Gone.
A manifested territory. Gone.
It was a prospect Michi had dreamed of for years. Countless nights, she'd woken in a cold sweat, swimming up from glorious visions in which those words left her own lips, not like the broken utterance that fell from Kaito's but like a prayer answered by the gods.
My territory is gone.
Gone. Disappeared. Terminated. Ended. Severed.
So many words for this possibility she'd begun to think conceivable only in a dreamscape, yet now it had been rendered a reality. Not for her. But for Kaito.
If Kaito's pronouncement had struck Michi numb, it had evoked precisely the opposite reaction in Yana. Though she could no longer remember how to move her muscles, Yana lurched into motion, grabbing at Kaito with both hands. "Gone? What do you mean gone?"
Beyond the gleaming lenses of his glasses, Kaito's eyes shone glassy with incredulity, his threads a stained mess of lime shock and hunter green terror. "I can't open it. It's still there, somewhere. It has to be. But it's not answering. I can't—"
"Come sit, girl."
The woman's voice brought Kaito's near incoherence to a standstill.
Her tenor was like smooth honey, almost melodic, but roughened at the edges, ever so slightly broken. As if she'd gone hoarse from yelling or crying or sheer bad luck, and now her voice was only just returning, still fumbling back to normalcy.
She raised a pale hand, and for the first time, Michi noticed a mass of knitted fabric pooled in her lap. Her other hand remained buried within it, fingers pinching at the threads, and no sooner had she waved at the other seats around the kotatsu than did her first hand rejoin the second.
Beneath her nimble fingers, the knitting in her grip slowly—methodically—unspooled.
Wrapping a bracing arm around Kaito's shoulders, Yana glared at the woman with more baleful ire than Michi had ever seen him muster. Fear drenched his threads in vivid pine, but anger had begun to crackle beneath, black strings staining across his weave. "What have you done to him?"
The woman's lips puckered downward. Annoyance spilled across her strange Loom in a flash of scarlet, and in that moment of change, Michi could at last see her threads clearly. A breath later, they'd blurred back into obscurity. There, but not. Visible, but impossible to process.
Painfully aware of a fresh text buzzing into her phone, Michi stepped past Etsu and into the living room beyond. Behind her, Yana muttered to Kaito, and Kaito hissed in answer, though without glancing back at his Loom, Michi couldn't be sure if he was angry or terrified or some crippling mix of the two. All she knew was that this woman had somehow cut Kaito off from his powers, and if Michi had to guess, the unraveling fabric in the woman's lap was the means by which she'd done.
A Loom.
Right in that woman's hands.
Or a facsimile that was close enough, anyway.
Michi settled at the kotatsu gingerly. Her feet remained tucked within her boots, and kneeling atop their supple leather struck her as decidedly improper. An absurdly unimportant concern at a moment like this, and yet one she took comfort in. If it meant she was still composed, still whole, not yet rocked to her core as Kaito had been, then mistimed manners weren't the worst thing in the world. For as long as she could, she had to hold on to that—had to keep control.
Smoothing her hands across the tops of her thighs, she dipped her head politely. "My name's Michi," she said, offering up an olive branch she wasn't sure she wanted accepted. "You are…?"
"No one."
Michi couldn't stop her brow from furrowing. "Everyone is someone."
"I'm no one to you."
Praying that Yana would keep it together long enough to get Etsu out of here, Michi strived to keep her tone as unperturbed as the woman's. "I'm afraid that's just not true. You're here, disturbing a friend of mine." Who she spoke of didn't really matter. Kaito and his missing territory, or Etsu and her riled Loom—either way, this woman was to blame. "That makes you someone."
But Michi's words fell on uncaring ears. The woman had ignored her, staring instead at the trio still gathered in the entryway. "Quiet," she ordered, and then, when Kaito ignored her, still muttering to himself in a fervor, she mumbled under her breath, "Why must they disobey?"
Because she—this odd, detached stranger—was the interloper here, not the one who should be bandying around orders. Because from the glimpse of his Loom hovering at the edge of Michi's vision, it was obvious Kaito was panicking, coming apart at fragile seams Michi hadn't even realized he possessed. Because Etsu had sunk to the floor, clutching at her skull, sobbing and snarling in the spaces between each new breath.
Michi doubted the woman would appreciate any of those answers.
"I'm listened. Isn't that enough?"
The woman's hazel eyes swung back to Michi, but she didn't speak. In her lap, her hands continued stirring, their movement visible only as a constant shifting in her shoulders, her knitting hidden below the edge of the kotatsu.
Michi waited, hoping acknowledgment was coming, anticipating some new vague rebuttal, and yet the silence held. With each second—or was it minutes? Or hours?—that drew on, the woman grew strangely more frantic, her arms rising, her fingers coming into view above the table's lip. They crept over the threads of her knitting, nails scraping across strings, catching in the scratchy wool, tensing, twisting, then letting go and roving onward. Her grip pressed so tight that the blood leeched from her fingertips, turning her flesh white as bone, but her movements were hypnotic, drawing Michi inexorably, captivating her so completely she didn't think to interrupt the woman's work.
Until suddenly, at the door, Yana grunted.
His arms sprung free of Kaito, one thick fist thudding into his ribs as if he were trying to kick start his own heart, and without Yana's support, Kaito crumpled to his knees. His hands curled against the apartment's threadbare rug, knuckles pressing into its plaiting.
"Yana!" Michi gasped, half-rising to her feet. "Kaito!"
Neither answered.
Around them, their Looms burst with visceral explosions of color. Greens so vividly afraid that Michi had to blink and look away, a headache already pounding in her temples like the rattle of machine gun fire. But the distraction had torn her free of the woman's magnetism, and as she squeezed her eyes shut in a useless attempt to escape the Loom, proper thought came back to her.
What exactly was happening to her friends? What magic ran in this woman's fingers? How was she tampering with their Looms?
Precise answers escaped her, but where they led—what they meant—did not.
This brittle slip of a woman was responsible for everything. For Dai and Taki and Ryota. For ruining the halfway house's years of effort. For all of it.
At her feet lay dozens of demon lives, ruined, ripped to tatters by her scuttling, frenetic fingers. That much seemed undeniable. But the how of it, Michi hadn't yet worked out. After all, in all her years under Genkai's tutelage, manipulating the Loom of Life had always remained thoroughly out of reach. She could no more affect the colors she saw than she could block them out.
So how did this woman manage it?
And—far more importantly—how could Michi stop her?
Rising to her knees swiftly, Michi reached over the kotatsu and snagged her fingers in the sloppy remnants of the knitting in the woman's lap, but when she tried to jerk it free, the woman held firm, eyes flying wide. Her gaze locked on Michi, a wild ferocity hidden in the whites around her muddy irises that Michi was unprepared for.
"How are you doing it?" the woman bit out. "Why are you different? Why haven't you succumbed?"
To what? Whatever spell she'd woven over the boys? Whatever curse she'd laid on Etsu, now writhing on the floor, fingers clutching at her face like claws?
Michi had a guess. One she was shocked the woman hadn't concluded before her.
The answer lay in the woman's Loom, in those there-yet-not threads that even now, mere inches away, remained impossible for Michi to hone into focus. Just as Michi couldn't see her own Loom, she could barely see the woman's. The effect wasn't as strong, sure, and the woman's threads still danced at the edges of her perception, but only just, only ever-so-slightly. Not enough to be properly viewed.
In turn, by some trickery Michi didn't understand, her own greater connection to the Loom of Life seemed to be protecting her. Because of her territory, Michi was safe. Somehow, impossibly, she was safe.
For perhaps the first time ever, her territory had rescued her rather than dragged her to ruin.
But if the woman hadn't put those pieces together, Michi wasn't going to tell her. Not while her fingers were still skittering across that stretch of crumpling fabric. Not when the truth might provide the weapon she needed to unravel Michi just as she had the boys.
Instead, there were questions Michi needed to ask—answers she needed to get. Quickly. Before all this got any worse.
"You're the one whose been breaking our transplant apparitions, aren't you?"
Perhaps she shouldn't have named the demons for what they were. Perhaps she should've toed the line, played the game, guarded Spirit World's secrets. Perhaps that's what Asato or Kurama might have done.
But why waste time on futile riddles? This woman knew. She wouldn't be here if she didn't know what Etsu was. Why toss around mysteries when the point of it all this was right there, just out of reach, waiting to be grabbed and dragged into the open?
The woman tilted her head, a single degree. Her half-silvered hair shifted in a ratty wave. "They don't belong in this world."
Ah.
That was it, was it? Why she'd done what she'd had? Because she didn't believe demons had earned a place in Human World.
Still clutching the tattered knitting in one fist, Michi rocked back onto her heels. The fabric stretched between them, holes riddling its surface, threads trailing haphazardly in all directions. "That's not for you to decide."
A sneer tugged the woman's features into a hostile mask. "Why? Because it's your choice? Because you and your ilk want these monsters here?" She leaned forward, jamming the narrow cage of her chest against the kotatsu's edge. "I gave you a chance to remove them. I didn't kill them. I didn't let too many people get hurt. That was supposed to be enough. But it wasn't. You're still protecting them. Putting them somewhere you think I can't reach."
Meaning their relocation efforts, their plans to bring the transplants safely within the ring of psychic seals protecting Genkai's compound. Which, in turn, meant Michi's plan was working. She'd been right. She'd found a way to keep the demons safe.
But for how long?
Somewhere you think I can't reach.
As if this woman knew something Michi didn't. As if the temple wasn't a stronghold that would last forever.
The woman gave Michi no chance to pursue that thought, though. In a flurry, quick as a striking snake, she rose to her feet, yanking on the knitting stretched taut between them as she did so. At once, it lost its unsteady hold on a genuine form. The yarn came apart, collapsing into a tangled heap atop the kotatsu. White surged across the edge of Michi's sight, off in the entryway, vicious and sickening, abolishing the odd calm of her territory in a crush of stomach-churning sensation.
Then those threads began to break. To cleave clear in two. Nearly a fifth of Etsu's Loom all told, shearing in half and evaporating into oblivion.
Still clutching at her head, Etsu began to howl.
"You won't take them away," the woman spat. "Not the way you should. Not the way they deserve. But I can destroy them. I will destroy them."
On tottering, unsteady feet, the woman turned heel and staggered across the living room, headed straight for the door. She passed Yana and Kaito without incident, the boys still undone by whatever witchery she'd worked on them, and she stepped over Etsu's writhing form as if the demon was little more than trash strewn across the floorboards. For one perilous second, Michi imagined chasing after her, tackling her in the hall, pinning her there for however long it took for help to arrive.
But then Etsu screamed again, and Michi realized her cries weren't mere distress. They were fueled by pain, by blinding agony created as the apparition tore at her own skin, her fingers bent like talons, her nails raking across her face and arms and neck. And after that, it didn't matter where the woman was off to, because Etsu needed Michi and the boys needed Michi, and she wouldn't abandon any of them. Not for anything.
Scrabbling to Etsu without even standing properly, Michi grabbed for the demon's arms, managing to ensnare one wrist but missing the other. "Etsu," she gasped. "Etsu, stop. You're okay. It's alright."
If the demon heard her, she gave no sign.
Instead, she turned her claw-like fingers outward, the hand Michi had failed to wrangle slashing across Michi's chest in a downward arc. Nails tore along her collarbone, and a pained cry bubbled in Michi's throat.
"Etsu—"
The hand came again. It caught Michi's jaw this time and ripped lower, scouring wounds into the tender column of her throat. Tears stung in Michi's eyes, but she held on, trying in vain to seize hold of Etsu's free arm, still babbling calming nothingness, anything that might reach Etsu inside her all-consuming panic.
White threads lashed in the space between them. They scorched like brands against Michi's second sight, painful in their intensity. A few more broke, snapping apart, but most held firm, white as fresh-healed scars but steady nonetheless, and that, at least, was something.
Behind her, Yana grunted. Then a rustle of clothing announced him dropping to his knees at Michi's side. "Etsu," he begged. "Stop. We're here to help. Listen to us—"
Without warning, Etsu froze, her nails barely grazing Michi's cheek, about to commence with another scything blow. The demon shuddered, as if fighting her own muscles, but her arm remained motionless, suspended between them.
Kaito hacked out a cough. "My territory's back."
If it was, that explained Etsu's sudden stillness. Kaito must've manifested his territory, and within its perimeter, Etsu couldn't carry on her assault, not on herself nor on Michi. A small miracle, but one Michi clung to desperately.
Yana took over then, easing Etsu's wrist out of Michi's grip. His rumbling voice stayed low, a deep, soothing hum that slowly coaxed Estu in off the edge. The white in her Loom didn't dissipate, but the black rage and crimson frustration lessened, giving way to the painful pinks of sadness and regret.
With Yana in control, the instincts that had kept Michi going faded. In their place, agony burned like fire in her chest and neck. Hot, sticky blood dripped down her throat, and she pressed a hand against her jaw in detached disbelief as she crawled back toward the living room.
The rug beneath her was coarse, almost threadbare in patches, and she noted distractedly how poor a home the halfway house had supplied to Etsu. They could do better. They should do better—
"Michi?"
She snapped back to herself, startled to find Kaito kneeling at her side. His glasses dangled off his nose, thoroughly askew, and his usually tight curls had given way to frizz after he'd dug his fingers through their coils, but the glassiness had left his eyes. "Michi," he said again. "Who was that? What did she do to us?"
His threads blazed against her awareness, a swarming mass of riotous color. She couldn't bring herself to parse out the meaning of the shades, couldn't gather her own thoughts enough to do anything more than hum in vague recognition.
He grimaced, then pulled her hand away from her jaw, analyzing the wound Etsu had carved across her face. Seemingly satisfied, he tipped her chin back with his thumb and studied the other gouges across her throat and chest. "Nothing permanent. These can be healed."
"Mhmm."
A muscle ticked in his jaw. "Do you know what she was doing? Could you see it?" When she made no move to answer, he groaned and stood. He glanced at Yana, still crouched before Etsu, pacifying her with the steady thrum of his voice, then yanked his phone from his pocket. "I'm going to get Kido up here. You're in shock. We need Genkai—"
"Already told him," she mumbled.
Kaito crooked a brow. "When?"
"Texted. Before. Kurama, too."
A bit of tension unwound from Kaito's shoulders. "Good. Then I'm sure they're already enroute." Gritting his teeth, he shoved a hand down to her. "Come on. You should lie down. You're useless like this. "
He hauled her upright and guided her to the couch, maintaining contact with her only long enough for her to find her balance atop the cushions before dropping her arm like a hot coal. "I'm still calling Kido. If that woman returns, he shouldn't be isolated."
Michi offered up another hum, then watched him stalk into the apartment's bathroom and jerk the door closed behind him. Right before the latch caught, she heard his cell phone's faint ringing break off and Asato's voice burst forth, sharp and anxious, but then the door fit home and she couldn't make out anything Kaito said in answer.
Not that she was really trying.
Dully, she fished her own phone from her pocket. Nearly two dozen texts waited for her, an endless stream down her home screen. Kurama. Asato. Asato. Kurama. On and on and on.
Kurama's response had come in first, almost instantaneously after she'd sent her panicked warning. –If there's an unknown threat, don't engage. Wait for us. We're on our way.–
Then Asato. –Too late for that. They're already inside.– A second message followed, clarifying quickly. –I stayed in the car with Saburo. Fuck. I should be in there.–
There was no way to be certain, from the transcript alone, the tone of Kurama's answer, but Michi suspected she knew it—that precise, calculated way he spoke sometimes. The voice he'd used on their way to Itomori during their failed trip to save Ryota. That careful, practiced delivery she now knew hid turmoil beneath it, a thin layer of glass harboring a maelstrom. –You broke protocol.–
The lack of question mark seemed especially telling.
Asato's hostility—and the terror that caused it—wasn't remotely as hard to identify.
–Screw off with your blame game. Too late to change anything now. I can't leave Saburo.– And then another from Asato. –Why isn't Michi answering?!–
–Let's hope it's a choice. Rather than because she can't.–
–Fuck you for even suggesting that.–
What followed was a series of lightning fast texts, Kurama peppering Asato with questions about the specifics and Asato answering back with a whole lot of I-don't-knows. As she scrolled, barely retaining what she read, a half-formed image swam to the forefront of Michi's thoughts. Kurama, sprinting through forests and villages and cities, his phone in hand, frantically typing out texts as he swerved between cars and forded rivers. An absurd imagining. Yet one she couldn't shake.
What was this bizarre life she'd found for herself?
When had the world gotten so weird?
"Michi?"
For the second time in… well, she wasn't sure how long—ten minutes? An hour? Two?—she startled, jolted from her tangled, muddled thoughts as a shadow slanted over her.
A shadow.
Shade.
"Hey," she said.
His threads trailed over his shoulders in a shawl of worried coral, and he gestured for her to move over, to give him space. Obedient, she scooted back and rolled onto her side, creating a sliver of cushion that he sank onto.
"Hell, Michi. What did you do?"
"Tried to figure out who she was." Was that an answer to what he'd asked? Sort of. Right?
"Alone?" He dragged a hand through his bleached locks. "What were you thinking?"
She rolled one shoulder into an attempted shrug. "Somebody needed to."
Exhaling a weighty sigh, he bent over her and wrapped her in an awkward hug, struggling to properly snake his arms around her until she pushed herself upright and snagged her own arms around his waist. She breathed him in. His familiar deodorant. The scent of his detergent, same as the one both their mothers used. The tang of fresh sweat. When he pulled back an eon later, a red stain had spread across the powder blue fabric of his shirt.
Blood.
Her blood.
"How long has it been?"
"Since you came up here? Three hours, maybe. Since Kaito summoned me, an hour or so."
That long?
She pressed her fingers to her forehead, as if by doing so, she could steady her swirling thoughts. That it had been an hour since the woman left wasn't as much of a surprise as it looked like Asato expected it to be. Somewhere between thoughts of Kurama running through the woods as a fox, she might have drifted into a doze or simply stopped thinking at all.
But two hours with that woman?
Where had all that time gone?
"You're sure he only called you an hour ago?"
Asato cocked his head sideways, his threads shining with lime astonishment. "That's the part of the timeline that's throwing you off?"
"It didn't seem like that long with her."
"It was forever, Meech. If Kaito hadn't called when he did, I was planning on abandoning Saburo in the car and getting my ass up here." His breath caught, and he swallowed down whatever he'd planned to say next, shoving a hand through his hair once more. "Though in retrospect, I wouldn't have been any help. Yana and Kaito don't even know what happened. Last thing Kaito remembers clearly is his territory disappearing, and Yana gets foggy a few minutes after that. Well, except for this weird sensation of wanting they both described, though neither can say exactly what they wanted. I guess, to not move? To not interfere?" He shook his head. "I don't think I get it, really."
"Oh."
He sighed. "Anyway, once that woman escaped, Kaito's territory came back—which I think you know—and theoretically Yana's probably did, too, assuming she blocked it to begin with—and we are assuming that, despite Yana not testing it. From there, Yana was able to get Etsu under control." He jerked his chin toward the closed bedroom door Michi didn't remember identifying, though apparently she had at some point. "He's got her in there. Ten minutes ago, Kaito took Saburo back outside. I brought him up, but seeing you completely zoned out got him agitated. Seemed like fresh air was in order." Gently, he squeezed her knee. "Yusuke and the others should be here soon, then we'll—"
"Soon, Kido?" Yusuke's voice boomed from the doorway, and Michi winced, flattening her palms over her eyes as a territory-induced headache she'd hardly noticed until then reared its head. "Nah. We're already here."
"Quiet," Asato snapped, pitching to his feet. Without him, the couch felt suddenly far too large, readying to engulf her in its crevices completely, but she didn't try to tug him back as he loped across the living room and started rattling off new details in a hushed rant.
The ex-Detectives filed over the threshold like a steady stream. Yusuke first, then Hiei, then Kuwabara. And last of all, his gaze finding her instantly, Kurama.
His Loom was almost entirely obscured behind those of his friends, Yusuke's electric lines and Hiei's cutting sharpness nearly too blinding to see past. But despite them—and the taut strands of the Ties That Bind—she could still spot the faint edges of Kurama's threads. They shone with a green she could've sworn she'd never seen on him before.
A green almost like pine needles.
The green of fear.
She mustered a wave, lofting her hand into the air through sheer force of will, and though his eyes stayed narrowed and tension flattened his lips into a pursed line, that fearful green lessened. Just a touch. Just enough for a flicker of pale blue to flood into place.
He did not, however, appear to miss the blood crusted over the wounds Etsu had scoured across her throat.
Still, he eased the door closed gently as the Detectives moved deeper into the apartment, and all the while, Asato kept up his ramblings. After a minute, Michi gave up trying to hold her head high and slumped exhaustedly into the couch, but when that proved no more restful than listening had been, she wobbled to her feet, pausing for an overly long moment to gather her bearings before traipsing for the bathroom.
If everyone was going to keep noticing her injuries, she might as well see them for herself.
Or not.
Actually, definitely not.
Because as soon as she stepped in front of the bathroom mirror and saw the blood dried along her jaw in a splatter of rust brown ruin, an overwhelming sense of vertigo nearly brought her to her knees. Not because of the blood. Not really. On its own, blood was just blood. She'd never been a queasy person, never the one prone to passing out when someone broke an arm or when high school biology classes called for dissections.
But this wasn't really about the blood, was it?
This was about that woman. About what she'd tried to do—to the boys and to Etsu and to Michi, too. About what she'd already done to transplants like Taki and Ryota.
About what she might still do.
Gnawing on her inner cheek, Michi tugged open Etsu's linen closet and yanked out a hand towel. Her blood might stain the pewter terrycloth, but if it did, she could always buy the apparition another. Right now, all that mattered was getting this blood off—and seeing what sort of carnage lay beneath.
She ran the tap for a minute, testing its temperature with a finger before soaking the cloth and pressing it to her tender jaw. The work that followed consumed her, long seconds drawing into minutes as she worked the towel over the gouges Etsu had shorn across her body. So preoccupied was she that when Kurama stepped into the doorway and cleared his throat, she jumped in surprise, jabbing her cheek painfully with the cloth.
"Sorry," he said softly. "Didn't intend to startle you."
She winced, glancing in the mirror, convinced her jaw must've started bleeding again. "Not your fault. I'm a bit out of it."
"Understandably so."
Letting the towel drop into the sink, she shot him a weak, sidelong roll of her eyes. "Somehow, I imagine none of you would go into shock over… well, anything. And certainly not over something as little as this." She flapped a hand toward her ravaged chest, and a bloom of palest coral awoke in Kurama's Loom in answer.
There was nothing romantic or sexual or even remotely comforting in the way his critical gaze swept over her. If anything, his attention was clinical. Appraising and sharp, but interested only in the facts, in just how injured she was or wasn't.
After a beat, he said, "You're right. Shock is a response we've all left long in the past. But that's no more a comment on you than it is on us."
She started to shake her head, ready to fight him on her weakness, but he stopped her in tracks as he left the doorway and drew closer. His lithe fingers drew the hand towel from her grip and he ran fresh water, rinsing it. Her blood spiraled in pink rivulets down the drain.
She shuddered.
Deftly, he squeezed excess water from the cloth, then shifted to face her. "May I?" he asked, lifting the towel in question.
Swallowing raggedly, she titled back her head. "Gently."
"Of course."
The going was quicker under Kurama's capable hands. In short order, he's cleaned the last of her jawline, washed what little blood had dried across her cheek, and moved on to her throat. Beyond the bathroom door, the others were talking. Asato had finally tapered off, and now Yusuke was batting around insane ideas about how they might track the woman down, but Michi could tell he was just biding his time. They all were, because they were waiting on her, the only person who actually knew what had happened. Jamming her eyes closed, she tried to quiet the roaring between her ears as Kurama rinsed the towel a final time before turning his ministrations to her collarbone. That wound stung most sharply, and she couldn't help a sudden intake of breath.
"Sorry," he murmured.
She didn't manage an answer, remaining focused instead on the simple act of counting her heartbeats, willing them to slow down, to return to normalcy, to a pace too regular and steady to be counted at all.
At last, as Kurama draped the towel over the sink's lip, she forced her eyes back open. Once her vision cleared, she discovered he was all she could see—his viridian eyes, his scarlet hair, his gentle smile.
And his purple threads.
His threads that were too deeply purple for mere affection.
Whatever he must've seen answering in her eyes sent his smile skewing sideways, and he reached a tentative thumb up to the side of her jaw that was gash-free, then said, "This isn't a request you can truly promise to fulfill nor once I'm so imprudent to think I can demand from you, and yet I can't help but ask it, just this once."
"Oh? Well, shoot, I guess."
He laughed, though she couldn't quite spot the humor in it. "Do me a favor, would you? Can you try to avoid getting into trouble when I'm hours away?"
Her teeth sank into her lip. "Trust me, it wasn't part of the plan."
"I know that."
She spoke up again before he could continue. "And regardless, even if I'm a mess now, I had to do something then. If I was in the same position, I'd do it again. I won't be somebody's damsel. I won't let down my transplants, not if I can help it—"
His thumb slid over her lips. She went quiet.
"I know that, too, Michi."
Oh.
Right.
Soft as the whisper of wind through blades of grass, he added, "But that was still the most chilling text I've ever received."
Her breath caught in her throat, lodged beside her heart. It took her a moment to find her voice again. Once she did, she pulled back from his thumb. "Maybe you don't text enough human girls," she said with a forced laugh. "Trust me, I wouldn't have to scroll far back to find a text from Yurie about the world ending because her favorite mascara tube has run dry." As his brows climbed toward his hairline in dry disbelief, she tacked on, "I mean, really. What's one creepy psychic next to a makeup crisis?"
Seemingly despite himself, cobalt swathes spilled across his Loom. "Michi, I'm being perfectly serious."
And he was.
She could tell he was.
"I know. But serious is… not what I need right now."
A sigh escaped him, funneling out his nose, but then he swept his thumb across her cheek and nodded. "Of course. I—"
"Oy, you two," Yusuke bellowed from the living room, cutting Kurama off, all of Asato's warnings about staying quiet apparently long forgotten. "Get your asses out here. I'm all out of patience."
This time, the amusement in Kurama's Loom was joined by equal doses of weary gray and exasperated crimson. "Well, you're in luck," he muttered to Michi. "Yusuke rarely does serious."
Too bad, then, that everything she was about to tell them was nothing short of grave. The sort of grave that led to tombstones and actual graves.
Even Yusuke's humor wouldn't be enough to offset that.
She told them everything. Her suspicions about the woman's powers. As much as she could recall of the woman's threats. The way she'd shredded that square of knitting until it had unspooled entirely. How Michi had found herself inexplicably captivated by the dance of the woman's fingers.
And lastly, the woman's parting declaration.
I will destroy them.
"Then she… I don't know how to put it. Tore Etsu's Loom apart. Cleaved her threads into pieces."
Cleaved.
It was the only word for it. The only way to describe how cleanly the woman sheared through Etsu's threads, how absolutely she'd severed Ryota's.
A stiffness hung in the silence between them, and though the ex-Detectives were arrayed all around her, a tight ring around Etsu's couch, though Asato was right there at her side, his hands curled into fists atop his knees, in that moment, looking at them all, remembering how it felt to be alone against that woman as Yana and Kaito and Etsu fell to pieces, Michi had never felt more isolated—more unlike these men who'd welcomed her into their folds. They were right there, and yet, they were so very far away.
When Asato spoke, breaking the quiet that had fallen, that gulf only yawned wider.
"Well," he said slowly—uncertainly. "We can't keep calling her 'the woman.' She needs a name." His fists flexed, knuckles straining white as his eyes found Michi's. "Is going with the Unweaver too on the nose?"
The world shifted on its axis.
With a bark of startled laughter, Yusuke declared the name perfect, and simultaneously, Kuwabara muttered it under his breath, rolling it across his tongue as if testing out the fit, but Michi wasn't so quick to agree. A knot in her throat, she tore her gaze from Asato, looking instead to the kotatsu—and the jumble of yarn strewn across its surface.
The Unweaver.
It was a name that drew a line straight to Michi, whether Asato had meant it to or not. A name that connected her to that woman inextricably, like they were two sides of the same coin, like they were two disparate halves of a single whole.
After all, if there was an Unweaver, didn't there have to be a Weaver, too?
AN: Slightly early post because I'm going away this weekend. Gotta do all sorts of packing and I'm not sure I'd have time to get this up in the morning, so up it goes now! And on that note: a very happy New Years to all of you! Here's to 2017 resting in infamy and to 2018 being the year the world gets back on track.
(Random aside: I've started thinking of 2016, 2017, and 2018 like a book trilogy, both in terms of my personal life and the world at large. 2016: the start of the adventure, some minor baddies along the way, and then, just as victory seems in hand, the true nemesis rears its head. 2017: the insufferable second book of the series; always worse than the first, always ending in a very 'dark night of the soul' type moment. And then, hopefully, if the universe is willing, 2018: the thrilling conclusion, where the baddies get got and the good guys emerge, battered and changed but ultimately victorious. So, um, yeah. I hope we all have a badass 2018 worthy of a series conclusion. /endweirdramble)
Speaking of arcs, I reckon this chapter marks the end of BBL's second arc. Shorter than the first (which ended around Ch. 17) by chapters, though in word count, they may be comparable, but pretty pivotal in shifting Michi toward who she's going to become. And now, at long last, we have a face (and a name!) for the person behind everything that's gone wrong for the halfway house. I am so very, very excited.
As always, endless thanks to the glorious lovely souls who reviewed last chapter. I love you all. You're a huge part of what keeps me hammering away at the keyboard each day. All the following folks are simply the best: MissIdeophobia, LadyEllesmere, knightsqueen05, Kristy Himura, o-dragon, Laina Inverse, WistfulSin, Vulvarity, Guest, roseeyes, Shell1331, MoonlitMajick, SlytherclawQueen, and ahyeon!
And with that, happy New Years! See you on the flip side.
