Warnings: None
Lucky Child
Chapter 113:
"A Nagging Feeling"
Amid the cacophonous confines of the arcade, our group stood in absolute—and absolutely heavy—silence.
Yusuke continued to wear a shit-eating grin, of course. He reveled in the awkwardness like a cat in a fish cannery, looking between Kuwabara and I as if waiting for sparks to catch a bone-dry powder keg. I wanted to shoot him a look of fury, but I was too busy staring at the flush on Kuwabara's angular face to spare him anything more than a cursory glance. I just stood there, gaping, holding the toy arcade gun in one limp hand, as Kuwabara's eyes met mine and then flickered away again just as fast. Soon a little sound left Amanuma's mouth—a greeting he couldn't quite articulate—but he fell silent again just as quickly.
And since Yusuke was too busy grinning and Kuwabara was too busy staring awkwardly at the floor, that meant it was up to me to break the silence. But what the hell should I even say?
Luckily, I never had to make that choice. I was saved when a dry voice cut through the hazy arcade air like the cut of a honed blade.
"Well," said Kaito without a trace of amusement. "This looks like an annoyingly emotional confrontation if I ever saw one."
Kaito and Kurama, like ghosts of gamers past, emerged from behind a nearby Time Crisis machine, materializing from the ether beside Kuwabara. He flinched and backed up a step, and while I also flinched in surprise, Yusuke just tossed his hair and laughed.
"You bet it is!" he said, still grinning. "Just like I wanted, too."
Kurama shot Kaito a warning look. "Kaito..."
"Yusuke!" I said, finally giving him the Death Stare he deserved.
"I'm not wrong," Kaito said, mostly to Kurama.
"And neither am I!" Yusuke concurred, mostly to me.
Finally Amanuma found his voice. "Kuwabara!" he said, nervously shifting from foot to foot. "I'm glad you're here. We missed you last time!"
"Uh. Yeah, I…" Kuwabara paused to draw a deep breath—but his face only turned a deeper shade of red. Looking askance, he muttered: "Sorry, kid, but maybe next time. There's something I forgot I had to do at home."
"Huh?" Amanuma blinked a few times. "But you just got here!"
It was no use. Kuwabara had already turned and walked in the opposite direction, toward the front door of the arcade with a hasty cry of "See ya later!" thrown like a haphazard brick over his broad shoulder.
The toy gun in my hand fell to the ground with a clatter, and before I could tell myself to stop, to think, to give him space—I bolted after him.
Amanuma yelled something after me, but I didn't hear it; the games blared too loudly, too persistently, for me to hear whatever it was he'd said. Like a solider on a mission I pursued Kuwabara through the arcade, then out the front door and down the street. Only his legs were longer than mine by no small degree, taking him away at a lengthy lope Keiko's short legs couldn't hope to match. Fast though I was, I fell behind bit by bit, faces of pedestrians and storefronts passing through my periphery with a flicker and in a blur, my eyes locked on the span of Kuwabara's blue-clad back… but I did not move fast enough to gain any ground on him.
Sensing I'd lose him if I didn't do something, anything to stop him, I dug in my heels and took a deep breath to bellow, "I'm not going to chase after you like a damn dog, Kuwabara!"
And, miraculously, he stopped. He came to a halt on the sidewalk ahead of me like a marionette with severed strings, freezing in place after his shoulders sagged and his head bowed. Marching forward, I sensed eyes on me as the Sunday crowds along the sidewalk parted, a few people murmuring behind their hands when I moved in front of Kuwabara and leveled a finger at his shell-shocked face.
"Keiko, I—" Kuwabara started, but I shook my head.
"I am not going to chase after you, Kuwabara," I repeated. "And I get that that's ironic considering I just chased you halfway down a city block, but you know what I mean." Because his eyes were as wide as I'd ever seen them, my heart gave a pang. In softer tones (and after I lowered my hand) I added, "You're mad at me. And you have every right to your emotions. I respect your anger, and hell, I even agree with it to an extent. But ignoring me and avoiding me hurts, and I'm not so big a masochist that I'm going to put myself through that pain on purpose." I leaned toward him when he did not reply. "Do you understand me?"
Kuwabara swallowed, eyes dropping to the sidewalk. "I'm… not sure."
My heart gave another pang, but I ignored it. "You've been my best friend for a long time, Kuwabara." I couldn't keep a tremble from my voice, try though I might to stay strong. "And I miss you. I miss us."
His eyes lifted, meeting mine at last. In them I saw… hope, I think, but a darkness, too. I wasn't sure I understood it, but now wasn't the time to wonder. I had been rehearsing these words for weeks. It was damn time he heard them.
"It sucks that you're avoiding me," I continued, "but I'm not going to force you to look at me or be around me, either. I wouldn't put you through that pain." Braving a smile I wasn't sure I felt, I told him, "You'll forgive me someday, or you won't. I'll be waiting for you once you do, but until then…" Here my voice hardened once again. "Don't expect me to bend over backwards waiting for you to come around. I'll wait. Patiently. Forever, if I have to. I just want you to know that I'll give you space until you don't want it anymore—because I care about you, and if that's what it takes, so be it."
The hurt and the haunt in his eyes did not heal at these words. Not that I'd expected it to… but when he remained silent, I faltered. I'd expected a reaction by now. His silence was unexpected, and my script did not account for it in the slightest.
"Come find me when you're ready, I guess," I finished (a touch underwhelming, I have to admit). "So…"
Still Kuwabara said not a word. I'd scripted a hundred responses to something he might say, and the only one that made sense at this point wasn't really about talking at all. I reached into my purse (thank god it was the same one I'd taken to Shizuru's when I got my haircut) and pulled out the envelope still tucked into one of its many pockets. Kuwabara's eyes flickered to my hands as I took a deep breath, and before I could hold the envelope out toward him, he spoke.
"It's not that simple, Keiko," he said. "It's not—"
He stopped talking. In the absence of speech, the murmur of the Sunday crowd crept back in. We stood in the middle of downtown Mushiyori; two teens have an emotional meltdown in public wasn't exactly subtle. But Kuwabara didn't look bothered, and so I tried not to let the gazes of prying strangers get to me, either. I just stared him down, worrying at the envelope in my fingers as he stared at me in return. He didn't talk, though. He narrow eyes remained hooded and dark, auburn hair gleaming carroty in the springtime sun, teeth worrying his thin lips as he watched passersby traipse back and forth across the pavement.
I'm not good at silence. "What?" I couldn't help but say, searching his face. "What is it?"
He took a deep breath.
Then: "You lied to me."
Such a plaintive statement, wrought with pain and pity. I winced at once, holding back the urge to grab his hand and squeeze.
"I know," I said instead. "And I'm sorry."
"Don't apolo—" He swore, hands running through his pompadour hard enough to leave it rumpled. "Jesus, Keiko!"
My jaw dropped. "The heck did I do now?"
"Can you stop being so damn reasonable for maybe two seconds or somethin'?" he said, eyes rolling. "It's hard to keep being mad when you're—"
"Wait, you want to be mad at me?" I said, aghast. "Because that puts a confusing new spin on all of this that I'm not sure I want to—"
"I don't want to be mad!" Kuwabara interjected. "I'm just… I'm just mad! And the fact that no one else is mad only makes it worse!"
"Worse? Worse how?"
"How did they get over it so fast?" he said, flinging a hand out toward the arcade we'd left behind. "How did they get past it that quickly? And why the hell can't I? At first I thought it was because—" He paused, a strangled sound ripping up his throat. Softly, in a voice that trembled, Kuwabara said, "You know how I feel about you. About Volcano Girl." Softer still, he told me, "You know how much she meant to me."
I swallowed. "I do."
"And I thought that was it," Kuwabara said as if I hadn't spoken. "I thought that maybe I had put too much into—into the way I feel about you. About her." His eyes closed. "And I think deep down, maybe I knew you were her. Volcano Girl." A wry smile twisted his mouth. "Build something up so high, it's gonna make a big crash when it comes crumbling down, right?" One huge hand cupped his face, knuckles stark white. "God, they're all so chill and I'm a wreck. It's embarrassing!"
Behind the knuckles, his cheeks burned red—but of course they did. He was embarrassed. That made sense, and my face wasn't exactly cool, either. This was the first time Kuwabara had flirted with stating his feelings for me aloud, but I hadn't gotten any better at hearing them since the last time.
"But… that's not all of it," Kuwabara said, a runaway train barreling on ahead. "That's not why I've been avoiding you."
"It's not?"
"No." His throat moved as he swallowed. "It's because I'm scared of you."
He spoke the words like a confession—a whisper, a murmur in a dark night, hesitant and scared. But I didn't lash out or reject what he'd said, mostly because I didn't understand it.
He was… he was scared, of…?"
"What?" I said, uncomprehending. "You're what?"
"I'm scared." The words leaked from between his teeth syllable by syllable. "Of you, of what you're capable of."
"Kuwabara," I said, still not understanding but desperate, so desperate, to fix that emotion—fear, I finally recognized—shining in his fever-bright eyes. "Kuwabara, I would never hurt—"
"I know you never would," he was quick to assure me (to comfort me, me, the person who scared him!). "Not on purpose, anyway. But you…" He shook his head. "You know everything about me. Even before I told you about my powers, you knew everything about me. From the story. The legend."
I just looked at him, still not getting it. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair again.
"I can't keep secrets from you even if I want to," Kuwabara said, "but you can keep all the secrets you'd like, for as long as you'd like, and none of us will ever know the difference. And that's what scares me." A helpless smile, marred by pain. "I don't have a choice with you. I'm vulnerable and you're not. At any time you could choose to use what you know to hurt me, and I'd be powerless to stop you. And even if you say you've told me everything about yourself, that we're on the same level again… how can I trust that? In the end, Keiko, that's what hurts. That's what scares me. The fact that this playing field between us will never be level, ever. The fact that for some reason, you told Kurama and Hiei and even Yusuke some or all of the truth, but to me you didn't say a word. And that fact that when you could've chosen to level it a little, you decided not to, and you kept me in the dark." He swore again, hands once more in his hair. "Why does everyone always keep me in the dark?!"
My chest had gone numb, a block of jagged ice. "I was trying to prote—"
"To protect me. I know." Now he just sounded tired, bags like bruises beneath his haggard eyes. "But from where I'm standing it, looks more like you just didn't want to give up control. You wanted power, even if it was at my expense. Because that's what you told us, isn't it? That you've been pulling strings to make sure this story we're in goes the way it did when you read it in your old life?" He didn't wait for me to answer. "You need power to do that, and telling me the truth would've made me less easy to push and pull in whatever direction you wanted." Again, he broke my heart with kindness, the faintest of smiles softening the ragged edges in his eyes. "But I know you're a good person. I know you did it for what you think are the right reasons. Maybe they are the right reasons. It's just that those reasons don't make me feel any better—and I've tried to change how I feel, but Keiko, I just can't help it."
The people on the sidewalk had mostly stopped staring at that point, moving on with their lives and dispersing with the wind. Now I felt the absence of their eyes as much as I'd felt the pressure of them. No one was there to watch Kuwabara's broken smile, nor help me understand the nuance of all he'd said. No one was there to help me escape this—this horrible pain I'd inflicted, half on purpose and half in ignorance, on someone I considered my best friend.
It was a realization I had to face alone, standing on that crowded Sunday sidewalk.
But Kuwabara—that beautiful, precious boy—took pity on me. He offered me kindness and hope as he forced a smile and said to me, the person who had wronged him, "Still, I… I don't wanna be mad at you, Keiko. Gimme a little time to work on that, OK?" He took a deep, shuddering breath. "But I have to be honest. Even if you give me time, I don't know if I'll ever be able to trust you again."
"I'm sorry," I said, because it was all I could do.
"I know," said Kuwabara with agonizing gentleness. "That's why I can't stay mad. Because you at least can admit you know what you did was wrong." Once again, his eyes closed. "Too bad it just doesn't make it hurt any less."
We stood only a few feet apart, but it might as well have been a hundred miles for the look of distance on his face. Alone in a crowd, together but apart, mired in shock and confusion—I barely heard it when a child cried nearby, when a car roared too quickly down the street, when a lone bird chirp as it landed on telephone line overhead. Kuwabara didn't look like he'd heard, either. He stood with hands in pockets, head down, mouth a gash across his jagged face. He looked both defeated and determined at the same time, paradoxical as that sounds. Like he was too tired to keep talking, but he knew he had more to say.
And yet, I was the one to speak next. "So where does that leave us?" I said, words thin on the string of my breath.
Kuwabara shrugged. "Space is good. So's time, if that's OK."
"Anything you need." I meant it, too, and chanced a smile I prayed looked reassuring. "I hope that eventually I can earn your trust back."
"I hope so, too." He took a ragged breath. Smiled like broken glass. "You're not the only one who misses us. And I need to hear the rest of The Princess Bride." That smile faded. "Someday, anyway."
Those were the last words, it seemed, that he wanted to say. He took a step forward, turning away until I faced his broad back instead of his wounded face. But although he had said his piece, there was still one thing I had to do. Almost of its own accord, my hand rose, fingers hooking into the back of his shirtsleeve.
"Wait."
He stopped. Turned his head, one dark eye glimmering over his wide shoulder. He did not speak.
I held up the envelope. "You should have this."
Still Kuwabara said nothing… but he didn't walk away, either. Hooking a thumb beneath the flap, I opened the envelope and pulled out its contents: a glossy slip of paper inscribed with the Megallica logo, a date, and a seat. Kuwabara's eye widened a fraction when I held it toward him, but once again, he didn't say a word.
"Take someone else," I said, both to fill the silence and to drown out the racing of my heart. "Yusuke, maybe. He likes Megallica as much as… well, not as much as we do, but he likes them." I thrust the ticket toward him. "Well, go on. You won this fair and square, right?"
Kuwabara's eye shut. His head turned, facing forward and away.
Kuwabara said: "No."
My hand dropped an inch. "What?"
"No," he said, with more force than before.
But all the force in the world didn't make that word make sense. My hand dropped another inch before jerking up again, ticket held stubbornly in his direction. "I'm sorry," I said, "but you need to take—"
"But nothin'. I won it for you." Without preamble, Kuwabara broke into a jog. "See ya round, Keiko."
In confused silence I stood and watched him run from me, weaving nimbly through the bystanders until he vanished from sight, sun catching on his bleached hair as he turned around a corner and disappeared. I'm ashamed to admit I stood there for a while longer still, until I saw the keeper of the shop in front of which I stood give me the Eye. On reflex I turned and headed back to the arcade, tucking the Megallica concert ticket back into its envelope and the envelope back into the depths of my purse. I don't know what showed on my face when I found my group of friends standing around a racing game, but judging by the odd looks that Amanuma, Kaito and Kurama all gave me, I'm sure I didn't look quite normal. Even Yusuke appeared perturbed, glancing behind me before shooting a scowl in my direction.
He said, "Where's Kuwa—?"
"I don't want to talk about it," I flatly replied—and when I saw Amanuma's shoulders sag, I added, "Sorry, kid, but he'll come around again soon, promise." A smile forced its way across my lips. "What're we playing next?"
"Not exactly a smooth segue," Kaito muttered, "but I admire your dedication, Yukimura."
"Thanks, Kaito." Color me sarcastic. "You're a gem."
Amanuma listened to us bicker with a roll of his eyes. "Well, I have no idea what any of that was about. Teenagers sure are weird." He turned to Kurama and grinned. "Wanna play Goblin City, Minamino?"
Kurama smiled, pleasant and kind as always. "Sounds fun."
Normally the mention of that game—the game via which Kurama was destined to murder the sweet, trusting Amanuma—would put a pit in the depths of my stomach, but given how numb I felt after the altercation with Kuwabara, only the barest of flutters of disquiet flitted through my wrists and neck instead.
We stood around watching Kurama and Amanuma play Goblin City for a time, but eventually Kaito grew board and wandered away to play Tetris by himself at a neighboring machine. Yusuke and I wound up leaning against a pinball machine behind the Goblin City setup, staring at the backs of Kurama and Amanuma's heads as they cycled through various mini-games and competed against each other. Occasionally Amanuma would throw back his head and laugh at something Kurama said, green sparks flickering in his eyes at whatever small joke he'd uttered. The arcade's scintillating lights coaxed garnet from his hair, deep red sparks glimmering against onyx strands.
"So… how'd it go?" said Yusuke.
I shifted away from him, elbows squeaking over the pinball machine's glass top. "I said I don't want to talk about it."
"Tex. It's me."
I sighed in annoyed defeat. "Kuwabara was pissed I never told him the truth."
"Well, duh," said Yusuke with a snort.
"And he's embarrassed that he can't get over it when all of you rolled with the punches pretty fast," I continued.
"Ha!" Yusuke threw back his head and laughed. "And he should be, that wuss."
"And also, he's scared of me."
"Ha ha, yeah, he— Wait. What!?"
I shifted back toward him again, but only so I could glower in his general direction. Yes, I was serious—that's what I told Yusuke with my eyes, and he believed me, drawing his hands through his pomade-primped hair in consternation.
"Scared? Of you?" he said. "But you're about as intimidating as a baby duck."
"Yeah, apparently that's not the problem." I hated admitting this next bit, but I'd sworn not to lie to Yusuke anymore, so I soldiered on. "I know everything all of you, but y'all… you're still getting to know me. To know Tex, that is. And Kuwabara is not thrilled about that imbalance."
"Oh." Yusuke leaned back on his elbows on the pinball machine, too, legs stretching out ahead of him alongside mine. "I guess that makes sense."
I watched him carefully from the corner of my eye. "You're not about to be mad too, are you?" I asked, ashamed at the quiver of fear that leaked into my voice.
But Yusuke just scoffed. "Who, me?" he asked, as if I were being dumb. "We've always had some… what's that word?"
"Imbalance?"
"Yeah, that. You've always known more than me—you're not smarter, just more in-the-know. Don't let your head swell." He rolled his eyes before I could so much as snicker. "And you've been in my life since I was a little kid, which means you know everything there is to know about my life. So you knowing so much about me… it's normal, as far as I'm concerned."
I'd never thought of it quite that way; all I said in response was, "Oh."
"But for him…" Yusuke tilted his head back, squinting at the foam ceiling tiles and the lights playing across them, inconsistent illumination cast by flickering arcade screens. "I guess it's not so normal at all for Kuwabara. Especially since he trusted you so much." His lip curled. "Aw, man. I hate it when he makes sense. I've been bugging him for weeks to talk to you, and now I get why he wouldn't. But it wasn't like he'd explain it to me, so…"
"Is that why you did this today?" I asked, curious. "To get us to make up?"
Yusuke rolled his eyes again. "Don't you dare get mushy, now."
"Don't tell me what to do, Urameshi."
"Ha. You're hilarious," he snarked, but the humor faded from his eyes just a moment later. "Last week the kid kept asking where you and Kuwabara were, and that got me thinking I could trick y'all into being in the same room and hashing stuff out." His voice fell. "Fat load of good it did you, though."
I made my lip wobble, eyes wide and plaintive. "Yusuke. I didn't know you cared."
"Cut it out!" He pretended to be offended, like my emotions pissed him off, but I knew better than to believe him. "I didn't do it for you, dummy. Watching both of you stress was just giving me a headache, that's all." Yusuke's pert nose thrust skyward. "The sooner you two stop being stupid, the better off I'll be."
I reached up with the intent of ruffling his hair. "Suppress your emotions a little harder, why don't ya."
"Don't mind if I do," he said, swatting away my hand—and then he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Though Puu gets pretty annoying when I…"
"Puu? Where is the little blue bat-thing, anyway?"
"I left 'im with Botan." Yusuke looked everywhere but at me, tone cool and casual… too cool and casual, if you ask me. "He seems happy with her."
"I'll bet he does," I said with a wicked grin. "Speaking of emotions we're trying to suppress… how have the two of you been doing lately, anyway?"
"None of your business, Tex." He shoved off the pinball machine in an instant, but not before I saw a hectic flush rise into his cheeks. "Hey Amanuma, move over! I want a turn."
Amanuma looked over his shoulder at the sound of his name, but he was too late; Yusuke shouldered his way past the kid to take over the controls, prompting Amanuma to give an indignant squawk of, "Hey, but I'm winning!"
"So?" said Yusuke, hands jerking at the joystick and buttons. "I can still show you a thing or two on fighting games, so shove—"
Amanuma squirmed his way under Yusuke's arm, and Yusuke shoved him back with a smart hip-check. The kid made a good show of being ticked off, but every now and again a smile broke through the ire, revealing his secret joy at being teased. Amanuma really was attention starved, to be enjoying Yusuke's taunts. Even when Yusuke put a hand on Amanuma's forehead and stretched out his arm, holding the kid at arm's length like you'd see in a cartoon, Amanuma made a show of whacking Yusuke's wrist and trying to break free, but without really trying to break free. I couldn't keep a grin off my face at the sight, the numb ice inside my chest thawing just a bit… but that was before Yusuke gave the kid a playful shove.
That time, Amanuma's squawk of pain was actually real.
He went tumbling to the ground in a heap, fine one second and a boneless ragdoll the next. Yusuke nearly did a double-take, crouching at Amanuma's side in a flash of bright green jacket. Kurama startled, hands still busy with the Goblin City game as he looked at Amanuma in shock—but his verdant eyes were already sweeping over the kid in a calculating wave, looking for injury and pain.
Took me a second to catch up with the rest of them. "Amanuma!" I cried, bolting to his side, too. "Are you all right?"
"Hey kid, you OK?" Yusuke echoed, hand on Amanuma's thin shoulder. "What gives?"
"Yusuke, what did you do?" Kurama asked, voice low and urgent.
"Nothing! I did nothing!" Yusuke said. To his credit, he looked sorry as hell, eyes horror-wide and contrite. "Seriously, I didn't even push him that hard…"
And Amanuma seemed to agree. He'd fallen flat on his butt on the arcade's threadbare carpet, dazedly staring at nothing as if jolted into another state of being, but at Yusuke's words his eyes refocused, kid coming back to himself in a snap. "I'm OK, I'm OK," he insisted as he rolled to his knees, then to his feet. "It's no big deal."
"You sure?" I said, rising too (and noting the way he'd put a hand to his head, like maybe he'd gotten a headache). "Because if you're not—"
Amanuma scowled, waving me off when I tried to place a hand on his forehead to take a temperature. "Nee-san, stop being such a worrywart," he said, grinning like his fall hadn't even happened. "I just lost my balance, that's all."
"That's not all you lost," a dry voice observed.
We turned in the direction of the voice to find Kaito standing a few feet away, staring over our shoulders at Kurama, who hadn't moved from his spot at the Goblin City machine. Like lemmings off a cliff, we following his bespectacled gaze toward Kurama, who sheepishly waved a hand at the game screen—a screen that declared him the winner and Amanuma's avatar the loser. Amanuma gave an indignant cry upon realizing he'd lost, lurching back to the game's controls with a growl and a shriek.
"Hey, I was on the floor!" he said, already fumbling in his pocket for more loose change. "That's cheating!"
"Apologies, Amanuma," Kurama said. He shot the machine another sheepish look. "But this game doesn't exactly have a pause button."
"Excuses! I challenge you to a rematch!" Amanuma yodeled.
Kurama grinned. "And I'm happy to oblige."
But Kaito didn't share their exuberance. "Do you really think that's wise?" he asked with his typical acerbic tones. "If you're not feeling well, Amanuma, you should rest and recuperate at home." He shoved his glasses up his thin nose with a fingertip as he gave a piquant sniff. "And furthermore, if you really are ill, you shouldn't risk spreading whatever you have to the rest of us."
I crossed to Kaito so I coulee blow him in the ribs. "Since when have you been such a germophobe?"
"Since my parents keep coming home with horror stories from the hospital," he said with a biting scowl.
Kurama glanced over his shoulder, hands flying inexorably at the game's controls. "That's right, Kaito. You told us a few weeks ago that there's been a nasty bug going around Mushiyori City."
My palm hit my head with a smack. "Oh, I totally forgot. Is that still happening? I just assumed it was like, a stomach bug or something."
"Nothing as mundane as that, unfortunately." Kaito adjusted his glasses again. "But it's nothing to worry about."
Kurama's eyes narrowed, but Amanuma yelled something about taking the lead, capturing Kurama's attention once again. Yusuke (still feeling apologetic after nearly breaking a child, no doubt) stood at Amanuma's elbow shouting encouragements; none of the trio noticed when Kaito and I retreated to the pinball machines.
"Why do I get the feeling it's much worse than you're letting on?" I said, voice held purposefully low.
"Because it is," said Kaito with equal quiet. His voice dropped lower still when he muttered, "There have been a few deaths."
My turn to do a double-take today. "Are you serious?" I hissed, gripping his arm on reflex. "That's awful!"
"Agreed," he murmured back. "The good news is that it doesn't appear communicable in any typical way. The illness' appearances are honestly random, defying all efforts to track the malady's spread."
"That seems… weird."
"Yes," said Kaito with grave solemnity. "To put it mildly."
For the third time that conversation, he shoved his glasses up his nose with a fingertip—but before he could say anything else, his nose wrinkled, and then he turned away to give a great foghorn bellow of a sneeze. I backed up a foot or two on reflex, tucking my mouth and nose inside the neck of my shirt.
"Don't tell me you're sick," I said, thinking thoughts that had a lot to do with hand sanitizer and vitamin C packs. "Because I work in a restaurant and I can't go spreading a virus to our customers!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Yukimura. I feel perfectly fine," Kaito scolded. "As I just told you, the disease does not appear to spread by methods as conventional as sneezing."
"Hey, stop yakking and get over here, you guys!" Yusuke cut in, inadvertently sparing Kaito from a lecture on good hygiene. "Amanuma's on fire!"
"You bet I am!" Amanuma sang, practically in harmony.
Even Kurama was feeling the heat, judging by the impressive focus in his eyes as he stared at the flickering screen of Goblin City. "On fire indeed, Amanuma," he murmured, not breaking his concentration in the slightest. "I'm impressed."
"Ha! You mean you're scared!" said Amanuma with a laugh. "At this rate, I could beat you with my eyes closed!"
And that claim, wild though it sounded, might actually have been true. In the player-versus-player version of Goblin City, two opposing players faced off in a series of five mini-games, each game decided by a role of the dice from a selection of several dozen possible contests. The score at the top of the screen showed that Kurama had won just one of the three matches they'd thus far undergone, Amanuma leading the score 2-1. They currently played the tennis mini-game, and each of Amanuma's volleys managed to hit nearly on top of the white line at the back of Kurama's court. Kurama had a hard time keeping up with him, moving his character to intercept Amanuma's serves just barely in time to send them back in Amanuma's direction—no time for aiming or strategy at all. Amanuma hummed as they played, super in the zone judging by his flying fingers and nimble moves, eyes bright with the joy of the game and the glow of the arcade lights.
Yeah. Bright. His eyes were really bright. Glassy, even. But when the mini-game ended and I tried to feel Amanuma's face for fever, he shrugged me aside with a laugh. All he wanted to do was play games, he said, until he ran out of money and had no choice but to go home.
"Kid, you're a master at this!" Yusuke said as he continued to keep Kurama on the ropes.
And in response, Amanuma laughed. "Call me the Gamemaster, I guess!" he said—and at the sound of that nickname, the same cursed nickname granted to him by Sensui in the canon of Yu Yu Hakusho, my stomach turned back into ice.
Kuwabara was right, it seemed. I did like being in control… but in that moment I was anything but, destiny barreling on ahead without me to the tune of the Gamemaster's delighted laughter.
In the quiet of the unkempt clearing, I said, "So are we done, or are we just gonna stand here till the sun goes down?"
Ayame didn't look up from the report held in her spectral hands. In fact, she gave no indication that she'd heard me speak at all. Not that that was unusual for this particular guide to the afterlife, but still. We'd been home from the Dark Tournament for a solid month at that point, and Ayame and I had met up once a week ever since the boat brought us back to Japan… but usually Yusuke came with me, since he was my parole officer these days. He hated that title, but we both knew it was true, and Ayame addressed most of her comments and queries to Yusuke instead of me when we came around together. This time, though, I was alone, and I had to wonder if that had been a tactical error on my part. I definitely had some questions for Ayame, after all.
Not that Yusuke had given me much choice in the matter of meeting Ayame alone. It was Sunday, and when I'd showed up at his apartment to rouse him from bed, he'd grumbled and thrown a pillow at me, flat refusing to wake up on the one day a week he was actually allowed to sleep in (not that he woke up on time any other day of the week, but still). In a huff because getting smacked in the face with a pillow wasn't really my idea of a good time, I'd slammed the door on my way out—but not before Puu had clambered out from under Yusuke's covers and flitted his way into my hoodie's hood. He'd ridden all the way to the clearing in that spot, and when Ayame had appeared and accepted my written report of the week's events, he crawled into my hair and lodged his little bat-talons deep into my scalp. The gremlin watched Ayame through intelligent black eyes, weird arm-ears perked up at attention when the wind whispered through the trees.
Ayame paid neither of us any mind. She just continued to leaf through my report—an impressive feat considering it contained only a page and a half of material.
Eventually (and still without looking up) Ayame murmured, "Am I keeping you from something, Keiko?"
"Just a fun Sunday, that's all. But—" I pointed at the folder "—it's a little thin, so… not much to talk about, unless there's something you want to tell me."
Coal-dark eyes finally lifted from the printout in her lithe fingers "Why, Keiko? What would I even say?" she said, making a show of feigned confusion.
I didn't even pretend to buy her act. "Maybe if you've looked into the little pest problem over in Mushiyori I told you about?" I suggested with a shrug. "You remember that, right?"
Kurama and I had taken the jar containing Amagi's Makai insect to Ayame a few days after Amagi had shown it to us in the greenhouse. Ayame had tucked the jar into her sleeve without saying much, simply stating that she'd report our findings to Koenma promptly. She never had much to say, though, about neither anything I asked her nor anything I reported in the weeks that followed. No matter how hard I pushed, she just stayed true to the yamato nadeshiko stereotype she embodied and smiled her normal, demure smile, declining to indulge me at all.
Today, at last, proved different.
"We've looked into it, yes," she said, tucking my report up her sleeve and out of sight. Folding her hands into her jet-black garment, she looked me over with one of her usual enigmatic smiles. "The results are…"
"Are?" I prompted when she did not continue.
A tight smile eclipsed Ayame's moonsilver face. "Unfortunately, there isn't exactly a preponderance of specimens. Additionally, we have yet to locate their source. Given their name, it's obvious from which plane of existence the Makai Insect originates, but finding the place where they sneak through the fabric between worlds is proving tricky indeed."
I kept my face as neutral as a manila folder at this statement, though inside I gave a derisive snort. Of course they hadn't found the burgeoning breach between realities; just like in canon, I had a feeling they were looking in the wrong place. The hole between worlds was underground, too deep for them to sense on the surface… and by the time that sphere of distortion grew big enough to sense from the sunlit world, it would be too huge to miss. But much though I wanted them to find the breach and stop Sensui, I couldn't just hand them his location on a silver platter. After all, I'd already given Spirit World far more of a head start than they'd ever had in the anime; anything more and I'd practically be holding Koenma's hand, and that didn't seem right.
"So no updates, then," was all I said. "Good to know."
But again Ayame smiled. "Not quite. There is one other topic we could talk about."
My heart lurched. "I'm listening."
"Koenma has been conducting research in Spirit World, as promised, on the topics revealed to us by Clotho, the Fate whose ear you seem to have snared," Ayame said. "He believes he is on the verge of a breakthrough. You should be hearing word from him before the month is out."
"That's…" Amazing. Wonderful. Intimidating. Foreboding. Frightening. Something. "… great, I guess."
One black brow rose, a delicate curve of darkness against pale skin. "Your expression indicates you feel otherwise."
"It's just a lot," I confessed, because Ayame's imperious stare left little room for prevarication. "Every time my… my little origin comes up with someone, it feels…" Invasive. Uncomfortable. Painful. Instead of those things, I just told her: "I can't get used to it."
"15 years is a long time for a mortal to keep a secret, especially one as interesting as yours." I could've sworn her features held sympathy, however subtle. "I imagine its revelation is something of a relief."
"In some ways." Kuwabara's face rose unbidden in my mind's eyes. "Not so much in others."
She nodded. "All problems pass with time. I'm certain your friends will come around if given enough of it."
"That's the idea." Again I thought of Kuwabara. "Some are just proving more stubborn than others."
"I wish you well in that respect." Her red mouth thinned. "Not knowing who truly stands beside you is… unpleasant."
There was something in her face. A tightness, perhaps. It made her face turn the color of old milk, grey and lined and battle worn. Ayame was truly beautiful, in that same unreal way that Botan was so beautiful, but just then she looked… well. Not pretty, exactly. More like a flower left too long in hot sun, once gorgeous but now wilted with a bowing head.
I didn't tell her any of that, though. I merely asked, "You doing all right, Ayame?"
One hand emerged from her sleeve to trace a path along her brow. Ayame looked briefly skyward, into infinite blue the same color as a certain grim reaper's death-colored hair. Something unguarded filled her gaze—a raw nerve, exposed and stinging.
"I worry for Botan," she said after a time.
"No word on her being allowed back in Spirit World?"
"I can't speak to that, I'm afraid." Her hand disappeared into her sleeve again. "Is there anything else?"
As shuttered closed behind her eyes, I reflected that Ayame certainly was an enigma. A friend one minute, an unknowable agent of death the next. Pushing wouldn't do me any good here. At least she knew I cared, though—about Botan, clearly, and about her, hopefully just as clearly.
"One last thing before we wrap," I said. "Itsuki?"
The shutters closed tighter. "What about him?"
"Before we left for the Tournament, you assured me Koenma would look into him, too," I said. "Trying to figure out if you're still on that ball, or if it's fallen to the wayside after everything Cleo told us."
She smiled—a genuine smile this time around, teasing and droll. "Why, Keiko," she said. "I'm surprised. I thought you'd already know the answer to that."
"Not everything matches up with my book of cheat codes, so to speak."
"I see." Lashes like soot stained her cheeks when she closed her eyes. "Fine. I'll give you something." Drawing herself up to her full height, Ayame inclined her chin and told me, "Any companion of a former Spirit Detective who disappeared under mysterious circumstances is of interest to Spirit World—of too much interest to fall by the wayside when times turn turbulent."
"That's…" Loaded. Unsettling. Ominous. I settled on: "Interesting." Grabbing Puu from his nest in my hair, I stuffed him back into the hood of my sweatshirt and tugged the drawstrings, trapping his wriggling body inside. "Well. Thank you, Ayame. I'm sure you've got a lot on your plate, so…"
"Indeed." She bowed low, back of her neck gleaming in the sun. "See you next week, Keiko… if not sooner."
She faded into the shadows beneath the trees soon afterward, leaving me alone in the sunlit clearing. A cryptic farewell was just her style, but Ayame's inscrutable comportment was the least of my worries. She'd all but confirmed they'd been looking into Itsuki, and Sensui by extension. How far had their research taken them? I'd worried about holding their hand too much, but what if they didn't actually need my help to make headway on the Chapter Black case far too early to comply with canon?
Or did it even matter?
The Chapter Black arc, after all, wasn't exactly pleasant. Could early progress prevent much of the bloodshed that was to come? And was that preferable to keeping canon intact? But changes could incur negative consequences, a risk I wasn't sure we could take. Everything turned out all right in canon, after all. Lives that were lost were restored. Demons didn't invade the earth. Sensui was stopped and Yusuke's demonic heritage was awoken. All's well that ended well, and all that jazz.
But the suffering that happened along the way… was it all right to ameliorate it, at least a little? Or was this philosophical waffling of mine even worth the effort?
Shogo's cards had told me to be decisive. To listen to my instincts. To trust my gut.
Too bad that was easier said than done.
Puu, trapped in the hood hanging between my shoulders, managed to get a claw out of the hood's small opening. It scrabbled along my cheek, hard claws pricking, and soon Puu had lodged himself in my hair again. His small face hung over my forehead so he could look into my eyes, his own narrowed, a low and worried burble bubbling from his golden beak.
I stroked his anxious cheek with a thumb.
"Are you Yusuke's soul-beast, or mine?" I sighed.
Puu did not answer me. He simply cuddled close, providing me comfort in return.
I heard him before I saw him, but only because he let me. No doubt Kurama could move without making a sound if he so chose. He knew I knew the rhythm of his gait; the sounds he made were a warning, a gesture of civility, of politeness that belonged uniquely to him. I listened to the music of his footsteps echo up the stairs until he appeared at the top of the flight below my lunchtime seat, raising a hand in greeting as his dark head bobbed into view.
"Hey," I said.
"Hello, Kei." He scanned the steps and the window on my landing with his usual mild smile. "Is Kaito with you?"
"No, he's not. I thought he'd beat me here, honestly."
"Hmm." He considered this a moment. "Unusual for him to be anything but punctual."
"Yeah, well, silver lining. Need to talk to you."
"Oh?"
I patted the steps next to me, scooting over so he could take a seat. As he unpacked his lunch across his lap, I said, "Saw Ayame yesterday, as always, but… I dunno, they're not making headway on any of the stuff that I've told them about and I have no idea what to do about it, if anything at all, and it's frustrating—"
"Slow down, Kei." He broke apart his chopsticks with a snap of fragile wood. Question mostly rhetorical, he said, "Do you think they'd tell you even if they had made progress regarding Hiruko?"
"Not just about him, though." I began to unpack my lunch, too, though I didn't start eating just yet. "Itsuki, the guy who kidnapped me and whatnot? No clue how much progress they made about him, or about that bug we showed them, and—"
A flash of bright green iris killed the words in my mouth. "I assume these things are connected, then—Itsuki and the Makai insect," said Kurama. "You wouldn't bring them up in the same breath if they weren't." He chuckled at the look on my face. "I know, I know. You can't say."
I cleared my throat. "Thanks for understanding."
"Don't mention it." Shiori had made Kurama a yummy bento box, fried prawns, steamed rice, pickled vegetables and a grilled fish rounded out by a thermos of miso soup. Lifting a bite of rice to his lips, Kurama asked, "When you say you don't know what to do about the situation, what exactly are your options?"
"Oh, you know. The usual." Upon my fingers I counted, "Egregious meddling, clandestine string-pulling, overt sabotage and misdirection… that sort of thing."
Kurama chuckled again, sound silky in the quiet stairwell. Below us a door opened and banged shut, a girl's bright laughter invading and then retreating in just a moment's time. The echo of chatting students in far-flung hallways drifted upon the air like the beat of waves on a distant shore, or the roar of the ocean inside a pearlescent seashell. I mostly heard Kurama's laughter, though, close as he sat to me.
"I'm serious," I said when he didn't speak, continuing to eat in silence. "This is my eternal conundrum and I'm both sick of it and totally enthralled by the possibilities. So any perspective?"
He finished chewing and then swallowed. "I'm afraid I've never been faced with a conundrum this… unique," Kurama said with an apologetic smile, "but I trust your judgement. Whether you interfere or abstain, I'm certain your choice will be the right one."
"You have far more faith in me than I do."
"A pity." He seemed sincere about that, judging by the tension in his eyes. "I wish you understood just how much faith I have in you, Kei. Perhaps then you wouldn't second-guess yourself as often as you do."
Strangely, his words—spoken so casually, but with so much simple candor—brought a lump to my throat.
"Kurama," I said.
And I would've said more, but another door slammed far below us, and the footsteps that rained upon the stairs belonged to someone else I knew. Kurama and I scooted apart a ways, each of us taking a bite of food (him of fish, me of a riceball) to fill the conspicuous silence. But if Kaito noticed the oddly tense atmosphere, he made no mention of it when he joined us upon the landing. He merely plopped onto the sill of the nearby window and sighed, elbows resting on his knees as he rested his head upon both hands. His curly mop of hair held more frizz than curl that day, black strands a mess of tangles and static made all the worse with the help of his fingers, which pulled and tugged at the strands in persistent grasps.
Wordlessly, Kurama and I exchanged a look. A loaded one.
"Uh… hi, Kaito," I said when the aforementioned said nothing.
When Kaito continued to say nothing, Kurama ventured, "Kaito… you look…"
His head rose, lurching upward like a guillotine in reverse, revealing a sallow face and bruise-like bags beneath Kaito's narrow eyes. "Dedicated to my academic pursuits?" he said, words flying bullet-quick in the quiet stairwell. "Enthusiastic to continue my education? Determined to maintain my record of perfect attendance?"
"I was going to say out of sorts," Kurama silkily intoned.
"Like shit, to be specific," I added.
"Ah. I see." Kaito sat up straight at last, spine ramrod straight. "A genteel euphemism followed by an idiomatic synonym. How very droll. Ha. Ha."
I expected him to mock us with his usual acerbic wit, but he did not. Instead Kaito stared into space above our heads, light glancing brilliantly off his coke-bottle eyeglasses. His fingers worried the kerchief-wrapped bento box on his knee, twitching as if pecking at an invisible typewriter.
Kurama and I exchanged another look.
I cleared my throat. "Uh. Kaito?"
He hummed.
"Are you OK?"
"Never better." Finally he roused from his torpor, head swinging toward me with a jerk. "Why do you ask?"
"Well. You're acting weird. So there's that."
His brows hitched. "And coming from you, that's cause for alarm, I suppose."
"Hey!" I gasped, offended—and when Kurama laughed behind his hand, I gasped at him, too. "Double hey! J'accuse!"
Kaito rolled his eyes—his glassy, fever-bright eyes, ones that still held a faraway quality even as he stared at Kurama and I in turns. "If you're curious," he said once Kurama finished laughing, "my mannerisms are being affected by the thoroughly engrossing discussion held today in literature class. You see, I challenged the notion of subjective literary criticism being worth anything of value, to which the classroom reacted with thoroughly predictable distaste, but—"
He ranted for a while. Kurama and I looked at each other sidelong on occasion, wordlessly considering whether or not an intervention was in order, but in the end, neither of us acted upon our suspicions that Kaito was having… well, an off-day, to put it mildly. We just let him talk, because he didn't need us to say much of anything, his vocabulary flying loudly and lustily down and up the empty stairwell. Eventually he quieted down to drink some water and rest his hoarse throat, out of steam at last—but before I could ask him if he needed to visit the school nurse (which I suspected he did, if those glassy eyes and the sweat on his forehead were any indication) he shot to his feet, wrapping up his bento box with swift and stumbling fingers.
"Apologies," he said, hands jerking his handkerchief into a hasty knot. "I must go."
"You OK, man?" I said as I stood, too.
Kaito stared into the middle distance and professed: "I am haunted by the specter of literary analysis."
"I don't know what that means," said Kurama with quiet desperation.
"Neither do I, but nevertheless, it is a mystery I must solve." His frizzy head listed to the side. "I shall pen an essay on the subject without using the letter E. An arduous task, but a task I shall accomplish with no difficulty, as is only obvious." He swayed forward, and for one terrifying second I thought he'd fall on his face. Instead, he transitioned into a drunken walk, portrait of inebriation completed when he slurred, "Sayonara, compatriots."
Kurama and I listened to him stagger downstairs in silence. Eventually a door creaked opened and slammed shut, the echo of Kaito's footfalls disappearing into distance. Slowly Kurama and I looked at one another again, uncertainty mirrored in each other's befuddled faces.
"Was he drunk, do you suppose?" Kurama said.
"Not sure, but I think that last big sentence of his…" I thought about it some more, nose screwed up in concentration. "Well, I'm pretty sure it didn't have any E sounds in it."
Kurama's mouth quirked. "Truly, his mastery of linguists puts ours to shame."
"Indeed it does."
We stared at each other—and then we burst out laughing. Worried though I felt for Kaito's weirdness, I wasn't too worried. He'd seemed preoccupied and strange, obsessed with language as usual, but he was destined to develop a psychic territory that revolved entirely around the language arts. Maybe this had something to do with that? I wasn't entirely sure, but at the very least, his odd demeanor had done wonders for my mood.
We collapsed into giggles for a lot longer than is flattering, but eventually Kurama and I managed to compose ourselves again. "Anyway," I said, wiping at my eyes. "What were we talking about?"
He was still smiling when he nodded toward my bento box. "You should eat something."
"Huh?"
"You barely touched your food."
"Oh." I cracked my bento's lid and peered inside; only two bites of my three onigiri were missing, which honestly came as a shock. I thought I'd eaten more. A bit bewildered, I muttered, "I was so distracted by that rant, I must've…"
Kurama chuckled again. "I don't blame you. It was a rant to behold." Gesturing at my food, Kurama said, "While you eat, I have comparably more pleasant news to share, if you're interested in hearing it."
I grinned around a bite of riceball. "Sure. What's up?"
"My mother set a date for that dinner she'd like you to attend."
I put the riceball down, heartrate kicking up a tad. "Oh?"
"The week after next, on Friday evening," Kurama said. "It's at a restaurant she says is quite nice, so please wear appropriate attire."
"Formal, semiformal… any idea?"
"Semiformal, I believe."
"Roger that." I made a mental inventory of my closet, thinking of what I could wear. "Well, that should be fun. Provided you don't replace the salad course with a mutant Venus flytrap or something."
"And endanger my mother, Kei?" Kurama said, tutting. "You wound me. It's like you don't know me at all."
"What can I say? You've got so many sides, I just can't keep track of which one likes the carnivorous plants."
We bantered back and forth for a while, mostly about which types of salads would make for the best weapons, until the bell rang—all too soon, in my opinion, because that conversation was deceptively fun. We carried on with it as I packed up my leftover food, at which Kurama levied a glance of supreme disapproval. I just stuck out my tongue and assured him I'd eat it later or when I felt hungrier. After school, most likely.
Not that I was given the chance. No sooner had the final bell of the school day rung than did Kurama sidle up to me amid the press of evacuating students, taking my elbow in his hand as he gave me another of his loaded looks. I didn't need him to explain; his expression meant business, so I did not protest as he steered me out of the classroom. I waited patiently to ask him what was up, biding my time until we passed through a less-populated corridor to tug my arm out of his grip.
"What's up?" I hissed as he came to a stop. "Is it a demon?"
He shook his head, just once. "Yusuke is here."
"Oh." I scowled at him with envy. "Must be nice to be psychic or whatever."
"It has its perks," he admitted with a sly smile, and without another word, we continued in unison to the front of the school.
True to Kurama's word, Yusuke waited for us at the school gates, lounging with his back pressed to the brick wall that concealed the school from the outside world. He mean-mugged any Meiou student who dared to give his bright green school uniform a stare—and when we got close, I could see why he wasn't keen on letting anyone approach him. A lump underneath the armpit of his jacket quivered and shuddered, and just as we came abreast of Yusuke, a tiny blue face topped by a mop of black hair poked out of Yusuke's collar. Kurama looked like he was about to have a stroke as Yusuke shoved the creature back under his coat with a snarl. He acted too fast for anyone to spot the spirit beast, but not fast enough for me to miss the look of pinched, pained worry etched across Puu's beak and beady eyes.
In contrast, Yusuke was all buster and his usual swagger when he led Kurama and me away from the school (and all the prying eyes that came with it). The further we got from the school gates, the fewer school uniforms we spotted on the street, and with every step Kurama relaxed a fraction. By the time we'd walked nearly a dozen blocks, he'd relaxed almost completely, though he still scanned the street for anyone who might recognize us. Truly, Kurama was dedicated to keeping the different facets of his life separate… made his reluctance to accept Kuwabara Sr. as his mother's romantic partner make sense, but that was neither here nor there. I put it out of my head as we came to a stop in front of a small café.
"So, Yusuke," Kurama said as Yusuke turned to face us. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"
Yusuke grinned. "You both free tomorrow night?"
"I am," I said, and then I glanced at Kurama. "You?"
"I am, as well," he replied. "Why?"
Yusuke pointed a finger skyward, an action that made sense when he added, "Koenma wants to see us. He's got news."
"Wow." It took a lot of willpower to keep my jaw off the floor. "Ayame wasn't kidding when she said she'd see me soon."
"Ayame never kids," Yusuke quipped. "So… My place? Tomorrow after school?"
Kurama nodded. "I will be there."
"Me, too," I said.
Yusuke looked me over with another of his delinquent grins. "And you'll bring the food, Keiko?"
"I host all of our damn shindigs, and you want me to bring food again? When I'm not hosting, for once?" I pretended to be mad, socking his arm in mock retribution. "Typical."
Yusuke remained entirely unaffected by my ire though. "Ramen," he demanded. "And maybe some of that coconut cake your mom makes, huh?"
"Ugh, fine." Thinking ahead to the contents of our pantry, the dinner-hour rush that evening, and my own homework load, I said, "But if I'm gonna bring food this last-minute, I need to go warn my mom and dad NOW so we can prep stuff." I swore when I remembered something else. "And hell, I've got aikido tonight. Shit!"
"My plate is comparatively less full," said Kurama, "but I need to run home as well."
"And I've gotta track down Hiei. Koenma wants to see him, too, wherever he is," said Yusuke, looking more than a little peeved. "If Hiei doesn't wanna be found, like hell will I be able to find the little bastard!"
"Try downtown near tall buildings," I said with attentions absent, mind still stuck on everything I needed to do that evening. "Especially if any of them are under construction on their upper floors."
Yusuke looked at me like I'd sprouted an anteater's tongue. "What the hell are you yakking about?"
"Yes, Kei," Kurama said with comparable confusion—and additional curiosity. "What does construction have to do with Hiei?"
"Oh, nothing. Just take the tip, or don't. No skin off my nose." I broke into a jog before they could interrogate me, waving and calling goodbye over my shoulder. "See ya tomorrow!"
"Meh, whatever. Good luck getting your ass kicked at aikido, Tex!" Yusuke chortled after me.
"Fuck you too, buddy!" I called back with equal glee—and as I listened to Kurama and Yusuke's laughter chase me down the sidewalk, I got a nagging feeling that keeping up with my evening lesson was the least of my worries.
Surely whatever Koenma had to say would blow anything Hideki-sensei could throw at me right out of the goddamn water.
NOTES
A big plot point in the canon Dark Tournament is Kuwabara getting mad at his teammates for leaving him out when Genkai died. He was so mad people lied to him. I truly do think he'd have trouble with NQK's actions. Sorry this wasn't the reconciliation some were looking for, but… emotions are messy, and it's not that easy. Hopefully this was at least a step toward a brighter future for them.
It's my birthday this week! I can't have a party this year or see my friends thanks to COVID, so wish me a good one, yeah? It'll be a fanfic birthday party, the big 3-0 celebrated in style with my YYH pals. Love you guys.
See y'all on Sunday, September 20 with the next chapter.
Oh, BTW: Started a new little side-story called "RIOT CHILD." It's a reimagining of Lucky Child that answers the question of, "What if NQK died in 2020? How would this hellscape of a year affect her character and the overall story?" People on Tumblr have been contributing a TON of head-canons, and RIOT CHILD exists thanks to them. Obvs it won't cover all of Lucky Child, but writing one-shots for the project has been a ton of fun during these stressful times. Be warned it gets political and deals a lot with COVID. Overall it's not to be taken seriously, so have fun if you check it out!
Also the stuff about Kaito's parents dealing with sick people has been a core part of my fic's outline since I first outlined it. Weird that it coincides with COVID, but I guess the universe likes to pull stunts like this sometimes…
And, as always, huge thanks go out to the people who commented on chapter 112. You keep me going when I'm not feeling my best. This one's for you: LadyEllesmere, RE Zera, MissIdeophobia, cestlavie, Mia, Forthwith16, cashmeredragon, Sorlian, xenocanaan, DarkMoonDiamond, EdenMae, cezarina, vodka-and-tea, noble phantasm, C S Stars, Yakiitori, A Wraith, Ouca, MidnightAngelJustForYou, Kaiya Azure, Call Brig on Over, FantasticalFish, MyWorldHeartBeating, tammywammy9, QueenHobo, MetroNeko, PretiBurdi, SterlingBee, Himemiko, IronDBZ, MysticWolf71891, SlytherclawQueen, Rubber and Gum, AvidReader2425, Swanny173, Kry Chi, kindsoul1991 and guests!
Also, to the anonymous reviewer who goes by Sarah: YOU ARE AMAZING. Thank you for reviewing nearly every damn chapter of this mammoth story. You made my day with your comments and really brightened my week during your speed-read of this fanfic. Thank you SO MUCH, and please never change, because you're sincerely a writer's dream come true.
