It's taken you all these years to ask that question?"
"I guess."
It wasn't the response he'd anticipated, it seemed, because further surprise—and a twinge of wry, cobalt amusement—spread through his threads. "Not good at paying attention, are you?"
"More like, willfully oblivious."
A bark of laughter drew her eye to Yusuke, his Loom blooming with cobalt. "You? Or him?"
She shrugged.
Hiei's lips pulled back in a snarl, his threads bleeding toward crimson as he tossed Yusuke a glare, but his frustration didn't appear aimed toward Michi. He spared Kurama a brief, indecipherable glance before returning his focus to her, then raised a hand to the white strip of cloth wrapped perpetually around his forehead. He tapped a finger directly over its center, his touch feather light. "I make them unaware."
A flicker of cold woke in her belly, and Kurama's thumb ceased its gentle stroking as she asked, "Come again?"
"Human minds are easily manipulated. Weak, fragile things." He grinned, wicked as a wildfire. "All I need do is prod their thoughts back toward whatever mundane drivel occupies their lives, and they forget all about me."
For a heartbeat, Michi regretted asking, but as she drew in a fresh breath and her chest expanded, the fist that had gripped her heart in its bony clutches for weeks finally loosened. Only a degree. But a degree nonetheless.
Because this was an answer, and at least she could do something with answers. Even if all that meant was asking more questions.
With sharp clarity, she flashed back to what she'd told Asato—that she was sick of juggling two lives in two different worlds. Well, maybe the path to balance wasn't, in fact, locking one world out entirely. Maybe it was learning what she could about both, on her terms, when she wanted, as much or as little as she wanted.
And maybe, despite everything, she did want to.
Without crutches.
Carefully—pointedly—she retrieved her hand from Kurama's, unlacing their fingers and retreating into her own space. The moment she did, she sensed a change in him, his walls bricking back into place, whatever facsimile of Shuichi that emerged when she'd needed him returning to the place from whence it came. He remained at her side, legs crossed, ankle resting atop knee, hands laced atop ankle, but he no longer leaned toward her and a calculating appraisal had taken root in his emerald gaze that hadn't been there seconds prior.
The fox was back.
So be it.
"You use mind control," she said to Hiei.
"Hn."
"Casually? Without strain?" After all, he didn't appear as if he were exerting himself. Perhaps he hid it well. Or perhaps it was just that trivial for him. Perhaps demons were simply that unfathomably powerful.
"As I said, human minds are—"
"Oh, shut up, short stack," Kuwabara snapped, swatting a hand in Hiei's direction. Then he jabbed a finger toward his own forehead. "The shrimp got this creepy eye implanted in his head years ago. It makes that mind voodoo crap pretty easy for him—"
Hiei bristled. "The Jagan would tear you to pieces—"
Kuwabara plowed ahead as if he hadn't heard the fire demon at all. "It almost killed him when he got it, but he's a stubborn idiot, so he did it anyway. But it's not like he can just waltz into your head without a little work on his part now—and a lot of work in the past."
An eye implantation? Was that what lurked beneath Hiei's bandana?
Bizarre.
Utterly so.
And yet, for all his bluster, not even Kuwabara seemed fazed by the strangeness of what he'd just proclaimed. Third eyes. Mind control. None of that was odd to these men.
Just then, an intercom clicked on, and a voice drifted through the station as an operator announced the arrival of their train. No further talk of Hiei's unsettling powers transpired while they filed out onto the chilly platform and watched the train grind to a stop on the rails, but the revelation remained jangling in Michi's mind, set on repeat, and as they climbed aboard, she watched Kurama ahead of her, wondering—not for the first time—what secrets he was still hiding.
Genkai's stairs.
The inescapable bane of Michi's existence.
Goodness, how she hated them. And oh, but how much more she detested them while climbing with these men—these indefatigable, untiring machines. At least when she had to traverse the steps beside Asato, he was as out of breath and exhausted as she was by the time they reached the summit.
Not so with the ex-Detectives. Nevertheless, she persisted. Here was another place she wouldn't reveal weakness.
The boys were talking, Yusuke and Kuwabara ahead of her, chattering nonstop, jabbing at each with playful insults that deluged their threads in steady cobalt, and Hiei and Kurama at her back, voices pitched low. She caught only the occasional word of their conversation, but it seemed they combated the burden of Ryota's death in a manner opposite that of their jovial counterparts. Where Yusuke and Kuwabara had retreated to the comfort of superficial humor and bickering, Hiei and Kurama had chosen to wade deeper into the murk, trying to work out where they'd gone wrong—what choice they'd missed that might've averted Ryota's death.
She wished they'd stop.
After all, the solution was obvious. She should've listened to Kurama. She should've kept away from the cottage. She shouldn't have been so bull-headedly stubborn—
"Oy, you idiots!"
The shout snagged Michi's attention, and she looked up from the never-ending stairs, discovering Asato just twenty steps away, waiting at the summit. He'd planted a hand on his hip, his head cocked with arrogant pride, and she recognized the punkish, rough-edged version of her cousin honed by years of secret disobedience. "I still don't get why you took a train from Itomori," he continued. "You could have just run—" His gaze slid past Yusuke and landed on her, and though his lips kept moving for a moment, whatever he'd planned to say never made it off his vocal chords as lime surprise burst through his threads. It took a second before he found his voice again. "Michi? What the hell are you doing here?"
She startled to a halt herself. A dozen questions sprung to mind. Like why he was shocked to see her, for one thing, because surely he'd been the one to send the Detectives after her, hadn't he? But also, a sudden and overwhelming love for her cousin. Her stupid, stubborn, belligerent cousin who'd remembered to call her Michi, despite years of habit and a healthy dose of bewilderment if the lime in his Loom was anything to judge by.
Her throat closing around a sob she refused to allow escape, she trudged up the stairs as fast her beleaguered legs could manage and threw herself into his arms.
"Michi?" he asked again. "What the heck is going on?"
But she couldn't manage a response, not yet, and it was Kurama who answered instead, his voice somewhere at her back. "If I may," he said, "I'd recommend we find Genkai—and perhaps somewhere comfortable to sit. This explanation is one best given only once."
"It's time we see your territory for ourselves."
Sitting in Genkai's meditation room, shins tucked beneath her, knees bent, feet flat against her plush cushion, Michi stiffened. For an hour, she'd drifted in and out of the briefing the Detectives delivered to Genkai and Asato. A dull, aching headache had settled over her, blunting her senses and making concentration near impossible, and only an effort of stubborn tenacity had kept her in this room.
To manage it, she'd done as Genkai had instructed her to do back when she'd first been learning to control her territory—focus on a singular Loom, just one batch of threads to decipher and decode. Though her abilities remained meager even all these years later, Asato's tangle of threads had provided the refuge she needed, even as riled and anxious as it was. But now Genkai had turned all eyes her way, and whatever brief respite she'd managed to grasp evaporated between her fingers.
"Is that possible?" she asked hesitantly. "You seeing the Loom of Life?"
"It is," Genkai answered, gruff as ever. Not the type to coddle. Not even now, after Michi had witnessed a death as brutal as any she could imagine. "Provided you're willing."
"To do what, exactly?"
Genkai jerked her chin toward Hiei. He stood at the window, staring out at the snowy grounds beyond the panes, his cushion forfeited to Yusuke, who sprawled across two in an ungraceful heap. "Hiei possesses the ability to show me what I might not otherwise see."
"With his third eye."
She hadn't phrased it like a question, but Genkai nodded regardless. "Precisely." Her gaze swung across the gathered men. "In fact, I think we would all benefit from a glimpse at the Loom. Your ability to describe what you've witnessed has only gotten us so far. Clearly, it's not enough. We must save these demons before the damned bastards—"
Michi held up a hand. "Fine. That's fine. I'll show you. Or Hiei will. However this works."
Wind seemed to disband from Genkai's sails. If the navy in the old woman's threads was anything to judge by, she'd been bracing for a battle, intending to wear Michi down until she agreed to this invasion of her mind. But really, was it an invasion? She overstepped into these people's inner-workings every time she so much as approached their proximity. After such violation, could she really begrudge them the same?
And besides, even if Ryota's death had taught them nothing else, it had still bared her selfishness for all to see.
She'd left this place because she was scared, because she was fleeing what she could no longer face—because she was weak. As a result, more and more demons had lost themselves to the white threads. Genkai had been robbed of her best tool to unravel this mystery, and she'd been forced to watch as all the halfway house's precious work began to crumble.
Maybe being here wouldn't have changed that. Maybe those souls were lost either way. But if her territory could make things different—if she could make things different—didn't she have to try? Could she live with herself if she didn't?
No.
Resoundingly, decidedly, inarguably no.
"Hiei would be entering the sanctity of your mind," Kurama reiterated, surveying her with a critical intensity that stoked coals to life in her belly, "and baring what he finds there to all of us." There was lime surprise in his threads, weak but recognizable, mixed with a dose of the washed-out green she'd come to know as his brand of curiosity. But there other shades, too. A pale wrinkle of amethyst affection. A nearly unrecognizable mix of pallid green and watery blue that she thought might approximate the combination of mossy anticipation and teal happiness she recognized as hope.
As if she'd caught him as off-guard as she had Genkai. As if doing so had changed how he saw her in some way. As if his understanding of her had been fundamentally altered.
As if he'd at last unearthed the answer to a question he'd been pondering for weeks.
She met his gaze directly as she answered, "I gathered as much."
Hiei turned from the window. His cloak flowed about his legs, rippling like liquid midnight. He tilted his head, looking for all the world like a bird of prey. "Done running, girl?"
She ignored him. "How will you perceive the Loom of Life? The same way I see it?"
Genkai's chin dipped in confirmation. "Hiei should be able to layer your second sight over our own. We'll experience Looms exactly as you do. To begin, I'd like to see our own."
"Then we should go outside," Michi said, pushing to her feet, pins and needles coursing through her calves at the movement.
Asato squawked, the first noise he'd made since Genkai suggested this idea. "Uh, Meech, it's freezing out there."
"I know." She tugged her sweater straight. "That's why jackets were invented."
Yusuke's attempt to muffle a laugh morphed it into a snort as Genkai asked, "What purpose does moving outdoors serve?"
"When my territory first manifested, I found it nearly impossible to separate the threads I saw from the colors of the real world. It took my mind ages to comprehend and differentiate my true vision from that of my territory." Glancing around at the Detectives, she clarified, "My ability to perceive the Loom isn't dependent on eyesight. I see it even with my eyes closed." She took a step toward the hall and the backdoor beyond. "Outside is gray and white. As blank a canvas as we'll get. It'll probably prove less overwhelming."
Yusuke scrambled upright. "Give us some credit, kid. We can handle some cutesy colors."
Her shoulders rolled into a defensive shrug, but she fought off the urge to snap back at him. "Maybe so. But better to be safe."
Grunting a gruff noise of agreement, Genkai stood, and the others followed, trailing Michi into the hall, where they shrugged into coats before carrying on out the doors. A steady wind gusted, sending icy fingers beneath Michi's layers, but she ignored it as she trudged into the snow. The drifts weren't as deep as they'd been during the blizzard six weeks prior, and an icy crust had formed atop the snow, breaking beneath each step of her boots.
Stopping in the yard's center, Michi wrapped her arms around her middle and faced Hiei. His threads glinted back at her, navy and emerald. "Ready when you are."
"Hn."
As the others circled around her, he pulled off the cloth around his forehead, revealing an actual, honest-to-goodness third eye. She had only a moment to startle at its purple—not crimson—hue before she felt it. Not Hiei's presence. Of that, she sensed nothing.
Instead, there was a sharpening of her territory, a brightening of her awareness. All her usual defenses fell away. Her careful ignorance of animal threads and the connections between Looms and the strings of the world shattered into nothingness, and she was left wincing, clenching her teeth against the crush of colors and sensation.
Around her, the others reacted, Kuwabara groaning like he'd been struck, Yusuke throwing up a useless hand to shield his eyes, Kurama sucking in a disconcerted breath. Genkai went still, muscles locking up tight, and Hiei's jaw strained, his eyes narrowing to a directionless glare.
Asato managed to speak first, hands cradled around his temples. "Hell, Michi. This is what you see all the time?"
"I…"
Yes.
Yes, it was.
This crushing wall of color. The whirlwind of emotions in dozens of sparkling shades. The Ties That Bind. The cobweb kiss of the world's threads. The tangled, inescapable snarl of everyone's Looms feeding into one another. The burning, sun-bright cores in each of their chests.
For the first time in months or even years, she realized how utterly all-encompassing her territory truly was. Even now, after practicing blocking out the peripheral details for months on end, they were still there. She couldn't evade them. She merely refused to dwell on them. Only, in that moment, with Hiei rooting through her mind, projecting her awareness in this manner, all those tiny, usually ignorable pieces became impossible to shut out—impossible not to dwell on.
"Yes," she whispered into the silence. "This is what I see."
"No wonder you fucking hate it," Yusuke groused. He dropped into a crouch in the snow, elbows braced atop his bent knees, eyes jammed ineffectually shut. "I take back my crap about cutesy colors. This shit is not cute."
"No," she agreed. "It isn't."
Watching them struggle and squint at the Loom as if peering into headlights, Michi found herself emboldened. After all, these were some of the toughest men the three worlds had to offer. Not to mention, Genkai was unceasingly in control of her own body. To see them all rendered so unnerved bolstered her in a way she'd never encountered before—because she lived like this. Every day, for six endless years, she'd lived like this.
Perhaps she wasn't quite as weak as she'd imagined.
Shifting her focus to Genkai, Michi asked, "If I restrict my awareness of the Loom, will that in turn limit what you all see?"
Genkai looked to Hiei, and he hissed a short note of verification.
"Then what you're exposed to now is more than we need," Michi said. "For one thing, the threads of the world can go." Clenching and unclenching her fingers to keep her body grounded, she peeled away the cobweb like strings of the wind and trees and earth, refusing to acknowledge their slippery, translucent presence. Next, she honed in on the Looms of nearby creatures, walling them off. "Nor do we need animals."
With each layer of the Loom of Life she stifled down, her onlookers faltered less. Yusuke managed to reclaim his feet. Hiei's jaw loosened. Asato stopped clutching at his hair. With the overwhelming onslaught dampened, their Looms began to crystalize, individual threads becoming visible.
Still, she kept going. "The interactions between Looms aren't needed either. You're all overcome. Seeing the feedback loop doesn't get us any further." As she spoke, she closed out her cognizance of Hiei's agitation bleeding into the space between them, bucked off the snarls where Yusuke's bewilderment met Genkai's awe, and smoothed away Kuwabara's connections last of all, choosing not to focus on how strangely heightened they were compared to the average soul's.
Throughout, she kept her concentration carefully away from Kurama. She wasn't sure she wanted to witness the moment he pieced together the odd difference between his Loom and those of his teammates, and she certainly wasn't ready to deal with however he might react to the way she'd relied on him or whenever he realizated that her territory had been what drew them together in the first place.
Better to cling to ignorance and risk hurting him than be hurt herself.
Selfish.
But also, what she needed.
When at last only their basic Loom's remained, she licked her lips, dragged her fingers through her windswept hair, and said, "All that's left now is emotion. The one piece I've never managed to block out."
"Michi…" Asato took a step toward her, crunching through the snow, then faltered and shook his head. "I never realized."
She offered him a reassuring smile. "I know."
"No." He grabbed at her elbow and hauled her into a hug. "I'm sorry. I didn't get it."
"It's okay, Asato. It's fine. I'm fine." Despite herself, she laughed. "I think I'd forgotten how dramatic it is. I'm so used to it by now. But you all experiencing it… It's like I'm seeing it for the first time again myself."
Sighing, he stepped back, but he kept hold of her arms for a second longer. His fingers squeezed as their eyes met, and then he looked down at the loose net of his Loom as ice blue pride washed through his threads—pride aimed not at himself, but at her.
Failing to stave off a grin, she asked Genkai, "So where do I start?"
"Explain what we're seeing. The colors. The bright points in our chests. I can piece together the gist, but the boys are unfamiliar. Teach them."
Michi's grin proved infectious, and despite the useless squint he couldn't seem to shake, Asato beamed at her as he smacked a palm against his chest. "You've my permission to use me as your demonstration dummy." He spread his arms wide. "What the heck do all these colors mean?"
"Well," she said, "first off, half those colors don't matter. Most people feel dozens of things at once, tiny flickers of emotion that don't mean anything worth focusing on. Could be a little irritation from an unresolved fight the day before. Or residual happiness from a promotion. Those sorts of emotions stay in a Loom for days at a time. I ignore them for the most part." She combed through his Loom, searching for prime examples. "You're always tired, for instance, and that's the gray in your threads, the shade that looks like thunderclouds."
Pausing for a breath, she discovered her audience stood riveted, each of the ex-Detectives focused on Asato's knotted Loom. Only Genkai had eyes for Michi. The force of the woman's gaze put steel in Michi's spine.
She had to get these explanations right—that was the message she found in Genkai's resolute intensity. For Ryota. For the other demons they'd lost.
For demons like Taki they'd yet to lose.
The ones they could still save.
"The useful pieces are the shifting colors," she continued, chin lofted high, "the ones that seem more transient. They're your current emotions, what you're feeling right this second." Picking through Asato's threads, she started highlighting what she found valuable. "Lime means surprise. Emerald is curiosity. Mixed as they are in your Loom now, I'd say you're fascinated or in awe. But the goldenrod is discomfort, the mustard anxiety. Side effects, I'd imagine, of viewing threads for the first time." Sheepish silver twisted into being, and she laughed as she said, "Silver signifies embarrassment."
Asato frowned as further silver spilled across his Loom, his nose crinkling. "Well, that's… unflattering."
Michi stifled another grin. "You're embarrassed of being embarrassed? Seems a bit recursive, dear cousin."
He flipped her the bird. With it came not crimson annoyance, but cobalt amusement and a stain of lavender affection. She identified each in turn, then let her attention swing wider, encompassing Genkai and the Spirit Detectives, though remaining well clear of Kurama. His pale threads waited at the edge of her vision, calling to her, begging to be examined, but she refused.
Instead, she vocalized what she saw in the others' Looms, pointing out any colors that differed from what she'd already identified in Asato's. Mint suspicion in Hiei's threads—distrust of that which he did not yet understand. Navy determination playing across Genkai's hollow cheeks—her resolve to withstand the onslaught of Michi's territory written as deeply into her bones as it was her threads. Mossy anticipation woven through Yusuke's tapestry in ever broader strokes—impatience at Michi's slow, deliberate teachings. The pinks and mauves that signified the grief haunting each of them over Ryota's death.
Then, last but far from least, the Ties That Bind.
Only then, once she'd exhausted every example other than those she might find in Kurama's Loom, did she move on.
Time to explain the last piece they'd need to understand what they would see in Taki. "The bright knots in your chests are your cores. Your emotional centers. In some respects, a core is like your baseline, the place from which all your other emotions develop. It's comprised of what you feel most deeply, of the emotions that inform your decisions and shape your character. Cores don't change. Not perceivably anyway. Maybe they do over lifespans, but not in days or weeks or even years." A gust of wind burst through the clearing, sharp and biting. Shivering, she withdrew her hands inside her sleeves. "Except, that's not true of the demons with the white threads. Their cores are changing. Bleaching white."
Genkai crossed her arms atop her chest. "Are those the only ways they differ from us? White threads and cores?"
"Not just that. They're… angry. But it's not traditional anger. It's… hard to explain without showing you." Biting her inner cheek, she scanned their Looms, searching for a trace of black to point out, ignoring the growing pain in her skull. Now wasn't the time for a migraine. She wouldn't succumb to one. Not yet.
Her search turned up not even a flicker of black.
Which meant she had to get creative.
"Asato?"
"Yeah?"
"Remember in tenth year, that weekend you attended a party in Sarayashiki?"
Uncertainty rippled through his threads in strokes of mint suspicion. "Of course I do. Father found out somehow and grounded me for weeks—"
"I told him."
Michi had planned on further explanations. In light of her territory's overload of stimulation and Asato's continued squinting, she'd imagined she might need to drive the blow home deep to get a rise out of him. She'd figured on weaving quite the tale to garner his attention properly.
She'd been wrong.
Black dark as tar flooded his Loom like an oil spill.
Exactly the anger she'd wanted.
"Are you serious, Michi? What the hell? I spent the rest of the year paying for that damn party. Why would you—"
"I didn't really rat you out," she said quickly, holding up a hand to stopper his rant. "I have no idea how Uncle found out."
"Then why—"
She hushed him with a raised finger. "The black in your Loom is what regular anger looks like. You can still see other emotions through it. Lime, mustard. It doesn't consume everything. But that's not how Taki's threads appeared last time I was here. His Loom was entirely black and white, and his core was little better."
Slowly—deliberately—Genkai nodded, no doubt locking the sight of Asato's rage inside the steel trap of her mind. Then she switched her focus to the boys, taking a step through the snow in Yusuke's direction. "Any questions, dimwit?" Her gaze swung wider. "Any of you?"
Kuwabara's hand shot into the air. "If Michi's territory does all this, why can't I sense it at all?" He jabbed a thumb toward Asato. "I feel it when he opens his territory, so why not Michi's?"
Genkai chuckled, the sound like grinding gravel. "What we're seeing is not Michi's territory. The Loom of Life exists separate from any mere psychic's trivial powers. If I were to hazard a guess on its exact workings, I'd say Michi's territory doesn't extend beyond her own body—perhaps not even beyond her eyes. We don't sense it, because we've not stepped within it."
"Logical," Kurama said, off to Michi's left. He remained out of view, nothing but a red blur at the edge of her peripheral vision. "Such a simple explanation. My inability to form as useful a theory was proving perplexing, I'll admit."
Theories.
About her.
Like she was a puzzle he was still trying to work out. Even though they hadn't seen each other in weeks. Even though she'd told him she was leaving his life for good. Maybe she'd only stayed in this thoughts because of this case. Maybe any contemplation he'd directed her way arose purely because the white threads were the single clue they had to work with.
But the heat of his gaze upon her made those maybes seem rather obtuse.
Or perhaps there was no heat. Perhaps that was just the ache in her chest speaking. Sometimes, it was hard to say. Where did rationale, reserved Michi end and heartbroken, grieving Michi begin?
"Anything else?" Genkai barked. "Questions, any of you?"
A seemingly general prodding. As if Genkai were irritated with their reticence to speak up. Only, there was no flare of crimson annoyance in her threads to corroborate that explanation—and it wasn't hard to see why.
Though Genkai had pitched her accusation at the group at large, she had interest in only one of their answers. Her focus was laser bright on Kurama, cutting into him with a wicked curiosity that shone emerald in her Loom. The others, too, had concentrated on him, staring where Michi herself had not looked all this time.
But she couldn't resist any longer.
He stood five feet to her left, strands of hair dancing on the icy breeze, his hands slipped neatly within the pockets of his jacket. With pointed calm, he ignored the attention leveled his way, and he gave no indication of further intent to speak—not with his lips, anyway. Yet the question was there. Shining in the viridian depths of his eyes. Why were his threads different? And, more meaningfully still, a second query, one built from flickering, guarded hurt: Why was this the first moment Michi had acknowledged him?
When the silence held, Genkai snorted, rolled her eyes, and stomped for the temple. "On to Taki then. Time to see these white threads for myself."
AN: For ages now, I've been waiting to reveal why Kurama and the others hadn't sense Michi's territory. I hope Genkai's explanation strikes y'all as solid. The boys don't sense Michi's territory because she doesn't manifest it around herself; it's just always active within her eyes themselves, thereby enabling to view the Loom of Life. There's nothing to step inside of, and therefore nothing to sense.
Not sure how many of you will be interested (and some of you may have already seen it), but I posted a new story on Friday, titled 'The Unknown Grounds.' It's a YusukexOC fic, and I'm planning to update it biweekly, every other Friday. If you're interested, give it a peek! BbL will still be my main focus, but I'm super hype about TUG, and I can't wait to share it with y'all.
This is being posted at such a weird hour because my favorite YouTubers and Twitch streamers are doing a 48 hour charity marathon this weekend (Google the Mindcrack Marathon if you're interested). Lots of shenanigans, lots of good souls doing great work for charity. Three and a half hours in, they've already raised $60K!
And now that's enough spiels from me. The response to last chapter was phenomenal. Thank you all for being such wonderful peeps. You make sharing this story every Saturday the absolute highlight of my week. ENDLESS love to all these fabulous folks: MissIdeophobia, shewritesfic, o-dragon, anonymous pal, xanaldy, xenocanaan, ahyeon, LadyEllesmere, knightsqueen05, Guest, xXGemini14Xx, WistfulSin, Crackles McKraken, daochan, and Guest.