Kochou Shinobu sometimes felt like she was sick. Very sick. Terminally sick, really. Because that was the only feasible explanation as to how she would have developed a crush on Tomioka-sensei, of all people.

The first time she met him, she was keenly aware that some village out there must have been missing its idiot (It did not matter that he turned out to be a Tokyo boy/man/dork later). She was late for her own entrance ceremony, which was all her sister's fault, absentmindedly forgetting her lunch and having Shinobu rushed back home to deliver it. She did not feel like barging in through the front gate, with all the attention fixated on the lone first-year kid arriving late for her own welcome ceremony. Her sister had just started working in the infirmary, too. What a shame it would be for them both if this incident were caught in the spotlight. So she climbed the fence and jumped down to the school yard. Except it wasn't the school yard that she landed on. Her feet connected soundly on the back of someone wearing a suit and was sitting down trying to pet the resident ugly cat. He looked stupid from the back, and she was ninety-nine percent certain that he looked pretty stupid on the front as well. Only someone losing a few brain cells and several emotional drives would be caught in that embarrassing position with a cat as ugly as that.

Smiling sweetly, she hopped back away from him and said unapologetically:

"My apologies. As thanks, I will most certainly refrain from divulging this compromising position of yours to the general public. On that note, Ojii-san," She flashed another faux smile, "Are you sure you are alright?"

Slowly, almost lethargically, the man raised himself up and turned to look at her. Well, she was half right. He was pretty and stupid from the front. Beautiful blue eyes and dark hair much longer than conventions, an impressive height and a face young enough to be only a few years her senior. Familiar, too, making her felt the nagging jolt of recognition. Crap. Not a teacher... She could not be that unlucky!

"I'm alright," He said slowly, as if testing out something before putting it to words. He was also looking at her with a queerly intense gaze that made it seem like he knew her at a personal level (It scared her that the fact did not make her uncomfortable. They had just met!). "Are you?"

She snapped out of her stupor and took a tiny step back, smile in place:

"Of course I am." Winding herself up for a run, she hedged, "It was nice meeting you and all, but I'm currently running late, so..."

His hand was lightning fast as he grabbed hers, eyes blazing and mouth opened as if on the verge of saying something. He did not utter anything, in the end, but she did reacted badly and kneed him in the gut. As he doubled over in resigned (why resigned?) capitulation, she flung his hand away and ran off at full speed. Before losing sight of him, though, she looked back and shouted, amused and more than a bit exhilarated:

"That's why even the cats hate you, Ojii-san!"

His expression of confused nostalgia ended up haunting her dreams for days.

He turned out to be the teacher intern. Which wasn't all that much better from being an actual teacher. Five days in and already the rumors of his outstanding attractiveness, unreasonable stringency, and almost theatrical brooding silence were all over the place. He was three-four years her senior, but graduated high school two years early and was currently interning at her school for future employment here as well. She found the entire thing hilarious, why would anyone of his pedigree want to work as an intern for the position of PE teacher? Besides, regardless of all the pretty words spoken about him in petty corners of the corridors, all of the impressions he left her were the dull absentmindedness and inept social maneuvers.

She kept trying to remember whether they have met somewhere. He was striking enough (in all his dumb glory) that she really would have remembered. Her sister seemed intent to believe that she was currently entering her rebellious phase, which explained the thoughtful silence, occasional grumpiness, and dazed look. She was not, nor was she love sick, like her neighbor Mitsuri were so set on believing. Mitsuri was also one year her senior, and had always been of the mindset that even the crazed neighbor's dog was insanely cute and that even two relatively chipped cups were having a romantic affair with each other. Shinobu loved her, she did, but sometimes Mitsuri's pink-tinted outlook of life gave her the pip.

One thing was different after meeting him, though. She dreamed often now, just like how it was back when she was a kid. Chaotic dreams, near nightmares, even. She barely remembered anything when waking up, but the residue feeling of rage and the dull ache of longing did not ebbed away.

There were butterflies, she recalled hazily, beautiful and mournful. There were wisteria, flying in the wind and covering the sky. There were absent blue eyes that looked permanently forlorn. There were laughters, joyful and carefree and sweet in a garden filled with white bed sheets and the smell of medicine. There were blood, too, and rain, and darkness the likes of which would swallow one whole. The tightened feeling of being suffocated stayed with her and seemed keen on never leaving.

Kanae worried, as she was prone to do. She asked if Shinobu wanted to talk about it. Shinobu, being Shinobu, smiled and said that she did not.

She got wary, though, of that boy-man-idiot of an intern teacher, and went out of her way to avoid him. Perhaps then the dreams would go away.

It did not, unfortunately.

What it did, though, was dealing her a resounding slap on the face, and made her despairingly realize that she was, in fact, one of the universe's favorite chew toys.

The more she avoided him, the more often he crossed paths with her.

She would go to the quiet balcony behind the Home Economics classroom for a calm and private lunch and he would have already been there squatting low with a pitifully lost expression on his face and the look of an eccentric idol running from a mob. He would then stared at her with those confused but elated blue eyes and proceeded to initiate some very awkward greetings and small talks. She almost considered never coming back to that balcony, but goddamn it it was her spot! Why was she the one who needed to go away? He didn't have enough common sense to notice it, apparently, since he ended up coming back everyday, looking less and less harried and more and more content - in that creepily blank way of his. (She had heard of talks that he was growing into his shoes, a tyrannical PE teacher waiting for the day he could actually be promoted into one). They only had lunch together, barely talking and not-at-all bonding. But stills.

She would come to school early in the hope that he wouldn't be at the gate till there were stragglers about, only to be greeted by an armed-to-the-teeth Tomioka-sensei looking ready to race through the street catching latecomers or violators of dress code. He seemed surprised to see her (as he always did when seeing her, interestingly enough), but immediately softened his menacing eyes (nice try, but she wondered if she was the only one who saw the dazed puppy gearing up to act all mature and stringent) and gave a slow nod as greetings before assuming his previous stance.

She would choose to stand way behind in the PE class, hiding herself from his gaze behind the scrawny back of Gyutaro, only to have Urokodaki-sensei (their current PE teacher, half way through mid-life crisis and one foot away from bliss retirement) instruct Tomioka to stand at the back of the class, to have a better view of everything going on around. He didn't initiate any conversation, thanked the Lords, but the feeling of his gaze following her occasionally was quite enough to make her back itched and burned uncomfortably the entire time.

She would be stopping by the convenient store near her house one fine evening just to find him already standing in front of the magazine stance, looking constipated with indecision and really, even she could not find it within herself to breeze through ignoring him.

"Tomioka-sensei, you're obstructing public path, mind." She poked him from the back and plastered her signature smile on her face.

It was somewhat satisfying to see him jump, even though just a tiny bit.

"Kochou." He turned and said, almost placidly. Then immediately, his blank face morphed into one of irritation, "It is too late, Kochou, for a girl your age to wander about alone. What are you doing here?"

It was 8:00 pm, she was at a convenient store, what else would she possibly be doing? Oh, this idiot. (She valiantly ignored the fact that of late all her complaints about him kept turning indulgent inside her mind. Was he growing on her, damn it?)

"Please act like a functional human being of the modern age, sensei. Eight is hardly late, to my general knowledge." She smiled wider, resisting the urge to tease him even more. God, he just made it so tempting, and easy. "Are you looking at erotic materials, sensei? At such a public place, too?"

He was fully facing her now, face turning gradually purple with alarm:

"... No."

And no elaboration whatsoever. Sometimes she truly wondered how he would have survived in society till this age with this much deficiency in social interaction.

"Really now? Then what were you doing, taking so much time in front of the magazine stance and making a public nuisance of yourself?" She asked breezily, head cocked to one side and smile firmly in place.

A beat of silence, then he said, almost resignedly:

"My brother-in-law is bringing siblings and cousins to our place. Elementary kids and middle-schoolers, known for being loud and rambunctious. My sister asked me to go buy something that could keep their mind off of making a mess and interfering in adults's conversation."

That was the most words he had ever said to her, or to anyone, really, in one breath. She digested it slowly and amusedly, before deigning a reply:

"And what possibly make you think that magazines will keep them busy?"

He sagged visibly and sighed:

"I can't go too far, and even kids read magazine, no? Shounen Jump and the likes?"

She laughed in his face, a light, teasing sound, and reached over to shift through the shelves in front of him. Pushing him away with one hand, she waved dismissively:

"I doubt these could hold their attention for long, but I'll help you pick some out. Go over to pick juices and snacks over there."

He stared at her, but strangely enough, did not hesitate to turn around and follow her order like a trained puppy. It was almost cute, how sweet he was acting. (She stopped just in time to be horrified at her thoughts and berated herself for getting away with her musings).

After that encounter, he insisted on walking her home, despite all her protests at the ridiculous hours (it was barely nine! Did he think that they were living in the Meiji period? And even then...) and the possible contrasting paths. The second ended up being a baseless worry, because they were neighbors, not close enough to have apartments in the same building (life could not be that coincidental, mind), but the two buildings were right beside each other, and once again Shinobu lamented at the theatrical drama that was her life. He had just moved there a few months ago, apparently, and was inept enough that not even the neighbors living on the same floor as him know who was living with them, much less her, who lived a building over and wasn't keen on housewives gathering.

They bid each other farewell with her breathing a sigh of relief at the end of awkwardness and him looking as contemplative as he always did (still more like an absentminded moron to her, but anyway).

She got into the habit of teasing him after that. She decided that since avoiding him had not yielded the result she wanted, then at least she should not limit her own amusement. Besides, his reactions were hilarious, at worst, and ludicrous, at best. At one point or another, he ended up getting all resigned and indulgent at her jokes and nastiness. That ended up riling her up even more. In fact, she teased him too much, too persistently and publicly, that even her sister - cooped up in her infirmary - started noticing.

"Shinobu," she said one day, acting half-uncaring (which wasn't very subtle, all things considered), "What do you remember about my Sex Education for you a few years back?"

Forget subtlety, her sister had officially crossed the distressing line of failed rationality and became the permanent inhabitant of Delusional Town.

"I beg your pardon? Kanae!"

Kanae blinked and gave a tinkling laugh:

"Oh, you know. I just want to make sure, is all. But you do know that it is illegal for Tomioka-san to lay a hand on you at this point in time, no?"

Shinobu felt her head swelled up into a purple balloon. She was just teasing him, just that! How could Kanae even jumped straight from teasing to fornicating?

"There is nothing between us!" She gritted out, feeling indignation rose to the back of her throat. (That, and just a tiny bit of embarrassed defensiveness, too.)

Kanae's lips just twitched into a soft, teasing smile, and she hummed nonsensically before turning away.

Mitsuri, too, hounded her like an oversized puppy. "Gosh you two are soooo cute! Are you sure he hasn't asked you on a date yet? Reckon he was social inept enough not to know what it is? Do you want to take the matter into your own hands?"

Shinobu's response to her tended to be solemn silence. She wouldn't know what or when to put in anything when Mitsuri was in one of her excited gushing mood. That, and she believed with certainty that whatever excuses she gave, Mitsuri would just believe in her own perception of them, anyhow.

Later, Shinobu ignored the embarrassing incidents entirely, since she had bigger things to worry about. Her dreams had gotten worse of late. She would randomly get caught in a vision even when she was awake and was walking across the school hall. Sometimes when she looked at her sister, the young woman no longer wore the laboratory coat, but a beautiful haori with patterns similar to butterfly wings. Occasionally she would look at the Art teacher and felt like hitting him over the head just because he seemed overlap with the noisy man that had almost kidnapped her loved ones for unreasonable purposes in her dreams. The blond, rambunctious Math teacher that had been spending an unholy amount of time around her sister also looked eerily like he would fit perfectly with a white and red haori and a sword the color of the flame. Even Mitsuri, at times, appeared as if she was wearing a scandalous black uniform with green tights even though she was actually sporting her PE uniform and was just there to deliver some of her mother's snacks.

Worst yet, though, were Tomioka-sensei.

It wasn't just that he overlapped with the man in the two-colored haori from her dreams (the absentmindedness, the unbelievable awkwardness, the resignations to her teasings, the forlorn silence,...) but also the fact that she felt like she was the version of herself in the dream when she was with him. Sometimes, as she was poking him, she was almost able to see the sleeves of the butterfly wings haori covering her arms instead of the usual blazer sleeves. Some other time, when he said something distinctly stupid and she would feel herself reaching unconsciously for the hilt of a sword (that weren't there) to knock it over his head so that he could see the stupidity of it as well.

She even started seeing illusions of pools of blood on the floor, dead bodies where there were only trashes, and hearing the sounds of battle echoing at the strangest moments of the day. The entire thing stressed her out, understandably so. She lost focus easily, she could barely sleep, her face sunken and the bags under her eyes got big enough to store coins in them.

Annoyingly enough, Tomioka-sensei was the first one to notice her changes. Granted, she did accidentally lose consciousness in front of him like a bloody damsel in distress right in the middle of the hall in the third floor. Stills, to think that she had fainted in front of him, of all people. (Did that mean that she felt that safe and relaxed around him? Ridiculous.)

It was during that dramatic episode that she dreamt a proper dream this time.

For once, everything happened in a chronicle order. She was of a child's height, first, running around with her sister (in a pretty haori and kimono) in a small garden full of flowers, their laughters ringing like bells and the light shone so bright she could not imagine anything being able to darken the image. Then, before the echoes of the laugh can disappear fully alongside the image of two girls chasing each other around, she was on her knees, blood in her hand and tears streaming her face. Her sister was hugging the body pieces of someone, no, two someone, and was hiccupping in anguish and grief. She herself was folding into herself, debating fervently whether to feel angry or terrified. She felt both, but that meant little, because they were there and no amount of feelings she exerted could bring her parents back to life. Her tears blurred her vision, and before the 'she' inside the dream could utter a wretched, keening sounds at the back of her throat, the images shifted again.

It went worse. Her sister was the one in blood now, haori drenched in blood and rain, and she was hissing, wailing, and cursing with every breaths. She gathered Kanae in her arms, putting their foreheads together, and getting choked on her own tears. The world was ending, she could feel the pain vibrated deep inside her bones, how many things would you take from me, Gods? How many demons must I kill for this pain to be soothed?

God did not answer, and Shinobu felt her heart hardened. All, even with all of them dead and maimed and tortured, her pain would still be there. Nothing could save her. Not from this unending anger.

Until he came along. The memories -yes, she realized now, in her slumber and the residue rage still roiling in her veins - shifted to the first time she realized that her heart still beat, after all, regardless of all the pain and anger.

It hadn't been the first time they met each other. They had met before, though she could not remember clearly, just that it was in the infirmary, and he had been in bandages and stupidity. She had known a lot of people of that kind back then, so he hadn't exactly made an impression. He did make an impression, though, when being introduced amongs Pillars and Apprentices as the Water Pillar just five months into his enlistment. It was unprecedented, at that moment. But it was just that. He wasn't in her life back then, and neither of them strived to change that fact. Then her sister died, and for the first few years, it seemed that he was everywhere. He was the one assigned to work with her after she joined the rank of Pillars, he was the one bleeding on the white sheets of the infirmary when it was her shift to take care of the patient, he was the one picking at his chopsticks at her favorite ramen shop at the rare moment she spared to drop in. She got used to him enough that the lack of him occasionally made her forlorn.

She dreamt of teasing him, much like at the moment. She dreamt of bugging him, and Gods what a hilarious affair it was. She dreamt of nights sitting above the roof in comfortable silence, of death anniversaries of loved ones spent together, of quiet roads on missions where only her teasing laughs and his noncommittal grunts were heard, of that out-of-character hug just a few days before the great battle with Muzan. He was near delirious with pain, back then, but she would like to believe that it wasn't just fuzziness that prompted him to do so. It was then, she remembered, that she finally realized that he meant a lot to her, that her heart still beat, and that it was too damn late already for her to recognize that (she was filled to the brim with poison, and just days away from avenging her sister). She did think of him the first time she took the poison, but she thought of her sister more, so she craved. She did think of him when that filthy son-of-a-bitch ingested her into his system. It was just a brief flash of his image underneath her eyelids, and oh how she wanted to tear up right there. She did not, in the end, since Douma did not deserve to see grief or pain on her face. Stills, she could not help herself, and she whispered quietly as she sunk into the darkness: "I'm sorry."

Shinobu jerked awake with a start, eyes blurring with unshed tears and throat bobbing in grief. She saw the white, bright light of the infirmary ceiling first. Her sister was not there, though, and she almost thought that she was all alone in the room, with how quiet it was.

Until Tomioka-sensei poke his head into her vision, looking both worried and chastised.

Finally, his reactions to her before now made sense. Someone had been keeping a terrible secret.

She did not deign to move, just stared at him, blinked slowly, then stretched her lips into a Cheshire grin:

"PE coach, really, Tomioka-san? Have you not been hated enough back then that you just have to choose a profession detested by everyone?"

And so it started again.

This time, at least, let them have a happy ending of their own.