Last Chapter: Botan woke up to find she had been ensnared in the Lure's web, and Kurama and Kuwabara were trying to free her. After returning to Spirit World for a night's sleep, she was sent back out on duty, but immediately abandoned that to seek out the Lure.
Chapter 8: There you are
"I knew you'd be back, I just didn't expect you to come back so quickly. You must really, really like being my prey."
Botan tightened her grip on the edge of the stone bench.
"No, you monster," she ground out. "I just need to know why you made me hallucinate about Hiei. Why you made it seem like he had feelings for me. I thought your power was that you were supposed to make people feel good. You just made me feel confused!"
""Make people feel good"?" the Lure repeated. "That's a gross over-simplification of what I do if ever I heard it."
"Alright then, what is it that you do?" Botan snapped.
"I push you."
Botan waited for a moment before sighing in exasperation.
"What kind of an answer is that?" she blurted, turning her head to glare at the little girl sitting on the other end of the bench.
"An accurate one," the little girl replied, her tone far too calculating to be human, despite her still looking so very, very human. "I push you. That is what I do. I push you down, way down, into the deepest parts of your subconscious. I let you live there."
"The deepest parts of my subconscious?" Botan echoed. "Are you trying to tell me that, in the deepest part of my mind, lives a Hiei who has a long, enduring crush on me, one that is so intense, he acts awkward around me?"
The Lure turned her head and looked directly at Botan.
"I didn't say that," she said. "I didn't say anything. You said that."
"I didn't say it!" Botan argued. "You made me think it!"
"You already thought it," the Lure returned, slowly shaking her head. "I just made you focus on it."
"That's not true."
"It is true."
"That's not possible."
"You must think it. You wouldn't have seen it, otherwise."
"Why would I think something like that? Why would anyone think something like that?"
"Maybe because you wish the real Hiei had a "long, enduring crush on you, one that is so intense, he acts awkward around you"."
The Lure smiled that unsettling, sickening smile at Botan, looking over at her from under the shade of the pretty black hair she somehow had on her cute little head: her cute little head that housed a vile and twisted mind, Botan thought bitterly.
"Are you saying I'm in love with Hiei?" Botan asked quietly.
"Again, I'm not saying anything," the Lure replied. "You said it, not me."
"But why Hiei?" Botan pleaded.
"Only you can answer that," the Lure said.
"But I can't answer it! That's why I'm here, talking to you now!"
"So… You admit that you sought me out for your own purposes, not because I was calling on you?"
"I just want to know why. It seemed so real – it was so detailed, so intense – I just need to know why Hiei."
"The answer lies in the deepest parts of your subconscious."
"Well then why can't I find it?"
"Maybe you need a little help. Maybe you need a little something to push you down there, so you can search for your answer."
Botan paused. She hated that the first thought that occurred to her was that maybe she should let the Lure take her again, just for a little bit, just so that she could find out why her hallucination had primarily been of Hiei. Or just to have another hallucination – one that looked, sounded and felt so very, very real – about Hiei.
"Maybe I could…" she began.
She swallowed hard, gripping her fingers into the stone bench until the joints in her fingers ached. Although most of her knew it was wrong to even be talking to the Lure, she could not shake off the small part of her that wanted her to be there, the tiny part of her that wanted to go back to her hallucination, back to being something more than a ferry girl with a too-long task list, something more than a side-kick to the others in her life, something more to Hiei.
"Maybe…" she said softly. "Maybe I do have feelings for him. In my hallucination, I felt like I maybe always had, but that I'd never really let myself admit to it, because I was so sure it could never work out between us. And, now that I think about it, I can't imagine Hiei ever wanting someone like me. All my friends – Yusuke, Kuwabara and Kurama – tried to rescue me, but Hiei didn't even come close. The more I think about it… I'm surprised he even knew things about me when he spoke to me back in Spirit World, at the start of our mission. I'm surprised he even spoke to me at all. I-I just – wait – did he speak to me? Did that happen? When did the hallucination actually start?"
"The answer to all your questions is one little sleep away from you."
Botan looked down at her feet, but her mind was blank. The Lure was suggesting something absurd and terrible, and she thought nothing about it. Nothing at all. When she felt hands grabbing her arms and hauling her to her feet, she numbly let it happen. She was prepared to keep her head down and just try to think, try to make sense of what was happening to her – of what had been happening to her – but when the hands holding her shook her slightly she looked up, startled back to reality when she saw the face looking at her.
"Botan, that was close, the Lure almost got you again!" Ayame said to her.
Botan looked over Ayame's shoulder at the Lure, her mind once more going blank when she saw Kurama grab a handful of the Lure's hair and swipe his other hand across its neck, severing its head from its body with a single blow of his leaf blade. The Lure's body fell limply to the ground and Ayame released Botan, spinning around to face Kurama, who was still holding the Lure's head by its hair.
"What have you done?" Ayame asked him.
"I have done what needed to be done," Kurama solemnly replied.
"Your orders were to capture the Lure and return it to Demon World!" Ayame said.
"This creature is very dangerous," Kurama said, glaring at Ayame in a way that made Botan afraid. "Destroying it is the only viable option."
Ayame looked about herself in what was as close as Botan guessed the super cool ferry girl ever got to a panic. Botan copied her actions, growing anxious herself when she realised that several other humans in the park had just witnessed Kurama behead what appeared to them to be a little girl. A crowd was starting to gather, but Kurama appeared not to care, despite him having always guarded his human disguise very carefully in the past.
"You have all been very wrong," he said darkly. "You should never underestimate a Lure. This creature could have done unthinkable things. The only way to deal with these monsters is to destroy them wherever they are found."
Ayame looked around the growing crowd before summoning her oar.
"Botan, take Kurama, get out of here!" she said to Botan.
Botan found her oar in her hand somehow, but stood still, watching on as Ayame grabbed up the Lure's body, snatched its head from Kurama and took off on her own oar.
"We should go too, Botan," Kurama said, bringing Botan back to her senses again.
Botan nodded and sat onto her oar, waiting for Kurama to join her at her side before taking to the air. As she ascended, she looked down at the humans watching them – she supposed the SDF would visit and do something to make them all forget what they had seen – but really her mind kept drifting back to one thought that she was ashamed to allow into her head: with the Lure gone, she would never find out why she had hallucinated about Hiei or how she really felt about him.
"You shouldn't have done that," she said, turning her head to look at Kurama.
"It had to be done," he plainly replied.
"That's as may be, but you did it in front of a crowd of humans," Botan countered.
Kurama looked down, catching one last look of the crowd that had gathered in the park before they rose above the clouds.
"Botan, you yourself have been a victim of that monster," he said. "You know what it is capable of. You were lucky that we caught you before it drew you in again. Freeing you from it the first time was always going to be a relatively easy task, but freeing you a second time, freeing you after the Lure has successfully used its typical catch and release strategy on you, would have been much more fraught. And if it had not taken you, it only would have taken someone else. I was not prepared to let it take another victim."
"You were worried it might target your family," Botan concluded aloud.
Kurama did not answer her, but he did not really need to, Botan already knew that her assumption was correct. She knew that Kurama could be ruthless when threatened, and she appreciated that he was very protective of his human mother and extended human family, but she was surprised that he had done something so blatant, so risky. And she was even more surprised that he was letting her take him to Spirit World with her – though she was glad that he was coming with her, as his presence there, especially after his actions in the human world, would distract Ayame and Koenma from the fact that Botan had gone looking for the Lure.
Arriving in Spirit World, Botan saw Ayame zipping downwards into the section of the temple the SDF used as their headquarters, still carrying the remains of the Lure with her. Botan wondered if there was more than one Lure – the way Kurama had spoken about it, he had made it sound as though Lures were an entire species – and if there was another one, she wondered if it might cross her path any time. Would she have the same hallucination with a different Lure? The Lure had told her the hallucinations had come from her own mind, not from anything the Lure had done to her, so maybe another Lure could answer her question about Hiei.
Botan was not really thinking about where exactly she was going or why, but found herself going to Koenma's office, with Kurama following behind her. Koenma seemed to have been expecting them, as he was sitting in his throne with his arms crossed, glaring at them as they entered the room.
"I expect goofs from Botan, but you, Kurama?" he began.
"I did was necessary," Kurama coldly replied. "You will thank me in the long run."
"You murdered a child in a public park in broad daylight!" Koenma barked back.
"Well, I'll leave you two to it," Botan said.
"Hold it right there, Botan!"
Botan stopped short. She had turned towards the door and taken a step towards it, but paused.
"You're not off the hook either, Botan!" Koenma continued. "I know what you did. I know you went back to find the Lure – even after everything it did to you, after it very nearly made you lose your mind entirely!"
Botan looked down at her feet. She knew she ought to, but she could not make herself turn around.
"Go to the class room and wait," Koenma added.
Botan clenched her fists at her sides. The class room was the place juniors of Spirit World went to train. The only time ferry girls ever went there was when they were brand new or when they were being punished for failing to perform their duties: and the latter was something Botan had only ever heard about in rumour, never actually witnessing an example.
"Now, Botan!" Koenma barked.
Botan let out a cry of despair and ran from his office. She ran through the temple, somehow managing to run in a straight line, as though the crowds around her were parting to let her through (which they maybe were, seeing as she was clearly distraught, and also the fact that some of them were giving her odd looks, clearly disapproving of her as the spirit who fell victim to a demon and had to be rescued, only to then willingly return to her captor). She was glad to find the final approach to the class room was deserted, and, unsurprisingly, the room was vacant when she entered it. She dropped herself at a desk, crossing her arms over the desk and resting her forehead against her forearms, where she closed her eyes and tried to focus on calm breathing, tried not to cry.
The room was still, serene, and, despite how distraught she was to have been sent there, Botan found herself calming down relatively quickly.
"Why did you go back to the Lure?"
Botan's eyes snapped open and she froze.
"Everything that wastrel showed you was false. Why would you pursue something that is false?"
Botan slowly lifted her head. She blinked a couple of times to be sure, before tilting her head as she found her eyes confirming what her ears had heard.
"Are you listening to me, woman?"
Botan nodded dumbly. Hiei was sitting in a chair he had positioned on the other side of her desk. He was looking so deeply into her eyes she almost felt like he was hypnotising her. He was talking to her in that low, intense voice she had heard in her hallucinations, but she knew this moment was real because she could actually feel him. She could feel the warmth of his body, she could feel how close her was to her: and, as though to reaffirm the moment, one of his knees brushed against hers beneath the desk. She gasped at the contact and he grunted out something that sounded uncharacteristically like an apology.
"Why did you go back to the Lure?" he asked again.
"I just wanted to ask it a question," she confessed.
"You had no need to consult with the Lure," he corrected her. "Kurama and I have plenty of experience of its kind. There is nothing you could need to ask of it that we couldn't have answered for you. Tell me why you really went back to it."
"I-I never thought about asking you."
"You never do."
"What?"
Hiei's top lip twitched and he made a small growling sound of irritation.
"Why did you seek it out?" he pressed. "You literally went looking for it the moment you were back on your feet."
"I just…" Botan began. "I just needed to know why."
"Why what?"
"Why it showed me… One of the things that it did."
"There's something you covet that you need the Lure to provide for you?"
"No…"
"You never struck me as the type who needed anyone else to get what you want. You've never been backward at coming forward."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're terrible at keeping secrets. I'm certain if there was something you really wanted, everybody would know about it, and you being as stubborn as you are–"
"Hey now!"
"–you would surely be chasing after it already. So again, why did you go back to the Lure?"
Botan straightened her back, feeling slightly attacked and ready to defend herself. She hesitated in responding only because she found herself vaguely distracted by the intense look in Hiei's eyes, but when he leaned over the desk, leaning so close to her that she could feel his breath on her face, she lost her train of thought entirely, and stayed silent.
"When I heard a Lure was in the human world, I thought it might take Yusuke's woman to try to get to Yusuke," he said. "Or that it might take Kurama's human mother to toy with him. I thought it might even go after Kuwabara."
Hiei narrowed his eyes and his top lip flickered, briefly flashing his teeth as though just thinking about Kuwabara irritated him.
"It never even occurred to me that you would be the one to fall victim to the Lure," he eventually continued. "Lures target the emotionally weak. I never thought of you in that way."
Botan's eyebrows lifted and she saw Hiei's throat move as he audibly swallowed hard.
"Not that I think of you," he added. "At all. Ever."
"Okay," she said slowly. "Thank you for clearing that up."
"Just tell me why you went back to it," he insisted. "If I know why, it will be easier for me to help you."
"Help me?"
"I'm trying to get you out of this."
Botan looked about herself.
"Out of class?" she asked.
Hiei blinked a couple of times, the look on his face changing. The intensity eased as he took on an almost childlike look of confusion. Botan did not really want to stay where she was, and since she had not been able to ask the Lure why her hallucination had primarily been about Hiei, maybe if she left the class room, went with Hiei, spent some time with him, maybe she could find the answer for herself.
"Is that why you came here?" she asked him. "To take me somewhere else? Where are you taking me? And why?"
"I didn't come here to take you anywhere," Hiei grumpily replied, looking off to one side and squaring his shoulders in that defensive way he often did. "I was sent here to talk to you."
"Oh," Botan said, deflating both emotionally and physically. "You aren't here by choice?"
"Koenma is worried you've been traumatised by your experience with the Lure."
"No, I'm fine."
"Well, clearly you're not. You did go looking for the Lure almost as soon as you'd been freed from it."
Botan nodded slowly.
"I had a good reason for that," she muttered under her breath.
"The reason is that the Lure tempted you with what its powers showed you when it caught you, and now you can't resist, you want to go back for more," Hiei answered her.
"That's not exactly true," Botan said, shaking her head. "I didn't go back for more, I just went back to check something."
"You went back for more," Hiei flatly responded. "You're not thinking clearly, and Spirit World don't trust you now."
Botan nodded reluctantly. She already knew nobody in Spirit World trusted her: it was the reason why Ayame had watched her sleep, followed her to work, it was the reason why the other two ferry girls who had been in the common room the day before had been whispering and laughing at her. None of them trusted her. She was the ferry girl who socialised with humans and demons. She was the ferry girl who went to Demon World. She was the one who did not conform to the rules for her role. She was the odd one out.
"It's the same for you," she said quietly.
"What?" Hiei grunted.
"It's the same for you," she said more clearly. "You're as much an outcast as I am. They don't trust you either."
"Of course Spirit World don't trust me," Hiei said. "I'm a demon."
"Not Spirit World. Demon World. You don't fit in there any more than I fit in here in Spirit World."
"You're mistaken."
"I remember when I first met you."
"A lot has changed since then, especially me."
"You didn't belong in any of the three worlds then. You don't now."
"You're right that I didn't belong then, but I do now. I belong in Alaric, working with Mukuro."
"No you don't. She doesn't trust you any more than Koenma trusts me."
"I am loyal to her."
"Unless you have to choose between her and Yusuke. Or her and Kurama. Or even her and Kuwabara."
"You choose humans over spirits all the time."
"Exactly. I'm not entirely loyal or entirely trusted by my world, and neither are you by yours."
"Maybe that's why Koenma wanted me to talk to you now."
"Maybe it is. Maybe he's smarter than I thought he was…"
"Or less so, that he would trust a traitor like me to preach to you that you ought to give up your treacherous ways."
Botan smiled.
"Hiei…" she said in a low voice. "Did you just make a little joke?"
"Hn, don't be ridiculous," Hiei scoffed.
Botan's smile widened in spite of herself.
"It sounded like a joke to me, Hiei," she said.
"It's not a joke, Botan," Hiei said sternly. "Nothing about this is a joke. They don't trust you not to go back to the Lure."
"I can't go back to the Lure. Kurama killed it."
"So you admit you want to go back to the Lure."
"That's not what I said!"
"If Kurama hadn't killed it, would you go back to it now?"
Botan pouted and Hiei sighed.
"And that's why Koenma sent me here to talk to you," he said.
"You came here to talk me out of going to see the Lure again?" Botan asked. "Not that I was going to – I mean I can't, Kurama killed it – but even if he hadn't, I wouldn't! I couldn't! I won't!"
"You have to forget whatever it showed you," Hiei replied. "It was false. You need to let it go. You need to move forward."
"I know it was false."
Botan looked down at the desk in front of her, if only to avoid looking at Hiei.
"It would have been really nice if it had been real," she said sadly. "And, really, that was all I went to see the Lure about. I just wanted to ask it why. I wanted to ask it why it showed me what it did."
"I think you already have your answer," Hiei quietly replied.
Botan froze, realising that Hiei was correct.
"I do," she admitted. "I do know why it showed me what it did. It showed me the thing I wanted most of all. Something I tried to pretend I didn't want. Pretend I didn't even feel. Something that lived only in the deepest parts of my subconscious. Something that can only ever live in the deepest parts of my subconscious."
"That is the true power of the Lure."
Botan lifted her head, looking directly at Hiei, even though his eyes were downcast.
"Its true power is that it makes something impossible real for you," he said, sounding almost sympathetic. "And you went back because the only way you could experience it again was through the Lure. The only way to make it real was to experience it in a hallucination."
Botan nodded.
"Yes," she said sadly. "It's won't ever be real any other way."
"If it isn't real, it's not worth wasting your energy on," Hiei replied. "You should focus your energy on things that are real."
"Like what?" Botan asked miserably.
"Like the things that interest you."
"A promotion to a better job in Spirit World interests me. That was one of the things the Lure showed me. But I've ruined my chances of that ever becoming a reality now. Like you said, Spirit World think me a traitor. They don't even trust me to do my current job, never mind a more important one, one with more responsibility."
"Maybe you should focus on pursuing a future somewhere else."
"Somewhere outside of Spirit World?"
"There was a time when I only wanted to be the most notorious, most successful thief in Demon World. Then I met people I hated, and they made me do things I hated, and it changed me. It changed everything. You just need to stand up. You need to fight this. You need to be courageous. You need to make your own destiny, not chase after a false one a pathetic, low class demon fabricated for you."
Botan smiled bitterly.
"I don't think I can be courageous," she said, swallowing back the threat of tears welling up from her chest.
"I think you can be."
Botan's eyes dried and grew wide.
"You-you do?" she asked.
"Yes," Hiei plainly replied.
"Really?"
"Don't make me repeat myself."
Botan laughed.
"And don't prove me wrong," Hiei added, sounding almost viciously threatening. "I don't like being wrong."
Botan laughed harder.
"That was definitely a joke, Hiei!" she said.
Hiei grunted and shook his head, but not before Botan caught a hint of a smile on his face.
"They're not going to let you out of here until they're convinced you're not going back to the Lure," he said.
"I can't go back to the Lure, Kurama killed it!" Botan argued.
"You know there are more."
Botan felt a strange pang within her as Hiei gave her a strange look.
"You read my mind!" she accused, pointing a finger at him angrily.
"I didn't need to," he calmly replied.
Botan adjusted herself in her seat, avoiding looking directly at Hiei as she found a thought rising to the surface of her mind and expanding, until it took up everything inside of her, until it eventually burgeoned up and out of her mouth.
"Are there other Lures?"
Hiei gave her a harsh look.
"I was just asking!" she said defensively.
"You don't need to go looking for pathetic weaklings who will only lie to you," he said.
"I didn't say I was going to "go looking" for Lures!" Botan sighed.
Hiei nodded.
"But are there many of them, and how difficult would it be to find another one, do you think?"
Hiei growled under his breath, his eyes narrowing.
"I was just curious!" Botan added.
"I believe humans have a saying about what curiosity does to a cat," Hiei replied.
Botan tilted her head.
"Was that another joke…?" she asked tentatively.
Hiei grunted and stood up, turning away without either confirming or denying Botan's leading question. She was silently glad that Ayame had never returned, as she had been sure she was facing a day of being lectured by her flawless colleague. Instead getting to spend the time with Hiei was much preferable, but she still wished she could spend the time with him under better circumstances – circumstances where he had not effectively been hired to test her sanity.
"Even if another Lure appears," she began. "I promise I won't go looking for it."
Hiei looked back over his shoulder at her, his expression flat, unreadable.
"I'll stay away," she continued. "I won't go looking for it. I'll stay here, in Spirit World, until you – or Yusuke, or Kurama, or Kuwabara, or whoever – catches it and kills it, or detains it or returns it to Demon World. I promise, Hiei."
"You have to do this," he said.
"I will," she insisted. "I promise."
"You have to do this for me."
"For-for you?"
"For me. For those who care about you. For everyone. For yourself."
Hiei slowly turned his head away. Botan stared at his back for a long moment. He was wearing his usual, baggy black pants – the kind she had mused over during her hallucinations, and she smiled as she found them looking as shapeless and deceptive in reality as they had in her delusions – and a ragged, dull blue vest. His scarf and cloak were absent, leaving his arms on display. As usual, his arms were wrapped in bandages from just above his elbows down to the bases of his fingers, but, as usual, even that could not obscure the definition of his strong, lean arms.
Botan wondered what it felt like to be held in those arms, if he hugged tightly or if he would be amenable to cuddling softly on a sofa.
"Thank you Hiei," she said quietly.
"For what?" he asked, keeping his head turned away from her.
"For coming here," she replied. "For helping me."
He said nothing, but somehow Botan felt that was because he was too proud to admit that he had come to Spirit World to help her. She hoped that part of the reason he was there was because he cared about her – even if it was just as a friend – but she was too afraid to ask him if that was the case. Or maybe she, like he, was too proud to ask, too afraid of rejection or ridicule. Like Hiei.
Botan silently and smoothly stood from her seat and leaned forwards. Her desk pressed against her legs and she had to stretch and strain to reach over it, and although she knew it would be logical to just walk out from behind the desk, she persisted, leaning forwards as far as she could manage, she reached out an arm, which felt heavy and awkward in her stretched position. She just managed to reach her goal, her hand landing on Hiei's shoulder. She touched him lightly at first, the initial contact making her pause. Her hand landed on his bare shoulder, and the feeling of touching him there was not what she had expected it to be. His skin was warm and unexpectedly soft, but when she applied a little pressure with her fingertips, she could feel a taut firmness just beneath his skin, which, she realised, was a swell of muscle.
"Hiei?"
Hiei suddenly grabbed his hand onto Botan's, holding it against his shoulder, he turned partially around, forcing her arm to move across the front of her body. The movement made her increasingly aware of the desk in front of her, holding her back from him, and she began to feel irritated by it.
"What is that you needed from the Lure, woman?" he asked, his voice low, and his eyes intense.
Botan wanted to look at the desk holding her back, to figure out how to move it out of her way or to step around it, but she found herself unable to look anywhere other than into Hiei's eyes, looking directly at her in a way they so rarely did.
"I just wanted to know why it kept showing me something," she replied.
"What?" Hiei insisted. "What did it show you that was so important you had to go back for more?"
"It showed me life."
Hiei froze and so did Botan. She was the first to recover.
"I-I've never really felt alive before," she said, the realisation literally occurring to her as she spoke it. "I've felt happy and sad, but the emotions I felt when the Lure had me, the hope, the passion… I've never felt those feelings, never felt anything so intensely… I felt more alive when I was "hallucinating" than I did when Kurama woke me up and Kuwabara took me back to Spirit World!"
"Alive?" Hiei said quietly.
"I know it probably sounds stupid to you!" Botan cried defensively. "But it was everything to me! I just want to feel that way again! I just want to really… I just… I want to feel that way. I want to be that person. I want my life to matter. I want exciting things to happen to me, not just to other people around me. I want to be the hero of the story for once. I'm tired of watching life happen to other people, I want to live my own life."
"You don't need the Lure to make that happen," Hiei said, sounding surprisingly sympathetic.
"Yes I do," Botan said, tears welling up in her eyes. "I do because one of the things I want in my life can only be possible in my imagination."
"You can have anything you want if you try hard enough," Hiei answered. "And you've never been one to give up on something just because it was difficult."
"This isn't a difficult thing, Hiei. This is an impossible thing."
"Hn, I never thought I'd hear you call anything impossible."
"You."
"…What?"
"It's you."
"What is?"
"You're impossible."
"What?"
"It's you, Hiei. I just wanted you. And the only way that can ever happen, is in my imagination."
Hiei said nothing, but he did continue to look directly at her. Botan wanted desperately to look away from him, to hide her tears, but she was spellbound, unable to look away, and he was still clutching her hand against his shoulder, making it difficult – even if she had been able – to will herself to look away from him.
"The Lure showed you me?" he asked, his voice so quiet it was barely above a whisper.
"Yes," Botan replied, her voice as quiet as his. "It showed me a lot of things, but that – you – is the thing I think I want the most."
"You want me?"
"Yes, I think I do."
Hiei made a low noise that was indecipherable.
"But…" Botan began cautiously. "That can't ever be a reality, can it? You couldn't ever… You wouldn't ever want to… We won't ever be… Right?"
Hiei said nothing, but again, he did not look away, nor did he release her hand on his shoulder.
"Right, Hiei?" she pressed.
"I…" he began, his voice still quiet.
"Hiei?"
Next Chapter: Hiei answers Botan and it's neither what she expected nor what she wanted to hear from him. After Spirit World deem her safe to go to visit her friends, Botan goes around them and tries to make sense of a reality where Yukina makes amazing gravy, Keiko and Yusuke are still very much a couple, and Hiei is quite different to how she imagined him. Chapter 9: I am Lost
