Warnings: None

NOTE: This'll get a better edit this coming weekend when I have time to do more than write this behemoth of a chapter (longest chapter ever!). Will be way too busy to actually edit it until then, when I have a flight to kill, but also I am late and I don't want to delay the posting any further. Thanks for your patience and your tolerance of typos!


Lucky Child

Chapter 94:

"Spring is the Time for Romance"


Midday light, strong and the color of platinum, eked into the room from behind the drawn curtains. Kuwabara's face looked particularly gaunt in the fitful light, but his eyes radiated visible clarity—clarity and hope, tempered with the barest flush of anxiety telegraphed by his wrinkled brow and the tightness around his mouth. He shifted from foot to foot, staring me down with the most hesitant of smiles on his face, hands balled into fists of tight anticipation at his sides.

He had a lot to say to me, it seemed.

But looking at him there, in that moment, I had no frickin' clue what to say back.

"Kuwabara." On reflex I tried to hand the ticket back to him. "This is…"

He rebuffed my hand, pushing it toward my chest as he shook his head. "I won them on the radio."

I blinked. "Huh?"

"I won them on the radio." He scratched the back of his neck, eyes sliding sideways and to the floor. "So if you think they cost too much—"

"That wasn't what I—"

"Well, I won four tickets on the radio, anyway. I had to save up my allowance to get the fifth. Okubo couldn't afford to pay for a ticket of his own and normally he wouldn't let me get him something like this, but since he thinks I won all of the tickets…" His gaze shifted back to me, suddenly sheepish. "Don't tell him I had to buy one, OK? He really wants to go to this and I don't want him feeling guilty, y'know?"

I blinked again. "Okubo's coming too?"

"Yup. And so are Sawamura and Kirishima. It'll be the five of us going together." He took a deep breath. "Which means that this isn't a date."

The words budding on my lips withered away.

Kuwabara swallowed, and he forced a smile.

"I know you don't date." Kuwabara shrugged. "Still don't understand why, not really, because you're way too smart to fall behind on your schoolwork even if you went on dates, and… well, point is, I don't need to understand it to respect you." He grinned. "My dad taught me better than that."

For a moment, I thought I'd misheard him.

Then reality snapped into place around me like a tight-fitting glove. The shock of his initial offer, the fears and apprehensions that had accompanied it, and then the relief when he said the very thing I had been preparing myself to say—it was all too much, too much whiplash to fit into the narrow handful of moments that had just past. The dry air blowing from the AC vent in the ceiling dried out my eyes and parched my skin; the crinkle of the comforter under me and the creak of the mattress grew too loud to bear; the wet hair on the nape of my neck felt slick and cold atop my skin. But even though the physical world had begun to overwhelm, in that moment I could focus not on those things, but rather on the way Kuwabara was smiling at me. I raked my hands over my face and breathed deeply, panic warring against relief inside my chest.

"Thank you," I said, pasting on a smile I wasn't entirely sure I felt inside. But then a laugh built in my chest, at once skeptical and pleased. "Thank you, that… that means a lot to me. I just—" I waved one hand vaguely, trying to find an excuse that wouldn't hurt him, still be true and keep him at bay all at once. "It's not just school. We're so young. Too young to know what we want. And I just can't afford to get distracted. Not right now, anyway. It's… it's just that there's so much going on between school and all the supernatural bullshit, and…"

I trailed off, lost for words. Kuwabara looked at me with a frown, and then he sighed.

"Look, Keiko. I get it. I get your reasons for… for not dating and whatever." He didn't look like he got it, even though his jaw was set with resolute determination. "And I respect those reasons. I'm not going to argue with them. But—"

"But what?"

His eyes cut toward the door. "Don't go making an exception for him, OK?"

It was an odd request, one made even odder because I wasn't sure what the hell he even meant by it. It's no wonder I could do little more, then, than stare at him in consternation. "Him who?"

His chin tucked close to his broad chest. "You know who."

For a moment, neither of us spoke. He stared at me, and I stared at him in return, the pair of us locked in a silent battle of wills. Kuwabara was trying to tell me what he meant with his eyes, it was clear—but it wasn't until there came a low murmur of voices from beyond the door, and Kuwabara's eyes flickered toward it, that I understood.

"Kuwabara…" I trailed off as that familiar voice murmured once more on the other side of the door. "What makes you think…?"

He shrugged, looking frustrated. "You two are always off talking to each other by yourselves. You're the smartest person I know, and so is he, so you have a lot in common. I know you hang out outside of school, too." Kuwabara hesitated. "And he's… pretty." His chin lowered again; he spoke out of the corner of his mouth, eyes toward the floor. "Which I'm not."

My heart gave a pang—but much though I wanted to step in and totally assure him he had nothing to worry about in the look department, I held back. Instead I turned it around on me. "I'm not entirely shallow, Kuwabara," I chided, trying to lighten the mood. "Sometimes I even care about personality a little."

Kuwabara sputtered, hands coming up in defense. "I'm not saying you're shallow! It's just that you said you wouldn't date till you're 18, and that's fine, but…" Once more he glanced at the door, just as a certain someone's low chuckle sounded in the other room. "If you made an exception for him, it'd be…" He shook his head. "Look, Keiko, I just don't know what I'd do if you—!"

And he stopped.

And he just looked at me.

The look—raw and vulnerable, sad and hopeful and pained all at once—said everything he wasn't saying just then, but I could read him fine. Even without words, what he was saying came through loud and clear. That look, and the words that had come before it, were a confession, and with him looking at me like that, there was little denying what I was sensing. I'd sensed it many times from him, but each time I wrote it off, made excuses to comfort myself that this extreme breach to canon wasn't happening… but now, no more excuses could be made. Kuwabara might respect my wishes to not date, but… he was thinking about it. And he was thinking about it a lot. Enough to notice when I went off with Kurama (that part was clear, too) alone. Enough to feel jealous of a guy I wasn't even dating yet.

Which meant that when I showed up and he beat Risho, he was reacting to… oh my fucking god.

My face descended into my hands like a brick falling off a skyscraper. "This is 1000% not the direction I saw this conversation going in today," I groaned into my palms. "Like, not at all."

"Yeah, well, staring death in its sunglasses-covered face has a way of making you think about weird crap, all right?" Kuwabara said, and between my fingers I saw his face turn the color of a ripe beet. "Don't go reading into anything I said just now, 'kay?" He turned even redder, hands running through his hair. "Now's not the time, but if I went into the ring tomorrow and got creamed and my last thought was about how I didn't say how I felt, I just—"

"I get that." Because the statement sounded a little too hasty, I smiled and caught his eye. "Thanks for being honest with me." The smile bittered. "You know, I came in here to give you a pep-talk."

It was his turn to blink. "You did?"

"Yeah. But apparently I'm useless at that, too, because now you're talking about dying in the fights and whatnot, which is the opposite of what I wanted." The statement had been a bit of self-deprecation, an attempt at ironic levity, but immediately Kuwabara's expression turned pained. As he opened his mouth (no doubt to try and comfort me), I cursed. "Sorry. I don't know what to say right now."

Kuwabara shrugged. "Say you'll be there to cheer me on. It—it matters to me a lot."

The hesitated.

But soon resolution gelled behind his eyes, and he blurted, "You matter a lot to me."

The air left my lungs like it had vanished into an empty vacuum—because there it was.

Kuwabara… he definitely liked me.

And no matter how tempting it was to stuff my fingers in my ears and pretend I hadn't heard him, the soft look on his face and the little light burning gently in his eyes were unmistakable. My cheeks heated on reflex, out of embarrassment and awkwardness because he'd never looked so young before—but at the same time, he'd never looked so old, because there was a gaunt and haunted look in his eyes as he stared at me. Like that little flickering candle of affection stood before a vast emptiness just waiting to snuff it out.

In the face of that, I shuddered, and wondered just what the hell I was supposed to do.

The obvious choice was to shut this down ASAP. Just nip it in the bud and tell him he had no chance; that would be the kindest thing, and it might free him enough to go after Yukina, who canon dictated was supposed to be his love interest. And it was the kinder thing to do when you considered that there was no chance of us dating for another three years. We were 15. We had three years until I would even entertain the idea of something other than friendship with him, or anyone—and no matter how my feelings for anyone changed between now and then, I wouldn't break my own rules for anyone. Yes. That meant it was best to shut this down now, because both for his sake and for the sake of canon, it was cruel to keep him on a string, and—

Someone walked over my distant grave, and a shiver ghosted up my spine.

Kuwabara saw it at once. "Aw jeez, Keiko, are you cold?" he said, looking me over with concern.

"Oh, um—"

His eyes fixed on my hair; he went knock-kneed, arms awkward at his sides. "Keiko! Why did you leave your suite with wet hair!" he said, pointing at the wet strands against my cheek. "You'll catch a cold at this rate and then you'll never make the fights!" He spun and lumbered toward his suitcase. "Here, hold on just a—"

"Kuwabara, I'm fine—"

"My butt, you're fine! Ah, there it is!" He stood and turned, and in his hands he held a wool scarf. It was forest green with a cream-colored pattern on the edges, but I didn't get a good look at it before he trotted over and started draping it around my neck. "You hold onto that for now. I'm gonna go make tea."

"That's really not—"

"Be back in a minute!"

Kuwabara ran out of the room without another word, and with a sigh I followed, exiting the room just in time to see his broad back disappear around the corner and into the kitchen.

There was no one around to hear me sigh, though. Kurama wasn't in the living room, and neither was anyone else. I sat on the nearest couch with shoulders hunched, hands braced on either side of my thighs while I stared moodily at the floor. Call me dramatic, but as I listened to Kuwabara banging around in the kitchen, I figured I had every right to be a little moody.

Canon really was in tatters now, wasn't it?

Not that Kuwabara's confession wasn't without its silver lining. This handily explained his lukewarm reactions to Yukina. He had been too hung up on me to even consider switching his affections to her—but why? Why had he glommed onto me like this? Why had I been the one he fell for, and not her?

Or had Kagome, so many months prior, been right after all?

"He's a teenage boy, you're a pretty girl, and you like all the same things he does," she'd said to me on the eve of the Rescue Yukina arc, when I told her about Kuwabara's non-reaction to seeing Yukina for the very first time and my fears of what it might entail. "How was he not supposed to imprint like a sweet little baby duckling onto you? You just gotta hope Kuwabara isn't so far in love with you that this can't be fixed."

It had been a long time since Kagome had first posited that Kuwabara was in love with me. I hadn't denied it at the time, but I had expressed hope that when he saw Yukina, his crush on me would disappear. And then his crush on me didn't evaporate, but still I held onto the hope that one day it would fade under the light Yukina's sweetness and beauty. Wait for the Dark Tournament Arc, I'd told myself more than once. Once Yukina came on the scene again, surely sparks would fly.

But "denial is a pretty color on you" Kagome had snarked at my continued wishful thinking… and yet, against all evidence, I just couldn't believe it was really that simple. Was simply being nice to him really enough to change canon so drastically?

"Maybe I could've been aloof? Distant?" I'd told Kagome when we'd talked it over. "But Kuwabara is just—he's my favorite character. I couldn't not be nice and supportive and whatnot. Being a dick to him would break my heart!"

But maybe it wasn't my heart I'd needed to worry about.

Groaning yet again, replaying that distant conversation over and over in my head, I put my face in my hands and rested my elbows on my knees. All the time I'd spent with Kuwabara—studying and listening to music and hanging out with his friends—had added up in ways I hadn't dared examine closely. And he'd made that comment about not being pretty, too, which revealed a hidden vein of insecurity I hadn't seen Kuwabara reveal too often, if at all, and I had a sinking suspicion that that had more to do with my current predicament than I'd ever dreamed.

Because Kuwabara was right: He wasn't pretty. He wasn't ugly like the anime had made him out to be, but he wasn't a pretty-boy like Kurama, and his proximity to that pretty boy no doubt brought his insecurities into stark relief. Kuwabara was all angles and severe lines, features stronger than his age could bear, and he'd grow into his face with time (his handsome father, whom Kuwabara greatly resembled, was proof enough of that), but rugged and pretty aren't the same thing… and in the end, maybe Kuwabara's apparent insecurities about his looks were responsible for the ruination of romantic canon. Was his affection for me caused simply by the fact that I'd never shied away from his Yankee hairstyle and scary-strong jawline?

Girls ran away from him in the anime at first glance, after all. When he got beaten up, which was often, people literally turned and ran away from his scary face. But I'd never done that. I'd been nice. He was my favorite. We'd talked about Megallica and I'd helped him study English and looked him dead in the eye with a smile even when his eye was blackened with a bruise, and I'd been nice to him.

In spite of everything I believed about treating people kindly, maybe that Mister-Rogers-inspired instinct had been an utter and complete mistake.

Once more I groaned, fingers digging through my hair and into my scalp. If I really cared about canon, I ought to rip the band-aid off immediately. I ought to tell him to give up on me, and that even when I turned 18, he'd have no shot. Only by cutting him completely loose would he be free enough to give his heart to Yukina, like he was supposed to—but could that possibly rattle him badly enough to hurt his performance in the next fight? Or was thinking that I mattered that much to him conceited?

No. It wasn't conceited. He'd just told me that I mattered to him, and my impact on his fight with Risho spoke for itself. Kuwabara cared for me in a deep and impactful way, and I was just plain lucky that he was a respectful enough guy to not ask to go on a real date. An outing that felt like a date, sure, but he respected my no-dating rule even in spite of his feelings. That was literally the only thing that had saved me from having to date him just to help carry him through the fights, and lying to him about my feelings was something I just couldn't do.

Because even if he respected my rules, it was abundantly clear he liked me, and I didn't feel the same way. He was too young, full stop. He was too young, I was mentally too old, and until he grew the heck up, there was no way we could work out.

But for him to pine after me for another three years, with no guarantee that I'd grow to feel for him the way he felt for me… that was unspeakably cruel, wasn't it? Keeping him on a string would be awful. It was best to just cut him loose, tell him he had no chance whatsoever, and the sooner the better.

… but he was my favorite character, and the heart was fickle. What if breaking his heart so early meant that, years from now, I'd end all chances of…?

And did I even want the merest possibility of a chance so many years down the line, or…?

Footsteps crossed the carpet with a sound like a whisper, and then someone chuckled. "Kei," came Kurama's smooth tones as a shadow fell over me. "If you were really that cold, all you had to do was ask."

I wrenched my face from my hands with a frown. Kurama stood on the other side of the living room coffee table, an amused smile playing across his full lips as just a hint of scolding lurked in the lines on his brow. His brilliant eyes were fixed on my neck—or, more accurately, on the scarf around it. I reached for it on reflex and quirked a brow; Kurama nodded, and the lines of admonition on his forehead deepened when I didn't speak.

"I'm surprised at you, Kei," he said, voice light but tempered by the barest edge of annoyance. "You aren't the type to search through someone's things without permission."

"I—what?"

"No need to play coy. I can see you wearing my scarf just fine."

I pinched the edge of it between my fingers. The cream-colored lining had a diamond pattern, edges jagged but soft, with little whorls of stitchery in the centers. "Your scarf?" I said, not understanding.

"Yes. My scarf." His head tilted just a hair to the left. "What's gotten into you?"

"Um." I lifted the edge of the scarf. "Kuwabara gave me this."

His smile dropped. "I understand he can be protective of his friends, and you are very much included in that number, but for him to rummage through my things is—"

"He got it from his own bag, actually."

Kurama stared.

"I watched him do it."

A shake of his head. "That's impossible."

"I mean, not really? You just have the same scarf."

His eyes flashed viridian. "Impossible."

Kurama turned on his heel and marched away, toward the open door to the bedroom on the far wall—the place where he'd probably been while I spoke with Kuwabara, if I had to guess, though that hardly mattered now. No sooner had he disappeared beyond the doorway did Kuwabara appear around the corner of the kitchen with a coffee mug cupped in his large hands. A string with a paper tag trailed from its rim; tea in a teabag, obviously. One had to wonder why it had taken Kuwabara so long to prepare it, but whatever. He marched over and set it on the coffee tag with a flourish like he was presenting a home-cooked meal.

"Here ya go, Keiko," he said with a bright smile. "Drink up."

"Um. Thanks." I picked up the cup because he was favoring me with a rather expectant stare. "But Kuwabara, I gotta ask." I gestured with one hand at the scarf. "Where did you get this—?"

"Oh, that's my dad's. Nice, right?" He chortled as he sat on the couch beside me, weight making me bounce a little in my seat. "I didn't think it would be cold or anything since it's already spring and stuff, but it's better safe than sorry so I grabbed it at the last minute while I was packing because my scarves are already in the attic, and for some reason he's been keeping this one on the coatrack all the time—"

And with that, all the pieces clicked into place inside my head, and right on cue, Kurama reappeared in his bedroom doorway. Kuwabara looked over at him with a grin, though his smile faded just a little at the stormy expression on Kurama's face.

"Hey, Kurama. You want some tea?" he asked. "I just made some for me and Keiko, and—wait. Hold on a sec." He squinted at Kurama's right hand, from which trailed a green scarf—a familiar one, color deep and edged with cream-colored diamonds. His eyes lit up as he pointed at Kurama's scarf and then at the one around my neck, narrow eyes opening wide with delight. "Oh hey! That's funny! We've got the same scarf! Great minds, huh?"

"I doubt that," Kurama said.

"Huh?"

Kurama lifted the scarf. He lowered it slowly into the palm of his other hand, fabric layering atop itself until it keeled under its own weight. Before the fabric could tumble to the floor, Kurama clenched his fist, crumpling the wide knitting with a flex of his fair fingers.

"This scarf was knitted for me by my mother," he said as he pulled the fabric through his hands, over and over again, voice murmuring low and silky in the suite's quiet air. "She did not use a pattern. She rarely ever does. She knits her own designs, and, as such, the question becomes this." His eyes flashed like an emerald storm, and then he posed the query: "Why do you, Kuwabara Kazuma, own an item of my mother's knitting?"


My second thought was that maybe Kurama's mom had an Etsy store, but that was the wrong decade.

My first theory, though—the one that had clicked so neatly into place the minute Kuwabara explained his dad's attachment to the scarf—was the more plausible scenario. The pieces had all fallen into formation of their own volition, creating a picture I hadn't even realized was possible, image swimming into sudden and distinct clarity before I could stop it… and I just wasn't sure what to make of it. Kurama too looked surprised, though not upset. Just confused, mostly. Confused the same way Kuwabara looked confused, pair of them staring at one another's scarves with pursed lips and lowered brows. I glanced between them in turns, wondering when Kurama's big brain would put it together, wondering when the penny would drop and they'd each figure it out. Because if my hunch was correct…

Well, I frankly had no fucking idea how they'd react if my dawning hunch was correct, because I had no idea what it even meant, myself.

Eventually Kuwabara just shrugged. "I mean. It's my dad's scarf, not mine," he said, as if that explained it.

Kurama repeated, "Your father's scarf."

"Yeah." He fidgeted under Kurama's hard gaze, rubbing the back of his neck with pronounced awkwardness. "I dunno," he eventually ventured when the tension stretched too tightly. "Maybe your mom sells her scarves sometimes?"

"Not to my knowledge, no," Kurama said. Wheels turned in his eyes, variables cycling into one another in an endless swirl. "And it's highly improbable that she, for instance, dropped the scarf, only for your father to pick it up and keep it." His chin lowered so he could look at Kuwabara from beneath his brows. "That would be quite a coincidence, indeed."

"Maybe she actually did use a pattern for that scarf?" Kuwabara suggested.

"She never does, I'm afraid. And your scarf and mine are made of the same colored fabrics. Even if a common pattern was used to make both scarves, the identical colors are harder to explain away." He didn't look away from the scarf around my neck even once, words clipped and automatic. "Do you know where your father acquired his scarf, by any chance?"

Kuwabara shrugged. "Sorry, I don't. I mean, I guess I can ask when we get home next week?"

"If we get home next week, you mean."

Everyone in the room flinched as one, but it was only Shizuru who had spoken. Somehow I don't think even Kurama had heard her come in, because his eyes widened when he spotted her leaning against the living room doorway. She held an unlit cigarette in her lips, eyes intense but bored as she glanced between Kurama's scarf and Kuwabara's. Like Kurama, wheels turned behind her eyes, but they settled into a pattern sooner than did his.

"Shizuru?" Kuwabara said. He rose to his feet on reflex and scowled. "When did you get here?"

"Fifteen seconds ago, give or take." Her honey-colored eyes slid toward Kurama. "And the scarf was a gift, by the way."

Kurama's chest stilled. "A gift?" he said, words slipping from between his teeth as quietly as an exhaled breath.

"Yeah. A gift. From your mother to our dad." One eyebrow lifted. "Aren't you supposed to be smart? Occam's Razor or whatever?"

His eyes hooded at once. "I am working through all variables before drawing a conclusion, thank you," Kurama said, voice clipped, and his frown turned absolutely blistering.

Shizuru remained unmoved, however, rolling her eyes as she reached into a pocket for her lighter. Kuwabara just stared at her, cupping his pointed chin as she thumbed her lighter's strike wheel.

"Wait." His lower lip jutted out when he frowned. "What the heck was Kurama's mom giving our dad a gift for, anyway?"

"For walking her home from Keiko's New Year's party." Sparks lit up her face in flickers of illumination, catching in her eyes like snared stars. "Remember?"

"Oh yeah!" He turned to Kurama eagerly. "Well that explains everything! I forgot that was when they met. Heck, I forgot they even met at all!"

"Yeah." Shizuru's cigarette caught; she inhaled, blowing a plume of silvery smoke into the air as she tucked her lighter back inside her vest. "They met, all right."

Kurama's eyes narrowed.

Shizuru smirked.

Kurama's eyes narrowed further. The wheels behind them turned faster.

"How often do they see one another?" Kurama asked with delicate precision.

Shizuru looked at him askance. "Hmm?"

"My mother and your father." Kurama did not lose his patience, though judging by the way his hands had tightened, he was thinking about doing so. "How often do they see one another?"

Shizuru took another drag. "How should I know?"

"You're an observant person, Shizuru." His smile sent a chill up my back, because it showed all of his teeth without touching his eyes at all. "I highly doubt you haven't been paying attention."

Shizuru didn't reply right away. She took a long, slow drag on her cigarette, eyes locked on Kurama's without blinking. Kuwabara glanced between his sister and Kurama in turns, face screwed up in concentration, confusion, and god knows what the hell else. I just tried not to look too guilty, because I was pretty damn sure I knew what was going on, even if Kurama didn't want to believe it just yet—and I didn't want him knowing I knew, because ooooooh, boy. That wouldn't end well for me, now would it?

And also, Shizuru and Kurama are scary.

Best just let them hash it out and fade into the wallpaper for the sake of my health.

Eventually Shizuru decided to put the poor guy out of his misery. Sort of? "Does your mom wear magnolia perfume?" she asked, and when Kurama said nothing and his shoulders went the smallest bit stiff, Shizuru shut her eyes. "Thought so. It's good stuff." She waved her cigarette. "Lingers."

Kurama spoke from between his teeth, enunciating each word with care. "How. Often?" he demanded.

Kuwabara stepped between them, hands upraised. "Hey. What's going on?" he asked.

Shizuru ignored him. She just pointed her cigarette at Kurama and said, "If your mom is the one with magnolia perfume, then they saw each other maybe twice a month at first. But lately they've been seeing each other more."

Kurama ground out, "How much more?"

"Twice a week, give or take."

Kurama's eyes widened. Kuwabara's jaw dropped. He looked at Kurama and then Shizuru and back again, eyes almost as wide open as his mouth.

"Our dad's been seeing Kurama's mom that much?" he said. He cupped his chin, eyes rolling toward the ceiling. "Huh. Well, I guess this makes sense? Maybe? I've noticed he's been coming home late and going out a lot on his days off, but… hey, wait a second." He turned to Shizuru with a gasp. "Does this mean—?"

"Dunno." She shrugged again. "Not our business. He hasn't bothered to tell us, so I haven't bothered to ask."

Kuwabara wasn't so easy to placate, though. He stuttered and stammered, eventually grinding out the words, "But Shizuru—ever since Mom died—our dad has never—Kurama!" He turned to the aforementioned demon and asked, "Are our parents dating?"

And… there it was. The hunch I'd been entertaining for the past five minutes, spoken into the universe by none other than Kuwabara—Kuwabara, who still had his mouth open as he stared at Kurama, who was staring at Shizuru was a carefully neutral mask on his face, who was staring right back with a bored look on hers while she puffed her cigarette. A muscle twitched in Kurama's jaw, and when Shizuru quirked a brow at him, he turned away from her with a quiet murmur of, "If you'll excuse me."

And then he wheeled away from us and stalked out of the suite, door shutting with a whispering creak behind him.

For a minute, no one spoke.

Then Kuwabara opened his mouth.

Before he could talk, the suite's door opened again, and through it strode Atsuko. She held a six-pack under her arm; on her heels followed Botan and Yukina. The door banged shut at their heels, and when the lock clicked into place, Atsuko lifted her thumb and pointed over her shoulder with it.

"What's eating him, huh?" she asked.

Shizuru said, "We think our dad might be dating Kurama's mom."

"WHAT?! No!" The six-pack fell to the floor with a clatter; her face purpled, teeth showing in a livid grimace. "But I was the one who was supposed to—ugh, I need a beer. Or a tequila shot." She snatched her beer off the floor and veered toward the kitchen. "Do we got anything strong to drink in this place or what?"

Grumbling, she marched away, disappearing into the kitchen with a curse. Botan tittered and followed, saying something about keeping Atsuko at least somewhat in check ("We can't have her getting totally soused before lunch, now can we?"). Yukina watched them with a concerned look on her face, but soon she turned to us and, with a polite smile on her face, took a seat on one of the chairs in the living room. Kuwabara greeted her, but he was too busy stroking his chin and staring at the floor to pay her any rapt attention.

My heart gave a little pang when I saw that.

Oh, canon. You poor, forgotten thing…

Oblivious to my internal struggle, Kuwabara heaved a sigh. "Our dad. Dating," he said as he settled back onto the couch next to me. "Dating. Dating Kurama's mom." He looked at the ceiling for a second. "You know… I don't hate that." A light dawned behind his eyes. "I didn't talk to her for very long at the New Year's party, but Kurama's mom—what's Kurama's last name again?"

"Minamino," I said.

He beamed. "Minamino-san seemed like a super nice lady. And she's pretty, too. And age-appropriate, even." He looked at the scarf he'd lent me with new appreciation. "And she can knit really nice scarves, and Dad has been in a great mood lately…"

"True." Shizuru strode toward the nearest chair and sat with a huff, long legs crossing at the thigh. "He's had a spring in his step this spring. Figure she has a lot to do with it." She grinned a little, cigarette bobbing between her lips. "But I guess spring is the time for romance…"

"Heh. Heh-heh." Kuwabara's cheek turned bright pink, the silliest of warm smiles plastered across his face. "Dad is dating again. I never thought he'd…" The smile turned into an enormous grin. "This is awesome!"

I did a double-take, which I tried to hide behind the mug of tea in my hands. "It is?" I said, lifting it hurriedly to my mouth.

"Well, duh! Mom passed away a long time ago and it's about time he got back out there!" He sobered just a bit, catching Shizuru's eye as they shared a knowing look. "Y'know, I kinda worried that when he started dating again, it'd be some lady we didn't like, but if it's Kurama's mom…!" And then the silly-grin was back in business. "Heh. Heh-heh! Wow" The dork was staring at the ceiling as if it had just given him a million dollars. "Kurama and me might be stepbrothers someday!"

I almost did a spit-take. Shizuru rolled her eyes.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," she said. "They've only known each other for a few months. It's probably still casual between them."

"Hey, can't a guy dream?" Kuwabara protested. "I think it's a good match! We're gonna have to have them over for dinner, and we're gonna have to invite her and Kurama to the movies sometime." He turned to me all of a sudden, twisting his hands together on his lap. "Should I get another concert ticket for Kurama? Does he like Megallica, do ya think? Oh, and he can help me with my homework and I can show him how to wear a pompadour, but that doesn't seem like his style I guess, but anyway, he'd be a much better brother than Yusuke, that's for sure, and—"

We watched in silence as he gushed, big guy giggling to himself as he daydreamed about what it would be like to have a mom again, not to mention as cool of a brother as Kurama. Shizuru remained comparatively more stolid, watching her brother without commentary (though I did catch her smiling a few times at his enthusiasm). Yukina mostly seemed puzzled at Kuwabara's behavior, listening and nodding, though it didn't quite look like she really understood.

And me, through all of this?

I just tucked myself into the corner of the couch and clutched my tepid mug of tea, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone—because out of all the romantic changes to canon that had come today, this had been the most unexpected (not to mention mystifying) of them all.


Kuwabara pushed his plate away and sighed. "That was delicious!"

Everyone murmured in agreement, chopsticks descending to various plates with a series of loud clatters. Yukina set hers down delicately and dabbed her mouth with a napkin, staring at the crumbs and leftover sauce on her plate with a small, happy smile. Botan and I had cooked lunch, and we'd made sure to ask her if she had any preferred human foods—which she did not, she said. She'd been eager to try as many new foods as she could while spending time in Human World (with her people's permission, she mentioned a few times; I knew this was a lie, but I said nothing). It was charming to watch her marvel at new tastes and textures, asking which ingredients were in what dishes and requesting we one day teach her to make some of our favorites.

I couldn't help but wonder how many things Tarukane allowed her to eat while holding her captive.

Like with most of my canon curiosities, I knew better than to ask.

When we finished our meal, Yukina was the first to stand and begin collecting plates; she was eager to be helpful, even suggesting we pack a plate with leftovers for Kurama. He hadn't come back before we'd eaten. She looked at his unused plate with a sad frown as I carried it toward the kitchen, hesitating until Botan asked what was wrong.

"The food you made won't be warm when he comes back," she said, anxiety carving a small line between her brilliant eyebrows. "Will it be as good if it's cold?"

"It'll be fine if we reheat it," I assured her.

"And besides," Botan added as Yukina looked relieved, "we'll order room service tonight, anyway. He probably won't eat the leftovers even if he comes back soon."

Yukina looked confused. "Room… service?"

"Oh, yes." Botan nodded, hair flapping over her shoulder. "You're not supposed to work or cook on vacation. Tonight we'll have to order room service and really live it up!"

Shizuru gave her a fish-eyed stare. "This isn't a vacation, Botan."

"Maybe not, but you know what I mean!" She spun in place, beaming at the gleaming hotel suite. "We're in a fancy hotel and I went to the spa and now we need a free fancy dinner to top it all off!"

"Greedy, huh?" Atsuko teased.

"Hey!" said Botan with a giggle. "I resemble that remark."

"Anybody interested in dessert?" I asked.

A chorus of yeses came from the lunch table. With Yukina's help I carried the dirty dishes into the kitchen, piling them into the sink as the others drifted toward the living room, the murmur of their voices like a steady tide through the wall. I'd baked a cake that morning and made a tub of icing, too, but the cake had been too hot to frost before lunch. I got it out of the icebox and pulled a spatula from one of the drawers (really, this suite kitchen was super well-stocked), wondering how evenly I'd be able to coat the two-layer cake without a proper turntable (even this fancy kitchen had its limits, I guess).

Before I could get started, movement from the kitchen doorway caught my eye. It was only Yukina, though, hovering in the entryway with hands folded primly in front of her light blue yukata. "May I help?" she said when our eyes met.

My cheeks colored at once. "Oh, Yukina. Hi." I turned back toward the cake. "Um."

"I'd like to help, if I could." Her voice was as soft as spun cotton, airy and light. "Just tell me what I should do."

How very like Yukina, I thought to myself. She was just as helpful and eager to please as the fandom made her out to be. But I still had the tendency to blush and stammer around her (damn you, my weakness for pretty girls!), so it was probably better if she just let me have full run of the kitchen.

But it was really hard to say that when she was staring at me with that hopeful look on her face, pretty features arranged into a painful expression of potential helpfulness. My resolve crumbled away the minute I turned to tell her it was fine and to just let me take care of dessert, and I wheeled back toward my cake with an embarrassed cough.

"There are some plates in the cabinets, if you'll get those down." I gestured in their direction, though I kept my eyes fixed on the cake. "We used most of the others for lunch, but those should be fine."

She murmured an affirmative. I didn't look at her as she passed with the smallest of cool breezes to mark her presence, concentrating instead on covering the cake I'd made with snowy white frosting. From my periphery I saw her move toward the cabinets with the plates, and then I heard the hinges creak open—but don't stare, Yukimura. Don't you dare stare at her and make her uncomfortable.

"I found them," Yukina said after a moment. "Now if I can just…"

She grunted (though, like, delicately and shit, because this was Yukina we were talking about). I turned my head enough to see her gently lever herself atop the counter, where she knelt as she reached for the plates on the rather tall shelves. Well, shit; I'd forgotten she was short! But before I could tell her to never mind the plates, just let me get them, she turned her face over her shoulder to look at me. At once I tore my eyes away, fastening them back onto the half-frosted cake.

"Be careful," I said, mostly to the cake.

"Of course," Yukina replied. "Don't worry. This will only take a moment."

There came a small clink of china; seemed she was able to reach the plates just fine. I breathed a sigh of relief, not daring to look away from the frosting-covered spatula in my hand. The last thing I wanted was to make Yukina uncomfortable with any unwanted staring, or stammering, or whatever other embarrassing things I was capable of when in the presence of someone I considered very, very pretty. I just kept an ear on her as I continued to frost, counting the number of plates she'd fetched by the sounds they made against each other. One plate, then two, then three, then four—

The sound of nearing footsteps masked the telltale clatter of any further plates. Once more movement flickered in my periphery, and Kuwabara strode into view from the living room. Because any awkwardness I felt around him paled in comparison to what I felt around Yukina, I gratefully turned in his direction as he walked into the room with a big grin.

"Hey, do you guys need any—" But then his eyes popped wide open; he lunged past me with a harsh cry of, "Yukina, watch out!"

It was like moving underwater, turning around to face her, but turn I did. Yukina knelt on the countertop, soles of her wooden sandals scuffed and exposed thanks to her odd posture, one arm stretching high above her head to the topmost cabinet. Small plates sat next to her, and more sat on the very highest shelf—next to a heavy iron stockpot, which had shifted forward as Yukina dragged plates out from behind its bulk. She'd looked over her shoulder at the sound of her name, oblivious to the shadow falling over her face as the stockpot tilted forward, sliding toward the edge of the shelf and the freefall beyond.

I'd like to think I would've grabbed her and pulled her out of the way. I'd like to think I would've reacted quickly and calmly and gotten the situation under control.

Instead, I froze.

Lucky for Yukina, Kuwabara didn't. He was across the kitchen in half a second, speed utterly supernatural as he grabbed her arm and yanked her out from under the path of the pot. She fell off the cabinets with a cry, staggering against him as the pot fell like a stone through the air and hit the marble counter with a horrific clang. "Are you all right?" Kuwabara said, hand still locked around her arm. "Yukina, you almost—"

But over the sound of his question Yukina snarled, "Don't touch me!"

Kuwabara blinked. "Huh?"

"Let me go!" She shoved against his chest, arm still locked in his grip as he numbly stared at her (and as I numbly stared at them). "Don't touch me!"

"Hey, I didn't—"

"Get away!" Yukina shrieked. "Go!"

And Kuwabara, bless him—he listened. He let go of her arm as she wrenched it away, staring at her as she stumbled backward and into the counter, where she crouched with an arm thrown up over her head, trembling as she buried her face in her other hand and heaved a sob. Kuwabara just gaped down at her, his own hands coming up as if he wanted to comfort her or something, but the minute he stepped toward her, she loosed a shriek and scooted backward over the tile, curling in on herself when she hit a cabinet.

The glimpse I caught of her face, however brief, was unmistakable.

Fear—pure and unadulterated—caked her features like thick and heavy mud.

Shizuru and Botan and Atsuko appeared in the doorway a moment later, each of them asking what the hell was happening in comical unison. It would've been funny, the way they each looked at Yukina and Kuwabara and then back again as one, but there was absolutely nothing funny about the way Yukina was babbling her fear for the world to hear.

"Please!" she was saying, desperation catching like a thorn in her throat. "Please, no, no, I—"

The ice inside me thawed. I bounded across the room and snatched Kuwabara's wrist with a growl of, "Kuwabara, get out."

He looked at me in pure shock. "But I didn't—"

"I know you didn't do anything, but that doesn't matter. Just—"

I tugged him away from Yukina, passing Botan, Atsuko and Shizuru as they in turn surged forward, kneeling next to Yukina on the cold kitchen floor. Botan pulled Yukina to her and wrapped her arm's around the girl's shoulder, murmuring comforts I could barely hear as I shoved Kuwabara into the living room and told him to stay put and do not come back in there, promise me. He looked completely confused, heartbreakingly so, but I didn't have time to explain. I just gave him a Look before reentering the kitchen, where Yukina continued to shake in Botan's arms like a single flower in the arms of a gale.

Hard though it was to hear Botan's comforts beneath the sound of Yukina's sobs, I heard it loud and clear when something small and crystalline hit the floor. It was followed by a second, and then a third, and then three small objects rolled out from under Yukina and towards me feet.

I didn't need to look to know exactly what they were.

And I didn't need to think to know what I should do next.

Without a word, I lunged for the refrigerator and wrenched open the freezer. The ice-maker's catch bucket was only half full, but that was OK. I grabbed it and whirled. Atsuko and Shizuru darted out of the way, reading my intention before I slammed onto my knees next to Botan and Yukina so I could shove the bucket into Yukina's lap.

"Yukina," I said. "Yukina—here!"

And maybe she knew what to do without thinking, too, because the second the cold bucket touched her hands, she grabbed onto it tight. Yukina clutched it to her chest and buried her face in its open top, breathing ragged gulps of frosting air into her lungs. Every rise and fall of her chest shook, eyes squeezed tightly shut as she drank down the cold. Botan kept her hand moving in small circles across Yukina's back, still telling her it would be all right, to just breathe, to just breathe for just a minute more, and it would be all right, you'll see…

Somehow, against all odds—Botan was right.

It took time, and by then the ice at the bottom of the bucket had started to melt, but soon Yukina's breathing slowed. It grew deeper, steadier, and even. Soon her legs uncurled a little; the deathgrip she'd out on the ice bucket slackened just a tad. Her eyes opened, soon, and with a shuddering breath she raised her face to look at us.

"I'm—I'm so sorry," Yukina said with a gasp.

Words flew from my mouth like vomit: "It's not your fault."

"No, Yukina, it most certainly isn't." Botan smiled at her, kindly and warmly and with the softest of sympathy. "We're here for you. Can we do anything?"

Yukina took a deep breath. "I think—I think I'd like to take a bath," she said, voice quavering.

"Upstairs?" Botan shook her head, face pained, because it had been a premature question and she knew it. "Yes, of course upstairs." She took Yukina's hands in hers. "Let's get you a bath drawn up, hmm?"

I took the ice bucket. I put it back in the freezer as Shizuru, Atsuko and Botan helped Yukina to her feet. Above her very short head, the four of us shared a look—a look of understanding, of intention, and of communication we did not need to speak aloud to comprehend. But then a shadow fell over us, and Yukina's eyes went wide.

Kuwabara stood in the doorway, looking as heartbroken as I'd ever seen him. "Yukina—Yukina, are you—" he said, and he stretched out his hand.

It was a futile gesture.

Yukina shrank into Botan's side and shut her eyes tight, shaking her head firmly 'no.' Shizuru stepped forward in turn, backing Kuwabara out of the kitchen with one of her most fearsome glares.

It wasn't a glare made entirely of teeth, though. Her voice came softly when she spoke, telling Kuwabara under her breath, "Not now, kid."

"But what's happening?" he asked.

"We'll explain later. For now, just let us go. Kay?"

"OK." He didn't sound satisfied, but he scrubbed any notion of annoyance from his voice when he called, "I hope you feel better, Yukina."

Yukina didn't answer. She just clung to Botan and let both her and Atsuko to lead her out of the kitchen toward the suite's front door.

I didn't follow, though.

My eyes had caught on what lay glittering upon the floor.

Once again I found myself frozen neatly in place, staring with unconscious comprehension at the evidence of Yukina's agony—and then Shizuru called my name from the door. Just like that, the spell upon me broke. I shook my head and bent, swiping them up off the ground so I could shove them in my pocket, and without a word I followed the girls out of the hotel suite.

Atsuko led the charge, as she was wont to do. Botan and Yukina followed in her wake, and Shizuru brought up the rear, protecting the caravan as we made our slow way to the elevator at the end of the hall. I caught up quickly, and when I fell into step beside Shizuru, her eyes cut to me sidelong.

"What was with the ice?" she muttered.

"Just something I read somewhere, once." No sense telling her I'd had an informative therapist in a past life. "Cold can trigger the mammalian diving reflex. Helps regulate panic symptoms."

One brow rose. "How'd you get to know so much about panic attacks?"

I hesitated—but Shizuru's eyes were as penetrating as drill bits. "I've had a few," I admitted out of the corner of my mouth. I hesitated again, for different reasons, before whispering, "I also thought, for Yukina, ice might feel like home."

Shizuru considered this a moment.

But she said nothing, and continued marching on.


Once we boarded the elevator, Atsuko and Botan kept up a steady stream of cheerfully distracting chatter, but Yukina didn't appear to listen. Uncharacteristically withdrawn, face gaunt and slick with sweat, she leaned against the side of the elevator in silence, she didn't appear at all interested in what Botan and Atsuko had to say about the hotel, and dinner that night, and the possibility of watching a movie in the suite. Normally Yukina gobbled up any information about this world that she could, but not then.

Not that I blamed her. I knew damn well how tiring a panic attack could be. And even without knowing why she'd had one, what I needed to do remained exactly the same.

If Yukina was in pain, then Atsuko, Botan, Shizuru and I would be there for her. No "why" was needed. The look we'd shared back in the kitchen said we all felt the same way about that.

Atsuko and Botan kept up their chatter routine through the elevator ride and all the way to our suite, where Botan deposited Yukina on a couch and then ran off to the bathroom to fix Yukina's requested bath. Atsuko sat next to the Yukina without even a moment's awkwardness, taking up the solo chatter like she'd been born for it. I sat in a nearby chair, not sure what to do, but soon Botan appeared in the bedroom doorway over Yukina's shoulder. She caught my eye and beckoned me over, so with a quick look at Shizuru, I got up and stole over to Botan's side.

"What's up?"

She shifted from foot to foot, looking agitated. "I don't know what temperature to run the bath!"

"Uh—" Now that she mentioned it, what the heck temperature would an ice apparition prefer, anyway? I stared at her, mouth working around empty air, but I came up short. "Um—?"

"Hot, please."

Atsuko's chatter quieted. Botan and I both flinched. Yukina turned her head just enough to see us out of one crimson eye. She wore a tiny smile on her face, but it was bitter, distorted by the fatigue still haunting her ghostly features.

"Hot?" Botan repeated with a gulp. "You're sure?"

"I'm odd like that." Yukina's voice held steadier than before, but it remained whisper-quiet. "Most of my people prefer cold, but…"

Her voice broke. She turned her face away, hands over her eyes. Shizuru glared at us from across the room and shook her head. Atsuko started talking again, stammering at first, and I jumped into her random talk (about her favorite brand of beer) to give her a break. Botan gaped at Yukina for a minute, but soon she gave a resolute nod and disappeared into the bedroom once again. Soon there can a squeak and the sound of running water, and after a few agonizing minutes of Yukina's silence and my stilted conversation with Atsuko (faking a breezy attitude is not one of my strengths), Botan came back and knelt at Yukina's side.

"Yukina?" she said, peering anxiously at her covered face. "Come with me. Your bath is ready."

Yukina's eyes appeared between her cracked fingers. "Thank you."

Like a parade of ducklings, we followed Yukina and Botan into the bathroom, where the cavernous garden tub sat full of steaming water—water and copious bubbles, that is. Botan blushed when Shizuru raised her eyebrow at it.

"I, um. I hope you like bubbles!" she said with a nervous laugh. "I might have overdone it on the bubble bath."

"Just 'might?'" Shizuru muttered.

But Yukina only gave another of her barely there smiles. "I don't mind," she said. "Although I've never tried it."

Botan gave her an encouraging smile. Yukina smiled back, reaching behind herself to untie the obi keeping her yukata shut. As Botan helped her out of the heavy garment, I turned my face away and excused myself. Call me a prude if you want, but even though communal bathing was common in Japan (Botan certainly didn't see any problem with Yukina undressing in front of her), I felt it would be better to give Yukina her privacy. The Japanese population in general had a healthier view of nudity than Americans, not viewing it as inherently sexual (which it isn't), but sometimes I just couldn't shake the ingrained naked-is-bad American sensibility.

Did the Koorime have the same Japanese sensibility? Yukina certainly wasn't shy about undressing in front of us…

Atsuko followed my lead, heading back into the living room on my heels, and soon Shizuru joined us. Botan was the last to arrive, and when she did, she carried Yukina's yukata in a ball in her arms. On reflex I started to tell her to fold the garment nicely so it wouldn't crease, but she shook her head even as I opened my mouth.

"It's soaked," she said. "Yukina was sweating, I think. We'll need to have it washed."

An uneasy silence stole over the room. I couldn't take my eyes off the crumpled yukata. For that thick garment to get soaked with sweat, Yukina had to have been in a lot of psychological pain. And from the looks on everyone's faces, they had arrived at the same conclusion, too.

Atsuko was the first to acknowledge this aloud. "What do you think that was all about?" she said, voice pitched low so Yukina wouldn't overhear. "She was in a real bad way."

Botan's face paled. "I hate to say it," she said, voice quavering, "but I have a hunch."

My head turned sharply toward her. "You do?"

"Of course," said Botan. "Don't you?"

"No?"

Confusion filled her magenta eyes, but it drained away again just as quickly. "Right," she said. "You looked away."

"Looked away from what?"

"It's… it's not my place to say, I think." Botan grimaced. "She'll talk to us when she's ready. If she's ready."

But Atsuko just shrugged, leaning back against the couch as she crossed her legs and arms. "None of that matters, anyway," she declared. "I have no idea what her deal is, but I know a girl who's seen her fair share of hell. Whatever she needs, I'm there." She eyed the beer in her hand (when had she grabbed that?) and then set it gently on the coffee table, pushing it away and out of reach. "So look alive, and be ready." Her dark eyes traced our faces one by one. "Right, you three?"

Shizuru shrugged one shoulder. "Goes without saying, doesn't it?"

"Agreed," said Botan.

"Yeah." I nodded. "I'm in, too."

And that was it, really.

Nothing else needed to be said.


"What are you doing?"

Shizuru was staring at the clothes in my hands—a dress and a jacket, with leggings to wear under it—with confusion. I pointed at the bag we'd stashed Yukina's yukata inside of and smiled.

"I realized she doesn't have a pair of clothes to change into." I held up the clothes. "So I thought…"

"Right," Botan said. "She didn't bring any luggage with her, did she?"

Indeed, she had not. I'd tried to pick something I thought she might like from the clothes I'd brought with me, and this ensemble reminded me of what Yukina wore in the last episode of Yu Yu Hakusho, so… I just hoped it fit, and as I sent good-garment-fitting vibes out into the universe, I sat beside Botan on the couch.

Atsuko had shown an incredible amount of willpower in the last half hour; she hadn't taken a sip of her beer, keeping true to her decision to be there for Yukina, come what may. Botan, meanwhile, twiddled her thumbs and hummed under her breath, biting her lower lip as her eyes gazed into the distance. Shizuru stared out the window, smoking. Every now and again she'd sigh and rub her temples, but for the most part, we remained quiet as we waited for Yukina to come out of her bath.

Botan shifted uneasily after a little while. "Do you think we should check on her?"

Shizuru shook her head. "Give her space."

But Botan didn't look convinced. She glanced over her shoulder at the bedroom door, and then at Shizuru, and then at the clothes folded on my lap, one after the other after the other. "She's been in there for so long…" she said, eyes huge and swimmable, and Shizuru heaved a weary sigh.

"Keiko." She knocked some ashes into the tray she'd balanced on the windowsill. "Take her those clothes."

I jumped nearly out of my skin. "Why me?"

Shizuru glowered at my reflection in the window. "Why not you?"

"Uh." My face heated. "No reason."

Botan started to say something, but I had already gotten up and marched quite stiffly out of the room. I refused to look at Shizuru at all, because she was smirking, and that smirk was dangerous, and I really didn't want to hear what she was thinking just then. Instead I headed for the bathroom door, told myself not to think too hard about this because otherwise I'd probably end up in a panic spiral, after which I took a really deep breath and knocked three times upon the door.

"Yukina?" I called into the bathroom. "You OK in there?"

It took a moment, but soon her soft voice filtered through the wooden panel between us. "Yes," she said, the sounds of lapping water almost drowning her out. "I'm fine, Keiko."

"Good. Cool. Good." Another deep breath. "I brought you some clothes to change into. We're washing your yukata."

"Thank you," Yukina said.

I nodded. "Cool. Cool-cool-cool-cool-cool. So. Um." Kneeling, I placed the clothes carefully on the carpet. "I'll just leave these here for you."

And with that, I thought I was home free.

But then Yukina's soft voice once more carried through the quiet to ask, "Can you bring them in, please?"

Well, shit.

I wanted to make an excuse. I wanted to make any excuse in the world to not go in there, but none of them sounded natural. None wouldn't make me sound like a total and complete dork, so I steeled my resolve and slowly inched the door open bit by bit until moist steam buffeted my face like a gentle cloud. I edged inside with breath held, taking great care not to look toward the bathtub on the other side of the marble-tiled room as I set the clothes atop the towel Botan had left folded on the sink. And with that done, I turned swiftly on my heel and made for the door.

"Keiko—I'm sorry."

Her voice—small and plaintive—stopped me cold with my hand poised on the doorknob. Small splashes of water made the quiet almost hum; the water sounded nearly like voices, but it was not, and that made the lack of speaking all the more grating in my ears. I took a deep breath, willing myself to not grip the doorknob quite so hard.

"Don't be," I said. "You haven't done anything wrong."

"Thank you." More water-sounds echoed through the silence. Somehow I think I heard her take a breath before she whispered, "Can you stay?"

And I was back to gripping the doorknob really super hard again. "Yukina. Um."

"I—I don't want to be alone right now."

It was the heartbreak in her voice that stilled the anxiety in my chest. It was that desperate quietness, that air of hopeless hopefulness, that cast a shadow across my anxiety and rendered it invisible—because no one, Yukina's cracking voice informed me, felt as alone as she did in that quiet, wavestruck moment. I was being a child, despite my age. I was running from a person who needed support because… what? Because I was embarrassed that I got all blushy when she smiled? Because I didn't want her knowing that I thought she was cute? What was I, a twelve-year-old?

The shame of that gave me courage, or at least humbled me enough to provide some momentary bravery. I took an enormous breath and turned, marching stiffly toward the bathtub without looking at it—and when I finally dared to take a peek at the massive mound of crystalline bubbles from the corner of my eye, I learned that all my awkwardness had been an exercise in futility. The curtain edging the bathtub was pulled half-closed on the crescent moon of the rod suspended above it from the ceiling, and Yukina was hidden quite nearly from sight.

In fact, as I settled down onto the hard floor at the foot of the bathtub with my back against its porcelain wall (angling myself so the curtain would block as much of her as possible), it became apparent that seeing Yukina in a vulnerable position would actually be quite difficult. Even if the curtain hadn't been drawn, the slew of bubbles in the tub rose all the way to Yukina's chin. Her face was a single spot of flesh-tone in the middle of a diamond ocean, her mint-green hair piled atop her skull like a crowning knot of jade, and although her red eyes were red-rimmed and the skin beneath them puffy, she looked like a beautiful but beheaded statue balanced atop a mountain of luminescent pearls.

She also looked incredibly silly, because a blob of bubbles had somehow landed atop the peak of her hair—snow topping the zenith of some wobbly mountaintop.

But the expression on Yukina's face didn't inspire any laughter. She stared moodily into the bubbly maelstrom of her bath. Thin strands of stringy hair crawled down the sides of her glistening cheeks, matted there with steam and soap suds.

"My people bathe communally."

Her lips barely moved when she spoke. Her eyes didn't falter from their stare into the snowy bubbles below. If she hadn't spoken, I might have mistaken her for a statue indeed.

But it was impolite to not reply to people, no matter how much like a statue they looked. "So do ours, actually," I said. I suppressed an ironic smile. "Or at least in this country they do, anyway."

Her gaze at last shifted, if temporarily. It flickered to my face and then down again, and her lips pressed into a small purse.

"I didn't know that," she told me. "I was left alone so often, at the mansion. But now…" Her brow furrowed. "Now, bathing alone just hurts."

Even discounting her reference to the mansion where she had been tortured and detained, hers was a loaded statement, though she had no idea that I knew its truest weight—the weight of the fact that she hadn't asked permission to come to Human World. The fact that she might not be accepted back into her previous home. The fact that she might never bathe with her family again, and that the cost of finding her missing brother was the abandonment of the only other family she had ever known.

I couldn't tell her what I knew.

All I could tell her was, "I'm sorry."

Her eyes closed. "It's all right."

We said nothing for a few moments. Yukina kept her head bowed, eyes shut, bubbles threatening her nose as she breathed in the perfumed air. Botan had found bubble bath that smelled like freesia, or maybe lavender; it was hard to tell. I gave up trying to decide what the scent was after a little while. And besides: The cold tile under me sent chill into my tailbone, and the room's awkward quiet was too distracting to be put off for long by a single mysterious scent.

Eventually I couldn't take that silence anymore. "So. How've you been enjoying spending time in Human World?" I said with as much cheer as I could force.

Perhaps Yukina had been feeling the silence, too, because she answered me rather quickly. "It's… different," she said. Her eyes fluttered open so she could look at me, lips curling into the faintest of smiles. "Everything is so different here. It isn't like the mansion, or my home world, at all."

I hummed. "Adjusting OK?"

Her smile faded. "I'm not sure."

"It'll come in time. 90 days and you'll adjust." When Yukina looked slightly mystified, I clarified, "That's what they say about getting a new job. It takes 90 days to adjust and not feel like the newbie. Maybe it applies to interdimensional sightseeing, too."

"Maybe," Yukina said.

She didn't say more. I wasn't expecting her to not say more. I hadn't come up with anything else to say just yet, so for a second I just sat there in uncertain silence—but before I could find it in me to speak, the bubbles around her shifted. Her hand rose like an eldritch being rising from the deep, parting the bubble hills so she could swipe at the hair curling against her cheek. The motion scattered some of the bubbles under her chin and atop her chest, revealing the stripe of peach skin along her collarbone, and of course I tried to look away.

I tried, but I couldn't.

I couldn't, because the enormous line of warped purple flesh that ran along her collarbone and down her chest, disappearing into the bubbles, demanded my attention.

Yukina realized what I was so rudely staring at a second before I managed to wrench my eyes away from that deep, angry, gnarled scar. I cleared my throat and forced a smile and stared pointedly at the floor, but it was no use. She had caught me staring at that angry and gnarled and obvious blemish on her otherwise flawless skin, and a flash of hurt lanced through her bright eyes as she sank deeper into the bath with a tiny splash.

The silence that followed was so thick, a knife could've cut it—and it wouldn't take a knife anywhere near as sharp as the one that had no doubt caused Yukina such a grievous wound.

Guilt speared my heart with a spike at that comparison, but still the comparison remained.

"May I ask you something?"

I jumped when she spoke, curling my long bangs behind my ear to cover my surprise. She regarded me frankly, face composed as I fidgeted beneath her stare. It was all I could do to nod in affirmation, and in response, she nodded back.

"What is your relationship to Yusuke-san?" Yukina asked.

My eyebrows shot up. "Yusuke?"

"Yes." Her tone softened. "I've been curious."

"Well. Um." I fiddled with a rip in the knee of my jeans for a second, organizing my thoughts. "Well, he's… I guess he's basically my brother, more or less? We met when we were little kids and we've been looking out for each other ever since. His mother, Atsuko, is part of the family, too."

"I see." Yukina shut her eyes. "I, too, have a brother."

My heart leapt into my throat like a champion pole vaulter. "Really?" I said, and to my horror my voice came out in a tiny squeak.

"I came here to find him." She looked at me from beneath her lashes. "You know that already, though."

And then my champion-pole-vaulter heart was on top of my tongue and struggling to fall to the floor. "Uh. Yukina, I—"

She cut my panic off with the softest of intonations. "Botan told you, didn't she?" Yukina asked. "I explained why I came here when she spotted me in the crowds. I don't think she expected to see me at all."

Panic gave way to relief. For a second there, I thought she'd guessed that I knew the truth somehow; I'd quite forgotten she'd already spilled the beans to Botan about the search for her missing brother. "Right. Yeah, Botan, her, she did fill me in." I pasted on an expression of curiosity and helpfulness, which I hoped would hide any vestiges of lingering panic. "Do you have any idea how you'll find him? What he looks like, or…?"

"No." Again she smiled, with such fragility it was a wonder her features didn't crack. "But I have faith that when I see him, I will know."

Despite the fragility in her features, she appeared… serene, I guess. Like she believed what she was saying, despite having no clues to aid her search. Nothing in her eyes wavered, the expression in them as solid as a statue carved of stone… and I had to wonder if Yukina had already guessed the truth. If the sight of Hiei had been accompanied by a searing rush of undeniable recognition, a collision of entangled souls meeting at long last.

I'd felt precisely that the second I laid eyes on Yusuke, after all. And when I'd laid eyes on Kuwabara on the playground as a kid, and on Kurama in our classroom as teenagers, and on Hiei himself when he appeared to kidnap me. Recognition at first sight… it really wasn't all that unthinkable at all. Not in this world, anyway.

As if sensing my thoughts of him, Yukina asked, "What is having a brother like?"

"That's… huh." I scratched my nose. "Um."

She read my silence as reluctance, I think, because her head dipped in a penitent bow. "I apologize for the strange question," she said. "I asked Shizuru, but… my brother and I are twins. You and Yusuke are the same age. Shizuru is much older than Kuwabara. I'm interested to see if your perspective is different, and if it will be closer to that of mine and my brother's."

I just looked at her for a minute. It was a daunting question, even if on the surface it seemed simple. I'd been an only child in my past life. I was an only child in this one, too, my relationship with Yusuke notwithstanding—and as Yukina waited for me to speak, her eyes intent upon my face, I wondered if I'd be able to put my relationship with him into words to her satisfaction.

Wait.

'To her satisfaction?'

Yukina watched me with unmistakable intensity, face settled into an anticipatory constellation more befitting a probing scientist than a curious new friend. She'd asked me what my relationship with Yusuke was without seeming to know the answer, but she'd followed the question up so quickly with one about brothers… and the comment about Shizuru's age suggested that Yukina had given both my relationship to Yusuke and our ages quite a bit of thought. And that meant she'd already deduced that Yusuke and I had a sibling-like relationship, somehow, and she'd only seen us interact a handful of times, and while we were fighting.

Yukina… she was not what she seemed, now was she?

I had to fight to keep a grin off my face while I spoke, because the thought of Yukina not being exactly like I'd thought was, in a word, exciting.

"Having a brother is… it's like having a net," I explained as I threw caution to the wind and just let the words flow. "You know that if you fall, it'll be there to catch you no matter what. Sometimes the net trips around your feet and is super annoying, but it's worth having. It's more than worth having, actually." The grin broke through my defenses, but that was OK; it was not about Yukina anymore, but about the boy whose face had filled the eye of my mind to the brim. "Yusuke can predict what I'll do before I think about doing it. I can do the same with him. Having someone around who knows you better than you know yourself can be… humbling. But I sleep better at night knowing he's got my back."

Yukina studied my face.

"I see," she said.

Again, her eyes closed. Her head dipped low, nose nearly brushing the bubbles piled underneath it.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

She shook her head, but only barely. "The Koorime—my people—they…"

Her voice broke. I shifted onto my hip, knees curling as I lay my arm along the edge of the bath.

"It's OK," I said when she did not continue. "You don't have to tell me anything."

But again she shook her head. "We are all women," she said, and although her voice broke, she spoke with a pace both measured and confident. "We live on an island high above the ground, because men… they pose a danger to us." Another shake of her head, silken hair rippling. "My brother was cast out because of his sex. And I was taught, year after year, to fear men. But then I learned I had a brother." A bitter smile graced her lips. "And I had to wonder… how could my brother be a danger to me?"

Yukina paused. I said nothing, both because I sensed I shouldn't, and for fear of what I might give away of my knowledge of the Koorime if I broke the heavy silence.

Eventually Yukina continued on. "It felt fated, leaving to find him," she said, her voice a liquid whisper echoing in the cavernous bathroom. "But my ambitions soured when I was captured and sold to Tarukane." Pain flashed across her face, raw and undisguised. "I don't think I need to speak aloud the way in which I was treated."

She did not.

I remembered her scar just fine.

Yukina did not give me the chance to acknowledge this, though I doubt I would've had the courage to do so, anyway. Hand stealing to her chest, she whispered into the bubbles, "You saw what happened when Kuwabara touched me, even out of kindness. Kuwabara… he's kind. I know he'd never hurt me. He is a good man. But men…" She hesitated. But then her jaw set, delicate yet determined. "I'm trying to unlearn what I've been taught, by schooling and by experience, to fear, but it is difficult. I can only hope to overcome my feelings by the time I find my brother."

A long silence followed her declaration.

The first thought to cross my absent mind was: Good lord, that fucking sucks.

I mean, what else was there to say about her situation, really? It sucked, and that was all there was too it. Yukina had been taught to fear all her life, but then she'd questioned everything she knew and had taken a risk to see the world for herself, rather than take the teachings of her people at face value—and she was rewarded for that bravery and openness by having those fears completely reinforced by a deranged human businessman who tortured her to get rich. And even after being returned to the safety that was isolation on her floating island in Demon World, she'd once more risked everything she knew and in spite of what had to be major fucking PTSD to go find her brother and give him a chance to prove the Koorime wrong. She'd done all that for the sake of a brother she hadn't even met, and the sheer goodness that Yukina was apparently made of clamped my heart in a vice and squeezed it nearly into pulp.

Then again… Yukina wasn't nearly the shrinking violet that fandom sometimes made her out to be. Her insight into my relationship with Yukina proved she wasn't some one-note nice girl who liked to befriend fuzzy forest creatures. For Yukina to have shaken off the teachings of the Koorime spoke to a backbone of steal. Her survival of Tarukane's torture spoke to her iron willpower. And the fact that she'd left her village in the sky in defiance of her people said all those things and more about how cunning, how strategic, and how utterly unyielding she truly was.

And she had lied to us in the short time we'd known her, I reminded myself. Yukina claimed to have obtained her people's permission to search for her brother, but in the manga, she eventually revealed that this wasn't true. She'd run away without their permission, and to top it all off, in the manga Hiei had correctly guessed that half of the reason Yukina wanted to find her brother was to see if he hated the Koorime as much as she did. Her desire to find him was born at least partially of bloodlust. It was born of her wish to see her people punished for their culture of fear and isolation, but she knew she couldn't accomplish this on her own. That's why she'd sought out her twin, Hiei had guessed. Yukina wanted to see if her vicious, abandoned brother would kill their people for her.

Yukina hadn't bothered to deny his claims at all.

It was a conversation the anime hadn't quite managed to capture all of the nuances of, but it was one that had stuck with me the most. It was the single unveiled look the fandom had ever been granted of Yukina's cloistered heart, and it belied her kind, shy smiles like a riptide lurking beneath blue water.

I hadn't seen signs of that side of Yukina just yet, of course. Let me be clear that I didn't doubt her trauma for even a second, but all her sweet smiles and shy manner of speech… were they mere camouflage for her true personality? How much of her sweetness was artifice, like synthetic sweetener, and how much of it was simply her?

Yukina… she was more of an enigma than she let on.

A splash reverberated off the walls of the bathroom. Yukina had leaned forward, legs curling to her chest so she could pillow her forehead on her knees, arms wrapped tightly around herself as if she feared she might fly apart at any moment. Multifaceted though I suspected she was, I didn't have it in me to even consider that this might be an act; her reaction to Kuwabara had been nothing but genuine, and the slump of her shoulders now looked likewise heartfelt—heartfelt and defeated. All at once the vice around my heart gripped tighter, mind racing as I shifted back onto my butt and crossed my arms over my chest.

"Well," I said, staring straight ahead at the wall. "There are a few things to fear about men, if we're being honest."

Yukina looked up at once. "Oh?" she breathed.

"Yup." I looked at her askance, keeping my face utterly straight. "They stink. Badly."

For a second, Yukina just looked at me in shock—but then she laughed. She threw back her head and laughed loudly enough to hurt my ears, a single ringing peal of mirth that sent bubbles flying.

"Hey, it's not funny!" I said with manufactured anguish. "Boys smell bad; they're the worst. And teenage boys? Holy crap, stay very far away because they will knock you out with that body odor alone. If you ever live with your brother, Yukina, you will also need to watch out for dirty socks left all over your house, because boys seem to lack the ability to clean up after themselves. Not that you can really blame them." I sighed and rolled my eyes and tried to look appropriately disgusted, yet mournful. "It's just in their DNA, but nevertheless, the stench of unwashed teenage boy is a truly frightful thing."

Yukina hadn't stopped laughing the entire time I spoke, though she tried to stifle her giggles with her fist. She shook and vibrated, head descending to her knees again as her shoulders shook, water sloshing in the tub as the bubbles danced a merry jig in time with Yukina's jollity. Right when I finished speaking and slumped against the tub, pretending to look defeated and distraught, she tossed back her head and loosed another tickled holler. She rocked forward again just as quickly, slapping her hand against the side of the tub as suds flew through the air—and then there came a little clattering sound, hollow and distinct.

The sound seemed to sober Yukina, though at first I knew not why. Her laughter (so loud, so exuberant, so unlike the usual, quiet Yukina's dainty giggles concealed behind the sleeve of her yukata) abated into giggles, and then into a few gasps, and then into a silent smile… but the smile faded as Yukina reached into the water, feeling around the bottom of the tub like she wanted to pull the tub's plug. Her hand soon emerged from the sudsy water, and between her fingers she did not hold a plug at all.

Instead, she held a tear-gem.

Only it wasn't like any tear-gem I had ever seen before.

This hiruiseki stone was pink. It was the pale pink of sakura blossoms in full bloom, surface lustrous and shiny, milky pale but slick with myriad colors that caught even the smallest shaft of light and burst it into the softest of swirling rainbows. Although its surface was perfectly smooth, it seemed to gleam with a thousand tiny facets of prismatic light, in utter defiance of its soft and uncut shape. I gasped at the sight of the opalescent pearl, watching with held breath as Yukina rolled it between her fingers. She contemplated the stone in silence, eyes clouded with trouble… and they grew even stormier when I reached into my pocket and fished out the three gems she had cried on the kitchen floor.

"Oh. Uh. I picked these up earlier. I thought you might—want them?" I handed them to her without making eye contact, uncertain of her silence. "Sorry if that's… weird. I wasn't sure what to do but it seemed strange to just leave them there.

Still Yukina did not speak. She simply took the gems and placed them on her palm, gently depositing the pink stone amid the three I had saved for her. Their rounded sides struck one another with musical chimes that sounded for all the world like crystal made audible.

But the three stones I handed her weren't pink. They were yellow. They had the same beautiful sheen possessed by the pink pearl, all rainbow hues and impossible facets, and their buttery tint was indeed gorgeous—but they had nothing on the pink gem. The pink one appeared to glow in the bathroom's dim light, like it housed an inner fire made of pure, incandescent springtime.

Eventually Yukina's fingers closed, obscuring the gems. Her other hand wandered to her throat. The bubbles around her had popped a bit, their bulk deflating as she splashed in the throes of humor, and I only noticed the brown leather cord around her neck when her fingers tugged at its length. She fished the cord out of the water with nimble fingers, lifting free of the bubbles a tiny bauble of a pendant. I had to fight hard against a gasp, fangirl heart thudding against my ribs as I wondered if this was indeed…?

And so it was.

Suds dripped off the pendant's rounded sides, eventually revealing a pale blue gem the color of the sky on only the sunniest of days. It was the heart of a periwinkle and the translucent water of a distant ocean, the blue of a vein seen under the thinnest skin, all awash in pearly sheen that no jeweler could possibly explain.

It was absolutely breathtaking.

And it was strange, too.

"Can I ask you something?" I said when I found my ability to speak. At Yukina's questioning glance, I pointed to her necklace. "That one is blue. The others are yellow and pink. Is there a reason they're not all the same?"

Yukina nodded, looking down at her pendant with a smile. "The color denotes their meaning," she said. "Pink is for happiness and humor. Yellow is for sadness and pain. Blue is for…" She trailed off, fingers curling around her necklace until it disappeared from view. "My mother gifted this one to me. She cried another for my brother." Her eyes rose to meet mine. "Blue is for the blood in our veins that binds us as a family." The gem slipped back into the water and out of sight. "I will know my brother by the gem he bears."

Suddenly, her certainty that she could find him made all the sense in the world.

As did the various colorations of her hiruiseki stones, come to think of it. Hadn't I read a paper once that said that tears cried as a result of different stimuli had different chemical structures when viewed under a microscope? Like human tears, the structural makeup of a Koorime's tears must be influenced by emotion if their differences were caused by humor, sadness or even chopping onions (one wondered what Yukina's gems would look like if she chopped onions, but I wasn't a monster who'd trick her into onion duty just to satisfy my curiosity). Makes sense the same should be said for tear gems—and oh. Oh shit. We never saw Yukina produce gems in the anime for any reasons other than physical pain or grief, and they had all been yellow. So the gems Tarukane got were all yellow, huh? Were maybe the pink ones worth more than the yellow? Were some tears worth more than others? Could Tarukane have even discovered the other gems considering how badly he tortured Yukina? What did all of this mean for Hiei, who was part Koorime, and—

A drop of water hit my wrist, drawing me out of my inner monologue. "Keiko," Yukina said, holding out her hand. "Here."

Hesitantly I opened my hand beneath her fist. When her fingers relaxed, three yellow and one pink gem fell softly into my palm, striking one another with the sound of tiny bells. I started to protest, to try and hand them back to her, but she shook her head. She closed my fingers around the gems, her damp fingers gentle but firm around my own.

"Keep them," she said, tone unbearably gentle. "Keep them, or throw them away. Along with the others, please. They are of no use to me, but if they can bring you even a little happiness…"

I shook my head. "Yukina, I can't."

"Why not?"

Voice strained, I asked, "Aren't these incredibly valuable?"

She lips parted. Her head tilted to the side a smidge. She started to speak—and stopped.

"Oh. Yes." Yukina looked down and away. "I'd forgotten."

At the sight of her dour expression (one full of sadness, pain, but the kind of bravery in the face of it that only made the pain more tragic), I wanted to punch myself in the face for being so utterly and completely stupid. As soon as the words had left my mouth, it had occurred to me that to Yukina, these weren't priceless gems. To Yukina these were nothing but tears, especially the yellow ones. The yellow tears were nothing more noteworthy than tiny, gorgeous monuments to pain—pain that hurt her and yet was so infinitely valuable to pigs like Tarukane. Was it any wonder, then, that Yukina would rather throw these away than keep them in her care?

I stuffed the gems in my pocket; Yukina flinched at the sudden movement, but I just forced a grin. "All right, Yukina," I said, showing her my empty hands. "I'll take care of them, OK?"

She smiled back, warm and small. "Thank you for that, Keiko. And thank you for your company." She reached for the edge of the bathtub. "I'm ready to get out of the bath, now."

I fetched her towel for her, and I helped wrap her in it.

I did not flinch from the sight of the scars that covered her skin like so much violent lace.

Yukina was more than those scars tried to make her out to be. I'd do well to remember that, in future.


"I'll take…" Kuwabara's fingers skimmed the line of playing cards in Atsuko's hand before settling on the one in the middle. "This one."

"Old Maid."

"Dammit, again?!"

Cards slapped the table as Kuwabara groaned and Atsuko cackled, counting out her paired cards with a gloating grin on her face. We'd been playing cards for the better part of the day, and in spite of Kuwabara's psychic senses, he was a shit player at Old Maid. He kept losing with almost belligerent consistency, drawing the joker again and again even when Yukina took pity on him and basically told him which card not to draw. Yusuke would've made a joke that Kuwabara's psychic powers must be broken or something.

But Yusuke wasn't there, now was he?

Well, he and all the rest of the guys (plus Genkai) weren't there, so I guess I couldn't be too mad. Yusuke was off with Genkai undergoing what I suspected was a certain test, and Kurama hadn't returned to the suite after his dramatic exit, and of course Hiei was gallivanting off in a forest somewhere or whatever. With just the girls and Kuwabara, it was a pretty subdued crowd—especially since Kuwabara had been trying his damndest to be nice to Yukina while still giving her space, with mixed results. She was as polite and cheerful as always, but more reserved in a way she normally was not, and Kuwabara was basically just confused and sad that he'd made her sad. It was one big awkward soup of people trying too hard to make nice, basically, and Atsuko had started slamming beers to cope with the situation shortly after our tenth game of Old Maid.

We were on game 27 or so when Kuwabara threw down his cards with a sigh. "Can we play something else?" he groused as he glared at the joker in his card pile. "I suck at Old Maid, apparently, which I didn't know people could even suck at since it's a game for literal babies."

Atsuko's eye lit up. "We could take a lap around the hotel. Maybe hit up the pool?"

"Sunbathing sounds nice to me!" Botan said.

But Kuwabara only slouched. "I didn't bring my trunks. And what time is it, anyway? Can we eat dinner yet?"

"It's 3:15," said Shizuru.

He did an impressively cartoonish double-take. "Seriously? I thought for sure it was, like, 7!"

Botan glanced toward the windows. "I suppose it doesn't help that we've been playing with the curtains drawn…"

"Maybe there's a movie on we could all watch," I suggested, because Kuwabara had started humming to himself and Shizuru had been chain-smoking for an hour, with each cigarette looking incrementally more murderous, and she was only looking a shade away from homicidal as her brother's humming of an off-key Megallica song continued.

Yukina perked up at the suggestion. "I like movies."

"You've seen one?" Botan asked, surprised.

"Yes. A few." She looked a little unsettled, shaking her head as if to ward off cobwebs. "But I'd like to see more, someday."

"Well, today seems as good as any to me." I hopped up and threw down my cards, stretching as I looked around for the TV remote. "Let's channel surf and see what we can find."

"I'll make popcorn!" Botan said.

"And I'll get the drinks!" said Atsuko.

Kuwabara grinned. "And I'll—"

Someone knocked on the door.

Kuwabara stopped talking. Botan said "I'll get it!" and trotted toward the front of the suite. Kuwabara opened his mouth to try again.

There came a trio of knocks. A quick little triplet, chipper and unmistakable.

Rather than keep heading for the door, though, Botan stopped walking. Slowly—very slowly, indeed—she pivoted on her heel, looking back toward the living room in confusion. Everyone else stared at her with the same expression on her face, myself included.

"Did… did you all hear that?" Botan said.

On cue, the knocking resumed—and this time it was loud enough for us to tell that it was not coming from the front door at all.

It was coming from the windows.

No one said anything for a second. We just turned like a gaggle of automatons toward the windows, covered as they were in thick blackout curtains. At them we stared in silence, until Botan cleared her throat.

"Is someone… is someone knocking on our window?" she asked.

"Maybe we were being too loud, and someone's telling us to shut it?" Kuwabara muttered under his breath.

Botan's head whipped toward him. "But Kuwabara—we're 14 stories up!"

A moment of silence followed.

As if to giggle at her point, someone knocked on our 14-story-window in a shave-and-a-haircut rhythm.

Everybody jumped. Yukina scooted behind the bored-as-hell-and-also-slightly-bloodthirsty Shizuru, who apparently didn't like having movie night interrupted and was busy cracking her knuckles at the curtains. Atsuko picked up one of her empty beer bottles and raised it high behind her head like she intended to chuck it at whatever was knocking on our window with suspiciously jaunty tempo. Botan looked a little green, and Kuwabara had picked up a pillow like it could serve as a replacement for his Spirit Sword.

I, meanwhile, had put my hands on my hips, my face screwed up in consternation.

"Wait a mo'." My eyes bugged out a bit. "Could that be…?"

Shizuru shot me a sharp look. "Keiko?"

I ignored her. I went to the windows, grabbed the curtains in both hands, and peeked through the place where they met—and my face paled. I wrenched the curtains shut again with a curse. "Oh my fucking god—"

"Keiko!" Kuwabara said. "What's wrong?!"

From the other side of the curtains, the knocker knocked. They knocked with a few different rhythms, each more cheerful than the last, and with each tattoo my face turned just a bit redder, ears quickly feeling like they'd just gotten turned out of a forge. I turned my back to the window, resolving to play this off as, um, a tree branch hitting the window pane (oh shit, we were way too high up for that to work, fuck fuck fuck—)… but everyone was staring at me, deadpan dead-fish glares brooking no room for obfuscation whatsoever. Shizuru's stare was particularly intimidating, so I wisely said nothing as she broke away from the pack and shooed me out of the way so she could peek past the curtains, too.

For a second, she just stared.

Then she pulled her face away from the gap and, with one brow arched quite high, informed me: "I think it's for you."

And with that, she wrenched the curtains open.

Most of us groaned or gasped as afternoon sun flooded the room with its bright glare, but I did my best not to shy away from that brilliant light. I cursed and peered through my fingers at the silhouette suspended beyond the glass, blinking as my eyes adjusted enough to make out the figure's face. He wore an enormous grin, gleam of his curved eyeteeth matched only by the sparkle in his bright blue eye and the fiery crown of hair upon his head. He carried a somewhat squashed bundle of flowers in the crook of an elbow, and when he spotted me, he lifted one hand and waved.

Even if he hadn't been floating on nothing but thin air, I knew who he was at once—and even though the three inches of thick glass separated the two of us, I heard him plain as day when he said, "'Ello, Keiko! Good t' see ya!" He winked. "Now how 'bout we go on that date you promised, eh?"


NOTES

People have been asking when the Jin date would pop up, and after Keiko's assurances to Kuwabara that she'd never date until she aged more, this might be the absolute worst time for it to come into play. WHOOPS.

And… ah, the Kuwabara Conundrum. He's gotten as close to a confession as he ever has; Keiko won't be able to willfully ignore the obvious any longer as a result. She's talked about this with both Kagome and Kurama in earlier chapters, acknowledging that Kuwabara had at the very least a big crush on her, but she had faith that canon would hold steady. Her faith was misplaced, and how she'll have to face those consequences, whatever they may be.

A word about Yukina: She was tortured for so long that I find it wildly unrealistic that she wouldn't bear some physical and psychological scars from her ordeal. YYH isn't a show about war wounds, necessarily, but it still feels like an unrealistic characterization. Also that YYH chapter I referenced in which she basically admits she wants the Koorime to get wiped out is pure manga canon, as is the fact that she's told the YYH crew a few lies, and it pains me that people often overlook that part of her character. She's tough and sneaky and I'm convinced is a great liar, and is still recovering from a variety of abuses. She's nuanced. Greatly enjoyed writing her this chapter.

Also: Finally some of the stuff I wrote during the New Year's Eve party arc is coming back around to bite us in the collective butt. A lot of loose plot threads were touched on in this chapter, overall. From Kuwabara's dad dating Kurama's mom (ohhhh boy, we'll see where that leads soon) to Kuwabara's crush on Keiko all the way to the date with Jin to more info on Yukina, we're seeing some big canon alterations bloom into being from seeds planted very long ago. What kind of plants those sees will someday grow into is anyone's guess…

I'm heading out to another convention (this one in the Midwest) this coming weekend. If you're attending a con that weekend, let me know, because maybe we're attending the same one!

Many thanks to all y'all who commented on the previous chapter. You're all rockstars and I loved hearing from you: xenocanaan, Ijustdontcare132, Kaiya Azure, oyuki kita540, Domitia Ivory, OdinsReaper, teafortwo, chibi-no-baka, Krystall Klear, Blaze1662001, BuymeBalenciaga, Thornsilverfox, Yakiitori, LadyEllesmere, EdenMae, Marian, EasilyAmused93, Melissa Fairy, vodka-and-tea, WhatWouldValeryDo, rya-fire1, tammywammy9, RedPanda923, C S Stars, tequilamockinbur, Konohamaya Uzuami, Neko-Mitsuko, Silverwing103, Sweetfoxgirl13, SlytherclawQueen, SterlingBee, Lightning Ash, ahyeon, MetroNeko, buzzk97, cestlavie, Ally Kenshin, general zargon, Duo's chibi Deathscythe, Kykygrly, dantezess, WaveMasterYami (bruh your review MADE MY MONTH, expect a reply soon, but for now just know that you're amazeballs), drmsqnc, Dancing on Clouds of Sorrow, Xion The XIV and a smattering of beloved but anonymous guests.