Early morning sunlight streamed through Kurama's plants like golden ribbons, their edges tinged verdant and otherworldly.
Michi stood barefoot before the shelves, one hand raised, fingers tracing over a frond so green it seemed impossible. The light filtered through it, highlighting veins beneath its sturdy cuticle, and as the curious track of her nail reached the leaf's stem, it curled, bending around her wrist. The sight of it—of this plant so readily capable of reaction—woke a shiver that wracked down her spine. Such a simple, concrete reminder of what Kurama truly was.
But no degree of unfamiliarity could make this display of Demon World flora any less captivating.
In that way, it wasn't so unlike its creator.
An hour ago, she'd roused from dreams of old women and half-dug graves to discover Kurama slipping from bed. He'd offered her an affectionate—and apologetic—smile as he scrounged up his pajama pants and drew them on, cinching them at the waist before moving to the closet to claim a sweater. When she'd sat up to follow, he'd shaken his head, murmured about the hour being thoroughly indecent, and trod into the hall. His parting words before the door slid shut urged her to catch another few hours rest, promising he'd return with breakfast before they joined the team for a call with Genkai.
She'd failed entirely regarding his first bout of instructions, sleep proving too evasive.
With Kurama gone, the truth crept back in. Her nightmare clawed out of the hazy pit of memories where dreams usually went to fade into oblivion and hunched its hulking mass around her, a companion in the dark, lurking and seething and promising that this wasn't over. The Unweaver wasn't done. Not with the transplants. Not with the ex-Detectives. And certainly not with Michi.
Still, she'd made an effort. She'd closed her eyes and willed the darkness away, rolling onto her side and drawing the blanket up, over her head, cocooning herself until all she could smell was Kurama.
The Unweaver followed.
The memory of the woman's frantic grip clutched at Michi's wrist, phantom fingers sprouting from the crescents of broken skin the Unweaver had left behind. The distorted rhythm the Unweaver's meddling had created in Michi's thoughts resurfaced, panic sending her breath skittering, her hands seizing useless fists of bedding as she fought for calm.
A half hour later, she'd given up on sleep, stumbled from bed, and staggered to the windows, desperate for light, desperate for air—desperate. Just desperate.
As the curtains rose beneath her trembling hands, the sunlight spilled in, flooding the gaps between Kurama's plants, painting dappled shadows across the floorboards. She'd stood there ever since. Lost in those colors.
At some point, she expanded her territory again, allowing even the Loom's most inconsequential filaments to flutter against her awareness. The gossamer threads slipped between the rays of light, pooling on the shelves and twining through stems and leaves and petals. The faintest twinge of a headache built for a moment, gathering behind Michi's eyes, but as she stood and breathed and boxed the Unweaver's creeping touch into the deepest crevices of her memory, that pain faded.
And then she just was.
For as long as she needed to be.
"I have to take back what I said last night," Michi admitted when Kurama at last returned to her, a tray of steaming food in hand.
Easing the door shut with a deft foot, Kurama cocked his head. "Which of the many things you said might you be referring to?"
Standing beside his bed, Michi kept her eyes on her work, folding the t-shirt he'd lent her with careful precision, allowing not so much as a single crease to fall out of place. His clothes had made for comfortable enough pajamas, but she wasn't ready to prance around the guys' apartment in borrowed garb. Dirty though they were, her own rumpled garments were a preferred alternative, and she'd swapped Kurama's pants and shirt for her leggings and sweatshirt just moments before his arrival.
"The bit about being okay." Her folding finished, she swept a palm over the faintest wrinkle in the shirt's front, then forced herself to add: "I'm not sure the Unweaver is actually out of my head."
Setting his tray down on his desk, Kurama pulled out his office chair and sank into it slowly. "Meaning?"
"I don't know. Just that my head's not on straight, I guess."
"Understandably so, Michi, regardless of the Unweaver's talents. Last night's events were… disturbingly abnormal—and, frankly, even that description doesn't do their consequences justice."
Turning to face him, Michi crossed her arms over chest. "I'm not in shock again," she said. "This isn't like the first time I crossed paths with her." Sighing, she paced to his side and studied the offerings he'd brought with him. Four bowls total. Two full of miso soup. Two heaped with rice and fried eggs. Steam rising in curling tendrils from all four.
"Keiko's here already?" she asked.
Kurama's brows drew together, no doubt thrown off by her subject change, but he nodded. "Good eye. She and Yukina arrived a half hour ago, and she's been squabbling with Yusuke in the kitchen ever since. Once Botan joins us, we'll get in contact with Genkai." An elegant sweep of his hand encompassed the tray's contents. "These are a special order—straight from Keiko herself. By her decree, everyone else needs to wait for Botan."
Of course. Keiko would demand propriety from Yusuke and the others, barring exceptions of her own making. A surge of affection warming her chest, Michi bit her lip against a grin.
"I doubt Kuwabara's pleased about that."
"No less so than Hiei. He's positively fuming." Kurama's lopsided smile lasted only a heartbeat longer before melting away. "Can we circle back to the Unweaver?"
Claiming her bowls and utensils, Michi retreated to the bed, then sank to the floor, her shoulders resting against the mattress's edge. At once, Kurama started to rise, readying to give up his seat, but she waved him off. "My thoughts are all over the place. Maybe they're all mine, but I can't shake the fear that they're not."
"What part—if any—feels foreign?"
"I… don't know."
He'd lofted his chopsticks, but they hung inactive from his long fingers. His Loom rippled with yellows, though he said only, "I need more than that if I'm going to help you."
Maybe she didn't need help.
Maybe she didn't want help.
The thought cracked through her like a whip, and she winced at its wrongness. She bit the inside of her cheek, heaved down a deep breath, then found words. "It happened just now. You offered help, and it felt so badly like I don't want to accept it. But I do. Of course, I do." The steam wafting up from her soup woke grumbling in her stomach, but she couldn't bring herself to eat. "The same thing happened last night. I thought I should tell you, but I didn't want to. And part of that was me. I know it was. How much, though? I have no idea."
"So then, if the Unweaver is interfering with your Loom, you believe she's doing so to distance you from us?"
Oh.
Maybe.
"I hadn't thought it through all the way to that conclusion, but yeah, I guess so."
Nodding as much to himself as to her, he crossed his legs, propping his left ankle atop his right knee and balancing his bowl of rice atop his calf. "Last night, you mentioned she made you feel as though you wanted to stay in the square, which is why you didn't run immediately, right? Did she manipulate any other feelings?"
Yes.
Michi squeezed her eyes shut. "First, I wanted to learn from her. About the Loom and how to use my territory and how to… weave. But I saw through that. I guess it was too wrong? Too much of an alteration? Then, the sensation changed. I started thinking that if I stayed, she could remove my territory. That she could cleave it away or something."
"And you wanted that?"
She dropped her chin to her chest in wordless confirmation.
"Do you still?"
A moment's hesitation gripped her. Here was the truth, in all its ugly glory. "In some respects, yes. It's what I've wanted for six years. No more colors, no more emotions, no more connection to the Loom of Life. But I don't want what the Unweaver made feel. I don't want to be cleaved. I don't want to lose myself like our transplants have been lost."
At last, Kurama put his chopsticks to use, and he chewed a large, leisurely mouthful of rice before formulating his answer. All the while, Michi watched his Loom, letting herself fall between the folds of his familiar presence.
Could she really claim she wouldn't miss seeing him this way?
"I don't think you need me to say this," Kurama said, "but I'll reiterate it regardless. Just once. When this is over, when the Unweaver is behind us and the halfway house's transplants have been returned to their homes, if you still want your territory gone, I'll do everything I can to help you close it permanently. I can't make promises. As far as I once understood it, there's no way to remove a person's territory once it's awoken, but the Unweaver has already proven that false. If there are other means—less invasive, corruptive means—I'll help you uncover them.
"But right now, Michi, we need you. And I don't mean myself or Yusuke or Genkai. I mean the halfway house and your transplants and all the humans who've found themselves caught in the Unweaver's destructive workings. Your territory is the closest thing we have to an equal… weapon, for lack of a better word. Without it—and without you—our disadvantage is immense."
She already knew all that. Maybe not the part about him helping close her territory—though the vast research he'd done into the Loom of Life had been an easy enough sign to spot—but the rest? How much her territory served them?
That had been all too apparent for months now.
"My territory is important. I get what you're saying—"
Catching his rice bowl with the same hand that help his chopsticks, Kurama raised the other to quiet her. "No, it appears you don't."
When he made no immediate move to clarify, she leveled him with her sternest frown. "Kurama. No riddles."
He laughed softly. "I'm not laying out a puzzle. I already said precisely what you've overlooked. We need your territory, yes, but we also need you."
"You need me for my territory. That's not the same as needing me."
Setting aside his rapidly cooling breakfast, Kurama abandoned his seat in favor of a spot beside her on the floor. "Let me be perfectly clear," he said, left shoulder bumping against her right. His threads washed over her in a blanket of determined blue and affectionate purple, warming her as thoroughly as any afghan could. "Even if you never master a stitch more of your territory, you're already invaluable. In part, because you understand the Loom more concretely than any of us could ever hope to, regardless of your ability to manipulate it. But more so, because you—Michi Kuroki, a powerless human girl in all but the most pedantic sense—have connected with the halfway house's charges in a manner no one else has. You're a part of our team, your territory notwithstanding."
"So what's the 'but?'"
Another laugh, this time bright and pealing. "Am I so transparent?"
"More than you'd like to be."
With elegant fingers, he lifted her miso bowl from her lap, lay claim to her spoon, and gulped down a mouthful. "You know, if we don't eat all this, Keiko might never grant you special treatment again."
"Kurama, the evasion master," Michi declared, striving for dry condemnation but failing as a laugh snuck in.
He ignored her. "Though given the circumstances, she might forgive you. I doubt I'd fare so well."
She prodded a playful elbow into his side, and the soup sloshed as he evaded. "Tell me the 'but,' you tease."
A second spoonful of broth went down before he sobered. Then, offering an apologetic smile in advance, he said, "In our conversation with Genkai, I'm going to a make a suggestion I fear you won't particularly care for, but I ask that you give it a chance, okay?"
"Out with it."
"Considering the number of transplants the Unweaver has impacted and the absence of evidence their Looms will revert to normalcy without assistance, I think it's imperative we work to further expand your control of your territory. With the Unweaver moving more quickly, we may be hard-pressed to manage so many unstable apparitions, and if we're truly save them, we need to ensure their Looms are whole and healthy."
Michi tilted her head. "Well, yeah. Hadn't we decided that already? That wasn't exactly some big reveal." She tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears, her gaze roving to his shelves of greenery as she let her territory unfurl again. "It's not that simple, though. The transplants needing me doesn't make me capable. I only just figured out how to expand my territory. That took six years. I don't think I'll be knitting Looms back together in a matter of weeks."
It was such an impossibly absurd idea that she almost laughed, but then she looked at him, and that tremulous laughter fizzled away on her tongue.
He was serious. Completely and unabashedly matter-of-fact. Everything from the bleached navy of his threads to the firm set of his jaw smacked of steady resolve, and though she felt the man who might love her in the soft trace of his thumb alone her cheek, there was a different man in his eyes, too.
A strategist.
A cold, clinical tactician.
A Spirit Detective.
"I know, Michi. I'm not asking you to do the impossible. I'm simply asking that you try. If weaving is beyond you, not a soul in all three worlds will hold it against you. But we need to be sure if it is or isn't. That's all."
That's all.
Like it was a small thing. Like it wasn't embracing the same talent that rendered the Unweaver a monster. Like the creeping touch of the Unweaver's fingers didn't still remain a phantom around her wrist.
But it was what he wanted.
And he was right that it's what their transplants needed—what she owed them.
So be it, then.
"Okay. I'll try."
"Thank you." He leaned forward, his lips pressing over her right brow. "And now, let's eat. My stomach's future happiness depends on it."
As soon as Kurama cracked his bedroom door, noise hit Michi instantly.
Yusuke hollering in the kitchen. Kuwabara barking back from the living room. Those were expected sounds, ones she'd grown to welcome in the weeks since she'd become a frequent visitor here. What she wasn't as familiar with was Keiko, angrily calling for Yusuke to be quiet—and, judging by the yelp Yusuke issued next, not settling for simply telling him off.
In the barest of lulls that followed, bright laughter pealed down the hall, and as Michi and Kurama reached the corridor's end, two shocks of blue hair burst into view. Closest at hand, perched on the couch, sat Yukina, and by the door, unzipping leather boots and shrugging out of a jacket, stood Botan.
Which either meant Kurama's decision to join the others had been impeccable timing or the product of the spiritual awareness Michi had never manifested.
Probably the latter.
The moment Botan spotted them, her fuchsia eyes brightened. A whirlwind of chiming laughter and beaming smiles, she trod over, looped an arm through Michi's, and tugged her to the couch. "We'll take Michi off your hands," Botan said, winking at Kurama even as she guided—or, more accurately, pushed—Michi onto the couch's middle seat.
"She's hardly a burden to be lifted," Kurama answered drily. She felt his presence at her back, mere inches behind the couch, and the faintest trace of his threads trailed over her shoulders.
"Well, duh." Another ringing laugh from Botan. "Should I have said we're rescuing her from dreary, old you?"
Kurama's response was lost on Michi as Yukina's cool fingers grazed her elbow, drawing her attention to her left. "I'm so glad you're alright," the apparition murmured.
Alighting on the arm of the couch, Botan crossed her legs at the knee and laced her hands in her lap. Her threads swirled with excitable blues as colorful as her hair. "It was such a relief when the boys confirmed you were right as rain."
Michi tried not to wince.
If the flicker of mustard unease through Yukina's threads was anything to go by, she'd failed.
Time for deflection, then.
"It was a shock, more than anything." The shifting of a pale Loom in her periphery alerted her to Kurama crossing the living room to join Kuwabara and Hiei, and instantly, she missed him, though he'd truly gone nowhere at all. "I never suspected the Unweaver might look for me."
Botan, it seemed, hadn't noticed the stiffness in Michi's spine, and she nodded vigorously, hands flapping as she spun into a tale about her own night, out in the town where Oharu had lived, healing his victims. Michi barely listened.
She was too busy reeling her territory back in, settling it firmly in her eyes, dulling the manic throb of so many Looms packed into such a small space. All four ex-Detectives. Keiko. Yukina. Botan. It was too much at once, too much on her frayed, exhausted nerves. Last night with Kurama had been the distraction she'd needed, the boost she'd required to keep her feet under her—and this morning had helped, too—but he could only bolster her so much, and now everything had come rushing back.
She doubted it would go away any time soon. As long as the Unweaver was free, knitting her horrors into the Loom's careful patterns, there'd be no peace.
Nevertheless, Michi made sure to nod and hum and play the part of a captive audience as Yukina picked up the lull in Botan's story, murmuring about the frantic hours she and Keiko had spent waiting on news from Yusuke and the others. But even still, Michi's attention roamed to the others, checking in on each of the friends who'd become so dear to her.
Yusuke and Keiko remained in the kitchen, identifiable as much by the delicious aroma wafting around the wall as by the pitch of their voices, arguing and flirting in equal measure, their threads a jumble of indigo. Meanwhile, Kurama had joined Kuwabara and Hiei in a knot around the coffee table. Someone had dragged it away from the couch and strewn folders across its surface—files of the final transplants in need of withdrawal, most likely.
Whatever they were, they'd engrossed Kurama. He'd locked in on the reports, his focus dedicated to the materials spread before him, reading diligently as Hiei and Kuwabara bickered at his side.
Through all that organized chaos, the Ties That Bind wound like shiny, pearlescent snakes. Brilliant. Strong. Sturdy as steel cable. Linking these men forever, dyeing their team across the fabric of the Loom of Life for as long as they might live.
But their team extended beyond their foursome, too, even if the Ties That Bind didn't know it. It included these women. It included Genkai and Asato out in the mountains. It included even Yana and Kaito.
And somehow, unbelievably, it had grown to encompass Michi as well.
That line of thought in mind, she looked for the final member of this makeshift family, and when she went unaccounted for, Michi asked, "No Shizuru?"
Botan startled, cutting off her tangent about the last soul she'd ferried from Oharu's town, long before he'd taken lives himself, but it was Yukina who answered first. "Oh, no. Not today. She had a shift at work."
"And besides," Botan added with a smile, "other than coming along to rough up Kuwabara until she confirmed he's okay, Shizuru wouldn't be able to assist us much."
Michi's brow rose. "But you guys will? You two and Keiko?"
Yukina shook her head. "Keiko came to cook breakfast—" a grunt from the kitchen, deep enough that it could only be Yusuke, preceded the end of Yukina's thought "—though Yusuke had something to say about that, and I wanted to see Kazuma. Botan is here to help, though."
Smiling broadly, Botan pressed a pale hand to her chest, fingers splaying over her breastbone. "Kurama contacted me early this morning and said Spirit World's records might be of value to today's meeting, so here I am!"
Michi glanced back at the men, still crowded around the coffee table, Kuwabara on his knees now, sifting wildly through folders. What did they need Spirit World's registers for? Everything regarding the transplants was kept in the halfway house's files.
As if answering the questions Michi hadn't truly asked, Botan lowered her voice, the spark dying from her eyes, and added, "He mentioned something about a grave?"
Oh.
Oh.
Smart. Kurama was too darn smart.
After all, the Unweaver's insistence on transplants having murdered humans was illogical. It didn't match facts. But maybe there was truth in there somewhere, jumbled though it might be. If Spirit World kept record of humans killed by demon hands—and it seemed unfathomable that they wouldn't—then perhaps answers lay in those archives.
Of course, Kurama had already thought to pursue that avenue. Who would he be if he hadn't?
Before Michi could answer Botan, Yusuke sauntered from the kitchen, a tray of steaming bowls balanced on one hand. All billowing confidence and cocky persona, he planted himself in front of the couch, thrust out a hip, and announced, "Breakfast, you useless moochers!"
"Yusuke!" Keiko snapped, emerging with a tray of her own. A laugh snuck its way into the end of her rebuke, and when she caught Michi's eye, she was smiling, cheery and content, her threads blue as the sea.
In moments, bowls were distributed. Two to each member of the assembled team, minus Michi and Kurama. The same meal had been served up, miso soup, rice, and fried eggs all around. Yusuke ran a lap with chopsticks and spoons around the room, and then a lull descended as everyone tucked in.
Except Michi, bereft of a bowl as she was.
In the lull, the roiling unease that had seethed in her gut since she woke to Kurama's departure grew to a roaring blaze, scorching her from within, and soon Michi shut both her eyes as she fought to breathe.
This wasn't normal.
She definitely—definitely—wasn't normal.
At her side, Yukina reached out, a tiny hand slipping through Michi's. "Should we start? Or do you want time?"
Michi forced her eyes open and found all attention on her, a latticework of concerned coral and goldenrod disquiet stretching through every Loom present. "Let's get to it." She summoned her bravest smile, though she suspected it ran sharp at the edges. "Do we need to patch in Genkai and Asato and the others?"
"Bingo!" With a flourish, Botan produced one of her strange communicators from her pocket, flipped it open, and a second later, had Genkai on the line, the woman's gravely tone crackling from the tiny speakers.
"About time," Genkai growled. "I've been waiting since dawn."
Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, the wait didn't kill you. And that's all our loss, really."
"Can it, dimwit."
A brief pause, and then: "Michi?"
"Hey, Asato."
He sighed audibly, like he hadn't been confident she was okay until he heard her himself. "Can you fill us in on what happened last night? Kurama gave us a run down, but it's probably best to hear it from the horse's mouth and all that."
Unbearably aware of every set of eyes directed her way, Michi pulled a blanket into her lap and began to trace its threads, letting the pattern of knits and purls hypnotize her. "Sure."
It was the same story as the night before, though perhaps a bit more methodical, a bit less harried and scattered. Occasionally, Genkai interrupted with questions, prying into the Unweaver's mannerisms, her appearance, the way she spoke of the Loom. Genkai's thoughts seemed always one step down the line from Michi's own, connecting dots Michi had already planned to illuminate herself.
If nothing else, her years as Genkai's pupil had trained her to think in the same manner as the psychic. That much was clear.
As Michi's rambles drew to a close, Genkai directed her next statement to the group at large, not just Michi. "It's clear enough, then, that the Unweaver does in fact manipulate a person's desires. That must be her base ability, and it's what she's largely utilized against humans. But when interacting with demons, she seeks to destroy their Loom, which is what we've witnessed in our transplants."
"We reached the same conclusion last night," Kurama said. Like Michi, he wasn't preoccupied with eating, and he remained bent over the transplant files, thumbing through pages even as he spoke. "What that leaves us with is a series of questions I've not yet worked out how to answer. First of which is the quandary of whether the Unweaver's insistence on demon violence is a reality or a mere product of her own instability."
"That second option," Yusuke said, interrupting through a mouthful of egg. Shoving his chopsticks into his rice, he swallowed roughly. "I mean, duh. We know none of the transplants have hurt people. She's just a crack pot."
"You're quick to assume, Yusuke," Genkai growled. "Our transplants might be blame free, but they hardly account for all the demons in Human World."
Michi's breath caught in her throat.
What a simple explanation. And yet, one she'd never even thought to consider.
It should've been so obvious. The very occupants of this room—Hiei, Yusuke, and even Kurama himself—were proof that the presence of demons in this plane was not entirely regulated through the halfway house. If these three could exist, who was to say there weren't others?
"Precisely." Kurama's gaze swung to the couch, settling to Michi's right. "Which is why I invited Botan today."
"You want me to look into it?" The ferry girl sat upright, brows drawing together with the faintest crease. "Try to dig something up in Spirit World's records?"
"I do. Starting with six months ago and working backwards." He crossed his arms, left fingers drumming on his right bicep as his focus flitted away, off into the past. "If you'll all recall, the first instances of behavior that could be linked to the Unweaver actually started with psychics, not demons. Back in September, we had a few isolated reports of psychics misusing or entirely losing their territories. It wasn't until a month or so later that Taki exhibited the first signs of his white threads. I suspect those initial psychics were a test. Perhaps the Unweaver found it easier to manipulate humans, or maybe just easier to find them as compared to demons."
Kuwabara rubbed the hinge of his jaw. "So you're thinking a demon killed someone, and that's what set her off?"
"It's the best theory I have yet."
"Agreed," Genkai said.
Botan nodded firmly. "Right, then I'll see what I can find. Should we split the load? I could bring some records. It might move more quickly."
"If you can swing it," Kurama said, "though the rest of us may have our time limited by what I think constitutes our second largest concern."
As easily as if they shared one mind, Genkai finished his thought. "The rest of the transplants must be pulled immediately. Within days if we can manage it. Oharu's violence and the Unweaver seeking out Kuroki make it clear she's moved to her end game. If we're to protect what the halfway house has built, we must act before she can."
"Okay," Yusuke said slowly, syllables drawn out and uncertain. "But haven't we already been going as fast as we can? I don't know about all of you, but this pace has been kicking my ass. I mean, geez, I haven't even rolled my ramen stand out of storage in, I don't know, a month? At least?"
"And I'm the old lady, you lazy brat?" Genkai barked, feedback buzzing through the communicator's tinny speakers. "It's not as though your ugly mug requires beauty sleep. Get off your ass and do what needs doing."
Ah, Genkai. As charming as ever.
At least Yusuke was living proof Michi wasn't the psychic's only unsatisfactory pupil.
While Yusuke sulked, muttering under his breath a litany of vile swears, Michi offered, "I can jump back to helping every day. And I can afford to miss a class or two. Almost all the transplants left are mine, right?"
"Well… yeah," Asato answered, his reluctance as clear as the brightest Loom despite the dozens upon dozens of miles separating them. "But Meech, you don't need to do that. The team can run extractions without you—"
"I'm perfectly aware of that, Shade," she said, banking on the nickname to catch him off-guard, as it tended to do these days. "But if the Unweaver's worked her weavings on more Looms, then I stand the best chance of talking my transplants down without needing to subdue them physically."
Across the room, Kurama offered her a tiny nod, little more than a dip of his chin—quick, fleeting acknowledgement that he recognized her words, knew they'd come from him, and was thankful she'd taken him to heart.
Huffing, Yusuke muttered, "Jeez, the lot of you sound like we're running some freaking covert mission. Can we talk like normal people?"
Michi ignored him. "I can skip a class. It won't kill me. And logistically, it just makes sense."
"She's right," Kurama agreed with finality. "We need to act. With speed and efficiency."
Asato sighed. "Whatever you want to do, Meech. I'm game."
"That said," Kurama went on, pulling focus back to him, "Michi and I have agreed she needs to prioritize mastering further control of her territory. She has, at this point, learned to broaden it, and that's a start, but if there's the possibility she might be able to weave Looms back together, reversing what the Unweaver has done, I believe it needs to be explored."
"I'm not making any promises," Michi said after Kurama fell quiet. Her fingers knotted in her blanket, twisting the hem between her knuckles. "I can't even figure out how to touch a Loom or connect with one or whatever the first step is. We don't know that I'm actually capable of that. There's no reason—"
"Hey," Kuwabara interrupted. Somber but determined, he crawled across the floor on his hands and knees, then pulled her fingers free of the blanket and cradled them in his far vaster palms. His smile was gentle, his rough voice strangely soothing, as he said, "A few days ago, you'd have said the same thing about expanding your territory. Just because you haven't done it doesn't mean you can't."
Through the communicator, another deep, gravelly voice piped up. "Don't write yourself off, Meech." A rustle and a thump proceeded the rest of Yana's thoughts, his words clearer now , crisp with his nearness. "I bet you've got this."
Michi squeezed Kuwabara's hands and, striving for cautious optimism, clarified, "I appreciate the vote of confidence. From both of you. But that's what I was going to say already. I'll give it a shot. Kurama convinced me. Just… don't bank on anything."
Kuwabara grinned, his threads as blue as the clearest sky. "Oh, I'm banking on it. I've already got a bet with Urameshi. You're gonna make me rich, Kuroki. Count on it."
Well.
So much for even-keeled hopes.
The meeting carried on for nearly two more hours, Genkai and the men spiraling into ever deeper veins of planning. Michi filtered in and out, struggling to stay present, but a haze hovered at the edges of her thoughts, threatening to swallow her up if she let her guard drop.
The Unweaver's phantom fingers remained a ghostly recollection on her wrist, cold and dry and rigid compared to the smooth planes of Yukina's palm against Michi's. No second hand truly clamped around her forearm. Logically, that was obvious. And yet, she couldn't shake the sensation—couldn't stop imagining that hand twisting through her Loom, pulling apart threads Michi couldn't even see.
As the meeting drew to a close, she managed to tune in when Asato asked what supplies he and the other boys should haul back from Genkai's, and she put in a desperate plea for wards. Dozens of them. As many as Genkai could pull together. Not to protect her, but to protect everyone else.
Genkai complimented her good thinking, and Kurama's soft grin doubled down on the woman's praise, but Michi wasn't being cautionary. This was no proactive defense.
They all needed those wards. Now. Yesterday.
Until they had them, there'd be no true safety. She was sure of that now, even if she hadn't been last night. Twelve hours ago, being here had seemed like enough, being with Kurama had felt like all the protection she could ever need.
But it wasn't.
Neither he nor any other ex-Detective could protect her from the Unweaver. In fact, if Kurama was to be believed, it was Michi who needed to be the protector. And the spectral fingers searing against her flesh made it quite clear that Michi was many things, but she wasn't that.
She wasn't the Weaver.
Not now.
Not yet.
And maybe not ever.
"You're staying here?" Keiko asked Michi as the meeting broke up.
The instant Botan powered down her communicator and cut them off from Genkai, Hiei had stalked to the living room's corner and taken up residence there, chin tucked to his chest, one elbow braced against a drawn-up knee. From the context Michi had gathered during the call, it seemed he hadn't slept a wink last night, too busy cleaning up the ruins of Oharu's time in Human World to find so much as an hour's rest. Apparently, he intended to change that now.
Still seated on Michi's left, her cold fingers laced through Michi's, Yukina watched him through the fall of her unnatural bangs, her head tilted a degree, her ruby eyes unreadable. Strokes of coral concern and magenta disappointment played across her delicate features in ribbons of garish color, but Michi didn't have it in her to decipher the meaning of those shades.
Instead, she looked mutely at Keiko as the girl claimed the seat Botan had abandoned in favor of a conversation with Kurama. Face bare of smiles, Keiko perched on the couch's edge, hands folded neatly atop her knees.
"Michi?" Keiko murmured when Michi gave no immediate answer.
Michi startled, shaking free of the frenetic disquiet thrumming in her veins. "Sorry. Yeah, I am. For the next few nights, at least. Until we figure out whether the Unweaver knows the location of my apartment."
From the kitchen, a burst of shouting announced Yusuke and Kuwabara nearly coming to blows over who had to wash breakfast's dirty dishes and who got to dry, but Keiko resolutely ignored them, not even a flicker of crimson annoyance spilling across her threads. Instead, her Loom prickled with mustard worry as she glanced down the hall to the guys' bedrooms, looking for all the world as if she hadn't even realized she'd done so.
"Are you comfortable here?" she asked after a quiet moment. "Shizuru has a spare futon mattress tucked away. If you wanted to, you're more than welcome to stay with us."
A sweet offer. Made all the sweeter as Michi made sense of the nervous energy coiling tight in Keiko's shoulders. Keiko didn't realize that Michi's relationship with Kurama had evolved yet again—how could she?—and she was trying, as subtly as she could, to spare Michi the pressure of sleeping here if she wasn't ready for the paths that choice might take her down.
And maybe Michi wasn't ready.
She certainly didn't feel it. Despite last night, despite this morning, despite how close she'd felt to him as her territory spread to encompass every loose thread of his impossible Loom, the gulf between them had never yawned as wide and fathomless as it did now.
Because he—and everyone else—stood on one side of that chasm, and she stood on the other. Not alone. But with her.
With the Unweaver.
"I'm fine," she said, voice cracking as the lie took shape.
"No, you're not." A tick of stubborn disbelief slipped between the syllables, but then Keiko softened. Coral flushed across her threads. "Michi, I can't imagine how terrifying yesterday was for you. But you know that's alright, don't you? Yusuke and the others… They're used to this. And before they got used it, they yearned for it. Yusuke wasn't happy until his life turned into an action movie. Not everyone is like that. Not everyone needs to be like that. I'm not." She took a deep breath, bobbed her chin once, and then finished, "So if you're hurting, if you're rattled, you can talk to me. Or Kurama. Or whoever. Okay?"
No.
Not okay.
She didn't want to talk to anyone, didn't want to be a part of this, didn't want to hone her territory like she'd promised to do—but sitting there, faced with Keiko's fumbling assurances, her heart beating like a ragged drum in her wrists and chest and temples, she knew those wants weren't hers. They were the Unweaver's, woven through her Loom on poisonous threads. Now or last night or at some unknowable time in between, but unmistakably the Unweaver's.
Which was why her answer couldn't change—why she would talk, no matter how much she didn't want to.
Because the Unweaver wouldn't win.
Michi wouldn't let her.
"Okay."
AN: Holy smokes, guys. SO MANY new people followed or favorited this fic in the last week. Like WAY more people than usually discover this story in a given week. I have no idea what brought you new folks here, but endless thanks for joining in!
I got halfway through editing this chapter when I realized I'd uploaded an old version to FFnet and I was reading that instead of what you see here. Had to double back and redo my edits of the first half to make sure I was giving you all the correct content. (That whole conversation with Kurama didn't exist in the first version!)
Big, ginormous thanks to reviewers old and new for the fantastic reception to last chapter. Y'all rock my socks. Thank you, thank you, thank you to: Dear author, Beccalittlebear, Sidako, Sky65, knightsqueen05, Laina Inverse, Shell1331, roseeyes, MissIdeophobia, ahyeon, GinaLiz, TheChronicLiar, Kasumi Uchiha, and xanaldy!