Desperately, Subaru took a step forward and then dove. He landed prone, chest slamming into the brick lip where the railing had been anchored, but his dive covered the distance fast enough so that when his left hand shot down over the edge, his gloved fingers closed around Tamiko's wrist. Pain shot through his arm and shoulder; Subaru was a slightly-built young man, not particularly strong. Quickly, he reached down with his other hand, hoping to take some of the weight onto that arm. It helped some; it no longer felt like his arm was being wrenched from its socket, but he still didn't have the strength to pull Tamiko up.
She wasn't even looking at him, Subaru realized; Tamiko's head was hanging, gaze directed downward with her bangs falling across her eyes. She could have grabbed Subaru's wrist for additional support, or she could have reached up with her free hand, but she did neither. Was she
unconscious?
Or, did she just not care?
"Please!" Subaru shouted. "Someone help, please!" He couldn't hold on forever, and if he couldn't pull her up, she would fall from the four-story school building.
His hands and arms throbbed with pain. Subaru would be lucky to hold on for a few more minutes.
Then, he felt a body covering his, a face next to his own, two strong arms reaching down to take Tamiko's weight. Subaru turned his head to look at the man.
"Seishiro-san!"
"Don't worry, Subaru-kun; we'll save your friend quickly, before Hokuto-chan has a chance to scold us for being in this shameless position," Seishiro told him with a smile. Subaru was amazed at how easily the other man accepted the burden of Tamiko's weight, and brought her safely up to the roof.
"That's twice now that you've saved my life, Subaru-kun," the girl told him softly. "Please, do not go to that much trouble a third time."
-X X X-
Subaru had a blank look on his face as he stared out the window of Seishiro's car. Since he was at the school anyway, the older man had offered the Sumeragi twins a ride home.
"So what were you doing there anyway, Sei-chan?" Hokuto accused him.
This was usually the point where Seishiro ducked her questions with a swift change of subject, but this time he surprised her with a direct answer.
"I was watching over Subaru-kun."
He smiled kindly at her.
"Eh? Why?"
"This isn't his usual work situation. Subaru-kun may be a skilled professional, but he is still a young man. Moreover, he is too kind; his first reaction is always to protect others, so he needs someone else to protect him."
Hokuto's eyes widened in comprehension.
"So you knew that something was going to happen, Sei-chan?"
Seishiro shook his head.
"Not for certain. I suspected that it might, though. When emotions are so strong that they become a tangible force, the situation is inherently unstable."
"Adults don't usually realize that the emotions of high-schoolers are just as stong as their own," Hokuto agreed. "You're very perceptive."
Seishiro flashed her a smile.
"Well, having a high-school student for a lover, one has to learn such things."
For the second time in only a few moments, Hokuto was caught by surprise. Subaru didn't react at all to Seishiro's teasing; there were no stammered protests, no blushes, no change of expression at all.
"Something's strange though," Hokuto mused. "As I understand it, when emotion builds up like that, it strikes, then whatever the outcome it dissipates. Each time it has to build up again, because there's no cohesive force holding it together, and it doesn't do that in just one day! How could Tamiko-san have been attacked again so soon?"
"You answered that yourself, didn't you?" Seishiro asked enigmatically.
Hokuto frowned.
"You're terrible, Sei-chan! It's not nice to talk in riddles."
"If it wasn't the gathered, uncontrolled force of emotion, then it was something specific."
Frowning, Hokuto thought that over. Seishiro was right, of course, and if Tamiko had attracted so much hatred and jealousy from her peers that it had manifested itself in the physical world, it wasn't unthinkable that an individual, whether human or spirit, would have murderous intent.
"I wish we could tell what it was."
"An ikiryo," Subaru replied dully, speaking for the first time since he had entered the car. "I felt it in the moment that it attacked."
Hokuto whistled.
"That's bad."
"An independent spirit created from the hatred of a living person," Seishiro stated. "It's conjured from the pure emotional force of an individual, but not through a willful act, nor does it act under their control."
He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"In a way, it is the ultimate expression of human emotion. Action taken without conscious thought, force without any conscious control."
"I don't understand it," Subaru suddenly said, raising his head, his eyes stricken, pain etched on his face. "How can anyone hate someone that much? How can anyone hate ANYTHING that much?"
"You only say that," Seishiro told him, "because you don't hate anything at all." Hokuto nodded solemnly in agreement.
"What are you going to do now, Subaru?" she asked her brother. "Will you exorcise the ikiryo?"
Subaru shook his head glumly.
"That won't work, Hokuto-chan," Seishiro explained on his behalf. "An ikiryo is not a ghost, not a spell; onmyojutsu can repel it but not permanently dispel it. There are only two ways it can be destroyed; one is to exorcise the person who gave birth to it." There was no need for him to explain the second option; Hokuto knew that any spirit born to accomplish a specific goal would vanish of its own accord if that purpose was achieved.
"That means that, to keep the ikiryo from killing Tamiko-san, you need to find out whose hatred it represents," Hokuto reasoned.
Subaru's gaze went back to the window.
"I know that already."
He had sensed that, too.
Seishiro nodded, and he turned the car.
-X X X-
The apartment doorbell buzzed harshly as Subaru pressed the button. A few moments passed, then came the soft click of the lock, and the faint creak of worn hinges. A woman in her forties with tired eyes and her hair pulled back in a bun stood framed in the doorway.
"What do you want?" she asked bluntly. Her expression told Subaru that she was simply too worn to be polite.
"I'm sorry for calling at such an hour, Mrs. Takahashi. My name is Subaru Sumeragi; I am a classmate of Yuri-san's. May I come in and visit her?"
She looked at him with a dubious frown. Subaru didn't understand, until it slowly came to him that Yuri was unlikely to have many male callers.
He never did realize that it was his striking appearance that had impressed her as much as his presence.
After a long, thoughtful moment, she stepped back to make room for Subaru to pass and called, "Yuri! You have a guest!"
Subaru had barely gotten a glimpse of the shabby main room of the apartment before Yuri appeared from the single hall.
"Who is it, Mother? Oh--!" she exclaimed as she first caught sight of Subaru. "Subaru-kun!"
"Good evening, Yuri-san. Could we take a walk?" he offered. They both glanced at Yuri's mother, who nodded her assent.
"All right, Subaru-kun, I'd like that," Yuri said, smiling shyly.
It was a cool evening; the sun had slipped beneath the horizon to be replaced by starlight -- not the stars in the heavens, but the thousands of man-made stars that came out each night in Tokyo, in every color of the rainbow plus some hues not seen in nature. Even though his heart was heavy, Subaru couldn't help feeling happy for a moment at the reminder that people could create beauty as well as destroy it.
"This is really a surprise, Subaru-kun," Yuri was saying. "I didn't even know you knew where I lived."
He hadn't, but it had been easy enough to find out. Tracing the location of a person was easy for the head of the Sumeragi clan when he knew and had interacted with them.
Subaru sighed. He didn't have any energy for this. There wasn't any crusading determination; he just felt drained, and empty.
"Do you know what an ikiryo is, Yuri-san?" he asked.
"No," she said, surprised. "Is it one of your magic things, Subaru-kun?"
He turned, looking at her oddly.
"Magic things?"
"You're some kind of medium or spiritualist, aren't you? That's why you take days off from school, isn't it, because of your work?"
Subaru nodded.
"An onmyouji," he said. "I just hadn't realized that it was common knowledge."
Yuri raised one finger and said, "You shouldn't underestimate the speed and accuracy of the school's gossip network, especially about such an interesting subject!" She looked and sounded just like Hokuto, Subaru thought, before she flushed with embarrassment at having, perhaps, said too much.
"I guess not," he replied with a playful grin, an expression that died quickly as he began to explain an ikiryo. He wished that Seishiro was there; the older man was much better at explaining things. Maybe it was because he had more confidence in dealing with people than Subaru did.
Subaru finished his description a few minutes later. They had stopped and sat down on a quiet bench; Yuri had listened patiently the whole time.
"Subaru-kun," she asked, her voice trembling slightly, "why are you telling this to me?"
Subaru looked at her, his green eyes brilliant in the artificial light.
"Why do you hate Tamiko Hironagi so much, Yuri-san?"
There was a hiss of indrawn breath. Yuri's hands clenched in the fabric of her skirt.
"Will you listen?" she asked bitterly. "Or will you just rush off to her again?"
Subaru's eyes widened.
"Me?"
He had, though, he realized. Twice in two days he had abandoned Yuri for Tamiko's sake, first when she had needed help, then when she had asked.
That wasn't it, though.
"I'm sorry, Yuri-san, if you feel I have abandoned you, but the hatred to create an ikiryo does not build in a day. It isn't created out of a single act, no matter how much hurt that act makes a person feel." He didn't say anything about how trivial her pain seemed compared to things that others had suffered; Subaru knew that people's feelings weren't measured on some absolute standard, and what seemed meaningless to outsiders could be everything to the individual.
"It might as well have been you!" Yuri forced out. "All that frozen bitch had to do was beckon, and you went running without even a thought for me. It's always that way! Everyone sees the way I look, and they just turn away, like I wasn't even there! No one wants to make friends with 'that ugly child.' When I was a little girl, they used to call me the 'goblin girl,' because I was short, fat, and ugly!"
She began to sniffle.
"I don't know why I'm telling you this. Someone as beautiful as you couldn't understand."
"I never had any real friends while I was young," Subaru replied softly. "I was always in and out of school, you see, anc coming from an onmyouji clan as I do, people thought I was strange."
"They're still attracted to you, though," she shot back. "No boy ever gives me a second look, and no girl wants to be associated with me. When you look like I do, no one ever bothers to learn if there's anything worth knowing!"
She looked up at Subaru, tears streaming from her eyes.
That Tamiko is so mean and standoffish, yet every time she walks into a room everyone's attention is all over her! She won't talk to anyone, and yet everyone worships her!
"Subaru-kun, do you know that you were the first person who's ever taken an interest in anything important to me? My mother doesn't care about my life; ever since my father died she's had to work two jobs just to pay for the rent and for food. You actually seemed like you cared about my artwork, but you just left me standing there! Twice! For HER!" she shouted angrily.
Subaru sighed, understanding. It had been the straw that broke the camel's back, his action.
"You remind me of her," he told Yuri.
"What?"
"Both of you have suffered because of your appearance, because of people making assumptions just because of the way you look, without learning about the real you."
"What has she ever suffered?" Yuri snapped defiantly.
Subaru couldn't tell Yuri about Tamiko's past; he couldn't break a confidence, the trust she had placed in him. He did the next best thing, though.
"Do you know why Tamiko-san had to go the hospital yesterday, Yuri-san?"
Yuri shook her head.
So Subaru told her.
"You see?" he said. "Not everyone loves her; many people envy her beauty, or dislike her because she won't live up to their hopes. That's not all, though. Yesterday was because of collective feelings that had built up over years. Today, she was attacked again, almost killed, but it was because of an ikiryo -- a single person's feelings."
Yuri was trembling.
"You...you mean me?"
Subaru looked her full in the face.
"Yes, Yuri-san."
She raised one hand to her lips, biting reflexively at the knuckle.
"You...you can't mean that, Subaru-kun!"
He nodded once, firmly, his eyes not leaving hers.
"You have to let go of this hatred, Yuri-san. Unless you do that, the ikiryo can never be destroyed. Please, you don't want it to keep on, do you?"
Yuri took a deep breath, fighting for control. She was almost hysterical; she had faced too many emotional shocks, one after another. Yet, she at no time disbelieved Subaru, or thought about rejecting anything he said.
"I...I...no, I don't. I can't stand her, whatever you say, she's cold and mean and spiteful!..but...but I don't want her hurt. At least, I don't want to be the one to hurt her...I don't want to hurt anyone!"
"I can help you, Yuri-san," Subaru said, smiling kindly.
-X X X-
"What are we doing here?" Hokuto asked.
Seishiro smiled kindly at her as he turned off the car's ignition.
"We're protecting Subaru-kun's friend while he tries to exorcise the ikiryo. It's a very relentless kind of spirit."
"Ahh, because it's only made of emotion, so it doesn't plan anything, right?"
"Very good, Hokuto-chan!"
"Well, I am the big sister of the head of the Sumeragi clan!" Hokuto laughed heartily. "Wait a minute -- how did you know her address, Sei-chan?"
"I saw it at the registration desk at the hospital," he replied innocently.
"You were thinking ahead even then? Wow, that's great planning!"
Seishiro smiled modestly. He then stiffened, his face all at once becoming an expressionless mask.
"Sei-chan, what is it?"
"Wait here," he said, getting out of the car. Hokuto didn't look like she was going to obey without an explanation; he turned to her, eyes meeting hers, and she slumped back senseless into her seat.
At once, Seishiro extended his hand, and the form of his eagle shikigami took shape above it, perching lightly on his wrist. With a flick of his hand, the spirit-bird soared off towards the house across the street, moving much faster than its creater could run.
Of course, Seishiro was not running.
After all, he had no reason to.