Michi stayed with Kurama for hours, curled up on his couch, snuggled in a blanket, laughing and talking and—most importantly—gaming.

As it turned out, the console had been left on not by Yusuke as Michi had first assumed, but by Kurama, and it wasn't long before its blinking eye had drawn both their attention. One red, elegantly quirked eyebrow later, Kurama had been on his feet, fetching controllers for both of them.

The game he'd abandoned on pause proved to a puzzle-based platformer, and though he'd been partway through a solo campaign, he happily revealed the built-in co-op option, and ten minutes later, they were deeply immersed, working in tandem to claw their way through brainteaser after brainteaser. Kurama was good—there was no denying that—but so was she, and together, they made a near perfect team. Rarely did a level manage to stump them both for any length of time, and by the time Kuwabara returned home around ten, they'd already progressed through a quarter of the co-op campaign.

After a moment's surprise at finding Michi nestled on the couch, Kuwabara grabbed a controller of his own and threw himself onto the couch's remaining cushion. His presence put their puzzle-solving on hold, but Kurama's new selection—a crossover fighting game full of beloved characters from other franchises—had Michi grinning.

Last time she'd played games in Kurama's presence, it had been at an arcade of Yusuke's choosing, on old streetfighter machines that she had almost no experience with. But this? As far as multiplayer options went, this was her element.

And she proved it.

She won far more often than she lost, dealing out the most kills in nearly every round. Soon, she had Kuwabara begging Kurama to team up with him. "Anything," he howled, "to stop this ass-kicking." And when Kurama refused to appease him, his response nothing but a wordless toss of his head as he concentrated on fending off Michi's newest volley of attacks, Kuwabara shifted his focus to her, pleading to at least knock off Kurama first, declaring in a woeful keen, "Favoritism isn't fair, Meech!"

She merely laughed and booted his character straight out of the battlefield.

At some point, Yusuke arrived, shucking his coat and bellowing about 'that bitch of a grandma,' but after one look at the screen, he seized a controller and hurled himself onto the floor, propping his back against the couch between Michi and Kuwabara's knees, ignoring the boys' leather recliner in favor of a front row seat. Around them, the Loom of Life glinted, the Ties That Bind stretching in a stunning latticework over the array of ex-Detectives, and for once, she didn't mind it so much.

With Yusuke amongst their number, they again switched game modes, now fighting in duos—and though Kurama made a good partner, Yusuke was better. Even with Michi's best efforts, she and Kurama could only pull out a win against Yusuke and Kuwabara's teamwork every one-in-two games.

Eventually, as the clock ticked toward midnight, her gameplay grew sloppy, her fingers going numb after hours of button mashing and joystick toggling, and after they lost four matches in a row, Yusuke's fresh hands proving an insurmountable opponent, Kurama set aside his controller. "It's late, Michi. At this rate, you'll never get home."

Would that be such a bad thing?

Nevertheless, she unfolded her legs and rose creakily to her feet, easing around Yusuke as she did so. Her knees protested something fierce, stiff from hours bent up on themselves. "This isn't over," she said to Yusuke, wagging her controller in his direction.

He snatched it away, his threads gleaming with zinging teal. "Dang straight, Kuroki. I'm going to need a solo tournament to prove my dominance."

Shaking his head at their antics, Kurama stood and curled a lean hand around her elbow. Murmuring her goodbyes to the others, Michi let him guide her to the door. As they slipped into the entryway and she bent to pull on her shoes, he cleared his throat. "Promise me you'll cut back the number of nights you're spending on extractions. Let us handle some of them."

"Kurama—"

"Please," he added before she could speak.

"I wasn't going to argue."

A trace of stubborn navy darkened the edges of his Loom. "I find that hard to believe."

She laughed and straightened up. "Really, I mean it. You're right. I've been trying to balance too much. I'll ask Asato to cut my involvement back to five days a week. Just for the withdrawals themselves. I'll still help in other ways—ones that don't consume ten hours of the day." Wrapping a hand around the doorknob, she titled her head at him. "Satisfied?"

"I imagine it's the most you'll concede."

"What an accurate imagination you have."

That earned her another shake of his head and a rueful, bemused smile. "Then I'll take it." He paused, the gears behind his emerald eyes turning. She thought he might reach for her—might deliver that kiss she'd envisioned hours before—but then he dipped the polite sketch of a humorous bow and said simply, "Good night, Michi. Travel safe."

As she stepped into the hall, her veins buzzed as if flooded with champagne. "Night, Kurama."


Michi held true to her promise.

The next morning, as she walked to campus, she called Asato and requested that he shift the extraction schedule, omitting her on two trips during the weekdays. He complied without hesitation—even going so far as to say it was about time she realized she was stretching herself too thin. She got the distinct sense he knew the decision hadn't stemmed entirely from her, though whether he knew about Kurama's involvement thanks to his own intuition or the big mouths of Yusuke and Kuwabara, she couldn't be certain.

Either way, she found herself with two extra evenings, and she quickly filled them with nights spent with the girls. Dinners here and there weren't enough to abate the concern woven in strands of fibrous coral through Runa's Loom, but Nanako and Yurie ceased their endless barrage of texts checking in on her.

Moreover, with two afternoons added back to her schedule, it wasn't a challenge to catch back up—and even get ahead—on her assignments for university. After just two weeks, she'd read in advance for three classes and pre-written an essay not due for nearly a month in a fourth.

In a lot of ways, it felt good.

Yes, she wasn't helping as much with the halfway house as was absolutely possible, but Kurama was right. Striking a balance was key, and for the first time, she could actually see a means of making her lives in both worlds form some semblance of a cohesive whole. It wasn't prefect. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But it was a beginning, and all journeys started somewhere.

Nonetheless, she looked forward to the nights when she helped run transplant recalls. They gave her purpose. They made the bane of her territory seem a burden worth bearing, at least for now.

And she wouldn't deny it—they granted her moments with Kurama. Precious, fleeting instances in which she began to understand him, to recognize him for all that he was. Not just Shuichi. Not just a fragment of his larger whole. But Kurama. Multi-faceted and complete.

Truthfully, she liked the man she uncovered.

More than she dared to admit.


Late in the third week of extractions, as early-March loomed over Mushiyori, Michi walked off campus with Runa and discovered a familiar figure waiting at the crosswalk into Nako Square. A brown leather jacket. Red hair. Emerald eyes. A Loom washed out as if by moonlight.

He lifted a hand in greeting, lips quirking into a tranquil smile—one she categorized as Shuichi's easily enough. Around her, Kurama may have promised to be himself, but in front of Runa, it appeared he had other intentions.

At Michi's side, Runa whistled softly. She jostled an elbow into Michi's and hissed, "You know him?"

"Yeah."

But who was he to Runa? How was she meant to introduce him?

Sweat slicked her palms, and she hurriedly swiped them dry on the pleats of her skirt before leading Runa to him. "Hey," she said, asking with widened eyes what in the world he was doing here. "Runa, this is—"

"Kurama," he said, dipping a polite bow, creasing at the waist with fluid ease.

Runa's brows rose. Lime sparked in her threads. "Oh. I thought you might be someone else."

Meaning Shuichi. Michi knew that as surely as she'd ever known anything. Technically, Runa wasn't wrong—and yet, in all the ways that mattered, she couldn't be further from the truth.

Curiosity played across Kurama's Loom in his signature wash of green. "Sorry to disappoint."

Runa snorted. "Oh, no. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad you're not who I expected you to be." She cast Michi a pointed look. Then as the crossing light changed to a walk symbol, she hiked her bag up her shoulder and said, "I'm guessing you're hoping to walk Michi home or something of that nature, so I'll leave you to it. Text me, Meech."

"Will do."

In seconds, Runa disappeared into the flow of foot traffic, lost in the crowd of suited businessmen. Gone, just like that.

Biting at the inside of her cheek, Michi asked, "Why are you doing here? I thought we were meeting outside your apartment in two hours?"

Shuichi's smile still firmly in place, he gestured toward the crosswalk, and together, they traipsed for the far side of the street at a brisk trot, hurrying before the light changed. "You mentioned the subway being a torturous means of getting home, and that if you had any other means, you'd take that instead, right?"

She frowned at him as they boarded the escalator down into the subway tunnel. "Yeah. So?"

"And you said that my Loom—" he all but whispered the word, leaning close enough that his breath warmed the shell of her ear "—lessens the pain of your territory, correct?"

Her pulse jumped in her veins, and she prayed he couldn't smell the effect his proximity had on her heart, not to mention the rest of her. "Right again."

"Perhaps, then, a bit of company of your commutes wouldn't go amiss." The escalator deposited them on the subway's bustling platform, and his hand found the small of her back, grazing lightly, setting her entire spine aflame.

"But what about your job? Aren't you already missing so many hours working for the halfway house? I wouldn't want you to skip out on more—"

"Michi."

Instantly, she cut off her rambles.

"My step-father is a lax boss. Provided my work is done, he doesn't much care when it's accomplished."

The roar of an approaching train nearly drowned out the words he uttered next, but he bent nearer still, close enough that his chest pressed to her arm and she felt the thrum of his voice shiver beneath her skin. "I'd rather be here. Unless, of course, you don't want that."

Her answer to that went without saying.


From that afternoon on, Kurama became a regular presence during her commutes home. He and Runa rarely exchanged more than greetings as they handed off custody of Michi like some baton in a track race, but each day as Runa departed, the curiosity—and suspicion—in her Loom grew, blooming into ever-wider swathes of emerald and mint.

Yet despite those greens, Michi made no effort to explain Kurama's new regularity. She wasn't ready to share him yet—wasn't even sure how to do so if she'd wanted to.

Where her fibs about Shuichi met the reality of Kurama, she hadn't yet worked out. Could she simply pretend they were different men? Could she continue on as if Shuichi was truly gone from her life? Or did she owe Runa, Nanako, and Yurie the truth?

And, more importantly still, was it even worth worrying about when she wasn't yet sure what Kurama might become?

How did a fox fit into a human girl's life? Could one?

Or was that nothing but a fanciful dream, best meant for nights lying in her moonlit bedroom, hoping for a future that could never be?


The Wednesday of the fifth week of extractions brought together a team Michi hadn't worked with in months, not since their disastrous trip to visit Junko—the first of what had now amounted to nearly sixty transplant removals. Just like that trip months prior, Asato picked Michi up outside her apartment, though unlike last time, she piled into the backseat of his hatchback, diving into it before Yana could play his chivalrous game. Her theatrics earned her a sardonic smile from even Kaito, who bothered to look up from the transplant files he was reviewing just long enough to catch her eye. Moments later, they were on the road.

The transplants they were headed to pick up—Etsu and Saburo, Yana and Michi's placements respectively—had both answered the calls Asato had made to them weeks ago, but each had refused to extricate themselves from their lives. Neither posed any particular risk to the humans living around them, so when Genkai had summoned the Detectives out to the shrine on short notice, Asato had decided to shuffle their schedules around, electing to pick up two nonthreatening apparitions in one fell swoop while they lacked the muscle usually provided by the old Detective team. From Yokohama, the city where Etsu and Saburo had made their homes, Yana would take them on a train ride straight to Genkai's. Logistically, it wasn't as easy as one of the Detectives running the demons into the mountains, but it would suffice.

"Who are we getting first?" Michi asked as Asato pulled onto the highway.

"I was thinking Saburo?" Asato said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. "Your evaluation said he can be stubborn, right? Probably makes sense to try our hand at convincing him first. If he digs his heels in and Etsu was around to see it, she might end up agreeing with him."

Yana reached up, grabbing the back of his headrest and stretching, his yawn audible even in the backseat. "Works for me. Etsu shouldn't put up too much of a fight. I'm pretty surprised she didn't head to Genkai's on her own, honestly. She's usual a stickler for rules."

"If her threads have been tampered with, she may not be making her own choices," Kaito said flatly. Ever the pragmatist, he was.

Pragmatic, but also right. These days, it seemed every transplant had traces of white in their Looms. Some were even worse than that, though none had come close to rivalling Taki or—gods forbid—Ryota yet. But Michi suspected more breakdowns weren't far off now. Too many transplants were unraveling. One was bound to snap soon.

She just hoped it wasn't one of the demons capable of a true rampage.

And even that seemed a hope made in vain.


Saburo's tenement building was tucked off a chaotic street in downtown Yokohama—so chaotic, in fact, that Asato couldn't find a parking spot, and eventually, he gave up, letting them all clamber out and then roving off in search of a lot or garage somewhere.

While he hunted, Michi led the way up to Saburo's apartment. By now, they'd all gotten adept at sneaking into buildings if transplants didn't prove cooperative, and as another resident departed Saburo's building, Yana snagged the door's handle and waved Kaito and Michi through.

Strictly speaking, they weren't supposed to run an extraction without all their team members present, but with Asato car-bound and a second withdrawal to run today, it seemed foolish to waste time waiting for Asato to find parking. Besides, Saburo's demonic skillset was powerful, but limited. He was all brute force. A bull in a man's body—or so Botan had said after glimpsing his headshot. Kaito's territory was constructed to neutralize threats like Saburo. His no violence rule rendered Saburo's strength moot, and from there, he should be easy enough to manage.

Provided his threads weren't out of control.

Saburo lived on the second floor, in a modest little studio. In a city like Yokohama, the halfway house's budget didn't allow for grand accommodations, not even with Spirit World funds providing subsidies, but given the choice, Saburo had wanted his home in a place that rivaled the liveliness of his native city in Demon World. He'd told her about it more than once, the grand capital of Gandara—whatever that meant—but she'd never much listened. Back then, she'd still stubbornly refused to learn anything more than she had to about Demon World's workings, and she'd retained just enough to convey his wishes to Genkai. From there, the psychic had found him this apartment.

The day Michi had brought him here, his Loom had lit with teal happiness so pure it brought tears pricking to her eyes.

That memory rose in her as Yana knocked roughly, and juxtaposed against the cruelty of forcibly removing Saburo from his home here, it evoked an entirely different brand of emotion. That couldn't be allowed to stop them, though, so she blinked back the worst of it and soldiered on. No matter how much Saburo hated it—and the raging black that swarmed across his threads when he opened his door declared that he most certainly despised what their arrival meant—this was the right thing.

The thing that had to happen.

Eventually, he saw that. Just like all the others. Even if it did take so long that Asato managed to snag a parking spot and join them in Saburo's studio. In the end, Saburo got it.

And once he did, as the others had before him, he thanked her.


Against protocol or not, they chose to handle Etsu's extraction in the same manner they'd managed Saburo's, but this time, instead of puttering around in search of parking, Asato found a spot and unfurled his territory, readying to trap Saburo's shadow at a moment's notice. For now, the demon was cooperating, but who was to say if his benevolent mood would last. If it was bound to break, there was no better equipped guardian than Asato to keep Saburo in place.

The barest wrinkle of nerves set Michi's fingers twisting into knots within the pockets of her jacket as she climbed the steps to Etsu's flat in Yana's wake. Kaito brought up the rear, and each landfall of his shoes echoed off the stairwell's plaster walls, a staccato beat that thumped in time with her heart.

Kurama had devised their extraction rules for a reason, and though the logic in their choice to break those guidelines was sound, Michi couldn't help worrying they were pressing their luck. Saburo had been a known quantity for her, and his strengths were so perfectly offset by Kaito's that leaving Asato in the car hadn't seemed a true risk.

Now though?

Despite all Yana's claims about Etsu's calm, pacifist nature, Michi couldn't shake the sense that something was off. She felt it in the very air, a tightening, electric crackle of tension that had her clenching her jaw as Yana reached Etsu's door and drummed his knuckles against the wood.

As with Saburo, they'd snuck their way into the building, catching an outbound resident and slipping through before the door locked behind them—which meant Etsu had no reason to know they were coming. They'd given her no warning.

Maybe, then, it was innocuous that there were two Looms tucked beyond the door. Maybe, then, they'd simply arrived at a bad time, intruding while Etsu had a friend over to visit. Maybe.

But Michi doubted it.

Because the Loom… It was strange. Bizarre. Slippery and ephemeral, as if its threads had been doused in oil and now danced between Michi's fingers, impossible to get a hold off. It was nothing like Kurama's threads, muted and distant though they might be. This Loom was here, viscerally so, a right hook straight to Michi's gut, and yet it was impossible to look at directly, like a spot on her vision, perceptible only at the edges of her sight.

"There's someone in there," she whispered. "Other than Etsu."

Yana's hand lurched to a halt. His head swung her way. "Like a human? Should we come back?"

"I don't think so."

In fact, she'd never been more sure of something in her life. Etsu couldn't be left in there. Not with that person. Not with that Loom.

Scrambling, she dug her phone from her purse and swiped into her messaging app. Two quick taps pulled open her conversation with Asato, but on second thought, she backed out and begin a new message, this time for two contacts. Asato, still. But Kurama, too.

Yana's knocking had stirred movement inside the flat, and Michi used the precious moments before Etsu's approaching Loom reached the door to key out a text. –Something's wrong. Someone else is here. Loom is off. Unlike anything I've ever seen. It's— Then the door cracked, one liquid eye, black as ink, peering through the crevice, and Michi punched send regardless of her half-finished thought.

Mustard anxiety roiled in Yana's threads, tinged green by creeping tendrils of fear, but he forced a mega-watt smile and eased a foot into the door's gap. "Hey, Etsu."

"Why are you here."

It wasn't a proper question.

The demon's voice was too flat, too robbed of even the barest note of inflection. Her tone rendered the phrase a mere statement. An unflinching indictment of their presence.

Before it, Yana's fear spread wider. Forest green fissured through his yellow unease, a twisted approximation of sunlight dappling through leaves. A half-step back and to her right, Kaito tensed, and teeming moss apprehension swam in her peripheral vision.

But for all the boys' disquiet, Michi's own body remained strangely numb. The nerves that had previously set her fingers squirming in her pockets had fizzled away to nothing. In their place, she felt only a steady certainty that whoever waited beyond the flimsy fortification of Etsu's door held the answers they'd been searching for. This broken Loom and its oil-slicked threads were the keys to a lock she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

Which meant she had to get inside. She had to worm past Etsu's defenses and see the wearer of that Loom for herself.

And that left no room for fear.

As Yana fumbled for an answer to Etsu's emotionless greeting, Michi splayed a palm against the door and pushed. Not hard. Not forcefully. But confidently enough that Etsu couldn't miss her intent.

"Hi, Etsu," she said. The demon's hold on the door didn't give—if anything, the apparition only leaned against it harder—but Michi didn't grant any ground either. Inside her pocket, her phone buzzed with incoming texts. From Asato? From Kurama? She didn't check. Not now. Not with Etsu trying to gain ground in the battle for the door. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Michi Kuroki, another assistant for the halfway house. Like Yana."

The demon's nose scrunched beneath her liquid eyes. The fall of her hair half-obscured her face, a curtain of silky midnight, but the piercing intensity of her gaze didn't waver. "Leave."

Michi shook her head. "Sorry, can't do that. Not just yet."

The seething mass of Etsu's Loom was as black as her hair and eyes, but across that midnight expanse popped bursts of too bright color. Writhing crimson frustration. Stinging goldenrod discomfort. Prickling forest green fear. Peering at her Loom was like viewing the innards of a kaleidoscope, a black expanse dotted by senseless color.

It was a sight she'd become all too intimately familiar with in the months since she first visited Taki at Genkai's shrine. All those unconnected emotions fracturing across Looms. They weren't natural, weren't meant to arise that way. It was rage for the sake of rage, grief for the sake of grief—and it split a headache wide open in Michi's skull, like a sledgehammer straight to the skull.

But even still, she wasn't going anywhere.

"Let us in, Etsu," she said, soft but firm. For what might have been the twentieth time, her cell phone vibrated against her ribs. If nothing else, at least Asato and Kurama had gotten her texts. Too bad Kurama and the other ex-Detectives were much too far away to help. This was all on her. "I know you've got a visitor in there. How about making room for three more?"

Yana gawked at her like she'd sprouted a second head, but Kaito hummed in agreement, and then—to Michi's utmost surprise—he leaned past her and shoved the door wide, practically knocking Etsu backward. As soon as the demon stumbled, he strode across the threshold. If not for his Loom and its stark swathes of greenest pine, Michi might've believed his attempt at confidence. As things stood, she just hoped he wouldn't fall apart.

"You can't come in here," Etsu said, and now, emotion did curl inside each syllable, smoldering like coals. Not rage. But panic. Unhinged and wild.

Wincing, rubbing at his neck sheepishly, Yana followed Michi inside and tugged the door closed. "Sorry, Etsu. We gotta."

The demon's answer—whatever it might've been—was lost on Michi. Because up ahead, seated at a kotatsu table, legs folded neatly, waited the bearer of the oil-slick Loom.

A woman. Human, as far as Michi could discern. Older. Her mother's age? Maybe a few years beyond that. But no Genkai, certainly.

And her Loom…

Even now, exposed to it directly, no doors or walls in the way, Michi couldn't see it, not the way she was meant to, not the way she viewed most Looms. In some respects, it was like looking in a funhouse mirror, watching a reflection warp and shimmer and slide out of view. Or maybe like an image refracted beneath clear ocean water, wavering and evanescent, never quite where she expected it to be when she reached below the surf.

But unlike the white threads, her territory didn't riot in answer to the woman's oddity.

Her territory didn't—but Michi did.

Whatever piece of her that had forgotten how to exist without the presence of a thousand Looms stringing her up panicked at the strangeness of this Loom. Its fleeting quality formed an abyss in her stomach, like the feeling right as a rollercoaster crested its highest peak and began to plunge, that half-second when her body still thought it was at the top of hill even though she was already plummeting down, down, down.

Not her territory though.

That was calm. Almost placid.

Which begged the question: why?

Stilted and awkward, tossing furtive glances at Michi with every fresh breath, Yana muddled his way through a bow to the woman. "Sorry to interrupt. We're friends of Etsu's."

The woman barely reacted. Only a faint tilt of her head indicated she'd heard Yana at all, and even that was only perceptible thanks to the way her dry, fly-away hair shifted around her shoulders. Her roots—or really, nearly halfway down her locks—had grown in silver, and Michi got the sense hair dye had once played a role in this woman's upkeep, but sometime in the last months, she'd cast such superficialities aside.

Not daring to look away from the woman for even a moment, Michi murmured, "Who's your friend, Etsu?"

The demon had slunk back against the wall, pressing into the plaster as if it were the only think keeping her standing. Confusion unfurled across her threads in a skein of greens and yellows. "I don't know." Her flat, toneless delivery from before had thoroughly evaporated, and now her words rang plaintive and beseeching in Michi's ears.

Without warning, Kaito's breath guttered, a sudden, sharp intake drawing Michi's focus away from the woman for just one precious moment. The boy's skin had gone waxen, his lips pressed into a thin white line. He clutched his glasses, holding them in place as he tossed his head as if to clear his mind of cobwebs.

"Kaito?" Yana clapped a mitt-like hand over his friend's shoulder, shaking him once, but Kaito didn't look at him. He had eyes only for the old woman, and Michi followed suit, certain in a place she could not name that this woman was dangerous. A clear and present threat.

Even still, she wasn't ready for what Kaito murmured next.

Truthfully, she never would've been ready.

But that didn't stop Kaito from sagging into Yana's shoulder, his fingers tumbling from his glasses, limp and lifeless. Nor did it stop his words, uttered like a dying man's last plaintive breath.

"My territory is gone."


AN: I'd say I'm sorry for the cliffie, but... I won't lie to you like that, haha. I've been sitting on this for just about forever, and it was unexpectedly torturous to wait an extra week to post. The good news is: I'm working toward finishing BBL, and once I have, I'll return to weekly updates (though writing this week was dreadful. I write during my breaks at work, and my days were so hectic that I could barely take breaks at all).

I kept the game descriptions relatively vague in the chapter because the exact specifics don't matter to much, but for those curious, Michi and Kurama played Portal 2 as a pair, then once Kuwabara joined (and Yusuke later) they were playing Super Smash Bros. Both are games I love. I couldn't help sneaking them in (even if that does further fudge exactly what year this story takes place in; though the proliferation of cell phones amongst the gang already messed with that anyway).

Dudes. DUDES. You amazing, wonderful, fantastic people completely blew me away last chapter. I hoped it would be well received, but even nearly thirty chapters in, Kurama is still a terrifying enigma to me, so I'm never sure if I'll capture him right on the page. I cannot properly express how much all your fabulous reactions made me feel! Huge thanks to: knightsqueen05, WistfulSin, MoonlitMajick, ChocolateKisses9, Guest, Laina Inverse, Aly Goode, LadyEllesmere, MissIdeophobia, roseeyes, ookawa, Usako, Shell1331, xXGemini14Xx, and Kado-Kattsune!