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Chapter 8

I had never tasted fear before - had never really thought that emotions could have a taste to them, in all honesty. But as my shoulder slammed off of the jagged edge of the sharp turn that led to the entryway, I could taste it. Like eggshells ground to dust and sprinkled over my tongue. Like human hair chopped and shoved into my mouth by the fork-full.

Warbled, incoherent cries bounced off the walls, making my ears ring. I could feel the droplets of spit flying forward to soak through the back of my leggings and jacket.

SLAM - RATTLE!

My body hurtled into the wall, trying to make the turn but unable to brace for how sharp it was. My stomach tightened, that horrible, limp finger of the boy, his body oddly gelatin as it swayed with the motion of the rest of its body, filtering in out of the corner of my eyes. I was going to throw up. I was going to lose my bowels.

My socks slipped and slid against the wood floor, my body scrambling forward as I tried and failed to get to the entryway. Just a few feet more - just -

My body hit the ground hard, flying forward with the momentum of a small toy being spun by a frenzied child. Something metallic burst across my tongue, my head slamming against the floor with a crack that left me deaf and dumb.

Around my ankle, I could feel the long, oddly jointed fingers, the hand wet with something. A smell like rotting eggs and expired milk flooded my senses, making me gag.

I was going to die.

If I didn't fight back I was going to die.

It's an odd hysteria that comes over you when you think your life is about to end - all that human bravado, wiped away. I wasn't going to live and find a husband. I wasn't going to have a relationship that lasted more than 6 months. My aunts - good lord, what would my aunts say? Killed in an abandoned building still painfully single?

My feet kicked out frantically, connecting with legs and hands and a bit of meaty face. Looming above me, that horrible human boy swayed, hair falling closer and closer as the creature leaned forward. My fingers scrambled along the floorboards, trying to get any sort of purchase. I should be crying, I realized. I should be calling for help.

"SOMEONE!" Vague. I panted out a burning breath, stomach cramping. Could I come up with anything a bit more inventive? I shut my eyes, mustering all of the wind I had in my lunges. "I DON'T WANT TO DIE - PLEASE!"

Something hard and smooth grazed my foot, the creature's hand giving a single yank that snapped my nails like little twigs from where they were scrambling along the flooring. The sound turned off, the whole world seeming cast in an impenetrable darkness. Nothing to see, nothing to hear.

"FUCK!" I shrieked, squeezing my eyes shut as an irrational wave of adrenaline coated every nerve in my body. Like bracing for a drop after you get on a roller coaster. But I had never died before. Never been eaten alive. I could only assume that it would hurt. A lot.

I waited, still struggling but this thing was just so much stronger.

And then waited some more, my eyes squeezing so hard that I thought for a moment that I might burst a vessel.

As if from another room, sounds slowly began to filter in. Shuffling. Murmuring. A wet cleaving sound like a damp towel being torn in half. A strong voice.

My eyes popped open. A voice I knew.

The hands that had been wrapped around me were no longer there. In fact, the only thing that seemed to be in the hallway was a few bloody smears and-

"Nanami Kento." I blurted out his name like a bleating goat, watching dumbly as his broad back rippled, his hand swinging out as if he was trying to get rid of something unsavory. More blood splattered against the white entryway wall and I finally noticed the blunt cleaving knife, an odd white wrapping dotted with random dots of black hiding the metal. It fit comfortably in his hand, oddly intimidating.

Blankly, he reached up to draw something from his face, tucking it into his pants pocket.

Gone were the dreary grays of his office outfit. He had apparently changed them out for tan slacks that hung lowly along his waist, a leather belt cinching them to the tapered curve of his waist. Well-made shoes of brown leather scraped along the flooring, smearing some of the remaining blood as he turned slightly, his face cast in a strange mixture of moonlight and distant streetlights from the open doorway as he glanced back at me.

An appealing dark blue shirt tucked into his pants, just tight enough to give the first clear impression of how muscular he really was. Definitely not an office worker. Suspenders dug into the broad expanse of his shoulders, making my mind drift - I gulped, flushing. That was a horrible thing to think in this moment. Oh my god. What a horrid-

His seeking, dark eyes narrowed on me. "Are you-"

"You look nice!" I stilled, horror coated my tongue as I stared up at him. He had the oddest expression on his face, like he was trying to keep his thoughts off his face. His thoughts which probably consisted of thinking I was an absolute lunatic. I fumbled for something to say - anything. Anything to fix - "You're not yakuza?"

I should have been eaten.

It was as simple as that.

The soft rustling of clothing made me glance up. Nanami had completely turned, his body cast in the wispy, half-glow of the moon as it filtered in. Deftly, he tucked the cleaver behind his back - had there been a sheath there? I watched dubiously as his hand came back free. There had to be a sheath there. And I had been ogling him so much that I hadn't noticed.

Slowly, he crouched in front of me, his much bigger frame becoming glaringly apparent as he drew closer. I leaned a bit back, heat searing my face. Lord. He was so much more handsome up close.

An odd mustard yellow tie, dotted with the same splatter of black dots marred the material, reminding me of the material that had hid his knife. Nothing about his outfit should have worked. Tan suits rarely looked good on anyone other than tour guides and zoo employees. The severe, tired lines of his face that I remembered had somehow…lightened. He didn't look like a body slowly being shucked of all his souls. His hair that had once had that horrible tucked-back appearance had been pushed to one side, whisps touching the hard lines of his face in a way that made him unforgiving but not so haunted. Unapproachable but in a way that didn't seem so unwilling.

"You hit your head." I blinked, suddenly stumbling back to the present. Right. I had just been attacked by… by that thing. Whatever that was. His eyes searched me, a single hand coming forward to brush away a few tangle clumps of my hair from my face, leaving behind tingling sparks. His eyes caught mine, oddly unflinching as if he were trying to force whatever he was about to say into me. "You fell and got hurt while you were exploring. You shouldn't go into abandoned places."

I blinked dumbly up at him, unsure of what I had just heard. He had - he had seen - There was no way that he hadn't seen the creature that had attacked me. He had killed it… Right? My eyes slid to the sickly, splatter of sludge and blood that coated the entryway and walls.

My eyes slid back to him, apprehension stifling my words. "You - I came into the house because - because that thing lured me in here. He - it sounded like a little boy getting hurt. So I came and then - well, it wasn't a little boy-"

I searched his face anxiously, hoping desperately that he believed me. He had to believe me. He had seen it too. I know he saw it. Someone else had to…

His eyes widened on me, shock tilting his lips downward as he stared at me. Like he was seeing something that he didn't particularly understand. Quickly, those eyes snapped around my body, running along the curve of my shoulders and chest, to the weak tilt of my legs beneath me before finally colliding with mine again.

It was the same look that he had given me so many times before. Like he was checking the space around my body for… My mind drifted, a sinking feeling starting in the very pit of my stomach. Briefly, I remembered all of the things that I had seen crawling along the legs and shoulders of my customers.

"You remember it?" His voice wasn't soft anymore. It bit through me with a firmness that demanded an answer.

"I - yes." I searched for something - anything to make him believe me more and came up absolutely empty.

His face tensed, a long breath blowing from him. Like he was hearing something that didn't particularly amuse him. Stray strands of golden hair fell over his brow, oddly endearing in the tense tilt of his face. I resisted the odd urge to reach out and touch them, strangely enthralled by the complete change in the dour businessman I had seen in my shop only months before.

His brows creased into a harsh line, his head tipping toward the smears of blood and gore behind him.

Curiosity won over even as I tried to keep my mouth shut.

"You saw it too right?" I hedged, smiling sheepishly at him as his eyes snapped back to me. "You had to - of course. Since you - um - killed him - it." He didn't say anything, his face still creased in that odd way. I bulldozed on. "You're really not yakuza then, are you? I thought you were - you smelled like one. Well, I haven't really smelled one before. Not - not like that. Or, um in any sense of the word… What was that? I've been seeing so many but this one-"

His voice snapped through the air. "You've seen more?" Nanami's eyes narrowed, slight bewilderment tipping his lips. "Where?"

"Well, um all about." I searched for a way to say this without sounding insane, eyeing him warily. I had kept this to myself. Hearing someone talk about invisible things? Not the biggest endorsement. "They crawl all over other people. Hang on poles and in mail boxes. Balconies…"

He blinked slowly at me. A long moment of silence passed before he stood abruptly, his height looking doubled from my kneeling position. He shifted around, straightening his collar and hair in a way that felt oddly intimate - like watching the morning routine of someone for the first time. I blinked up at him dumbly, flushing. You need to get your head on straight, you idiot, I scolded myself. I felt a familiar, self-conscious frown tug at my lips as I stared up at him.

I needed to stop getting sidetracked by him and think about myself.

"You're not in the yakuza," I pressed and he let out a slow breath as he pushed back the bits of hair that had slipped forward to tickle his brow. I forced myself to continue. "What are you then? You killed that thing so quickly…" I gulped, thinking momentarily about the slavering tongue and grotesque body. He had been so strong to me. So fast. "What are they? How do I…get rid of them?"

He stepped back over to me suddenly, his stride wide as he moved back toward me swiftly and bent toward me. His face stopped mere inches from mine, so dangerously close to mine that I stopped breathing. Way too close, my brain buzzed.

His next words blew across my lips in a warm wave, the dark pricks of his eyes locking on mine. "May I?"

"What-"

The question transformed quickly into a bleat of surprise as strong hands curled around my waist, big through the thin layer of my clothes. He hoisted me to my feet without another word, his face oddly blank as he deposited me in front of him like a sack of potatoes.

"You live at the bakery, right?" he asked. His hands moved along the ruffled, torn folds of my clothes, straightening the knotted mess of my hoodie and dusting off my leggings.

I blinked down at him in mute shock, watching him cleaning me up like - like some kind of problem that needed to be handled. I didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know entirely how to react.

His hand closed around my wrist, tugging me gently from the blood-smeared entryway and back out into the thick summer night. The lawn seemed oddly serene, unnervingly undisturbed even though mere minutes before I had been fighting for my life. Hung demurely from the fence was a tan suit jacket that matched Nanami's pants. As I watched, he released my wrist long enough to slide it on, his face still strangely blank.

His hand closed along my wrist once more, opening the now unlatched gate and leading me through without another word. He leaned down, scooping up my abandoned 7/11 snacks. And then we were walking once more down the deserted streets, his stride sure and so wide that I almost had to jog to keep up with him.

There was a wall between him and me, I realized almost glaringly. I hadn't known him even a little bit - even when I had learned his name. Even though I knew that he couldn't stand sweets and he didn't like Monterey cheese and that he had had a job that sucked the very soul from him. I didn't know him at all. Why did that hurt so much?

"What was that thing?" I pressed to his back, my words shaking. I could feel the burning ache from where my nails had snapped, could feel the raw exposed skin of my nail beds. My head was starting to ache as well, a dull throb starting in the base of my skull. Nanami didn't answer. He kept walking like I wasn't even there. "Mister Kento, you need-"

"It's best that you forget that this happened," he cut me off. I startled at the harsh tone, the unflinching way that he said it even as he refused to look at me. We went around another bend. "Pretend you don't see anything and-"

"They're everywhere," I breathed, shocked at his words. "They - they speak. At first, I thought that they were just - just in my head but now… now I know that they aren't. You can see them too. Are there others-"

He stopped, turning suddenly so that he was all I saw, his body big enough to take over the space around me. He was all-encompassing, his very presence a dampener to everything around him.

"I'm telling you this for your own good: ignore them. They're not there." His eyes were hard pinpricks as he stared down at me. "What you came across tonight are things that eat everything good in this world right up. You need to stay away from them."

I stared up at him, watching the subtle shift in his face as he said those words. Pain - barely there and then gone again. He looked like he was in pain. My stomach churned.

"What are they?" I breathed, searching the hard lines of his face. What made you like this, I wanted to ask.

His lips tightened, unwilling to give me even a single inch.

Desperate anger bubbled up inside of me. I deserved something, goddammit. I deserved some sort of answer. These things - they had completely taken over my life. I couldn't sleep - could barely think most days. And today I had learned that I couldn't even trust my instincts. I couldn't trust anything.

"I deserve answers," I hissed, glaring up at him. His brows lifted slightly, his eyes running over my face. "I was almost killed tonight by that creature. You need to-"

A hand slammed into the brick behind my head, cutting off the rest of my words as he leaned closer, his face within a breath's gasp from me. His next words were quiet, painful things. "I don't need to do anything."

My heart beat painfully, the distant look on his face almost too painful to bear. He was the only one who had seen what I had seen. The only person who had any answers.

I felt bitter, angry words roll around on my tongue. I wanted to hurt him in that moment. I wanted to shake him and make him see why he needed to help me.

"So that's it?" I breathed, glaring up at him. "You're just going to leave me knowing nothing? I can't even protect myself against those things."

A flicker of something softened his eyes to the shade of warm chocolate. He didn't answer for a long moment before he straightened, pulling his hand away from the wall. His voice was the softest I had heard it, "Go inside, Minato."

I glanced around, shocked to see that we had made it to the narrow back alleyway that lined one side of my bakery. The back exit door was only a few feet away, looking sad in the dark little brick of the wall. My stomach turned as I thought about limping my way up to my room. Of the monsters that waited for me just outside my balcony window.

I hated myself for the urge to cling to him - to beg him to handle all of my problems. I hated myself for the weakness that I felt running through me in that moment, the small voice begging me to tell him all about how badly these creatures haunted me.

But I wouldn't give him that. Not now.

My eyes drifted to meet his, my insides going cold at the remoteness in his gaze. I felt the words bubbling up inside of me, cold against my tongue. "These things aren't going away for me. I'll die if you don't tell me what I'm up against."

I saw the surprise flash across his face but didn't entirely care anymore. I was tired and my whole body ached. I dragged myself to the door, yanking my bag from his fingers as I passed him. He wasn't at all the man I thought he would be.

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