CHAPTER 16: CHOICES UNMADE

"You—you what?"

Kuon felt the sad smile pull his lips tight. The memory had only faded a little as time went by, but he was at least grateful that he could look back on it with a lot less blame and guilt than he did in the past. Of course, his blood still curdled and the hair on his neck still stood on end whenever he remembered the sound of the bat colliding with the back of his friend's head.

"I was young and I didn't know how to properly handle bullies," he paused to pull in a deep breath, "without resorting to violence."

This was the first time he'd ever had the courage to tell this story to someone who wasn't a licensed therapist. He'd skirted around his history quite a bit in the past days without revealing a whole lot, but there was something about it being the last day that made him feel a little freer. He couldn't explain why, but he felt like she needed to know. And he wanted to tell her.

"You were bullied?" she asked in a quiet voice and he nodded.

"Just because my parents are who they are doesn't mean I'm exempt from ridicule."

"I didn't mean—"

"I know you didn't," he assured her. "My knee-jerk defensiveness doesn't imply you were being insensitive. That one's entirely on me."

He'd realized too late that this wasn't the time for that. She was already on edge as it was from the way he chose to begin his story. He'd decided then that he didn't want to go into too much detail, mostly for his own sake but also for hers. There was nothing to be gained from her knowing all of that when a truncated version would be far less damaging. He loved bantering with her; not crippling her under the weight of his own personal trauma. They'd already worked past that.

"He didn't know magic, didn't have the knack for it, I guess," he continued. "We met in my early teens when he helped me get away from some kids who were trying to force me to eat the milkweed* growing in a nearby park."

She frowned, her eyes filled with concern, but nodded for him to continue.

"I learned how to hold my own and how to fight back from him." He tucked his hands under his legs, not knowing what else to do with them while he talked. "It's not like my parents didn't know what was going on. They always told me to tell them, or someone else, when it happened but I wanted to be able to take care of myself. And I got really good at it. I… started to like it."

He hadn't dared to look her in the eyes again, worried about what he'd see if he did. It took one more steadying breath for him to finally do so, only to find her looking elsewhere. He saw a pensive sadness that marred her features. He wondered what she was thinking in that moment.

"I started getting into more fights. Not less."

She didn't need to know how many more. She didn't need to know that he would actively seek them out when things got too quiet. She didn't need to know that much about the monster he used to be. For whatever reason, that mattered to him.

"My friend would help me out when he could, though I told him I'd rather handle it on my own." He paused to choose his next words carefully. "But, I wouldn't be sitting here today if he hadn't."

That caused her to finally look at him again. Her piercing eyes were wide with dread and she'd pulled her lips in on themselves in a taut grimace. She was bracing herself for what she knew was coming next. He almost didn't want to continue and spare her the burden.

"He took a hit that was meant for me." He pushed down the lump in his throat. "I never saw it coming, but he did."

He was expecting a gasp or some other form of audible reaction, but it never came. Instead, she pinched her eyes shut and her face twisted as if she were in pain. Her hands were fisted into tight balls and pressed hard against her thighs and he could tell she was trying her best to keep her breathing steady.

"And you believed it was your fault." She surprised him by saying the words so evenly despite her expression.

"Yeah," he breathed. "I blamed myself for a long time."

"What made you stop?"

He pondered that for a moment, trying to remember exactly when he made the choice to start forgiving himself and move on. His parents tried to get him to at least talk to someone about it for the longest while, but there was something he had to accept before he could do that.

"I guess I needed time to realize that I was wasting the life that was given to me and it was an insult to the person who sacrificed theirs just so I could have it."

"Did you ever consider becoming someone else and starting a new life somewhere?"

What a random question to ask. And yet, eerily applicable. There was no possible way that she could have known he'd thought about it. He wondered on what example she was basing her question. Did she know someone who had done that before? Had she done that before?

"I—I did."

"What changed your mind?" she pressed.

"It just sounded so impractical, you know?" He didn't know where he was going with this, so he just spoke his thoughts out loud. "I mean, I'm sure I could've figured out how to do it easily enough, but it didn't make sense. Or, maybe, I was just too scared of leaving everything behind and took the coward's way out?"

Kyoko shook her head. "No, I think either choice would've required a great deal of courage."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He stared at the solemn expression she wore for far too long. There was so much she seemed to be hiding behind it and he hadn't the first clue as to what it might be. For all of her vehemence when they argued, she was surprisingly reticent about many of the details of her life. The conversation they had over dinner the night before was probably the biggest glimpse she'd ever given him.

"So, is that it?"

"Is that what?" she asked, sounding as if she was mentally somewhere else.

"Were there any other weirdly invasive questions you wanted to ask me?"

Her face colored. "I'm sorry."

"Don't," he waved off her apology, "I just hope you'll pay me the same courtesy during your turn."

"My turn?" she asked again in that same distracted voice.

"Yeah, we just finished revealing the tragic past I avoided talking about before. So, what's the story you weren't willing to tell?"

She ran a hand through her hair and exhaled loudly. "Right. My story."

Kuon waited patiently for her to begin. He would have denied it had anyone asked but, somewhere along the way, he stopped caring about the mystery of his mundane dreams and focused his interest towards Kyoko's strange behavior. The scarf thing was overlooked, at first, in favor of her overall prickliness when they met for the second time in the diner, but that was just the beginning. Then there was her reaction to the tarot deck he brought out, the index card she chose to exclude, her comments during last night's dinner and the very on-the-nose question she asked just minutes earlier. The most prominent thing was the faraway look she'd get on occasion. It wasn't always as a result of something he'd said. Sometimes it seemed as if it happened for no reason at all and she'd just start looking at nothing in particular while getting lost in thought.

He hoped he would get a few more puzzle pieces to fit together.

"I'd had a really bad day over a month ago." Her voice and her hands were shaking. "The person I was dating at the time turned out to be a colossal disappointment, to say the least."

So he was right about the scarf. He had a feeling that it didn't originally belong to her based on the way she treated it as if it were priceless and irreplaceable. But, this person clearly hurt her in some way (a thought that made him peculiarly itchy). Why would she keep it?

"I decided that night that I was done with love. So I cast this spell..."

"But—"

"I know. I know. Yes, I was taught that love magic is dangerous," she interrupted him. "Believe me, I know. I wasn't thinking clearly and I've more than paid for my mistakes."

"As in... you made more than one?"

She sighed. "Yes. I mistranslated the spell, thinking it was meant to avoid love. Instead, it was meant to find it."

"To find… love?"

Kyoko clasped her still shaking hands together. "True love."

An ache began to spread through his chest that he did his best to disregard. That seemed less important at the time when compared to how uncomfortable Kyoko looked. She couldn't sit still, shifting every few seconds in her chair. Her story had only just started and she was already a wreck. Sure, he wanted to know more but was it worth it to watch her suffer like this?

"Kyoko, you don't have to do this if you don't want to."

"No." She shook her head and rocked back and forth in her seat. "No, I have to try."

"Alright, so you did the spell." He tried to help her by leading her along. "Did it work?"

All he got by way of a reply was furious nodding while her eyes fixed themselves resolutely on the floor. He immediately withdrew. It was as if he was forcing it out of her and it felt wrong. So, he sat back and waited.

"It worked. It worked and he—" The words came out like helpless gasps. "A-and I—"

Nothing but shaky breaths left her for several seconds. Then, her head snapped up and she stared at him. No, that wasn't quite right. She stared through him as if she could see past his chest, the chair and right on to whatever lay outside the wall behind him. Her hands reached up to brace against the arms of the chair and her fingers dug deep divots into the upholstery.

"I can't do this."

It came out barely louder than a whisper before she launched herself out of the chair and into a standing position before running out of the room.

*milkweed is beloved by Monarch Butterfly larvae, but is toxic to animals and humans if ingested in large quantities.

WHAT? TWO CHAPTERS AT ONCE?! MADNESS! ABSOLUTE MADNESS! Actually, the real madness is that I only barely proofed this chapter once before posting. Apologies for whatever errors you find. I'll go back through and fix them later. I mostly did this as a double release because the second of the two chapters was so short, but it needed to be its own chapter.

Also, I hope you will all be happy to know that I've started working on the next chapter for Anomalous as well. No idea when it'll be ready, but it's been started at least!

AUTHOR OUT!