Warnings: Mention of suicide and suicidal thoughts.
Lucky Child
Chapter 68:
"What Kei Would Do, Instead"
As the boys—three I called mine, one new and unexpected—cooked meat on the small grill set in the middle of our table, I tried my best not to stare.
It wasn't hard. I'd done my staring when Amanuma introduced himself properly, confirming my almost supernatural premonition regarding his identity. Now I merely stared at the coals glowing beneath the grill's metal grate, orange and red and swimming behind a wall of heated haze. Yusuke and Kuwabara chatted with Amanuma at a decent clip while they flipped and turned our dinner. Neither appeared to notice my consternation.
Probably for the best. Just then, I really didn't want to be noticed.
I sat still and quiet at our booth. The octopus toy from the claw game sat on my lap. My hands hung loose and sweaty around the sphere of its mantle, slicking over its plush fur like tires over wet asphalt. Amanuma had won the toy for me in seconds. His eyes had lit up, he'd shouldered past me, and with a smug shrug he'd explained how best to time the swing of the claw to better your chances of winning a prize. Didn't pause a beat, winning that toy. Insert coins, move crane, press the drop button, and bingo. He won. I was the proud owner of a bright pink cartoon octopus that smelled inexplicably of strawberry.
"Here ya go," he'd said, handing over the toy with another shrug—and a grin I couldn't help but return with a shaking smile of my own. "Kinda silly-lookin' if you ask me, but if you like, that's OK I guess."
We were all staring by then, my personal fixation blending with that of my peers.
And now I wasn't blending so much as flying under the radar—just keeping quiet, out of the way as the boys talked and laughed and elbowed each other for the best pieces of beef and pork. Amanuma gamely fought Yusuke and Kuwabara for the food, giggling like mad when they tag-teamed him and wrestled away a choice chicken wing. Perhaps he didn't get the chance to roughhouse with other boys too often. He was enjoying this almost too much, and after an hour at the arcade had come with us to dinner without a moment's hesitation.
"Hey, waiter, we need veggies!" Yusuke called out.
"You, Yusuke?" Kuwabara said with a snicker. "Veggies?"
"Not for me—for Keiko!" When Kuwabara's brow furrowed Yusuke added, "She only eats meat when her parents cook it; duh!"
Kuwabara blinked, looking to me for confirmation; I gave him an afforming nod. Didn't say anything else, though, or volunteer information—not like I normally would have. Normally I'd overshare about my conditional vegetarianism, but not today. Kuwabara waited a beat before muttering a confused "OK, then" and returning his attention to the food.
Beside me, Kurama's green eyes slid sidelong. His gaze pricked my skin like the tines of a cactus. He knew something was up, clearly, but there hadn't been a moment to ask why I'd gone as quiet as the grave at the sight of a happy elementary school kid.
Because that's what Amanuma looked like, chatting with Yusuke and Kuwabara, roughhousing over food with them and laughing his head off when Yusuke stuck a straw up his nose. Amanuma looked happy. Happy and cute and adorable.
It was wrong.
Kuwabara blinked at something Amanuma said. "Mushiyori? What're you doing all the way out here?"
Amanuma shrugged, his wide smile shuttering a fraction. "Came to see if there were any new games." He spoke with clipped tones, like he thought maybe we wouldn't believe him, or feared we might ask questions. "I've played all the ones out near my house and I thought I'd see what I could find."
Yusuke frowned—but then he shrugged. "I mean, sure. That makes sense, I guess."
"You find anything good?" Kuwabara asked.
Amanuma perks up at once. "Yeah, I did! That new Sailor V game isn't in Mushiyori yet, but I've been reading about it in the papers and wanted to try it out. It looks girly, but the graphics are really cool."
"Hey, Keiko's pretty good at that one!" Kuwabara grinned at me. "Aren't you, Keiko? You made it onto the leaderboards earlier, right?"
My hands clenched around the octopus plush, under the table and out of sight. "Uh. Yeah. I did," I said.
"Ah, really?" Amanuma's eyes glittered, kid bouncing in his seat. "That's great! Maybe you could show me the good combos sometime. I tried to get them to work but there must be some trick to it I'm not seeing."
He beamed, waiting for me to explain said trick.
I didn't say anything.
Amanuma's smile faltered.
Yusuke to the rescue. "Of course she'll show you the combos." Yusuke kicked me under the table with a pointed glare. "Keiko loves a chance to show off. Don't you, Keiko?"
Again, I said nothing—but my fingers clamped onto the octopus a little harder.
Yusuke waited for me to chime in, but when I didn't he lost patience with me soon enough. Tossing his hair, he settled back in his seat with a smirk and shut his eyes, cracking one of them to look askance at Amanuma. "Say. We aren't usually in the business of hanging out with grade-schoolers, but skills like yours?" A lofty raise of his sharp chin. "It's not often anyone can challenge me at the arcade. You owe me a rematch."
"Gee, Yusuke," Kuwabara muttered, poking at a strip of pork. "You act like I didn't school your ass at Time Crisis last week."
"And as if I didn't best you at a game of competitive Tetris earlier this afternoon," Kurama demurely murmured.
Yusuke sputtered and rocked forward, booth shuddering a little from the force. "Sheesh! Some friends you two are!"
Amanuma, meanwhile, crossed his arms and put his nose in the air. "Well. As for that rematch, it depends on if I'm busy or not. I have a lot of friends, you know, so I'm usually booked up."
Yusuke and Kuwabara exchanged a look, conspiratorial. It hadn't escaped their notice Amanuma had been playing games alone. "Is that so?" Yusuke said.
"Yeah!" The kid's pert nose rose even higher. "And hanging out with middle schoolers isn't that big a deal."
The fact that no one had said it was before then didn't get past anyone, given Yusuke's ill-concealed snickering and Kuwabara's goofy smile. Even Kurama appeared in on the joke. "Isn't it, now?" Kurama mused.
"And hey, maybe middle schoolers ain't shit, but these two are in high school," Yusuke said, pointing at Kurama and I.
"Even so. I'm friends with an adult, and he's really cool." But Amanuma's triumphant smile faded. "I was supposed to meet him today, actually, but he didn't show up."
Yusuke harrumphed. "Some friend he is."
"Yeah, you sure he's really your friend?" said Kuwabara, concern etching lines across his brow.
Amanuma hung his head. "I thought he was…"
Such freckle-faced disappointment, large eyes watery above a jutting lip, could not stand at this table. Yusuke made a tetching noise between his teeth. "Well, kiddo. It's no great loss." He grinned like a rogue as he caught Amanuma's curious eye. "You met us, right?"
The kid's smile returned as quickly as it had disappeared. "I guess I did!" he said. "And yeah, my friend was really nice, but you guys seem—"
As it was no great leap to assume his older friend was a certain former Spirit Detective bent on flooding Human World with demons, a cold void opened beneath the cage of my lungs, hollow and empty and gaping. My breathing stuttered, chest hitching out of my control, and with a burst of icy adrenaline I slid out of the booth.
"Where you going in a hurry?" Yusuke called after me as I stalked away through the restaurant.
"Bathroom," I called back.
"Must be an emergency!" he said—and although the words were intended as a sarcastic joke, Yusuke had no idea just how right he was.
Because I didn't know what else to do, I did as I'd said and went to the bathroom, peeing for the sake of it even though I didn't have much to pee in the first place. I washed my hands with exacting care and stared at myself in the mirror for a minute longer than was necessary. Only left because a few more girls came in, talking and giggling, so I slipped into the hallway and just stood there. To my left lay the restaurant, clinking cutlery and conversation creating a bright concerto—much too bright for my tastes, light and sound like acid on the eyes and ears. To my right lay a short hallway, darker and much more preferable. Only two doors past the bathrooms, one marked as a supply closet, the other unmarked entirely.
I knew what it was, though: a back door. Every restaurant had one.
This back door let out onto the fire escape three stories up above a dark alley at the back of the building. The restaurant was in a plaza, a three-story ring of shops and eateries arranged in a U around a big open green dotted with benches and fountains. Very trendy spot, though this back door didn't show any of what made the place a favorite haunt of local teens. The rickety metal structure overlooked the tops of neighboring businesses. Whirling A/C units, gouts of steam and smoke, boxes stacked next to rooftop access doors—not a great view, no, but beyond the businesses lay a neighborhood of swaying trees and winking lights. I tried to look at those instead of the ugly roofs as I propped open the door behind me with a brick I found lying on the fire escape; most likely the cooks used it so they didn't get locked out on their smoke breaks. Deep breath in, deep breath out, I tucked my octopus toy under my arm and grasped the railing of the fire escape in both hands. The scent of earthy garbage wafted across my face, likely from a dumpster hidden in the darkness below. I didn't mind, though. I gazed out over the city until my eyes lost focus and the lights all blurred together. When a wind stripped by, cold with oncoming winter, the fire escape creaked beneath my feet. The entire structure swayed the slightest bit, a boat on a vast, dark sea.
I wondered, vaguely, how long it would take for me to hit the ground from this height, but I stopped short of actually doing the math. I knew the physics. I could do the math if I tried. But there was a difference, I felt, between wondering and performing, and the latter felt too morbid for my tastes. And there was no desire in me to die or anything, either, when I wondered about falling and smashing on the pavement below. Just a vague curiosity, a tingle of adrenaline in the palms, as if I didn't trust myself not to toss myself over the rail simply to scratch my intellectual itch.
There was a French term for it, I recalled. A term for that obsession with death, that odd compulsion to throw oneself from a high place alongside a lack of suicidal ideation—but I couldn't remember the word. Had been a long time since I had any reason to think in French.
But I was stalling.
I was stalling because I didn't want to think about what I needed to think about, and because I didn't know what to do.
I had no fucking idea what to do.
This went beyond "What would Keiko do?" Now I wasn't sure what question to ask myself, much less the answer to it.
Earlier that afternoon, wandering behind the boys through the scintillating arcade, I'd wracked my brains for what I knew about Amanuma. I'd gathered every last piece of information I could recall, hoping to arrange it into a mental dossier that would tell me precisely how to handle the unexpected situation unfolding before me. I recalled as follows: Amanuma was a kid, he lived a city over (what was he even doing in Sarayashiki?), he was great at games—and he was lonely. That was the biggest personality trait I could recall, the most important piece of the Amanuma puzzle. He was lonely as hell, and that's how Sensui got his claws into the kid in the first place. Didn't even have to show him Chapter Black to get him to go along with Sensui's scheme, in fact. Just gave the kid a chance to belong to something and Amanuma went along with it, because he was so fucking lonely.
Earlier, I'd wracked my brain for all of that. But I wasn't wracking now. Now I just stared, eyes unseeing, over the dark roofs of the surrounding neighborhood, chest as cold as the wind in my hair.
In theory, I should have taken control of the situation as soon as Amanuma introduced himself. In theory, I should have taken the reins and swung into action and fixed all of this the minute he walked up.
Instead I'd let Amanuma win me the octopus under my arm and make friends with the boys.
Make friends. When he was supposed to be lonely.
What a mess.
What a fucking mess.
I'd been too overwhelmed to do a goddamn thing, when Amanuma showed up out of the blue the way he had. I'd wracked and wracked and wracked until mental exhaustion led to physical exhaustion, following the boys around from arcade to restaurant in a stunned haze, unable to do anything but weakly protest ("Now, now, we can't stay out too late.") when they invited the boy to dinner.
Because what else was I supposed to do? Be actively mean to an innocent kid to preserve canon?
Nah, Amanuma, you can't sit with us. On Wednesdays we wear pink and your hair is hideous. Who am i, Regina George?
My chin tipped down, viewpoint swinging with it into the dark abyss below the fire escape. I wondered with more clarity what it would be like to pitch over the railing and over the edge, into that dark below. The rail would bite into my stomach for just a second, perhaps pushing a little air from my chest, and then I'd fall. I'd fall into the cold and dark, smash on the pavement, just obliterate into a thousand tiny stars of consciousness and scattered atoms, and cease to exist.
It was almost comical. I'd completely lost control of the situation when Amanuma arrived. Death was, ironically, perhaps the one thing I could control—though perhaps Hiruko would intervene again. I'd smashed my head in once, a car crash as opposed to a flight into the void, and Hiruko hadn't let it stick.
Right. That was the term for it: l'appel du vide. Translation, "the call of the void." That was the phrase I was looking for.
Don't get me wrong. I wasn't suicidal. There was no desire in me to die. I wanted to live. And perhaps that's what these thoughts were telling me. Some psychologists thought l'appel du vide was the brain's way of reminding you to appreciate life, in fact.
I don't know, really. But damn if a long nap in the void didn't sound appealing, if it meant an escape from the responsibility dogging my steps that night.
Speaking of which: I did not want to go back into that restaurant. So, I wouldn't. It's not like anyone could make me, after all.
I had just sat down, legs thrust between the bars of the fire escape so my feet could dangle in thin air, when the door behind me creaked open. "Kei?" Kurama said.
"Here," I replied.
He didn't move. I leaned my forehead against one of the bars in front of me, octopus toy pillowed on my lap. Its strawberry scent mixed with the garbage smell from the alley, tangy and pungent. No one could make me come back inside, but I got the feeling Kurama was about to try, so I braced myself. Not that I had much fight in me at that point.
"They're wondering where you've gone," Kurama said.
I snorted. "How many constipation jokes has Yusuke made?"
He started to speak. Stopped. Admitted in a quiet, embarrassed whisper: "Four."
"Disappointing," I said. "I'd counted on at least six."
"You make jokes to deflect."
That simple declarative sentence wasn't voiced like an accusation, but in my agitated state it somehow felt like one. I shifted in my seat and grimaced, pressing my forehead against the bars until it almost hurt. The cold empty spot beneath my ribs yawned open like a black hole, trying to suck down every last drop of my emotions.
"I hate that you can read me so well," I said.
"I consider it a blessing." His footsteps, measured and precise, barely vibrated through the metal fire escape when he walked across it and sat at my side, leaning against the railing instead of threading his legs through it. He could look at me this way, head turned to one side with the crown of his head against the bars, green eyes luminescent even in the single fitful light above the door. "Especially when you keep to yourself with such tenacity."
I said, "It's necessary."
"I know," he said. "I understand the necessity of keeping your knowledge of the future secret." Here his voice firmed. "But I wish you would trust me to—oh!"
Kurama didn't quite know how to react when I started to cry, but then again, neither did I. I hadn't expected tears. He hadn't even gotten going, admonishing me, but the tears had started nonetheless. I blotted at them with my sleeve with almost angry swipes, teeth bared in annoyance at the hiccups inflating my tight chest. Kurama offered me a handkerchief, which I took with a growl of thanks. This was more embarrassing than anything, crying out of nowhere—embarrassing and inconvenient. Crying filled the empty pot in my chest with a heavy weight, surging and bubbling, forcing its way up my neck like lava from the mouth of a volcano. But I kept none of my journals in Japanese, and despite a lifetime's worth of speaking such, I knew I couldn't express myself in any language but my native one.
"May I speak English?" I rasped.
"Yes," Kurama said, uncertain.
With his permission, I launched right in. "It's a gigantic clock, the world. All these moving gears and parts, spinning in place and intersecting with only the barest of margins for error, a cosmic spiral of fate and destiny and intention as inscrutable as the whirling stars." These were the words I'd written in private, had told myself a hundred times over, and at their sound Kurama's eyes widened. I blazed forward, unable to slow or stop. "The slightest anomaly could shatter the gears, send them spiraling out of control, hands striking midnight at high noon, fate inverted and perverted until nothing but ash remains." I thrust a hand at the door behind us, handkerchief waving like a white flag. "That boy we met tonight is a small cog in an enormous mechanism, and if the teeth of that cog fall out of alignment, I have no idea what consequences might be wrought. And I have no idea of those consequences will be terrible or insignificant."
Kurama paused, sorting through the English onslaught. "To know the future," he eventually said, gravitas unmistakable. "To know fate—it isn't the gift some assume it might be."
"That's just it. I don't know the future. I know one future. I know one version of fate." Another wave at the door, motion almost violent. "A version that could evaporate if I don't fix what's going on inside right at this very moment."
But even as I said the words, I knew how futile they were. I sagged against the fire escape, fingers winding around the bars with just enough strength to hold onto them—but only just. And then they lost their grip entirely and fell to the octopus on my lap.
"What do you need to do?" Kurama asked.
"Something awful," I said.
I shut my eyes. The next part wasn't something I could face with eyes wide open.
"That boy is lonely," I said. "Terribly, terminally lonely. So lonely he could die, in fact. And for him to play his role in fate successfully, he needs to suffer that cruel fate. I need to stand back and let him fall into absolute despair." My chest shuddered. "I need to stand idle and watch."
Unbidden, my hands pressed into the octopus, releasing a burst of strawberry scent I only barely smelled—because to smell something so sweet when I spoke something so foul wasn't fair. Not fair at all. Kurama didn't move beside me, didn't flinch away like I feared he might at my admission. In fact, he didn't move at all, but that was almost worse. He went utterly still, unmoving the way he did when the moment became unbearably tense, and I stilled, too, to echo him.
"That isn't the Kei I know," he said after a time. "That isn't the Kei who made my mother so many meals." His voice gained a modicum of strength. "That isn't the Kei who came to me on that rooftop and saved me from myself."
"I know," I said.
My eyes fluttered open, giving me a view of the darkness below. I tried not to think of l'appel du vide again. I thought of l'appel du vide again. I thought of having the power to throw myself into the void, and of having the power to refrain.
I thought of Amanuma having no power at all.
"I am in agony, Kurama—because that boy does not deserve his fate." The words slipped out of their own accord and I found myself quite unwilling to stop them. Part of me screamed to stop, to keep secrets, to preserve destiny as had been my practice since I first came to this new world, but the rest of me didn't have the willpower to care. The words poured from my mouth like boiling water from a geyser as I said, "Amanuma does not deserve what happens to him, Kurama. He does not deserve to suffer the way he is destined to. And in the end fate intervenes, and it rights the wrongs that happen to him, but even so. Even so! The cruelty he suffers—" I gnashed my teeth. "And what if fate does not behave as it's supposed to? What if the deus ex machina that saves him breaks down like a clock unwinding, gears tarnished, unable to perform its duty? What if I ensure the fate of this boy's suffering, but I undo the fate of his salvation?"
I looked at Kurama for the first time in a long time, then, for confirmation or condemnation I can't say. He provided neither. He merely stared at me, stricken, back ramrod straight and eyes narrow with… I don't even know what. Worry? Fear? Anger? Confusion? There was no telling. There was no finding out. There was no stopping to find out because I wasn't finished, and if I didn't say this now, there was a chance I'd never say it at all.
And I needed to say it, I thought.
I needed to say it, or else I might explode.
"I'm the aberration, in the end," I told him. "I'm what's different about the legend today. Me, and only me. If things go wrong, it's all on me. I'm the one to blame. The only one to blame. And the pressure of that—"
I shook my head and laughed—laughed long and loud and hysterical, head thrown back atop my limp neck, clutching the stuffed toy on my lap like it could save me from drowning. Kurama watched without a word, and now true worry crept into his gaze. He'd seen me anxious. He'd never seen me quite like this.
"That's why I keep things from you, Kurama," I said, uncaring of how unhinged I looked, uncaring in the slightest for editing myself (a choice I would, perhaps, regret eventually, but in the moment I found I did not care). "I can't put that burden on anyone else. This life I live? This fate I know? It's excruciating. It's excruciating, knowing the choices I make could result in chaos. That by being true to myself, by treating that boy kindly the way I want to, that by being kind I could kill you."
Kurama roused from whatever trance he'd been in when he repeated me words back at me, saying, "Kill me?"
Uh oh. Despite my revelatory state of mind, that had been too specific—too specifically tying him to the Amanuma situation, to the chance of him losing the Goblin City game. With haste I waved a hand and shook my head.
"Kill you. Kill everyone," I tried to amend. "The fate of the world depends on the loneliness of a grade-schooler—depends on him dying at just the right moment in time."
I stopped, biting my lip to bite back the rest of what I'd been about to say. Kurama leaned toward me almost imperceptibly, drawing in a sharp breath that sounded almost like a gasp. I hadn't meant to go that far in my confession tonight.
But now that I'd gone there—
Fuck it.
"Because that's his destiny, Kurama," I admitted in a softer voice, one tangled up in regret and sorrow. "His fate is to die. And he'll be brought back, but he will cower in terror before he goes, and he will live in utter, depraved loneliness until his life snuffs out." My head shook harder than it had all night, hair slicing against my cheeks. "It goes against everything I believe it, to stand by while someone else suffers, but for the wellbeing of everyone I care for, I have to watch him rot. I hate it." The admission cut my tongue like a blade. I sat there in silence, reeling from the sting, and then I repeated: "I don't know what to do and I hate it. I hate it." I looked at him in as much wonder as I did horror. "I hate it, Kurama. I hate it—!"
And then I was crying again.
Kurama took my breakdown very much in stride, with a level of poise that shouldn't have surprised me, and yet it did. He looped an arm in front of my shoulders and pulled me to him, hand tangling with the hair on the back of my head as I pressed my face into the crook of his neck and dug my hands into his school jacket. I owed him a dry-cleaning bill, probably, but he didn't say a single word as sobs tried to shake my bones apart. He only stroked my hair with his thumb and let me cry until I couldn't cry anymore, and when I pulled away, he looked very politely to one side while I composed myself. I knew I'd be embarrassed about this in the morning, but I was too tired to give a damn that night.
"You said that boy doesn't deserve the fate he has been given," Kurama said as I mopped off my face. "Neither do you."
For a moment I thought I hadn't heard him right, blinking into his borrowed handkerchief in disbelief. Soon I lifted my face from the cloth and very articulately blurted, "What?"
"You didn't ask for this life," he said, still not looking at me. Another wind blew by, curling his hair around his broad shoulders. "You didn't ask to be put in this position, responsible for the fates of those you care for. It eats at you. I can see it." And then at last he looked at me. Luminous eyes searched my face, steady and insightful. "I see it gnawing at you from the inside out, day after day. It's a burden you won't share, even if, perhaps, you should." His lips thinned. "It's a wonder you haven't broken down before today."
"I have."
His brow knit. "When?"
"When you found me out." I swallowed. "But it all worked out OK, so I was OK, too."
He considered this. What he thought about it, I can't say. We sat in silence for a long time—and I wondered how long we'd been outside, what the boys might be thinking of our absence. I didn't want to go back in yet, necessarily, but if Yusuke had forgotten his wallet I didn't want him walking out on the check or leaving Kuwabara and Amanuma (or me, for that matter) saddled with—
"You said that being true to yourself could end in chaos."
I flinched at Kurama's soft voice, at his unyielding stare and the way he'd angled his torso ever so slightly toward me. "Yes," I said in belated answer.
"Then let chaos descend," he replied.
I couldn't have heard him right. "What?" I said.
"We welcome chaos. I welcome chaos." His chin lifted, internal decisions—inexplicable as they were—made and set. "Whatever storm it brings, we'll weather it together."
"You don't understand what you're suggesting," I said, because clearly he didn't, he couldn't.
"Don't I?" Kurama said, face composed and cool. His eyes hardened into chips of bladed malachite. "You said your choice could kill me. I do not believe you misspoke. You rarely misspeak. I believe I am connected to this, and intimately. Am I wrong?"
"No," I had no choice but to admit.
"Then it is not even your choice to make," came his simple reasoning. "It is mine."
"You—but you don't understand."
My weak reply seemed to grate at him, for his lips pulled back below his narrowing eyes. Kurama leaned toward me, the part of him that was Shuichi making way for pure Kurama, that demon I barely knew who was all bared teeth and radiating menace surging to the forefront. "Then make me understand," he said, leaning so close I caught a hint of evergreen and mint. "I understand the need for your secrecy, Kei, but even my patience has its—"
Under the weight of his livid gaze, something inside me broke.
"That boy is recruited by an enemy to stand in our way on the eve of the end of the world," I said, "and you will have no choice but to kill him when that time comes, to prevent the descent of an apocalypse."
It was the most detailed thing I'd ever said regarding our shared future, and Kurama knew it. He pulled back in shock, blinking away the wild until the Kurama I knew returned in full. We traded a long look, bald and vulnerable, until he spoke.
"Me," he said.
"You," I said.
"I will have to kill a child."
"Yes." I took a deep breath, one that shook in my throat. "He was a stranger to you in the legend. And if he becomes your friend today…"
"You fear I won't do what must be done." A beat, and then: "You underestimate me."
I winced. "You're not that cruel."
"But I am that dedicated," he said. "But I am the kind of man who does what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, my feelings notwithstanding." Once more he lifted his chin, imperious and proud. "You once blamed yourself for my actions, Kei, when I did not use the Mirror of Darkness to cure my mother. Do not make the mistake of crediting yourself for my decisions again." The faintest of smiles ghosted across his mouth. "My pride will not allow it."
"I imagine so." And the strength left me, head hanging atop my boneless neck. I lifted the octopus plush to my mouth and murmured "What have I done, telling you this?" as I drank the scent of its fur.
"You've given me a choice," Kurama said, utterly matter of fact, not at all bothered by the risk I had just taken in divulging the future to him—perhaps he had more faith in fate than I did, or perhaps he just had faith in me, though in the moment that seemed preposterous. "You have a choice to make, as well."
Kurama put a hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head, agonizing though the action felt, to look him in his bright eye. He was all serious, then, no smiles or jokes to soften his delivery. What he had to say booked no room for prevarication.
"You have two options. The first is to do nothing. Betray your principles and let that boy suffer," he said. "The second is to honor yourself, and to do what you feel is right."
"Right for him, or right for everyone?" I murmured.
"I can't say. It isn't up to me."
A million different responses flitted through my head just then. Jokes about the Trolley Problem in real life, utilitarianism's practical application, that Agents, Actions and Ends class I took in college finally getting put to good use. But none of that felt appropriate. None of that felt like it mattered, relevant though it most certainly was. Instead I looked back out into the dark, into the light-polluted sky devoid of stars, and sighed.
"You know," I said. "Sometimes I ask myself 'What would Keiko do?' The real Keiko, I mean. The Keiko I replaced." I smiled at the starless sky, at the void arching high above. "She was kind, the real Keiko, but she was responsible. She was strong."
"And what do you think you are?" Kurama asked.
It took me a minute to work up the courage and admit: "I don't know what I am." But that was the truth, and to say anything else would be a betrayal indescribable. "But she would know what to do right now."
"Kei."
Once more he touched my shoulder. Once more I looked his way, managing the shakiest of smiles I barely felt inside. He matched it with a smile of his own, mild and subtle. A Kurama smile. One he didn't show me often, but one I drank the sight of eagerly.
"Perhaps instead of wondering what the other Keiko would do—" He paused, gathering himself. When his green eyes firmed, he looked me in mine and continued. "Perhaps it's best you ask what Kei would do, instead," he said.
His hand on my shoulder tightened.
"The original Keiko does not have a monopoly on good decisions," he said.
Kurama knew better than to wait around, I think. He knew I'd only argue, or that I'd shrug off the compliment with something self-deprecating. With one final squeeze of my shoulder he stood and went back inside, carefully propping open the door so I wouldn't get stranded on the fire escape.
I didn't move.
Not for a while, anyway.
I'm not sure how long I sat there, honestly. I'm not sure how long it took me to swim from the depths of my own disquiet and stand, to walk back into the restaurant and down the dark hallway, to the edge of the well-lit interior where I could watch the boys talk and laugh at eat at their chosen booth. Amanuma almost glowed as Yusuke ruffled his hair, freckled face beaming from the inside out at the attention he probably felt starved for.
I didn't know what to do.
I still didn't know what to do, even after everything Kurama had said to me—but he was right. The crux of the matter was the choice of being true to myself or respecting canon… and in this case, the two were not compatible.
So what was I supposed to do, exactly?
Yusuke cackled, the sound audible even from my distant vantage point. Amanuma joined in. I heard him laughing, too, even from so far off—and at the sound of that eager laugh, something inside me solidified.
Perhaps it was the wrong choice, what I did next. Perhaps it was a choice that would damn us all, bring us to ruin, make everything about this life I'd made for myself come crashing down around my well-meaning head.
Still.
It was the choice I made—and I made it myself.
I took a deep breath.
I steeled my nerves.
I walked into the restaurant, over to the boys, and back into the light.
NOTES:
I recognize this is a bit shorter than usual, I'm not feeling motivated enough to write 10,000 words like I do most weeks.
Also this chapter was dark but I'm OK, so don't worry.
It was wonderful to hear from you after coming back from hiatus. I hope more of you return to reading the story this week. To the following I give enormous thanks for greeting the story as it returned from hiatus. I couldn't do this without you: xenocanaan, Nozomi Higurashi, disenchanted love, MissIdeophobia, tatewaki2000, C.S. Stars, Just 2 Dream of You, Dark Rose Charm, wennifer-lynn, yofa, Blase1662001, FreeRainbowsWithLove, Shen0, Miqila, Viviene001, Ignis76, DiCuore Alissa, Marian, Lady Ellesmere, masqvia, Laina Inverse, Beccalittlebear, MyMidnightShadow, Kaiya Azure, general zargon, ahyeon, zubhanwc3, kykygrly, Desaid, almostNEET, Tay (love your song idea!), Silverwing013, and give guests!
