EVERY NIGHT YUMI dreaded that reoccurring dream. However the dream started, it ended with one thing: blood. His blood—and not hers like Yumi would have preferred—everywhere. Wherever the pain came, Dabi smiled through it like it was a scraped knee. But Yumi stumbled in it, slipped, sunk, drowned.

It was her that hurt him—incidentally, willfully, consequently. Shots firing, Fenrir swallowing, heroes hunting. Dabi never averted his gaze from Yumi's eyes, he even tried to console her for his pain: said he deserved it, opened blankets for her, wiped away her tears.

These dreams should have ended with The Ship. Yumi shouldn't have woken up every day like she hadn't slept a wink. Sleeping pills and antidepressants didn't work—they made the dreams even more vivid—self-induced insomnia didn't either, Dabi's face—bloodied and smiling—flashed in her every micro-sleep. The dreams left Yumi tired and drained until she had proof Dabi was alive.

Then, there were phone calls and voicemails from Gin, giving time and places, blaming her, threatening her with not sending the children. Yumi put her phone on silent and deleted the messages. She painted. All she did these days was to paint. Red charcoal for a blue boy.

—

"WHAT COLOR IS he?" Satoru said as he turned to the scene Yumi was watching.

Nishio shuffled the deck for the second round of Crazy Eights running on the coffee table. Mito craned her neck to peek at Dabi's hand and she hit his arm for his luck. Sora scolded Mito for loosening the braids on Dabi's hair, then tightened her legs around Dabi's shoulders and yanked his hair in place. Yumi wasn't brave enough to look at Dabi's thankful smile the second time, for it took the shape of his childhood: all bright, happy blue and not fading away like an ink-stain.

"Blue," she said.

"Do you paint him?" This question purpled different than when Satoru had asked if Yumi painted Gin. She looked at him for that certain sadness. They were sitting under the tree on the terrace and his face was dappled by the shadow of the leaves, but there were no traces of resentment for that sadness. Just a smile, knowing the answer.

"Secretly."

"What do you have to hide?" Satoru turned a leaf between his fingers. "You think it's something he doesn't already know? You always say love changes us irreparably—how a drop of blue alters red forever. He's changed your hue."

Of course, he knew. Dabi didn't count the coffee spoons when brewing, but he put exactly three scoops; brought a blanket at two a.m. sharp on the nights Yumi had a session in the morning; had memorized all three of her children's friends' names so that he could keep their conversation going; he had got used to Yumi never getting used to it. But he knew rather incompletely, didn't know that Yumi was scared to kiss him because it might have led to her scars even when clothes half undone; that this hurt her because even on the days his body screamed with desire, he was okay with it; that before her mother or Gin came, she didn't want Dabi to go; that she wanted him to stay despite despite despite.

"Are you happy?" Satoru said, it was his favorite question as it was Sora's. Both asked this when they couldn't figure out the emotion that was mixed with Yumi's happiness.

"I am," Yumi said the truth first time in years. "But I'm tired, mostly."

"How come?"

"Are we in therapy, Satoru?"

He laughed. "Opening up once in a blue moon isn't therapy, you know."

"It is, if you're anything like me."

"Well then, um, what does Dr. Amano have to say about this?"

"She condemns you for forcing her to self-psychoanalysis."

"But?" Satoru tilted his head. "She never backs up from a challenge."

"But she also says that I read people for a living because I don't wanna be read, that it's stupid of me to refuse forgiving myself for the things lesser than I've forgiven people for: she says I'm tired because of those. I desperately need to be understood but I don't allow myself to be—I don't allow myself to be anything."

DABI SAT WITH his knees to his chest under the blanket as the movie credits rolled on the screen. He chewed the nail polish off as if waiting for the moment Yumi announced she was going to go to bed.

Yumi lifted her head from his shoulder. "I'm going upstairs."

"I should get going then."

"Isn't it time you follow me instead?"

DABI SLEPT ON his right side, hugging his pillow and curling around himself; she had watched him on the couch a dozen times. So, it was fair to say that when he now lied on his back on the edge of the bed like an upturned beetle, he was neither sleeping nor comfortable. Yumi got under the covers and flicked on the bedside lamp for him, then reached over him and turned on the other. Dabi clasped his hands on his chest.

He was incredibly beautiful under her, trapped between her elbow and hand. Yumi didn't know how to interpret the warm glow of his face under the orange light—his eyes lightening up with anticipation and the terror of it, his lips just shy of a smile, body tensed up for what could come and what wouldn't. His beauty made her hopeless: how could something this beautiful understand the ugly in her? It bore witness to the certainty that he could save her life, even just a little.

"You're beautiful," she said without thinking what it would do to him. But his chain of reactions delighted her—his mouth opening like a rejection, then closing with an involuntary surrender, glancing away only to look at her again.

Yumi leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth, but Dabi greeted her with an open-mouthed kiss. It surprised her—her lips tingling, her arms giving up when Dabi pulled her to himself, his hand on her nape caressing her hair. He fed her with so much hunger that it left Yumi hungry—this limitless desire. She was helpless in his arms, kissing as if moaning his name.

"I love you," she whispered to his lips, not wanting him to say it back but also starving for it. His palms on her burned, blue glow of them reflecting off from his face. Yumi didn't wince at the pain. Pain was irrelevant, and so was everything else—except him.

ANOTHER NIGHTMARE WOKE Yumi up. It was the middle of the night and Dabi was still holding her tight, his body molded by the shape of her back. She stroked his arm around her waist, then her fingers trailed down inside his arm to check his pulse. She breathed.

"What's wrong?" Dabi's voice cracked. He lifted his head to look at her.

"Just a dream," she said. "Sorry I woke you up."

Dabi hummed as her pillow dipped. His breath on her skin relaxed Yumi, soothed her heart. I never want to let this go, she thought, no matter how selfish.

"I burned ya." Dabi traced the blisters on her neck.

She shrugged. "Then kiss it better."

Dabi's breath hitched. He was hesitant at the first, his lips brushing the skin, apologetic at the second, trembling over the burn, then encouraged by whatever he found in her silence, her closed eyes, broken breath. Only dizzying pressure under her skin.

He buried his nose on the crook of her neck. "Better?"

Yumi nodded.

AT BREAKFAST, DABI told a prison story to Nishio. The boy wanted to be a hero like his father but said he was having second thoughts: how could he bear the thought of people he would arrest going to places like that?

"Where else?" Mito said. "You can't just like… kill them. Even though they might've deserved it." She turned to Dabi. "No offense."

"None taken." Dabi shrugged.

AT DINNER, IT was a childhood story, one that was kept secret for years. The children listened closely, all stopped eating. Dabi was telling the story as if Yumi was telling it: just as a story and never a memory. It was of a boy who lived with his dreams and when they were taken away, he died. Simple as that, no? Except, it wasn't. The food turned acrid on Yumi's tongue. How did Dabi feel when the children called him Touya? Who was he, really, when he was called Touya?

WHEN THE TIME came for them to go home, the children dawdled, keeping Dabi up with idle conversations as they wore their shoes. Sora cried in Yumi's arms, throwing an uncharacteristic tantrum by the door. She held Sora quite incapable of consoling her tears, but only capable of joining them.

Yumi grabbed Dabi's arm before he could go hide in the studio. He only saw the tears forming and nodded. They opened the door together.

—

"I TOLD YOU I'd kill you if I ever saw you in this house again." Gin pressed Dabi onto wall with a fist twisted at his collar. The blood on his knuckles stained Dabi's t-shirt red.

"Gin!" Yumi pushed Gin, pulled Dabi, tried to get in between them. But neither Gin nor her arm was cooperating. The ache and Dabi's bleeding nose drifted her into a state of despair. "What are you doing? Get off him!"

"This is not yer home." Dabi grinned like in her dreams. His arms hung like a rag doll, but his chin was high in defiance. There was no fear in his voice even though Gin was twice his size and twice threatening despite his injury. Even if he had punched Gin back, Gin's face wouldn't budge. Dabi wrapped his fingers around Gin's fist. "Ya have no say in here."

"Let him go, Gin! Let's talk this properly."

"No say? You're fucking my woman in front of my kids, and I have no say in this? Give me one fucking reason to not kill you right here, right now! You act all high and mighty for a useless, feckless villain and a snitch. You scum never change, you're gonna end up in prison or better, you will wish you were dead, you have no other alternative."

"Ya talk too much for an ex-hero who killed his own father. Ya think I don' know my own end?"

"You're just like your father; a heartless, callous monstrosity," Gin yelled.

Dabi's neck and fingers burned blue. The flames didn't touch Gin, but it was obvious that they could. "Let me go or yer gonna burn."

Gin lifted Dabi from his neck. "Do that and see how I'm putting you back into that shithole."

Yumi's heart dropped to her stomach faster than Dabi's blood trickled to his lips. She shivered. Word by word Gin put her nightmares together: bones on bones, threat over threat, fire in Dabi's fists, Dabi defying the use of someone else's violence. In the nightmares, Yumi couldn't control what could happen to him. But this was reality.

Yumi pressed her foot into the back of Gin's knee and when Gin lost his footing, she pushed him off Dabi. "Enough." She put herself in front of Dabi. "You can't expect me to treat you after barging in and hurting my boyfriend."

GUILT WAS A dead dove found on the side of a road. It was dead but its feathers still prickled her fingers when she picked it up and couldn't just toss it in thrash. Yumi was desperately holding onto it as if she could have revived it. But guilt was dead, it should have been even though Yumi sutured Gin's arm that had been grazed by a bullet. She didn't feel guilty despite Gin's blaming, but the fallen feathers of that dove made her patch his wound while Fenrir lowly growled at Dabi.

—

THE NEO-ASIAN SPEAKEASY disguised as a second floor flat in a dull looking brick building in Daikanyama fell vacant by three a.m. The neon signs above the bar flashed everything red—the daruma dolls behind bartenders, the rare editions by the shelves, Dabi's sulk. They sat in front of the bar: Yumi swirling the wine in her glass, Dabi gulping down his sixth beer—neither of them feeling risky enough to try craft spirit cocktails or to utter a word.

Yumi had frequented the bar in her late-college days, mostly drunk on the idea of never being found. Solitude had been a hard-earned delight all her life: she had never learned where to start with silence. So, she started with keeping quiet. Whoever broke the silence would be responsible of acknowledging the anguish of it.

Yumi wanted to blame the polite rejection she sent to the man who had hit on her for Dabi's face: angrier than the dolls and colorless than the night. But who could have thought they were together? Dabi sat with arms and legs crossed away from her, and the only time he looked at Yumi's side was to glare at the man.

But it all had started before that. She couldn't disown the guilt of draining the blue off him, no matter how much she wrestled with it: it was a spar with only one puncher. If she could have pinpointed the moment Dabi's face turned lifeless, maybe she would find a remedy for his leg jerking away when her knee brushed against him.

Her hands fidgeted from her powerlessness to reach and touch him, her insufficiency to please him. The detachment in the closest distance beat the woman in her to a girl—shrinking at the irresolution of what she had done wrong. And what had she done wrong? It could have been everything—Yumi's new CMRP patient, her unrehearsed I love you, the grumpy quarrel in the kitchen two days ago, her taciturnity when Dabi had tested the waters about Gin's impromptu visit, her shame at every move Dabi initiated. He might have just given up.

Yumi played a game by herself: hurrying half-truths in hopes of hiding the whole. Everything that had got out of her mouth for the last two weeks sounded like a lie. Her mouth might have only remembered lies like addicts relapsing into the drug of their choice: with the fear of repeating the same old pattern and the comfort of it.

She returned to her drink and waited for him to talk. Please, please, please. Just speak to me even in words unintelligibly drunk. I'll take it—I'll give you the truth. The silence took her and split her in half, the truth spilling like blood: voiceless but trenchant. But Dabi was an expert on this game as though he had never been talkative at all.

ON THE WAY back home, the streets were empty with only streetlights companying Yumi's despair. She tailed Dabi from a couple of steps behind, watching him follow the white markings on the road and mostly fail. His back was a cold record of their last weeks.

Dabi stopped in the middle of a crossway. He didn't turn back as he waited her to catch up with him, just lifted his head to the starless night, his body swaying as if the air was pulsing.

He sat on the road after finding her hand.

"Come," he said.

Yumi tried to drag him to his feet, but Dabi gave the faintest tug to her hand. His childish insistence fit the little girl Yumi was—in seconds, made her hyper-aware of the knife she was hiding behind her back. What he wanted was a Russian roulette with that knife—pain by certainty.

Dabi shrugged and lied on his back. "'m not taking another step unless ya tell me whatever yer trying this hard to hide from me, Keika. I never minded what ya have been hiding until ya made it our business. Ya know I don' wanna die, and I know ya won't let me die either. So, come, lie with me. Ya can't both save the secret and me."

Yumi checked each street before resting her head on his shoulder. Dabi's hand went to her hair almost as an instinct, it hovered above her forehead, curled into a fist and finally gave in.

She flinched at a window closing, eyes snapping open.

Dabi snorted: the smile sticking long after its echo. "The clock's ticking."

"This isn't a healthy way to have this conversation, nor is it safe."

"Tick, tack."

The first sunlight behind clouds trembled with her in agreement to the exposure of someone not immediately knowing the truth about her. Junya had survived their home, Keisuke caught any lie from the twitch of her mouth, Gin sensed her tears minutes before they would fall, Satoru had grown old with her stories. They anticipated what Yumi would do, knew when to overlook her lies and how to get around her stories for the truth.

Dabi didn't—he had called her a bad liar right after Yumi had confessed by Lake Ashi. Obviously ya haven't tried to repress any feelings, he had said. If ya had, ya would've found a way.

Dabi saw her in a way no one had ever done in decades: oblivious of her home, sensitive to her lies, frightened by her tears and new to her stories—he asked, what then? What happens in the stories? Why are ya crying? Why are ya lying to me? He kept asking the questions Yumi had assumed everyone knew the answers of. How did she answer?

She would have to tailor her life in a shape Dabi could wear around his neck. Would that be for warmth or a burden? Yumi could never come to terms with the fact that it could be both. She tried to say something, but the clouds didn't let her—the rain in the back of her throat. Shall I hope you would still love me among these bodies piled up? Shall I dig my own grave next to them, instead?

"You're drunk, love," she said.

Dabi chuckled. "That isn't a secret, that's a fact."

Both their questions stayed unanswered because Yumi preferred Dabi would have kissed them better too. She wanted all questions to be answered like that: his mouth on hers. He wouldn't though, unless she asked.

"I'll tell you," she said. "But—"

"Be quick, Keika."

"But you have to kiss me first."

"This is a great way to ask me to die."

Dabi pressed her back onto the asphalt and kissed her with his whole body: his hand—recklessly warm—creeping into her t-shirt, his chest brushing against hers with the momentum of their lips. Now that Yumi let him lead, it was neither restrained nor only sweet. He never followed the same pattern: mouth crushing, lips pecking, tongue entering.

Dabi turned and pulled her on top of him.

"What are you doing?" Yumi whispered. "We're in public."

"I don' see any public."