Warnings: None


Lucky Child

Chapter 30:

"Plans and Subplots"


My mother walked down the line of girls crammed in our small personal kitchen with a critical eye—the eye she only adopted during the preparation of food, or when she felt like styling my hair. Food was serious business in our household. She looked at their handiwork as they chopped, fried, diced, and sautéed a variety of dishes, offering comments and critiques to anyone in need.

Every now and again she'd glance at the three boys standing near the edge of the kitchen. They stood in silence, watching events with uncertain expressions and questioning eyes.

When I invited the Punk Trio to get dinner with me, I don't think they expected an audience of at least ten other girls. They stood in the corner like awkward penguins as my mother and I gave instructions on how to make her famous tsunomono. Once I noticed the boys had arrived (sent upstairs from the main restaurant by my father, no doubt) I disentangled myself from the tightly-packed group and walked their way. They gave me hesitant bows as I blotted my hands on my apron.

"Not what you expected when I told you we had dinner plans, was it?" I joked.

The boys—whose names, I'd learned, were Masaru, Tadashi, and Shinji—exchanged a look.

"Not really," Masaru eventually said. He scanned the girls with a frown. "What are you doing?"

In lieu of an answer, I snagged a bundle of carrots, leeks, and cucumbers off the counter and asked them to follow me into the living room. Once I sat the boys at the kotatsu, I brought cutting boards and paring knives from the kitchen and placed them on the table.

"Do you know what 'julienne' means?" I asked.

Three heads shook.

"Like this." I julienned a section of carrot into thin, even slices. "Do that to the carrots and the cucumber. And then chop the leeks like this." Another demonstration of the preferred technique. "Got it?"

"Yes ma'am," they chorused.

Once they got to work (and once I determined they weren't totally inept at cutting vegetables) I went back into the kitchen. The girls hurriedly turned away from the door when I entered, pretending that they hadn't just been craning their heads to stare at the unexpected visitors. Amagi frowned at me as she stirred a simmering pot of soup.

"Keiko, who are those boys?" she asked.

"The one chopping the carrots is Naoko's boyfriend."

Alarm crossed Amagi's pretty face. "What are they doing here?"

"Learning a lesson in humility."

The last time I'd seen the boys—a quick run-in earlier that morning, in fact—I'd told them to meet me at my parents' restaurant for dinner…only I hadn't planned on eating with them, exactly. I meant for them to observe tonight's cooking lesson, and maybe (just maybe) observation plus a stern lecture would get them off my back.

We'd see soon enough. I had a plan. I just wasn't sure yet if it would work.

"I have it all planned out," I said when I caught Amagi staring, dark and lovely eyes narrow with concern. I nudged her arm with my wrist as I stirred a bowl of eggs (ugh, why did I notice how soft her skin was? This pointless crush was getting out of hand). "Stop worrying. You'll see."

Though her eyes retained their concerned color, she didn't complain. She just kept stirring, and let out a charming little 'eep' when Junko wriggled between us and accidentally planted an elbow in Amagi's ribs. Junko ignored her (even though Amagi's glare sent a chill up my back) and pointed one well-manicured finger at my workspace.

"Hey, what are you making?" she asked. "It's different from ours."

While the rest of the girls made roasted chicken, baked fish, or salads, my workspace contained eggs, rice, grilled fish, and some assorted veggies. I hummed, stirring my bowl of eggs a little faster.

"This is a special breakfast for a friend of mine," I said. I added a pinch of salt from a bowl on the counter, then a dash of pepper. "He has a big test tomorrow and needs a decent start to his day. This will be part of an omelet. I'm going to add fish for more protein and veggies for vitamins, and a fruit salad so he can have something sweet. He liked sweets a lot, but what I'm really excited to make are poppy seed kolaches. They're Czech, and they're really good, but I don't know if he'll like them. Sometimes it seems like he doesn't like foods with weird textures, and if he's not used to poppy seed, he might not—"

Junko and Amagi listened to me talk about the consistency of poppy seed paste and Kuwabara's dietary preferences in silence. When they traded a sidelong glance, I shut up.

"What?" I said. "Sorry. Did I just nerd out over food?"

Amagi delicately cleared her throat. "It's—it's not that."

"…then what?"

"It's just, you look really happy. And you were smiling while cooking earlier," said Junko.

Cooking was fun; what was wrong with smiling? I tilted my head to the side, brow knit. Amagi and Junko looked at each other again, and then Amagi sighed.

"You look happy when you talk about him," Amagi said.

Junko leaned her elbow on the counter, then leaned her cheek on her hand with an exaggerated waggle of eyebrow. "So…who's the guy, hmm?"

Oh, well wasn't that lovely. They were shipping me with Kuwabara and they hadn't even met him. Not that I minded, exactly. Kuwabara was a fantastic person and would make a great boyfriend to just about anyone. He also happened to be the exact opposite of Kurama in terms of both looks and temperament—so the exact opposite of my friends' "type," so to speak. Would they be so keen on shipping us if they met him, I wondered?

Not that it mattered. Soon Kuwabara would meet Yukina, and he'd probably not have much time for me anymore. Though the thought of him getting into that adorable canon ship made me smile (Kuwabara in love was a wonderful, happy Kuwabara), it would suck if my best friend in this world stopped wanting to hang out with me as much. He'd never be a bad friend to me, of course, but…

He was my favorite character.

Who wouldn't smile, getting to cook for their favorite character?

I would treasure every minute I got with my favorite character, especially the ones before he became distracted by romance. Call me territorial—jealous, even—but I'd guard and treasure moments like these like a dragon hoarding gold. I would not be embarrassed out of cooking for him no matter how many weird looks I got!

"He'll be here in an hour for a study session if you want to meet him," I said, choosing to leave Junko's suggestion of romance unacknowledged. "His name is Kuwabara. He's my best friend, so you'll probably meet him sooner or later, anyway."

Junko's eyes widened. "Oh! He'd the guy those boys beat up!"

"Yup."

"So he's the one who got you into the Naoko mess."

"No." The word came out firm and maybe a little sharp; I gentled my tone with an apologetic smile. "No. I got myself into that mess all on my own."

Junko pursed her lips. "I mean…if you say so."

We got back to work. Soon, after Mom determined everyone had performed to her satisfaction, we finished making our various dishes and moved into the living room. Mom stood at the front of the room and beamed.

"You all did a wonderful job cooking, so now it's time to taste-test," she said. "Take note of which flavors complement each other. When crafting a meal, you need to pay attention to the overall flavor of the dish. Individual components matter, but if they don't work together, your flavors might fall flat or cancel each other out." Her smile blossomed into a grin. "Though in the end, cooking with love and affection matters more. So keep up the good work no matter what!"

She guided us through all the dishes one by one, giving us little tastes and explaining the flavor profiles of each. The girls ate it up (literally and figuratively) but the three punks listened to us talk from the sidelines wearing bewildered expressions—especially when the girls started discussing Minamino's tastes.

"There are rarely leftovers of vegetables, but sometimes he doesn't finish the meat," one girl fretted.

"And he seems to like fish more than chicken or pork," said another.

"But is that him eating the fish, or his mother eating it? We don't quite know what he gives to his mother and what he eats himself."

"Radishes are the one vegetable he maybe dislikes. The last time I made—"

I took pity on them at that point and caught Masaru's eye. He and the others followed me into the kitchen, where they looked quite relieved to be put on dish-washing duty. I left them with their arms submerged in water and rejoined the girls in the living room. I kept one ear on the clinking dishes and another on the conversation at hand, hope the guys were paying attention to us at least in some small measure (my plan depended on it).

A few minutes into our discussion, however, it became clear the punks were not, in fact, listening to us talk.

My mom was the first to notice. She paused mid-sentence and looked at the kitchen doorway with a frown. A few other girls stopped talking, too, heads cocking to the side as they listened to the sounds drifting from the other room.

Someone was singing.

Three someones, in fact. Three male voices wove together in a simple yet solid harmony, and below that came a rhythmic clinking noise like someone banging a spoon against a pot. I recognized the lyrics from a popular rock song, as did some of the girls if their impressed expressions told me anything.

Amagi, who sat next to me, leaned in close so she could whisper in my ear.

"Did you know they could sing like that?"

No. No, I did not know the boys who's kicked the tar out of Kuwabara could carve a rhythm out of dishware and sing like a barber shop trio. I pushed away from the kotatsu and got up, watching the boys where they stood by the sink. They didn't notice me. Their hands still moved, sure, washing dishes like they'd been told, but they kept singing as they worked—keeping time with a song, in a way. Shinji (the shortest of the group, with gangster hair and lean features) lead the singing with a powerful baritone grip on the melody while the others complemented his voices with their own higher and lower tones.

Did they realize they sounded that good, and that they'd managed to find voices that fit each other's so neatly?

Their song came to an end right as they finished drying the last of the dishes. A smattering of appreciative applause at my back had them jerking to attention. Clearly they hadn't realized we could hear them, music coming naturally and spontaneously as they worked.

"Can you three come with me?" I said.

We went to the alley behind the restaurant. Not the cleanest or brightest place, but it was the most private one I could think of. We settled atop empty shipping crates as I handed them rice balls and passed around a basket of fried shrimp. They eyed me as they ate, clearly wondering what tonight had been about. Wariness showed on their faces like paint on a white dress.

"Thanks for your help tonight," I said when they polished off the last of the shrimp. "You guys can sing, by the way."

Masaru's chest puffed. "We're in a band."

"We're gonna be the next Megallica!" said Tadashi (Shinji nodded along in silence—for the best singer of the bunch, he did the least amount of talking).

But Masaru sighed. "Yukimura, you probably think that's impossible, right?"

"Not at all."

That took them by surprise. Each of them gaped at me—unused to being taken seriously, I guessed. The plight of every teenage musician when they first got started.

"I love Megallica," I said. All three of them looked elated to learn that factoid. "I think it's awesome that you have big goals. A lot of people never learn what they want to do in life, and if you've found your calling this early, you should go for it with everything you've got."

Seems I'd struck gold. They grinned, beaming like I'd just told them they'd won the lottery. Sometimes, at this age, all you needed was a single vote of confidence to get yourself inspired. Hopefully I'd done something helpful just now.

I asked, "What's the band called?"

As suddenly as they'd perked up, the three of them deflated.

"Uh…we don't know yet," said Masaru.

"We haven't exactly been able to play a gig yet," came Tadashi's evasive clarification.

"We're too young for most places."

"Yeah, bars won't let us in."

"Well, let me know when you put out your first record, because I'll buy it," I said.

Even Shinji thanked me when I said that, half bowing in his seat before lapsing into a shy, pleased silence. I made sure to smile at each of them.

"Anyway," I said. "I'm sure you're wondering why I invited you here tonight." I waved a hand at the upper floor of the restaurant. "Do you know what those girls were doing in there?"

They shifted atop their crates. "No."

"They're learning to cook," I said, "for the boy they like."

For a second they didn't react—but then Shinji's eyes narrowed.

"The boy?" he asked. "Singular?"

Sharp guy, apparently, even if he didn't talk much. I nodded. "They all like the same guy. And don't go talking about it in front of them, but…his mother is dying."

None of them quite knew how to react to that. They stared at me in horrified silence until Masaru muttered, "That's awful."

"Yeah. It is. But those girls, they cook to make his life a little easier," I explained. "Every day they leave him a meal in his locker. They don't talk to him, or get in his way, or ask for attention. They just do what needs to be done and leave it at that. They respect his time and they know he wants to spend it with his mother, not them."

I stared pointedly at each of them, one by one. One by one, they hung their heads.

OK. Good. Seemed they were starting to get it.

"You have a code, right?" I said. "That's why you've been hanging around me. Because you have a code, and I beat you in a fight…"

They all nodded. Said Masaru, "Right. We have a code. We're men, aren't we?"

"Kuwabara has a code, too. So I get it." I leaned forward, elbows resting on my knees. "You admire me because I beat you in a fight. And I get wanting to honor the people you admire. But the thing is, I spend my time making food for people. I study. And I watch out for my friends." I shrugged. "I don't want to head up a gang, I'm sorry to say. It's just not in me. So if you really admire me—in whatever way, because of your code—I hope you also respect me enough to abide by my wishes."

The three of them sat in silence for a time. Shinji, voice low and melodic, broke that silence first.

"We respect you," he said.

The other two seemed to take their cue from his words, uncertain expressions gaining new solidity.

"We respect you enough to know we caused you trouble, when we beat up Kuwabara," Masaru said. "We want to make up for that."

"But how do we do that without helping you out, and being around you and doing stuff for you?" Tadashi asked. "'Cause that's how the code works. You mess with someone, and they beat you, you pay them back."

They wore identical looks of confusion and trepidation. A few small stray ends clicked into place, then. Their code dictated they had to make up for the trouble they caused me—and whether or not I wanted their help didn't matter. This was a matter of conscience for them. They'd feel badly if they didn't do something for me.

Ironically, it was Kurama and the fangirls (whose meals comforted the girls who made them) all over again.

"Tell you what," I said after a moment's contemplation. "At some point, when your band is big and you're too famous for this town, I'll call you for a favor. How's that sound?" I winked at them, watching in satisfaction as their eyes slowly lit up from within. "That should make up for any inconvenience you think you've caused me, right?"

Shinji nodded. "It should."

"Provided we can make it big," Masaru grumbled.

"This just means you have to make it big," I said. "You just promised me a favor, and if I can't collect, the debt remains unpaid."

Masaru and Shinji nodded gravely. We all jumped when Tadashi lurched to his feet.

"That's right!" he exclaimed. "Now we've gotta make it as a band!"

"We've gotta focus on our music," Masaru agreed.

"Yeah—so cool it with the fighting if you can," I said, tone mild. The boys looked away, guilty. "Go make music instead. From what I heard, you're good at it. If anyone has a shot at making it, it's you three."

"OK," said Masaru. He stood up, too. "OK, it's a promise."

Shinji also stood. He bowed at the waist, hands stiff at his sides. The other boys followed suit.

"We will work hard in your honor to become the next Megallica," Shinji solemnly intoned. "Thank you, Yukimura-san."

"Thank you, Yukimura-san!" said the other two.

"You're welcome." I rose to my feet, walked past them, and stood with my back to them in the restaurant doorway. Over my shoulder I barked, "Now beat it! I don't want to see your faces until they're plastered on a billboard, got it?"

"Billboard faces!" Masaru said. "Got it!"

"We won't disappoint you!" said Tadashi.

"Thank you," Shinji said—but quietly, as if he didn't expect me to hear.

I didn't look at them, listening instead as I heard their feet travel away from me and out of the alley. Couldn't help but smile to myself, of course. I remembered being a kid with big dreams, and I remembered needing a word of encouragement in order to summon the courage to follow them. Maybe they really would become the next Megallica. No harm in dreaming. And if maybe, just maybe, my words got them to quit fighting and focus on their music—

"They gone?"

I flinched, but it was only my father moving around the corner of the alley. I stepped out of the doorframe and glared at him.

"You scared me!" I accused. "What were you doing over there—lurking?"

"Of course I was," he said with an exasperated roll of his eyes. "Those boys looked like trouble."

"Funny. They dress a lot like Kuwabara, but you approve of him."

"True. But Kuwabara is a special boy."

"Special how?"

"He's a good, good boy, that's how," Dad said, like it should be obvious. "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about." He reached into the front of his chef's jacket and pulled out a small object, which he passed my way. "I have a present for you. Here."

A small canister, black and unremarkable, hung from a small key ring—but I'd had something like it in my past life. I knew what it was, especially when I pressed a button on the side and a cap popped off the top, revealing a trigger like that of a squirt gun.

"Pepper spray?" I asked. "What's this for?"

"Your mom doesn't like it when you fight," Dad said, not bothering to be anything but blunt. "Maybe use that instead of your fists, the next time you make some punks owe you a debt. OK, honey?"

I blinked at him—and then I laughed, resting the heel of my hand against my forehead.

"OK, OK, sure," I said though my giggles. "Thanks, Dad."

"Don't mention it." He turned to head inside, then shot me a mischievous wink. "And start hiding your workout clothes better, huh? Your mom thinks you quit the dojo, but those sweaty clothes of yours tell a different story!"

I only laughed harder as Dad skipped inside with a merry whistle.

Leave it to him to call me out in a way that made me laugh.


Kuwabara's jaw dropped when he saw me standing by the gate of Sarayashiki Junior High the next morning. Some other students shot me wondering looks, too, but I paid them no mind and waved a hand above my head. "Hey there, Kuwabara!"

"Keiko!?" he yelped, scampering over. "What are you doing here?"

"Just coming by to wish you good luck before your test," I said. I reached into my bag and pulled out a cloth-wrapped stack of bento boxes, which I presented with a flourish. "Here. Consider this your good luck charm."

Kuwabara blinked at the bento, then pointed an uncertain finger at himself. "Is...is that for me?" he asked.

"You bet your sweet ass it's for you," I said. I giggled when my crass wording made Kuwabara's face turn a brilliant shade of cherry. "It's brunch! Your test isn't until fourth period, right?"

"R-right."

"Good. You'd better eat beforehand so you don't get distracted with hunger. I made it with brain foods to help you remember things. And I made some for your friends, too." I mock-glared, raising a fist that looked more comical than threatening. "So you'd better share, OK?"

Giant hands gentle, Kuwabara reached for the bento. He cradled it against his chest with an awed look, caught halfway between gratitude and wonderment.

"Keiko—thank you," he said. His typical growling voice had gone a little softer, narrow eyes warm with happy disbelief. "I don't know what to say."

The corner of my mouth hitched. "Say you'll kick ass on this test and show Iwamoto who's boss."

He looked askance, feet shuffling atop the placement. He said, "I mean…I'll try…"

I blinked at him, realized he'd just doubted himself, then placed a hand over my heart when I determined such a thing to be completely unacceptable.

"What's this?" I said with faux offense. "Why, Kuwabara! I'm insulted!"

It was his turn to blink. "Huh?"

"You've been studying with an amazing tutor for a week, and you still have doubts about your abilities?"

Panic flashed across his craggy face when he realized he'd accidentally insulted me in the act of doubting himself. "N-no, Keiko, you were amazing!" he yelped. "Best teacher in the world! I didn't mean—"

I laughed, slugging him playfully in the arm. "Oh my gosh, I'm kidding!"

"O-oh." A bashful glance at the ground. "Sorry."

Frowning, I leaned forward, inserting myself into his line of sight.

"Hey," I said. "You know you've got this test in the bag, right?"

He shot me a furtive look.

"…I like hearing you say it," he mumbled.

"OK. Sure." Nothing wrong with needing a bit of validation from time to time. "But you're the one who needs to say it. You're the one who needs to believe it."

"I mean. I guess?"

"Hmph." I planted my hands on my hips, chin jutting out. "Well, Kuwabara. I think there's only one way to fix this, and that's for you to repeat after me. So please say: I got this."

The big guy looked mildly embarrassed, mumbling under his breath, "I got this."

"I'm amazing."

"…I'm amazing."

"I kick English's butt like it's a soccer ball wearing a 'kick me' sign."

"I kick English's butt—but, oh man, Keiko, do I?" he said, and at that point his mumbled words pitched into a mini-screech of desperate confusion. "Do I actually kick butt at this? Because I'm so nervous! What if I don't do well? What if I fail? What will Okubo—!?"

Clearly Kuwabara wasn't expecting me to grab him by the cheeks and drag him down to my level, so I could butt my forehead against his and glare at him dead in the eye, but that's exactly what I did. I wasn't expecting to do that, either, to be honest. I grabbed him on a whim, but when I got close enough to see the doubt in his eyes (the doubt partially obscured by comically terrified awkwardness at being so close to a girl) I knew I'd made the right choice.

It was time for a pep talk. And not the gentle kind.

"Now you listen here, and you listen good," I all but growled. "You're going to do great. You got that? You're going to be amazing."

Kuwabara grumbled something about not being so sure, but I squeezed his cheeks a little tighter.

"You're smart," I told him. "You're so smart. You went from knowing nothing but the English curse words to being able to ace a test in a week. That's amazing. And you should be so proud of yourself."

I wasn't flattering him, either. He'd come to me utterly hopeless: vocabulary minuscule, pronunciation garbled, grasp of grammar nonexistent. He still wasn't fluent, or even conversational, but through sheer stubbornness he managed to cram a small dictionary into his head in just one week. He memorized all the grammar formulas I threw at him with frantic gusto. The kid could really retain information, when given proper incentive. Kuwabara was a beast when he applied himself.

"You're smart, and now you're applying yourself, and that just doubles how competent you are." I let my glare—my aggressively encouraging glare—go supernova. "If you apply that big fucking brain of yours and don't lose your nerve like a big ol' chicken, this test won't stand a snowball's chance in Hell at high noon of beating you. You got that, you punk? You got this."

Maybe my confidence was bleeding onto him, but as I held him there, his big face warm in my small hands, a fire lit behind his eyes. A smile of bared teeth creased his mouth. His forehead butted back against mine, hockey players slamming helmets in the locker room to rile themselves up before a game.

"Yeah." He pushed me; I pushed back, an inverse tug-of-war. "Yeah. Yeah! That's right. I got this! I got this test in the bag!"

"Fuck yeah, you do!" I shoved him away and pointed dramatically up at the school, not giving a rat's ass that my former classmates were staring—because Kuwabara had finally started to grin, the expression I most liked to see on his big beautiful face, and the people staring could go kick rocks with open-toed shoes. "You're gonna fucking murder this test. Now go kick ass and save Okubo's butt!"

"Roger that!" He threw a fist into the air and bellowed, "I have a promise as a man to fulfill, and gosh darn it, I won't let Okubo down!"

"That's the spirit!" I hopped in place, hyping him up before pushing him bodily through the gate. "Now get going!"

"Yeah!" He ran halfway across the yard before tossing over his shoulder, "Thanks, Keiko! You're the best!"

"No," I said as I watched him go. "Pretty sure that's you."

Hopefully he'd learn that for himself once he aced that test.


Although I had visited the Higurashi Shrine before, I had never met Kagome's grandfather. He wore the traditional robes of a Shinto priest (every single day, Kagome claimed with pronounced exasperation). Short and beady-eyed, with a scraggly mustache and an old-fashioned topknot, he looked like a relic of times long passed, resurrected to tend the ancient shrine and protect it from the encroaching modernism of Tokyo.

He also really, really fucking liked to talk about old crap, too.

We had to follow old Jii-chan around the shrine or an hour, listening to him rant about the history of that torii arch and that ancient tree until he finally grew too tired to walk any more. We sat by a dusty well at the edge of the property—a normal well with a cute little roof over it, from which he drew a bucket of clear water. The day was cold but the cool water still tasted lovely.

"Now," he said, settling onto the brown grass at the well's stone foot. "Kagome tells me you're doing research for a little story you're writing together, eh?"

"Yes, sir." Kagome had prepped me on the cover story before I came over today. "I appreciate your help very much."

"Yes, yes," he said, running a hand down the mustache strands trailing across his chest. Black eyes glittered with humor. "Though I must say, I didn't realize you'd be so much older than my granddaughter. You met in Hideki's aikido class, you said?"

"That's correct."

"Keiko is really cool, Jii-chan," Kagome chirped. She lay on her belly on the grass, toying with a stick with nimble fingers. Shadows from a tree overhead dappled her pale skin grey. "And we have a cool idea for a story. We both like writing. We're going to take a bunch of mythology and mash it up and—"

She prattled on for a time in a very Kagome sort of way, one thought bleeding into the next in a confusing mélange of topics nigh unfollowable. I wasn't sure if she did it on purpose as a sort of diversionary tactic or not, but that's how it played out. Jii-chan cleared his throat and shoved his hands inside his sleeves.

"Yes, yes, Kagome, that is very interesting," he said in a comically dismissive fashion. "Now, you said you wanted to research two gods in particular?"

"Yes. Though one of them is Greek."

"Ah. Can't say I know much about Greek myth, I'm afraid, though I'll do my best to be of service. Which deity are you after?"

"Clotho. One of the three Fates."

"The Fates!" he repeated with a bark of laughter. "Now them I know about. Though they're called the Moirai in Greek." He stroked his mustache, eyes distant. "Yes, yes. Atropos, Lachesis, and Clotho. Cloth was the youngest, of course, and spun the thread of life on her spindle. Next came Lachesis, who measured life's thread with her measuring stick. And then the eldest, Atropos, who cut the thread of life with her shears."

Kagome and I exchanged a look at that, while I tried not to appear confused. Clotho had held a pair of scissors—but they belonged to a different sister? That didn't seem quite right.

"The abhorrent shears, they were called," Jii-chan continued. "They could cut even a god's life in half. Fearsome weapons. The Moirai were feared even by the Olympic pantheon, as I recall."

Well, wasn't that just fantastic? A creature feared even by the gods was involved in this—maybe. Still had no proof Cleo was who she said she was, even if she had a pair of antique scissors and could vanish on command.

I pushed the thoughts aside. "Is there anything more you can tell me about Clotho in particular?" I asked.

Jii-chan frowned, looking up at the roof covering the well. "Clotho? Hmm. I believe she was knowing as the decision-maker of the Moirai. Sort of their leader, in a sense, who chose when people were born and when people would die. But that's about all I know."

Kagome and I exchanged another look.

The Fate who decided when someone was born, huh?

Had she had something to do with our situation in this strange new world? Hiruko claimed responsibility for our predicaments, but it sounded like Cleo might be better suited.

Jii-chan didn't leave me time to ponder much more. His hand descended onto his knee with a smack.

"Now. What other thing did you want to ask me about?" he said.

"Well, I came across a name while reading," I said. This was a lie, of course, but I couldn't exactly tell this man about the kid who visited me in my dreams. "I tried looking for more information but couldn't find much. So I don't know if the name is from myth, or another source."

"Hmmph." He pursed his lips. "What's the name?"

"Hiruko."

Jii-chan didn't immediately react. He blinked at me for a second, like I'd just announced I was going to join clown school—and then he threw back his head and laughed. Kagome's eyebrows lifted. She sat up, pouting at her grandfather until he calmed down enough to speak.

"Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time!" he chortled. "Well, no wonder you didn't have any luck with your research. Hardly anyone uses that name anymore. That book you were reading must've been even older than I am!"

"So—you know it?" Kagome said. She rolled to her knees, eyes bright. "Well, don't just sit there laughing like a hyena! Tell us who that name belongs to!"

Jii-chan chuckled for another minute, then looked at me.

"Kagome said your parents own a ramen restaurant, is that correct?" he asked.

I frowned at the non sequitur. "Yes. Why?"

"Then I reckon you know exactly who Hiruko is." He grinned, slapping his knee again. "Not too many Japanese restaurants go without a lucky Ebisu statue."

I found myself unable to speak for a second.

"E…Ebisu?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. The god of luck and fortune. We probably have a statue of him around here somewhere, in fact." He stroked his mustached thoughtfully. "Big belly, laughing, holding a fishing hook…yes. There's a statue of him near the Bone Eater's Well, in fact, to ward off any ill omens that might come forth."

Kagome sat up at that. I saw her look at me from the corner of my eye.

I didn't look back. I couldn't—because just then, I couldn't move.

Ebisu.

My eyes unfocused as memory came rushing in: Kuwabara at my side, my father standing in the alleyway behind the restaurant, packing wet concrete into a plastic container. "Making an idol for the new restaurant," he'd said, showing us the mold he poured. "We're opening a second location next week. New place won't feel like a real restaurant until I pour up a new patron!"

There was another idol in that alley—another concrete statue right by the back door. It had watched over me all my life, eyes kind slits set above enormous, smiling cheeks and gleaming teeth. He held a fishing pole in one hand and raised the other in greeting. I'd put a garland of flowers around his neck during Golden Week every year since I could walk. I'd patted his head when I came home at night, and I'd offered him a half-hearted prayer before every test at school at my mother's bidding.

That idol was an old friend. A lifelong companion. A fixture since the day I found myself awake in a new world.

"He's certainly a happy Buddha," I said.

But Dad had corrected me

"Buddha?" Dad said. "That's not the Buddha!"

"It's not?"

Dad rolled his eyes. "I didn't read you enough fairy tales as a kid. This is Ebisu—god of fortune and food." He winked. "Perfect god for a ramen shop, don't you think?"

Perfect god for a ramen shop, don't you think?

My chest felt hollow, like I might drift away on the wind like dandelion seed.

Jii-chan kept speaking, oblivious.

"Hiruko's story started off a sad one, as I recall," he said. "How much do you know of Shinto creation myth, hmm?"

"Not much," I murmured. I wasn't capable of saying more.

"Ah. I see." Jii-chan sighed, shaking his head. "Kids these days have no appreciation for the old things, for stories, for tales! Why, when I was your age—"

"Oh, can it, Gramps," Kagome groused. She braced her hands on his leg, peering into his face with a scowl. "Just tell us the story, why dontcha?"

"Oh, all right, all right," he said, waving her off. He settled into his seat, hands stowed in the sleeves of his robe, and spoke with the measured patience of someone who had told his story many time.

"Mukashi, mukashi," he said (the traditional Japanese introduction to a fairy tale). "Long ago, there lived the god and goddess of creation, Izanami and Izanagi."

Kagome said, "Just skip to the part about Hiruko!"

"Don't rush me, child!" Jii-chan fired back. "The pair wished to conceive a child together, and so, they married. However, their marriage ceremony was botched. During the ceremony they exchanged words, which is forbidden. And so their firstborn son was born marred, flawed—or, more specifically, he was born without bones."

"Without bones!" Kagome repeated with a gasp. "That's weird!"

"Weird, and not at all what they wanted in a child," Jii-chan agreed. "But gods aren't accustomed to being disappointed. Not wishing to acknowledge their son, they crafted a boat of reeds and set him adrift on the ocean, likely in the hope he'd die."

Kagome gasped again. I sat up a little straighter.

"Before they did, they gave him a name," Jii-chan said.

"Hiruko," I guessed.

"Yes," he said, "and to add insult to injury, they spelled his name with the characters for 'leech' and 'child.'" He tilted his head back, gazing at the awning above with a sorrowful expression. "They abandoned their boneless leech child in a boat, and pushed him out to sea to die. Can't exactly say they're model parents, but gods aren't known for behaving in ways we modern folks approve of."

He spoke the truth. I remembered Greek myth in particular brimming with gods behaving badly. Casting your child into the ocean because he didn't measure up to your standards was low even for unscrupulous gods, in my book. Poor guy. He hadn't asked for a life like that, and yet…

Don't pity him just yet, Keiko. He had still used you, even if his story was a sad one.

"Wait—but he's the god of luck, I thought," Kagome said. "How'd he go from boneless on a boat to famous god of fortune?"

Jii-chan chuckled. "I suppose he just got lucky, when you get down to it. Legend has it that he washed up on the shore and was taken in by the Ainu people, on the island we used to call Honshu. He grew bones, grew strong, and eventually grew to become the patron god of the people who took him in." Jii-chan's eyes lit up as his enthusiasm for the story grew. "The Ainu were fisherman. At first only fishermen worshipped Hiruko, but eventually his reputation grew, and worship of him spread from fisherman to merchants. Eventually he became the god of fortune...probably because he got so lucky, surviving an ordeal like what his parents put him through. Somewhere along the way, he started going by the name 'Ebisu.'"

I murmured, "I would, too, if my given name was 'leech child.'"

"You and me both," said Kagome.

"Yes, I suppose you have a point," Jii-chan admitted. "Now he's living large, as far as gods go. Can't find a restaurant or kitchen without a shrine to him inside it these days." He slapped his hands together. "Now, what else can I help you with? I can tell you more stories about this shrine, if you'd like!"

There wasn't a good way to say 'no', so we resumed the tour of the shrine and let Jii-chan have his fun. Eventually Kagome made up some excuse or another (I think she said we needed to go work on this 'story' we were supposedly writing) and managed to get us away from Jii-chan.

We went to the only private place we could think of: The Bone Eater's Well.

The doors had barely shut behind us, and Kagome had barely managed to turn on an electric lantern, before I started ranting.

"That snake," I hissed, pacing the length of the walkway above the well. "That snake! I can't believe he's been so close all this time! He's been right there, right on my goddamn porch, just watching—"

Kagome listened, eyes growing wider and wider with every detail I revealed. Multiple Ebisu statues adorned my parents' home and restaurant, but somehow I had missed out on learning Ebisu's real name. Years of proximity, years of clues, uninvestigated and undiscovered. I wanted to tear my hair out just then—but luckily Kagome's cheerful calm cut through my haze of anger.

"Hey, it's not your fault!" she said, tiny fists shoved resolutely against her hips. "You heard Jii-chan. Not many people know Ebisu's real name anymore."

"Still—I should've learned it in school," I said. "They taught us Greek myth in school. They should've taught us Japanese myth here in Japan, right?"

As soon as the words left my mouth, I frowned.

Kagome did, too.

We stood there in silence for a moment, each lost to our own thoughts. I assume Kagome's mirrored mine, because soon she raised her eyes and voiced exactly what I'd been thinking.

"Why didn't we learn about Japanese myth in school?" she said.

And she was right. Much as I racked my brain, much as I turned over all the memories I had about growing up in Japan, I couldn't recall a single incident in which I'd been taught Shinto or Buddhist myth. My parents had taken me to a temple on New Year's a few times, and they made me pray to (what I'd thought was) the Buddha statue when I needed to take a test…but my bedtimes were bereft of Japanese fairy tales. At least the ones involving gods or goddesses. I knew some luck and funeral rituals, some wedding rituals, and similar…but the actual tales behind the traditions I knew very little about.

Why the hell was that?

Why hadn't I leaned about these things before, or even gotten curious enough to look them up for myself? Curiosity was my middle name!

"I mean, I'm literally in elementary school right now," Kagome continued, tone uncharacteristically worried. "I don't think we've ever had a unit covering myth or fairy tales. Jii-chan will tell me some stories, but my mom doesn't even talk about them. And I don't recall my friends ever talking about them, either."

"Same here," I said.

"In my old life, legends and fairy tales were all over the place. Hell, I taught them to my kindergarteners. You know, Aesop's Fables and Grimm's Brothers stuff?" She looked at me with odd hope, like she hoped I'd tell her she was wrong. "But here, nobody talks about that stuff. Like, nobody-nobody. I don't remember a single person telling me about Cinderella even once, and that right there's some cross-cultural shit."

She was right—more right than she knew.

"In college," I said, words slow and searching, "I took courses on fairy tale study and analysis."

Kagome rolled her eyes. "Of course you did."

"Shut up." I shook my head, composing myself so I didn't freak out. "Tales exist in all cultures—and sometimes the same story will take place in multiple cultures, but before those places had any record of contact."

"Wow. Really? That sounds weird."

"Yeah. There are versions of Cinderella in almost all cultures." I ticked them off on my fingers "Chinese, German, Russian, Native American…and even Japanese." I met her eyes, a worried mirror of my own. "If fairy tales are so pervasive, why didn't we hear them growing up?"

Neither of us spoke.

Kagome blurted: "This is weird."

"Weird on more than one level," I concurred. "Weird because why didn't we never heard those stories…and weird because, why didn't we notice we hadn't heard them before now?"

In any other scenario, I would've found it funny that Kagome started pacing in an odd mimicry of my usual nervous habit. Just then, however, I saw nothing humorous in it at all.

"Well, I dunno about you, but I'm freaked," she said. "Freaked. Freaked. Like real freaky-freaked. It's one thing to not hear those stories, but it's another not to notice not hearing them. Why didn't we—"

Lucky for her nerves, I'd already concocted a quick working theory.

"Maybe since we already knew those stories, we weren't looking for them," I suggested. "Not being taught or told those stories didn't feel unnatural. We didn't need to be taught. They were already in our personal story repertoires, so why seek them out? That's why we didn't notice their absence."

"Maybe?" Kagome said. Her voice climbed into a higher register than usual. "Maybe that's it? Maybe? I dunno, Keiko! But something about this just seems off.

Kagome normally did the reassuring in our relationship, but for once the responsibility rested on my shoulders. I reached out and hooked an arm through hers. She met my comforting smile with a surprised smile of her own. To my satisfaction, her pacing feet ceased to move.

"I haven't had a chance to go to the library since I first met Cleo," I said. "I'm going to go right now and pull every book on fairy tales and myth I can find. I'm sure something will come up that'll help us figure this out. So don't sweat it, OK?" I winked at her. "Never did ask if you're a Doctor Who fan, but as the good Doctor might say, books are the best weapons in the world."

"Tennant was my favorite," she said, response almost automatic. She shook her head, eyes clearing of their panic. "I'll do the same at my school library. See what I can dig up. Because this is weird, Keiko, in ways I can't put my finger on—and that ambiguity just makes the weirdness worse."

She was right, of course.

But to keep her calm—not to mention to keep myself calm—I didn't agree aloud.


"You just had to go and ask questions, didn't you?"

"Why hello, Hiruko," I replied. "So nice to see you."

He wore a smile more teeth than good humor, pink hair mussed like he'd just woken from a deep sleep. Somehow it didn't surprised me to see him in my dreams that night. Learning his true identity, after all, seemed like a kind of broken rule even he might not find palatable. I hadn't had a chance to hit the library after seeing Kagome—Mom had asked me to help in the restaurant before I got the chance—but I got the feeling I'd already heard enough about Hiruko to rustle his jimmies.

"You couldn't leave well enough alone," he said. He stood with feet apart, head ducked as if he might try to ram me in the gut with his bubblegum skull. "You just couldn't stem that damnable curiosity of yours, could you?"

"What, you don't like having your past pried into?" I asked with faux innocence. "Interesting. You really don't like that I know who you really are, do you?"

"You know nothing about who I am," he snarled.

I shrugged. "I know some things, Leech Child."

"Don't you ever call me that again, you insignificant little—!"

I jerked back as though bitten by a dog. He'd never snapped at me quite like that before, and even Hiruko seemed taken aback by his tone. He blinked, mouth working around air, before turning away from me and clearing his throat.

"Would you prefer Ebisu over Hiruko?" I asked—but gently. Not with malice, or derision, or sarcasm. I asked with sincerity, because…well. I actually wanted to know, believe it or not. "Just tell me, and I will."

I of all people knew the importance of honoring one's name.

Hiruko, inch by inch, turned around again. Suspicion turned his eyes brackish.

"I wish you hadn't found out," he said, voice raspy with emotions I couldn't identify. "I wish…"

He lapsed into silence. I shrugged.

"For what it's worth, I think what your parents did to you was shitty," I said. "No one asks to be born. It's stupid to punish a child for something they couldn't control."

His eyes hardened with glacial chill. "Heed your own advice, lucky child." He tossed his hair with a harsh laugh. "Feh! Lucky child? More like guilty child. Still stressing over taking the real Keiko's place, even if it's not your fault? How pointless!"

I didn't rise to his bait. Voice even, I said, "You're lashing out at me right now. But I didn't do anything to you." Another shrug. "Not tonight, at least."

I half expected him to fight me—but he didn't. Hiruko's shoulders sagged as though weighted by a boat's heavy anchor.

"I know," he admitted. "It's just…"

Whatever he meant to say, he couldn't say it. I waited, but he didn't speak.

Guess it was up to me to take the initiative.

"What do you want, Hiruko?" I eventually asked. His head jerked, like he'd forgotten I was even there. "What's your goal? Why did you do this to me, to Kagome?"

He shifted atop his wooden sandals. "That's my secret."

"It's not fair to drag me into this and keep me in the dark," I said. Emotion broke through my calm veneer like a whale breaching the surface of the sea. "Like I said—no one asks to be born, and most certainly not into someone else's body. And nobody wants to be a subplot in someone else's story."

His eternal smile—the smile of the god of luck and fortune—faltered. "A subplot?"

"Yes. A subplot. Yu Yu Hakusho is about Yusuke, not Keiko." I gestured at myself, at my dream body, at the character I inhabited as well as the person housed inside her. "All this, my life…it's overshadowed by Yusuke. My choices don't matter as much whenever he comes near. The least you can do is tell me why you've suddenly given Keiko the chance to become a bigger player." When he did not reply, and merely stared with his oceanic eyes, I heaved a sigh. "Can you at least tell me what your goal is? Or tell me what you want me to do in this world?"

His throat worked as he swallowed. "Like I said—I want you to break the rules."

That old chestnut.

That old broken record.

What a fucking joke.

I was tired of this. Frustrated, angry, disgusted—but more than that, I was tired. Tired of being jerked around and fed evasive lines. Tires of equivocation. Tired of being used. Tired of asking questions that would never receive an answer.

I shut my eyes and said: "No."

"…no?" Hiruko repeated.

"You heard me. No." I opened my eyes and glared. "You want me to break the rules? Well, sorry Charlie, but fuck that. I won't do it. Not until you do something for me in exchange." I raised a finger and leveled it right between Hiruko's smug eyes. "I'm going to follow the script to the letter and not break a single goddamn rule unless you give me the answers I want."

Took Hiruko a minute to realize what was happening. His jaw dropped.

"Wait. Are you blackmailing me?" he said.

"Blackmail is such an ugly word," I said...and then I winked at him. "I prefer 'extortion'!"

Hiruko's jaw dropped again. Then his eyes narrowed, mouth clacking shut as his teeth collided.

"Lucky Child," he said, glowering. "More like Licentious Child."

"Is that a yes?" came my prim response. "Will you agree to my terms?"

He swore, colorfully for a child—only he wasn't really a child at all, was he? I watched as he stomped in a circle, swearing swears I notated for future use, and wondered just why he'd taken this particular form. Was it an illusion, or did he actually look like this? The portly statues at the restaurant did not resemble this pink-haired kid, that's for sure.

But no matter. I had bigger questions at the moment…but maybe I was barking up the wrong pink-haired tree. Time for a new tactic.

"Ugh. You know what?" I said, throwing up my hands with exaggerated frustration. "Forget the deal. Maybe I'll just ask someone else for answers."

Hiruko stopped swearing and looked at me, alarmed.

"Maybe I'll just ask Clotho. Or Cleo, as she called herself." I smirked. "She seemed to know a whole lot about you, that's for sure."

I'd hoped to get a rise out of Hiruko, name-dropping Clotho like that. Maybe I'd glean something from his reaction, or at least determine Hiruko's attitude toward the potential sister of Fate.

But Hiruko didn't react.

Instead, Hiruko froze. He stared at me with wide eyes, as still as though he'd been replaced by a wax simulacrum. Hard to read anything in a block of granite, and that's basically what Hiruko had become.

Too bad he couldn't remain a statue forever. His mask soon cracked when he bit his lip—and in his eyes I saw a spark of something bright and hot.

"You…you talked to Clotho?" he whispered.

He sounded shell-shocked. I frowned. "You mean you didn't know? I assumed you saw that."

The spark in his eye caught fire, then—and it flamed into searing fear.

"No—oh," Hiruko said. "Oh no." His smile portrayed panic, maniacal and pleading. "This is bad. This is really, really bad—"

I didn't need to ask why.

Two seconds late, I found out.

As always, Hiruko and I stood in a formless void. Shadows stretched in all directions below us, giving the illusion of ground where perhaps there was none. Behind Hiruko sprawled endless, featureless grey, a vast expanse of shapelessness that hurt to look at for too long. Eyes unfocused with nothing to focus on. The void appeared to ripple and pulse, like it might coalesce into a shape and lurch right at you if you stared for a second too long.

You can imagine, then, that when a black slash struck across the void, it was kind of hard to miss. One second empty grey pulsed at the cores of my eyes, and then a thin black line drew my vision the way a gunshot draws the ear. It almost hurt to look at, and then the black widened, bloomed into a dark flower of open space, and from it swam color and light on a backdrop of swirling, burning stars—

The color coalesced into Cleo, leather jacket and boots and sunglasses and all. She stepped from the black and became solid, and then the black behind her disappeared.

"Hello, Hiruko," she said with a toss of her cobweb hair. "Did you really think you could run from me forever?"

Hiruko let out a strangled 'eep' before darting behind me, where he crouched into my side like he thought I'd protect him. When I took a dramatic step away, hands held up in a 'what the hell' gesture, he stuck out his tongue.

"You little thief," Cleo continued. Her leather jacket flapped like wings of some dark beast as she strode toward him. Reaching into her jacket she said, "Give back what you took, or so help me…"

The scissors—copper, gleaming, ancient—appeared in her hand. Hiruko's eyes widened; his mouth curled in a pleased smirk. I don't know if his sudden confidence was merely playacted bravado or true self-assurance, but he stepped forward and peered at the scissors as though he weren't actually afraid of them at all.

"Oh, ho!" he chortled. "So Atropos finally learned to share, I see? Siblings have such trouble learning to share." A wink at Cleo, conspiratorial and overstated. "I would know."

"Can it, brat," Cleo snapped. She grasped the scissors by the hilt, holding them in front of her body the way fencers hold a foil. "And these scissors aren't all she shared."

The scissors—no, the abhorred shears, I reminded myself—gleamed like they'd caught fire. The glare intensified like a star burning its last hurrah, shooting from the base of the shears in a long, thin arc. I shielded my eyes with a curse.

When the light faded, and I could look again, the scissors had lengthened into a sword: a thin-bladed rapier. A seam down the length of the blade that meant it could still probably function like scissors if Cleo—Cloth, I reminded myself, because at this point I think I believed her true identity—needed them to function as such.

Hiruko took a step back when he saw the sword.

This time, it was Cleo who smirked.

"That's right. I mean business." She hefted the sword higher. "Now give it back. Give back what you took from us, Hiruko."

Hiruko placed a finger on his chin as if thinking. Crystalline blue eyes rolled toward the ceiling in contemplation.

"Hmm. Let me think," he said—and then his eyes snapped to Cleo in a spark of blue fire. "How about 'no'?"

The finger on his chin shifted toward his ear. With a tug and a twist he pulled the earring free—and from it spilled a thousand strands of fishing wire.

My father in my past life had been an avid fisherman. I couldn't count the time I'd been made to untangle fishing wire, strands cutting viciously into my soft fingers until the clear line stained pink with my blood. I knew at once the material when I saw it—but it behaved in ways I'd never seen.

I wasn't sure where this wire came from, to be honest. I certainly hadn't seen any on Hiruko's person before he took the hook from his ear. Connected to the base of the hook in a shining knot of clear threads, strands of gleaming wire rippled and twisted across Hiruko's skin, through his hair, around his limbs, spreading outward in a flowing tangle of thread until the air around him gleamed like it had been filled with spider's web. He swung the hook through the air like a bell, twirling in place as he lashed the hook like the handle of a bullwhip. Shimmering, gossamer threads wove into a loose-weave tapestry, a complex cage of fibers cupping him like a cradle, and when Hiruko finally stilled, he stood in the center of a gossamer hurricane. The threads drifted on winds unseen and unfelt, buoyed aloft by forces I couldn't name.

"Shit," Cleo said, eloquently.

"I'm having too much fun to stop just yet," Hiruko chirped. He gestured with his free hand at the maelstrom of fishing wire. "What do you think, Clotho? Do you like my handiwork?"

"You," she said, but she stopped. The sword dropped to her side; grey eyes gleamed silver with cold horror. "What have you done to it?"

Hiruko pouted. "Meanie. I've only made some minor adjustments." He smiled with patronizing pity. "Your work is lovely, but it needed a fresh eye. Even you can admit that, right?"

Her hand tightened around the sword. "Fuck you, Hiruko. We trusted you, and this is how you repay us?"

He tittered. "Oh. So ungrateful. Oh well. I suppose even geniuses will have their critics." His eyes slid my way, then, with another pitying smile. "Sorry, Keiko. I'll commit to your little bargain another night."

He held up his free hand—and when I saw that familiar gesture, something inside me snapped. I rolled my eyes, tilted my head so far back I almost fell over, and took a deep breath.

"Goddammit and fuck!" I bellowed.

Neither godling nor Fate had anticipated that reaction, it seemed. Both of them gasped and stared at me like I'd grown antlers. I threw up my hands and stomped in place, unable to contain my agitation.

"Really?" I said, words all a-drip with acerbity. "Really, Hiruko? Again? You're just gonna banish me as soon as it gets good? Banish me from my own dream? Again? Because it's getting old." I threw up my hands again, with shaking, angry vigor. "You could at least try to come up with something fresh, but no! But no! You'll just make me wake up and that's that, you unoriginal troll!"

Hiruko blinked in abject surprise. Cleo laughed, loud and barking.

"He's an ass, isn't he?" she said.

"Oh, like you're any better!" I snapped, and now it was Cleo blinking at me. "Remember how I just got to asking the good stuff, and you just disappeared when I started talking? The two of you are no different as far as I'm concerned. Both of you are annoying." I shooed them like they were nothing more noteworthy than bumbling pigeons blocking my way on a sidewalk. "So go on! Go play your little war games, fight your little fights, scheme your little schemes—but please. Do me the courtesy of doing it in someone else's head, because I'm done! I'm out! I'm sick and tired of this bullshit and you both suck!"

"Keiko—" Hiruko said.

"Nope! No! Nuh-uh!" I wagged a finger at him—my middle one. "Don't you 'Keiko' me. I'm done being your little plaything, so get up and get out of my goddamn head!"

Cleo stepped toward me. She said "Keiko" with comforting urgency, the way my old life's grandfather would try to gentle a panicked horse. "Keiko, Keiko, please—"

"Oh, shove it up your ass, Cleo," I snarled. "I'm in no mood to be placated. You know as well as I do that 'Keiko' isn't even my name, and neither of you are my friends."

And with that—I made myself wake up.

Not entirely sure how I did it. One minute I beheld Cloe and Hiruko in my dreams, and the next they both looked stunned and maybe a bit horrified, and the next I jolted awake in my bed. Moonlight streamed in the window like bolts of soft, rippling cloth.

I lay in my bed that night and wondered what the hell I was supposed to do now. I'd have to talk to Kagome. I'd have to go to the library like I'd promised, do my research—but first I'd organize my questions. I reached beneath my mattress and pulled out one of my many dozen notebooks. Inside of it I wrote everything I'd learned from Jii-chan, and every question that came to mind after tonight's ordeal.

How are Hiruko and Cleo connected?

What did Hiruko steal from Cleo?

Is Cleo friend or foe?

And what is Hiruko's final goal?

When sleep claimed me again, my dreams remained empty, save for echoes of the questions I'd asked in the waking world. I resolved to address them as soon as I could and put this mystery to bed before it drove me up the wall.

Too bad for me, I didn't get enough time to explore my questions fully.

Before I could get to the bottom of the mystery of the godling and the Fate, Yusuke returned to life. He came back like a freight train, momentum unstoppable—even when set against the obstacles of all my plans and subplots.


NOTES:

Well, this chapter got WAY out of hand and went on longer than expected, but I needed to cram in a bunch of loose ends before Yusuke's return next chapter, so here we are. Be warned: scenes that feel like "filler" might become important later on.

Can anyone find the Futurama quote in here?

The Kurama oneshot I promised last week is POSTED. Also expect another Kurama deleted scene that was supposed to go in this chapter but didn't fit, soon

SO MANY THANKS to those who reviewed the previous chapter. You seriously made my week. You're all so nice and wonderful and I'd be nowhere without you: Cytokinesis, Drachegirl14, EmmieSauce, Kado-Kattsune, DarkDust27, Just Another Star Child, rya-fire1, Unlocked Potential, Archaeological, xenocanaan, srirachacha, Counting Sinful Stars, kittenfood, Kaiya Azure, Xanaldy, JollyLoser, Lady Hummingbird, Maester Ta, musicisalifestyle, ballet022, CrystalVixen93, Ikara-o-Kage, wennifer-lynn, Metro Neko, HereAfter, Melissa Fairy, Mayacompany, Yunrii, DiCuoreAllison, Marian, Alice, reebajee, Just 2 Dream of You, giant salamander, Miqila, Falling Right Side-Up, LittleDragonTamer, FireDancerNix, essex2, ahyeon, Like Stars in the Sky, Ceradin, nevvy, and five guests!