Warnings: None


Lucky Child

Chapter 91:

"Pillow Fights"


Seven years before Yusuke entered the Dark Tournament and fought for both his life and the lives of his friends, my parents took us on a weekend trip to the beach… and Yusuke spent half of it mad at me.

To be completely honest, I couldn't remember why he was mad—not seven years later at the Dark Tournament, and not even back then, hours after whatever it was I'd done to piss him off. We were eight years old at the time, and I assume I must've done something silly (like get sand in his shorts or splash his face with seawater when he wasn't ready for it). The long and short if the situation was that he spent the drive from the beach to our hotel in silence, lower lip pouting out and arms crossed petulantly over his thin chest. One minute he was yakking, the next he was all scowls and surly silence, and try though I might to make him smile with silly faces and fart sounds, he remained belligerently pissed off at me.

Mom and Dad exchanged a Look over our heads shortly after getting to the hotel room—one of amusement tempered by fatigue, not to mention the affection of parents in the face of their children's antics. They left Yusuke and me alone to track down dinner for us soon after, with strict instructions to behave while they were gone.

It was obvious (to me, at least) that they were hoping we'd make up while they were gone. Keiko's parents always did believe in me like that; apparently they believed in Yusuke, too, even though he didn't say anything to them when they left. He was too busy lying on the bed watching TV in brooding silence. It was up to me, then, to build bridges… but that wasn't unusual. It's not like both of us were reincarnated almost-30-year-olds, after all.

Hoping to make nice, I crawled up onto the hotel room's dingy duvet cover with a sigh. As soon as I got near Yusuke, however, he jumped off the bed and headed for the couch near the windows, not looking at me even once. I sat up on my elbows with a sigh, glaring at him as he stared at the TV.

"Look. I said I was sorry, OK?" I said.

Yusuke's lip jutted out. "Hmmph."

OK. So it was time to try a bribe, then. "I'll eat a hot pepper like we do on New Year's if you'll just talk to me," I promised.

His lip jutted so hard I feared it might fall off. "Hmmph!" he grunted, louder this time.

"Not even a hot pepper…?" That bribe usually worked, but apparently whatever I'd done was too grievous for such petty apologies. I flopped down onto the bed with a frustrated groan. "Yusuke, what gives?" I said. "What did I even do?"

He harrumphed yet again. "You know what you did."

"No, I really don't."

His nose thrust high into the air. "Then I've got nothin' to say to you."

I rolled my eyes. "Drama queen."

Yusuke's head swung sharply in my direction.

I stuck out my tongue.

His eyes narrowed.

And then we were grabbing pillows and lunging at each other, fluffy weapons swinging.

The fight lasted for at least ten minutes. We beat each other up with pillows until our arms ached, chests rising and falling with hard breaths until we both collapsed onto one of the beds, too tired to continue. He rested his head on my leg, and for a second I thought that meant he'd forgiven me—but he just pinched the back of my knee with a fiendish laugh when I wasn't expecting it, and the race was on once more. I squealed and gave him a vicious noogie; he tried to give me a wedgie for revenge, and we ended up having another round of pillow fighting until we collapsed from sheer exhaustion all over again. This time he didn't pinch me or try to tickle me or whatever other juvenile revenge scheme he preferred. He simply rested the back of his head on my stomach, and when I smiled down at him, he lifted his head and grinned.

"Wanna watch cartoons with me?" Yusuke said.

My brow cocked. "So you're not mad anymore?"

Yusuke's head tilted to the side. "I was mad?"

"Uh. Yes? You were literally just—"

But he looked away with a shrug and a murmur of, "Eh. Whatever."

A moment passed in silence.

I deadpan asked, "You don't even remember what you were mad about, do you?"

Yusuke sat up straight and flushed. "Shut up! Yes I do!"

"Then tell me what you were so mad about!"

Rather than answer, Yusuke reached for another pillow.

We fought again, and when we were done, we bought candy from a vending machine in the hallway. We ate it and watched cartoons, giggling at Doraemon together, and we disposed of the candy wrappers in a hallway trash can so Mom and Dad couldn't get mad at us for ruining our dinners.

We never spoke of why Yusuke was mad at me again—because I truly think that by that point, Yusuke had forgotten.


Predictably, Kuwabara was livid when he learned about the stunt his sister had pulled while he was unconscious—but a single ferocious glance from Shizuru silenced his protests in a snap.

"Still, though," he weakly argued as we walked back to the hotel in a limping, ragtag group. "Who knows what the tournament committee goons might pull now that they know you're here?" His jaw tightened. "You girls will need to come stay in our suite tonight. That's an order."

Shizuru's glare reappeared. "And who are you to be giving me orders?" Although she wasn't as tall as Kuwabara, she still somehow managed to loom over him, puffing gouts of intimidating smoke into his panicked face. "Eh, baby bro?"

Kuwabara yelped and backed off at once—but when Kurama gave a silken murmur of agreement, and Yusuke said he'd like to keep an eye on his mom so she didn't drink the hotel's entire stockpile of booze in one night, and even Hiei voiced that there was safety in numbers (a point no doubt motivated by the desire to keep Yukina close), Shizuru rolled her eyes and, on behalf of all the girls, acquiesced to her brother's paranoid demand.

But not before Botan insisted we should have a big ol' dinner party in the guys' suite, of course.

The tone of the evening was one of celebration. Yusuke was still riding a high from his fight with Jin, I think, because he backed up Botan's proposal and only barely glared at me when I suggested we order room service. Room service was complimentary and everyone was too tired to cook, I pointed out, which made it an ideal solution to the dinner issue. Once we were in agreement, we went back to the boy's suite (a floor below ours in another wing of the hotel) and scrounged up the extensive room service menu. The boys' suite was just like ours, with a kitchen and two bedrooms set off of a spacious living room, but their suite appeared to be just a little bit bigger then the girls'—and a good thing, too, considering how many of us were packed inside it. The menu was the same, though, and we all gathered around the kitchen table together to pick out what we'd be eating.

Well, all of us minus Hiei (who I instructed to go find a shirt) and Kurama (who disappeared into one of the bedrooms to perform minor surgery on himself and pick all the vines out of his veins, not to mention wash off all the blood). Kuwabara also hung back from the frenzy of picking food, huddling on the couch with his duffle bag full of instant noodles and canned coffee. He still feared getting poisoned, even when Botan lectured him that he was being unreasonable.

"Oh yeah?" Kuwabara said after she finished her lecture. "What'll you be ordering since you think it's so safe, huh?"

She grinned, chipper as always. "Why, I'm not sure! But don't order anything for me just yet."

"We weren't," I said, tapping my pen against the notepad where I'd been transcribing dinner orders. "We're waiting for later since it's too early for dinner—wait, where are you going?"

She was halfway to the suite's front door by then. Botan pivoted and walked backwards so she could look at me, fumbling behind her for the doorknob. "Oh, nowhere, nowhere!" she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I'll be back soon!"

Shizuru looked up from the menu with a scowl. "Wait, where the heck are you—?"

Atsuko scowled, too. "At least use the buddy system, for cripe's sake—"

But Botan was already gone, the door falling softly shut behind her with a click.

I finished taking everyone's order, jotting down all items on the notepad I found in a desk drawer. When we finished, we waited for a bit, but when Botan didn't immediately return we settled down in the living room to… well, to wait some more. There wasn't exactly anything else to do. It wasn't quite the dinner hour and we wouldn't be placing our order for some time, anyway. Atsuko sprawled across the couch while Yusuke and Kuwabara sat in some of the large plush chairs near it; Shizuru and Yukina sat together on one of the other couches, too, as Atsuko began to fill Yusuke in about how we'd made it to the Tournament and some of the stuff we'd gotten up to since arriving. Meanwhile, I puttered about the suite tidying up. Yusuke had left his socks lying around, that slob, and just then I would have much rather faced the stench of his smelly feet than feel him glaring at me.

Because that's what he kept doing as I cleaned up and tried to avoid talking to him. Every so often I'd see his head turn and catch the barest glimpse of his eyes flashing before he looked away again. Or he'd look around the suite with faux insouciance, eyes gliding over my face without pausing for even an instant—that kind of pointed avoidance that meant the person obviously wanted to look at you but didn't want you to know they wanted to look at you.

Which meant Yusuke was still very much mad at me.

Ugh.

I ducked into the kitchen after that and got down plates and silverware, prepping for the dinner we'd soon order and then eat. At least in the kitchen, Yusuke couldn't see me, which meant I couldn't see him pretending not to look my way. Small comfort, but I'd take what I could get…

Eventually I heard a door open and shut in the other half of the suite. Poking my head out of the kitchen, I saw Kurama (sans the plants he'd placed inside his bloodstream, that masochist) walk out of a bedroom and sit beside Shizuru on the couch. He wore fresh clothes and moved with care, as if perhaps his wounds might not be completely shut beneath the long sleeves of his button-up shirt (a black shirt, which wasn't his usual color, but I suppose he was trying to hide any potential wound-leakage with the dark shade and I respect that). I waved as he sat down, but when the motion caught Yusuke's eye instead of Kurama's, earning me yet another glare, I froze in place.

Somehow that got Kurama's attention, because he looked over at me and frowned. "Kei. Are you all right?" he said, voice soft with concern.

Kuwabara turned around to shoot me a curious stare. "Huh? What's up?"

I braved a smile for both their sakes. "I'm fine." Another wave, this one as awkward as the first. "Be right back."

The feeling of eyes on my neck only abated once my feet mechanically carried me into one of the nearby bedrooms—the one Kurama hadn't just come out of, which meant it must be Yusuke's room (if Yusuke and Kuwabara roomed together like they did in the anime, at least). My hunch was confirmed when I saw a forest green duffle bag sitting in the corner, athletic wear spilling haphazardly from its unzipped innards. This was Yusuke's duffle, of course, and in the bathroom I found a tub of his preferred pomade sitting beside the sink, lid slightly askew. His frayed toothbrush sat next to it (Yusuke tended to gnaw his toothbrushes into oblivion), as did a few hair products and combs that I assumed must belong to Kuwabara.

"They have more hair products than I do," I muttered as I counted the pomade tubs, mousse bottles, and various other setting and styling products. "And they say girls are high maintenance…"

The thought made me giggle, but when my hand closed around Yusuke's pomade so I could close its lid properly, my heart sank. He'd made sure to pack his hair styling regimen when he came to the tournament. Had he thought to pack my letter, too?

I thought of Yusuke's duffle bag. I hadn't spotted a letter lying among his scattered clothes, but perhaps inside…?

"What're the odds he made handy notations in the margins that I can use to divine his true feelings?" I mused to no one. "Slim to none?" I nodded, pomade lid clicking shut under my fingers. "Yeah. Slim to none."

"Keiko?"

I jumped, but it was only Botan poking her head through the bathroom's open doorway. I put my hand to my heart with a sigh. "You scared me!"

"Oh, sorry!" she said with a laugh. "I just wanted to let you know I was back, and that I was going to place our room service order." Botan waved the notepad with all of our orders on it at me; she'd added her meal at the bottom, her handwriting far loopier and more feminine than mine. "The only phone is in here, you see. Well, there's one in Kurama's room, too, but somehow it didn't feel right to invade his space. But Yusuke? I stay with him all the time, so…" She paused mid-ramble, looking me over as her blue eyebrows knit close together. "Are you all right?"

Why did people keep asking me that? Pasting on a smile, I shook my head. "Doing fine. Go ahead and order. I won't bother you."

She seemed uncertain, but I just shooed her out of the bathroom and shut the door after her. I didn't have to pee, but I sat on the toilet anyway and stared at my toes, listening as Botan's soft voice filtered through the door like the murmur of a distant ocean. Eventually she fell silent, and some time after that I thought I heard the bedroom door open and shut. Good. She'd left, then. To really sell the fiction of "Keiko needed a pee break," I flushed the toilet and washed my hands—but when I walked out of the bathroom, Botan was sitting on the bed. I shrieked a little. She shrieked, too, but composed herself more quickly than I did.

"Keiko, you sure are jumpy tonight!" she said. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah." This was mostly a lie, of course, but she didn't need to know that. I sat beside her on the bed as my heart stopped beating out of my chest. "I just, ah—" The next words out of my mouth were more genuine. "I just needed to be alone for a few minutes."

Botan's eyes softened. "We are all stepping on each other quite a lot, aren't we? Especially since we're going to be staying with the boys tonight."

A vision of Yusuke's sharp eyes flashed through my head. "I dunno about that," I said, one knee curling toward my chest.

She frowned. "You don't—?"

"I mean, is there even enough room for all of us?" I gestured at the two beds in the room, then at the door to the living room. "We'd have to double up on beds and maybe have some people use a futon…"

Her frowned deepened. "Keiko, I'm confused. Haven't we decided to stay? Your suitcase is already here, isn't it?"

And she pointed at the green duffle bag in the corner. I looked between it and her a few times, wondering what she was on about—and then, when it hit me, I couldn't help but laugh.

"Oh, no. That's Yusuke's. We have the same duffle bag." I grinned at the memory. "My parents bought them for us when we went on a trip to the beach a long time ago."

"Oh, but it wasn't the bag that made me think—um." Her cheeks pinked; she looked away. "Never mind."

It wasn't like Botan to just drop a subject. "What?" I asked, peering at her. "What are you getting at?"

Her eyes cut from me to the bag and back again. She took a deep breath, and when my stare didn't falter, she admitted: "Those looked like your clothes, is all."

Slowly, the two of us turned toward the duffle bag. Out of it spilled a pair of high-waisted mom jeans. A cutoff shirt. Athletic shorts. A t-shirt with a torn hem—dude clothes, mostly. The things Yusuke always wore.

And the same things you could find in my green duffle bag back in the other hotel suite.

… oh.

Oh.

My ears felt hot all of a sudden. "Oh. Um. I wear a lot of Yusuke's old clothes. Once he outgrows them." I rubbed the back of my neck with a laugh. "No sense letting them go to waste, right?"

Botan gnawed on her lower lip. Just then, the door to the room opened with a creak. "Maybe," said a dry, scratchy voice. "But it wouldn't kill you to own a blouse or two, would it?"

Botan wheeled toward the door and chucked a pillow in that direction. "Shizuru!" she scolded. "At least I was being tactful about it!"

"And I do own blouses!" I protested. "And I wore a dress yesterday, thank you very much!"

Shizuru walked into the room and kicked the door shut behind her. "Yeah, a dress with shorts under it and a bunch of throwing knives strapped to your leg." She plucked the cigarette from between her lips and exhaled a plume of smoke. "Face it, Keiko. If someone could mistake your suitcase for a boy like Yusuke's, you might need to consider a wardrobe overhaul."

"Yes, Keiko. I agree!" Botan snatched up my hands and beamed. "You're such a lovely girl, but the way you dress is sometimes…"

Her beam turned into a sympathetic stare. Shizuru's was more pitying than sympathetic, but she and Botan were both looking at me with such similar expressions, it felt… odd. Odd enough to give me a rather foreboding hunch.

"Have you two discussed my wardrobe before?" I said, glancing at them one after the other. "Out of my hearing?"

Botan looked away with a nervous giggle. Shizuru very carefully inspected the end of her cigarette. The hunch budding in my chest solidified.

"Oh. So you have discussed me before." I put a hand on my chin and pretended to look thoughtful. "I think I'm having an epiphany." The hand dropped. "Oh, wait. No. Nope. It's gone. Neither of you make a fair point and I'm going to ignore everything you just said." As Botan choked on air, caught between laughter and a reprimand, I asked, "What're you doing in here, anyway, Shizuru?"

"Avoiding my brother." She rolled her eyes as the sound of Kuwabara's gruff voice penetrated the door at her back; he was yelling something at Yusuke, by the sound of it. "You?"

My turn to roll my eyes. "Avoiding my brother."

Botan frowned. "Your bro—?" She cut herself off as understanding dawned in her bright eyes. "Oh. I see. You mean Yusuke."

While I nodded, Shizuru asked, "And you, Botan? Why'd you come in here?"

"Just ordering dinner.

"And before that?" Shizuru pressed. "Where were you earlier?"

"Scheduling a meeting for Koenma, actually. He left me a note." For some reason she turned to me to say, "Yusuke should be back in time for dinner later, but Koenma requested he meet with him in half an hour in the forest outside the hotel." Her smile turned a little sad. "I'll be walking Yusuke to the meeting spot, but I'll hang back once Koenma arrives."

I patted her knee; she squeezed my fingers with a small, weary sigh. She was still not on good terms with Koenma… but aside from that, it was easy enough to guess what the meeting would be about, though I tried not to let expectations infiltrate my expression. "Yeah, try to have him back soon," I said, attempting cheer to distract her from her woes. "Don't want dinner to get cold, and Yusuke can get real picky about cold food.."

She saluted with a giggle. "Roger that."

"Speaking of Yusuke." Shizuru sat on the end of the bed, her back to us as she spoke. "Looks like you two are still—"

Shizuru didn't get to finish. The door burst open midway through her sentence as someone pelted into the room with a shout of, "Botan, wait, I think we only ordered meat but Keiko doesn't eat—" He shut up when he spotted me, brown eyes as wide as I'd ever seen them, and he uttered a very tiny, "Oh."

A long, awkward silence followed.

Yusuke muttered: "You're here."

"So it would seem." I tried on my best and most grateful smile. "Thanks for looking out for me, though."

"Is that what I was doing?" Yusuke dug a finger in his ear, looking anywhere but at me. "Or was I just making sure you didn't get the meat farts later?"

My smile disappeared. "You're disgusting."

"Hey, you're the one who gets the shits if you accidentally eat pork," he shot back. "And since you're sleeping here tonight, I just can't take that risk."

"I, um." Botan raised one hand meekly into the air. "N-not to worry. I put tofu on the list for Keiko."

"Hmmph." Yusuke flashed me an impish grin. "See? Even Botan knows about the meat far—"

Words bubbled in my chest. "Yusuke—can we talk?" I blurted, hating how desperate I sounded. "Please?"

He stopped talking at once. As he stared at me in silence, Botan looked eagerly between us. Shizuru sighed and rolled to her feet. I suspected she'd head for the door, but instead she walked around the bed and hauled Botan up, tugging her out of the room by the back of her collar. "C'mon, nosey," she muttered around her cigarette. "Four's a crowd."

Botan whined. "But Shizuru!"

It was, perhaps, the closest I'd ever get to seeing Botan wear a real, live Nosey Kitty Face, but in that moment I barely noticed. I was too busy trading dire eye contact with Yusuke to really clock the way Botan looked as Shizuru dragged her from the room. I was too busy trying to get my heart out of my mouth as the door shut, leaving Yusuke and I very much alone.

Alone for the first time since the disastrous night when I tried to tell him who I really was—and the way he wouldn't quite look at me said he realized this, too.

He still refused to look at me as I curled my legs under my ass, grabbing a pillow off the head of the bed to hold tight in my arms. "Hi," I said, mostly to get his attention but also to break the silence.

My ploy worked. His eyes flickered my way, although he stayed standing at the foot of the bed. "Well, spit it out," he told me. "What do you want to talk about?"

I took a deep breath.

With every ounce of my courage to gird me, I asked him: "Did you get my letter?"

For a minute or so, silence reigned.

Then Yusuke said, "Letter?"

His tone was casual—too casual—and something about it got under my skin. I clutched the pillow in my arms a little tighter. Feathers inside it squished in on themselves with a creaking sound, small vibrations running down the length of my prickling forearms.

"Yeah. Letter." Sarcasm reared its head in response to my heart trying to bust out of my chest. "You know. Sent in an envelope, a stamp on the front, sheets of paper covered in writing inside…?"

Yusuke sat down on the bed in a huff. Although he put his back to me, he still turned one baleful eye my way. "I know what a letter is, grandma," he snarked.

"OK. Cool." I held my hands out, palms up in supplication. "So…?"

"So?" Yusuke repeated, as if the word was stupid as hell and even more annoying.

"So what did you think of my letter?" I said between my teeth. When his expression didn't change, I added, "The one I sent you? When you were training with Genkai?"

He didn't say anything. He just stared.

And that was somehow worse than him yelling or saying he hated me, because my anxiety-riddled brain filled in the silence with even worse possibilities. This silence meant he never wanted to see me again. It meant he would never talk to me after the tournament. It meant he thought the letter was full of more lies. It meant—

Yusuke swallowed, and the voices in my head fell mercifully silent to listen as he spoke.

Yusuke said: "I mean—what the fuck am I supposed to think of that letter?"

It wasn't the reaction I wanted, but it was better than hatred. "Well, hopefully you think that I'm telling the truth," I said, voice coming out in a strangled whisper. "And that you understand why—"

Yusuke did a double-take. "The truth?" he repeated. "The truth about what?" His lips curled back off his teeth. "The truth about katsudon and fairy tales?"

My throat thickened. "There—there was more to it than that."

"Bull shit." He stood and turned, looking down on me with hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. "Let me spell this out for you since you seem to have trouble understanding how things went down." One accusatory finger pointed directly at my nose, but all I could focus on were the furious brown eyes staring at me down its length. "You're shady as hell and I called you out on it. You promised to explain and then you skipped out before you could make good on that promise, and then you wrote me a letter" (here he inserted a pair of very sardonic air quotes) "that… what? Spelled out all your favorite recipes between retellings of fairy tales I don't give a crap about?"

My throat thickened even more. It was all I could do to repeat, like the most broken of all records: "There was more to it than that."

"Oh, I'll bet." Sarcasm dripped from every syllable, and his eyes blazed pure fire when he said, "'Ask Genkai,' huh?"

"Well." I swallowed my nerves as best as I could. "Did you?"

"Ask her what—which story I wanna hear before bed and what I want for breakfast the next morning?"

"Just answer the question, Yusuke."

But he rolled his eyes. "Funny how that works. You need me to answer questions, but like hell you'll ever return the favor." A beat. "And no. I didn't ask her."

The bottom fell out of my stomach. "Why not?" I asked, rising to my feet, too.

"Because after I read your damn letter I was too pissed off to even think about listening to you when you said to ask her, that's why!" He crossed his arms and shook his head, every line of his body vibrating with tension. "And by the time I calmed down and punched a few rocks into dust, the letter had—"

He stopped talking. He looked down and away, glaring at the floor like he was as mad at it as he was at me. When he didn't keep going, though, I took a small step toward him.

"And the letter had what, Yusuke?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Nothing."

"Yusuke."

Something in my tone stopped him cold. He licked his lips, shook his head, started to speak—then stopped again. Slowly he looked up and met my eyes, holding them in a long, frustrated gaze until he took a deep breath.

He said: "The letter disappeared."

It took me a minute to follow. I stood there in silence, just looking at him, and repeated in a disbelieving whisper, "You… lost it?"

"What? No! No, I didn't lose it! Use your damned ears!" Yusuke snapped. "I meant it when I said it disappeared! One minute it was in my bag and the next time I looked for it, it was gone! I didn't take it somewhere and leave it lying at the bus stop or whatever."

My jaw dropped. "Oh my god!"

And with that, my legs gave out, sending me onto the bed with a bounce. I stared at him with my mouth open, thoughts racing but silent—because this was the absolute opposite of what I'd expected him to say. Mainly because it was so utterly and completely outside the realm of my expectation.

Yusuke had… lost my letter?

With a groan I cupped my face, pressing the heels of my hands into my eye sockets until I saw stars. All my carefully laid plans. All my exact, meticulous wording. All of the veiled references and double meanings, hidden messages and obscured truths layered into seemingly innocuous bits and bobs… for nothing? I'd stayed up all night crafting that letter for nothing?

And I mean, sure. The letter had been a bit obscure, but only to guard against the eyes of spies and those not meant to read it. No one who didn't already know the truth about me would've been able to make head or tail of the seemingly random assortment of stories, recipes, journal entries and correspondences I'd packed into that envelope—but that's where Genkai came in. On the very last page I'd written for Yusuke to ask her for guidance, and to trust what she had to tell him. If he had just asked Genkai, he'd know what that letter and all its weirdness represented. He would know that I'd done my goddamn best to tell him the truth from afar.

But for him to lose the letter—?

For him to lose the letter without asking Genkai about why I'd directed him to speak with her—?

Yusuke made an impatient sound in the back of his throat. "To be honest, I don't know what you're so upset about," he said, one foot drumming against the carpet with little, muffled taps. "The letter made no sense at all. Genkai's smart, but even she wouldn't understand that crap."

I lifted my face from my hands so I could glower at him. "Well, we'll never know now that you've lost it."

His jaw dropped. "Wait. You're mad at me?"

I started to deny it—but the heat in my chest stopped me cold, irony both burning and icy at once. I stood up again and rounded on him with a growl of, "I have been stewing and obsessing for the last two months about whether or not you read—" Words failed. I threw up my hands with a wordless sound of aggravation. "I have been lying awake at night—" Words failed again. I regrouped. "It's been eating me up inside and you just—" For a third time, words failed me. My hands came up and I shouted, "You lost it?!"

"Hey!" Yusuke protested, coming nose to nose with me. "If you weren't so shady, this wouldn't have happened in the first place!"

"Maybe if you weren't so irresponsible—"

"Oh, so I'm the bad guy here?!"

"No, but you're certainly not making this any easier, Yusuke!"

"Not making this—" His face turned beet read. "Shut up!"

"You shut up!" I countered.

"No, you!"

"No, you!"

He yanked the pillow out of my hands and shoved it at me. I shoved it back at him. He shoved it back at me, and I grabbed it and swung it at his face. It connected with a satisfying whump of feathers on flesh, but Yusuke dodged out from under my next attack and swiped another pillow off the bed. He aimed a blow at my legs, feathers striking thighs hard enough to send me staggering. I shrieked and rounded on him, looping an arm around his neck so I could rumple his perfectly coiffed hair, and he retaliated by hooking his fingers into the waistband of my pants and yanking, hard, so my underwear shot straight up my ass in the worst wedgie imaginable. With a scream I flipped him onto the bed and grabbed a pillow so I could smother him alive, but he grabbed another pillow and aimed it at my face with a bellow of fury—

The pillow hit my head and exploded in a shower of brilliant white feathers.

Ears ringing, I sat up on my knees on the bed. Yusuke shoved the pillow away from his face and looked skyward, mouth open in shock. Above us swirled a typhoon of feathers, pure white and infinite. One feather amid the maelstrom drifted down onto Yusuke's tongue; he grimaced and spat, sending a wad of sticky wet feather to the carpet with a splat.

Above, the ceiling fan caught the feathers and sent them soaring.

I held out my hands like a kid catching the year's first snowfall.

Yusuke's eyes met mine amid the fluffy downpour.

In unison, our eyes started to water, and our shoulders started to shake.

The door burst open right about then. "Keiko?!" came Kuwabara's rough voice. "Are you all right?! I thought I heard a scream, and—wait, wait, hold up." He stopped short, befuddled as he stared at the feathers raining from the ceiling. "What the hell—?"

And with that, we fucking lost it.

Perhaps it was the hysteria that made it all so funny. Perhaps it was merely our emotions riding high, flip-flopping from one extreme to the other in reaction to stress. Whatever made this so horrifically funny, I really can't say—but the fact remained that Yusuke and I fell to pieces together. Yusuke collapsed onto the bed, lying spread-eagle as he cackled. I buckled bonelessly across him, face buried in the feather piles accumulating on the coverlet. We wheezed; we guffawed; we hooted and screeched and beat out fists onto the mattress, tears streaming from our eyes as we rolled around in mirth. The others were gathering in the doorway in a perplexed knot to watch, tracking the fall of the feathers through the air around with expressions ranging from confusion (Kuwabara) to delight (Atsuko, Botan) to skeptical boredom (Shizuru) to wonderment (Yukina) to the barest of dry amusement (Kurama). Yusuke and I paid them little mind, however. Yusuke just shoved me off of him with another horselaugh, and I lay next to him on the feather-covered bed as our chests heaved and I tried desperately not to let my laughs turn to sobs of relief.

If Yusuke was laughing—if he wasn't glaring, and was instead laughing—that had to mean—

"Oh, man." He grabbed a handful of feathers and used them to blot at his watering eyes. "When was the last time we had a pillow fight, anyway?"

I used a feather to dab at my cheeks, too. "Years ago."

"Right, right." He dumped his fistful of feathers onto my face, laughing when I sputtered. "Well. Dunno about you, but I feel better."

Yusuke smiled at me.

And I almost started to cry.

I didn't, though. I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from bursting into tears, sure, but I didn't cry. I just nodded at him and traded his smile for one of my own, cheeks stretching until they hurt.

From the doorway, Shizuru said, "So did you two make up, or what?"

She sounded as bored as she looked. I was anything but. I looked anxiously at Yusuke, unable to help it—but when he looked at me, I couldn't meet his gaze. I sat up and studied the feathers settling on the floor and on the beds, hoping I didn't look too guilty as I waited for his verdict.

Yusuke said, with a smile in his voice, "Sort of."

I glanced up in hopeful surprise, hardly daring to believe it. "You mean—?"

He gave me a Look. "Still mad. And at some point, when things aren't trying to kill us so damn often, I'll want answers." But then he cracked another smile, real and broad and true. "For now we need all the friends we can get, and besides." His look turned more than a little sly. "If it's been keeping you awake at night for months… that kind of sounds like just desserts."

I blew a breath of amused air through my nose. "Justice has been served, huh?"

"Pretty much." He grinned. "But only if you bake me a cake or something."

"Just desserts; bake a cake," I mused. "Pun intended?"

"What? Oh, no! Gross! I ain't no nerd!" He sobered quickly enough, rolling off the bed so he could raise his arms in a long, languid stretch. "But still. Answers and cake, once this is all over." His lips curled at the corners. "Maybe one of the recipes from that letter, even."

Kuwabara marched into the room, glancing between Yusuke and me with a frown. "Huh? What letter?" he asked.

I ignored him and instead stretched a hand toward Yusuke. "It's a deal."

Yusuke took my hand and shook it.

Once more, I had to try very hard not to cry—because even if things hadn't been put to rest between Yusuke and me quite yet, this was a relief of the highest order. Before, he couldn't even look at me, but now he could look at me and smile? It was more than I could ask for… and even if it had come at the cost of one of the hotel's expensive feather pillows, this whole incident was so utterly and charmingly Yusuke that I couldn't help but feel my spirits soar. Of course Yusuke would want to work through his feelings physically, even if it was with something as mundane as a pillow fight and as infantile as a wedgie. He wasn't one for words when it came to self-expression; he was one for fisticuffs, even if they came in the form of feathers and wedgies and noogies.

This was my Yusuke, distilled—and my heart felt a million times lighter for it.

I was all smiles as he rose to his feet and dusted the feathers from his shoulders and pants. "Botan. We'd better head out," he said, heading for the doorway where she stood. Don't want to keep the toddler king waiting."

Botan tutted as she followed after him into the living room. "You know he doesn't like it when you call him that…!"

Kuwabara shouted at Yusuke's retreating back, "Does anyone want to explain what's going on?!"

"Gee, leaving me with cleanup duty?" I shouted after Yusuke, too. "How nice of you!"

"More payback." He winked over his shoulder. "Well. See ya in a bit."

I grinned back. "See ya."

"Hey! Yusuke!" Kuwabara said, taking a few steps after him, but Yusuke walked right out of the hotel suite with Botan on his heels. Kuwabara soon turned to me with a pout and a mutter of, "Clue me in, huh?" He blinked as I walked past him without saying anything. "Keiko?"

Coming to a stop by the doorway, I nodded at Kurama. "Hey, Kurama. I'm gonna get a trash bag. Will you call the desk and ask for a replacement pillow?" I pointed at the sad, deflated pillowcase on the floor. "We, um." I rubbed the back of my neck, grin sheepish. "We sort of destroyed one."

He smiled and turned toward his room. "Of course," he said—and his smile warmed a little. "And I'm glad to see you're feeling a bit better."

My smile warmed as well. "Thanks."

Yukina came forward then, too. "Let me help, Keiko," she said, pushing back her heavy kimono sleeves. "We can clean this faster if we work together."

"Oh, thank you," I said, unable to keep a small flush from my cheeks. "Sure."

Kuwabara threw up his hands. "Hey! Don't just leave me in the dark!"

Instead of filling him in, I only smiled. "Wanna help us clean?" I asked.

And then he was all smiles, too. "Oh! Sure thing!" he said, voice bright as a noonday sun. "We'll have this cleaned up in no time, don't you worry!"

Just like that, at the prospect of helping me, his mood turned completely around—but that's what I'd been counting on, as manipulative as that sounds. It was better for Kuwabara to gamely clean up feathers with me and Yukina than for him to pry into my business with Yusuke... and to my delight, it seemed like Kuwabara talked to Yukina as often as he talked to me while we cleaned up the feathery mess Yusuke and I had left in the wake of our small reconciliation.

At least, I hoped he was talking to her as much as he was to me.

But I didn't want to think about it too hard, for fear of what answers I might find upon taking a closer look.


With Yukina and Kuwabara's help, we made short work of the feathery mess Yusuke and I had created together. Shizuru and Atsuko watched from the doorway and gave us tips, but didn't lift a finger to assist (which Kuwabara crabbily pointed out whenever Shizuru critiqued his feather-grabbing skills). Kurama tried to help, but I told him to get lost and sit the hell down; he had just removed the plants from his bloodstream and had no business crawling around trying to catch the feathers rolling around under the beds. Hiei, of course, was nowhere to be found for any of this.

"Probably off stealing a new shirt off a clothesline," I muttered to Kurama at one point. "Really. I have no idea where Hiei gets his clothes. I just assume he steals all of them."

Kurama masked his laughter with a delicate cough, looking pained as the action jostled his wounds, and promised to look into the matter for me.

Once we got the bedroom put to rights again, Yukina and I went into the kitchen to find plates, cups and silverware for dinner. There was a table big enough for all of us in an alcove off the kitchen; we set places there for everyone, including the absentee Hiei. If he didn't want to be polite and hang out with his sister, that was fine, but I'd be damned if I didn't make an effort to include his loner ass and give him something to kvetch about later.

Kurama consulted his watch as he helped us set out plates and cups. "The food should be here shortly, if the font desk's time estimate is accurate."

"Think Yusuke'll be back in time?" I asked.

"Hopefully so. Though depending on what Koenma wants…" He shrugged, wincing when the motion tugged at his wounds. "It is difficult to say."

"Hmm." Shizuru muttered numbers under her breath for a second. "Maybe it's best he's late. We're a plate short, if you're really set on including Hiei."

We were indeed missing one place setting, which made Yukina's face fall a little. "Should we call the front desk?" she asked. She put a hand to her lips, regret clouding her luminous eyes. "Though I am afraid I do not know quite how to work a telephone…"

"It's OK," I was quick to assure her. I headed for the door with a grin, glad to see her expression lift. "I can get a plate from our suite; no worries."

"Want me to come with?" Shizuru called after me.

"Nah. It's not far. Be right back."

Kurama lifted a hand, gesturing for me to wait a moment. "Kei, are you certain—"

"It'll be fine, Kurama," I said. "I'm just going to—"

Movement flickered in my periphery. I came to a stop and turned in time to see the Masked Fighter (who had been as unobtrusive as a fly on the wall in the past few hours) step out of the kitchen to stand between me and the suite door. For a minute we just stood there, staring at each other—but then the Masked Fighter lifted their hand and pushed the door open, gesturing with their other arm for me to walk straight through.

I looked over my shoulder at Kurama and the others. "Looks like I have an escort, after all," I said, grinning. "Be right back!"

A murmur of assents followed after me and the Masked Fighter as we moved into the hallway. As soon as the door shut behind us, however, my grin faded, tension coiling in my shoulders as we walked in silence to the elevators at the end of the hall. The Masked Fighter pushed the floor button, not deigning to speak as we waited for a car to open up. Soon one did, and when we stepped through, they remained silent even after the doors shut after us.

As the car moved, stuttering as it began to ascend, I said, "Hello, Genkai."

She didn't move, head beneath its white wrapping staying perfectly still. "So you knew it was me?" she said, hoarse voice soft in the stillness of the elevator.

I resisted the urge to tell her she was the shortest person I had ever met. "I had a hunch."

"Well," she said, brusque as always. "I suppose that saves me any awkward revelations."

"True." I forced a smile. "Good to see you. It's been a minute."

"Try a few years," she said. "You're looking well. The haircut suits you."

"Thanks."

"It makes you look nearly as much of a degenerate as Yusuke."

"Aw, only nearly? I was trying to outdo him."

"Try a mohawk next time."

I hummed. "Will do."

We endured the rest of our ascent in silence, which surprised me. I'd assumed Genkai wanted to speak with me about something; she didn't seem the type to reveal herself without good reason, and I'd been very careful not to approach her or act like I knew her underneath her mask. I kept expecting her to break the silence as we got off the elevator and headed for my suite, but she said nothing at all while I unlocked the door and headed into the kitchen for a place setting. She likewise said nothing as I, acting on a sudden burst of inspiration, walked from room to room packing my friends' bags with essentials they'd need this evening and the next morning.

Genkai merely trailed behind me in silence.

Watching.

Watching, and not bothering to help at all as I wrangled toothbrushes and hairbrushes and changes of clothes for everyone. Her eyes simply bored into the back of my head through the tiniest of slats in her head wrap, as if she tried to see into the depths of my thoughts with her eyes alone.

Eventually the silence began to grate. "Not trying to be rude here," I said as I leaned into one of the showers for Atsuko's bottle of shampoo. "But do you have something to say to me?"

"Yusuke didn't lose your letter."

I jerked my head out of the shower. "Sorry; come again?"

"He didn't lose your letter." A pair of beady eyes gleamed between strips of dingy cloth. "He didn't lose it, because I took it."

My fingers went slack.

Atsuko's shampoo fell to the tile floor with the clatter of an execution bell.

And Genkai stood there in silence, eyes gleaming from the shadows, waiting for me to react.


NOTES

One of the advantages of writing week-to-week like I do is that I can pretty accurately gauge how I should update/meddle with my story's outline as I go along, owing entirely to the comments you leave each week. People have been getting pretty antsy for her to make up with Yusuke, and I wasn't necessarily planning on the pillowfight scene to come at this point in the tournament—but your reviews often tip me off to things that I need to change and alter, and thus I felt it prudent to move this scene forward a bit. So thanks for chiming in with your various comments, because they can and do affect how I handle this story's progression with each chapter. I much prefer this placement of the temporary appeasement with Yusuke as opposed to what I had originally planned; thank you for that!

And on that note: Don't be too mad at Genkai. You'll learn more next chapter, but just… don't be too mad just yet. She had her reasons. (Also I've been sitting on the knowledge that Genkai took the letter for MONTHS now, and I'm happy to finally get to reveal that the letter never quite made it to its intended destination.)

OK. So I don't think I've ever done this before, but… please go watch "One Day at a Time" on Netflix if you're able to. It's my favorite show and they're trying to get it renewed but it needs more streams. The show got me through some tough times and if you can do me (not to mention the show) this favor, I'd appreciate it. It's incredibly diverse, funny, and poignant, and way better than a lot of shows that get tons of seasons for no reason. Lydia Alvarez is a blessing unto mankind. You will understand once you watch "One Day at a Time." THANK YOU!

Sorry this chapter was a bit short (8,500 instead of the 10,000+ monsters I've put out recently) but I felt this was a good stopping point and I HATE wasting nice cliffhangers when they arise, haha. Anyway, many thanks to all those who chimed in on the previous chapter. I know the biweekly schedule is hard for some people to remember/keep up with, and I appreciate your feedback very much: Thornsilverfox, Lady Ellesmere, Edenmae, Sorlian, spacetimeenigma, cestlavie, TequilaMockinbur, McMousie, ahyeon, Jengurl24, Minirowan, What Would Valery Do, dbzfangirl13, xenocanaan, McFighty, Blaze1662001, Deamachi, C S Stars, rya-fire1, Anya Kristen, MetroNeko, Kaiya Azure, SixPerfections, Neko Mitsuko, RedPanda923, general zargon, A Wraith, oyuki kita540, tammywammy9, Shadowed Replica, MyHeartBeatingMWMI, Energy the Hedgehog, Yakiitori, SterlingBee, vodka-and-tea, The Shay-Shay, Kykygrly, Kirkleton, Ally Kenshin and guests!