Next chapter is on the 12th of September.
The stifled air in the flat is torn apart by Sakura's voice, urgent, cold shedding from it like ice shearing from a glacier.
"Kurogane-san!" She calls out, muffled by the cheap, flimsy door which separates her from everyone else but not enough that he isn't there in moments, slamming it back against the wall as Syaoran follows, driven by the seriousness in her voice, Mokona hopping in between them coming to sit beside her and shake Fai's shoulder with its tiny paws, desperation in its voice as it pleads.
"Fai-san! Wake up, please! Fai-san!"
"What happened?" Kurogane asks, placing two fingers on the man's neck as he lies, slumped over the princess. It's thready but there and stable. He lifts him up with Syaoran's help and puts him on the floor. The boy works, puts him into a recovery position, hopes he's remembered enough of what he saw through his clone's eyes.
"He gave me my medication and then we were talking," she says, eyes fixed on the blonde's back as Syaoran checks that he is breathing, "he stood up- he was going to get back to cooking I think? And then his eyes went funny, like it was too light in here, and he collapsed. I caught him as much as I could." The princess tells them, uncertainty and guilt and worry leaking into her tone as she fists her hands in the blankets covering her legs.
Syaoran looks up, looks at Sakura for the first time without guilt.
"I think we should move him to the bed, if we help you can you sit in the chair for a while?" He asks, "Or the sofa- we can help you if you like?" The boy says.
The princess does not falter as she meets his gaze for the first time in weeks. She nods.
"Yes- the chair is just fine- I can keep an eye on him from there." She says, throwing back the blankets with some effort and swinging her legs over the bed even though the flare of pain is clear on her face.
Kurogane scoops the man up into his arms and lifts him, feeling the weight of his body, strange in his arms which are used to carrying Sakura at most. He can't help but hold him closer, that same fear which had helped him keep the man alive gripping him now just as tightly.
Syaoran offers his hand to Sakura and she climbs off the bed with his help and slips onto the hard wood of the chair.
Mokona settles in her laps, just as anxious as everyone else, and Syaoran picks up the blanket, tucks it around Fai.
"Do you know when the last time he ate was?" Asks Syaoran, frowning at the limp, pale faced man in the bed.
Kurogane folds his arms, looking down at Fai's face.
"He hasn't," he says, bitterness and anger and a sense of uselessness tight in his chest and throat, "He refuses every time." Kurogane tells them.