Kurama barely noticed the next day passing.
He sat quiet in his seat.
His head down, red hair covering his eyes and the sleepless look to his face.
He hadn't gone home with Yusuke last night.
"Besides, if I did know," wasn't that what Kurama had said? "Would you want the answer?"
He had left then, abruptly, hardly knowing why he had said that, or where the words had come from. Yusuke didn't call after him or come after him. He had let him go.
His eyes, just before Kurama had turned away, they were worried, yes, there was that concern the detective always had for his friends, but along with it was fear.
Fear.
Kurama had slept on the roof of a temple. His body barely felt the cold.
He thought of Hiei and he wasn't sure whether the thought, in the end, convinced him not to return to Yusuke's, perhaps, in a way, the same thought prevented him from returning to his home with his 'ka-san.
He couldn't face HIei right now.
He could only wonder what the Jaganshi was thinking. If Hiei remembered anything from before....
No. Kurama put an end to that thought.
There was no use wondering it. Hiei didn't remember, what Kurama had seen in Hiei's eyes and felt in his touch, that was the phantoms of recollections in his mind. To Hiei it must have seemed like a dream, something intangable and just out of reach of understanding as Kurama had kissed him.
If Kurama was right, that is, or else, he simply felt nothing at all.
Kurama reached up and touched his ears and his hand trailed to his eyes.
How long would it be?
A week?Two?
Would he remain like this?
Did it, in the end, matter?
Kurama stared up at the stars. He saw snow falling. The answer, of course, was yes. It did matter. How could it not? He couldn't return home like this...
More so...
Although he hated to admit it...
Although he raked his mind for an explanation...
Something was happening to him, something linear that was leading to an end, not returning to Shuiichi Minamino...
Perhaps Kurama's thinking was slightly off...perhaps it wasn't linear at all, this subtle change in him...
"I'd want to know what is going on with you. And why your eyes keep turning gold..."
It wasn't that Kurama hadn't noticed he had gold in his eyes. He knew that the first night after he and Hiei had been blasted by that mysterious spell. But Yusuke didn't seem to be talking about the specks of gold Kurama had seen. He seemed to be talking as if his eyes were completely gold...and if that were true...
"Minamino? Minamino?"
Kurama started out of his thoughts.
He looked up. A girl was standing there, smiling at him.
"Yes?" Kurama said.
"Are you coming today?"
"Coming?" Kurama blinked and tried to repress the wince as his head pounded. He had applied the nectar particularly heavy that morning.
"To practice...For the play?"
"Oh, yes...of course." Kurama said as the girl's smile brightening. "I'll be there shortly."
"Alright!" the girl said and turned, but suddenly stopped. "Oh!" She cried turning back to Kurama. Her smile was impossibly broader.
"Yes?" Kurama said uncertainly.
"Didn't you hear? You haven't have you? I can tell..." She laughed.
"Hear what?"
The girl laughed again and clapped her hands. "He's back! Tohru's back! We'll be a full cast today! Isn't that wonderful?" She laughed again and waved as she turned and hurried away.
Kurama watched her go.
"Tohru.." he said, smiled, then shook his head bitterly.
...to be continued...