The next chapter is on the 30th of May.
The door only creaks a little as he opens it and gently closes it again, listening for the snick of the lock catching.
The boy is asleep on the couch as he steps into the dark room, Mokona held loosely against his chest. A light, cut into squares, falls across him from the sole grimy window in the apartment.
The door beyond is closed so Fai goes into the kitchen, knowing it to be empty.
The cracked dishes are as clean as they'll get, propped up in a rusty old dish rack above the sink. Fai presumes it was Syaoran's doing.
He smiles a little, though he knows that it comes out bitter.
He wishes that this didn't all have to come to an end so soon.
He wishes that he could be strong enough to do what Fei Wang asked and kill that man. Even now, now that he doesn't want to think his name and now that he hates the sight of him, he doesn't have the strength, the care, the energy, to do anything about it.
And then he smells him, hears the door to the kitchen shift slightly as the very person he doesn't want to be near steps in, closes off the exit.
They are silent for a moment.
Fai knows that the man can sense when people are close, knew that he was here, just as much as he knows that that man knows that he can too now.
And yet they stand, at a stalemate, a poorly acted surprise as Fai puts a dish down on the side.
They don't look at each other but Fai knows that he comes close, staring with a lowered gaze at the gap between well toned thigh and the next room, freedom.
The door closes and Fai feels no fear but instead annoyance, anger blooming, slow and hot.
Fai raises his chin and meets the other man's gaze, eyes hard.
"You should eat." He tells him, voice soft, red eyes not warm or concerned but something close, steel behind them.
Fai raises an eyebrow, challenging the tall man to force him on it, just as he'd forced this body upon him.
"Do you want to talk?" He asks, not wavering as he looks into Fai's eyes, patient as any hunter.
Fai says nothing.
They are silent for another moment, a testing of wills as Fai imagines giving the man what he wants, biting into him and drinking and drinking and drinking.
He recoils mentally at the thought and can only feel anger towards himself, for letting himself be trapped like this, for having such a disgusting thought.
"You smell of booze." That man says.
It's the word that breaks Fai's resolve.
"Don't worry. I can't drink it anymore," The mage says, sneering, the 'thanks to you' goes unsaid, "so I suppose it's not going to be a problem here." He continues, pushing past the other man, leaving the room as if it's nothing, as if that other man is nothing to him.
He goes into the room at the end of the apartment, takes up the seat by Sakura's head and holds her hand.
In her sleep she frowns.