Last Chapter: Botan was meant to return to her normal duties, but instead bunked off to go looking for her friends to ask their advice on Hiei. Something odd seemed to be happening at Shizuru's house, and when she looked outside, Botan saw something in the sky that she decided to follow: back in the direction of the park she had found the Lure in.
Chapter 11: You Don't Even Know
Botan slowed as she reached the park. It looked exactly as she remembered it – and she did not just remember it as the place she found the Lure for the second time, it was a place she had visited a couple of times in the past as part of her duties as a ferry girl – but it looked duller than usual. The sky overhead was completely black when she arrived there, but the park itself was somehow illuminated, as though bathed in moonlight. It was the odd, greyish hue that the landscape in the living world took on in areas devoid of streetlights, the only light source being the moon. It was not the lovely blue light that came from a full moon, rather it was muggy grey light cast by a waning moon that hung low in the sky (although the moon was not visible at that moment).
Botan landed in the car park by the gates of the park, looking about herself, surprised to find only one car in the car park. The car was haphazardly parked, as though it had been abandoned in a hurry. It looked familiar somehow, but Botan had never really cared enough for cars to be sure why it looked familiar. It looked familiar, but it also looked pretty much like every other small car Botan saw in the cities of Japan, and in the dull lighting, it was almost impossible to tell the exact colour the car was, she could only be sure that it was dark (though not black). She started towards it, intent on looking through the windows to see if she recognised anything inside the car that might give her a clue as to who it may belong to: but as she neared it, she moved into an area of surprisingly cold air, air that was easily as cold as the air Yukina generated when she was unhappy about something.
Botan stopped, resisting the urge to shiver in the cold, as she was suddenly struck by why she recognised the car. The owner of the car was standing on the other side of it, looking tired and worried.
"No, you have to go," Keiko said, leaning one hand on the side of her car to support her clearly weary frame. "Because I said so, okay?"
Botan took a step back, though she was sure Keiko had not been speaking to her, as she had not been looking in Botan's direction when she spoke. As she stepped back, Botan stepped back into milder air, and the image of Keiko and her car dissolved into a blur that eventually dissipated into the night air. Botan frowned and stepped forwards again, back into the same position she had been standing in: but the air remained mild and neither Keiko, nor her car, reappeared.
Botan swallowed carefully and moved on, through the gates of the park.
"I'm sorry, the park is closed today."
Botan stopped short, shivering slightly as she once more found herself in a cold patch of air. She moved her eyes to her side, where she saw Kurama standing not far from her, apparently talking to someone behind her. She turned around on the spot, but saw no-one. She turned to Kurama, who would probably look calm and collected to most people in that moment, but the tell-tale tension lines at the corners of his mouth and around the edges of his eyebrows told her he was anxious about something.
"You'll have to come back another day," he said to the invisible person. "My apologies."
"Who are you talking to Kurama?" Botan asked, looking in the same direction he was for a moment.
When he did not answer her, she turned to him, the air noticeably growing warmer as she turned to him, and she caught one last glimpse of a blur of his image before he disappeared entirely.
"Oh…" Botan muttered to herself.
She was starting to wonder if she was having a dream. Or if she was watching a film. What she felt was more like watching a film than anything else, but she was viewing it through her own eyes, and she was a part of the action. She moved further into the park, aiming herself towards the area where she had spoken to the Lure, the bend in the path with the stone bench they had sat on together. As the bench came into her line of sight she stopped short, suddenly finding herself in another cold spot, and standing not far behind Yusuke and Kuwabara.
"How long is this gonna take?" Yusuke asked, sounding on edge, as though he was waiting for his turn in a match during the Dark Tournament.
"It took all day last time," Kuwabara replied, sounding substantially calmer than Yusuke, though still slightly uneasy.
"Damn it…" Yusuke growled under his breath.
Botan took a step towards them and they dissolved into nothingness just as Keiko and Kurama had done before them. Starting to feel genuinely afraid, and almost certain she was having a hallucination, or a flashback of one, caused by returning to the place she had met the Lure, Botan continued to the path in front of the stone bench, stopping there as a cold gust of wind swept over her. She began to feel so cold, she was sure she was about to see another of her friends: but nothing happened, and no-one appeared.
"Hiei."
Botan reached out her hand as she spoke his name, somehow knowing where to place her hand – and it reaching its target – before Hiei appeared before her.
"Why did you come back here?" he asked her.
"I-I don't know," she admitted. "I just felt… Drawn here."
"It's not safe for you here," Hiei said to her.
"But… I don't know where else to go."
"Then come with me."
Hiei grabbed her hand and started to run, forcing her around, and forcing her to run alongside him. She was not sure how he had managed to judge it, but he had adjusted his speed to her maximum speed, allowing them to run side-by-side as they fled the park. The world was still grey, the sky was still black, there were still no sights or sounds of life anywhere around them, but, as they ran, Botan could really feel Hiei's hand holding hers. It felt the way she remembered it from when he had held her hand in Demon World – during her hallucination – but also the way it had felt when he had taken her hand in Spirit World, when he had held her hand against his shoulder. She was losing track of what was real and what was a trick of her mind, but one thing she knew was real, one thing that was undeniable, was the way Hiei was holding her hand. The sensation was so real, so grounding, it distracted her from the burning in her legs as she ran alongside him, the aching in her lungs as she gasped in the air she needed to keep going, the thundering of her heart in her chest. When they finally stopped, Botan doubled over, sweat dripping from her hairline, across her cheek and down to the tip of her nose, where it dripped to the ground. At her side, Hiei was calm, poised and relaxed. What had been strenuous and almost impossible for her, was nothing for him. The speed they had been running at was probably painfully slow for him. His heart rarely beat, so he did not have to deal with it pounding in his head like Botan did with hers at that moment.
The thought occurred to Botan that, in order to run as fast as he did, and to jump as high as she had seen him do in the past – sometimes up to the top of a tree from a standing start on the ground – his legs must be incredibly strong. And muscular. She slowly turned her head towards him, finding he was, as usual, wearing very loose-fitting pants that entirely obscured what lay beneath.
"What are you doing?" Hiei asked her in a low voice.
Botan paused, questioning her own sanity when she nearly found herself answering him honestly with the words "wondering what you look like without your pants on". She took a deep breath and straightened herself up, wiping her free hand down her face to clear away the excess sweat, before turning fully to face Hiei. He was looking at her so intensely, she momentarily worried that he might have read her mind and already heard the question she almost spoke aloud: after all, as Keiko had pointed out, he did communicate with her telepathically more often than seemed normal for him. And he had been able to cut into her personal thoughts before, to catch her before she said something that might have caused him trouble, despite them being a considerable physical distance apart at the time. It was almost as though he regularly just sought her out and studied her mind. But why?
"I'm confused," she admitted.
"I know," he replied, a little too quickly for her liking.
"You do?" she asked.
"Yes."
Botan nodded slowly.
"How do you know?" she tried, hoping to draw out a more specific answer from him.
"This," he said, holding up his hand, still holding hers. "Do you see this?"
Botan focused on their hands, joined together, for a moment. She found the sight strangely hypnotic, and spent longer looking than she meant to. When she felt her mind drifting, throwing up images of his hand gripping other parts of her body the same way he was so firmly holding her hand, she tried to look away. Her mind successfully pictured, visually and in physical sensation, his hand holding her inner thigh, one of her breasts and the underside of her chin, which he lifted up to kiss her exposed neck, before she was able to break her attention away. She met Hiei's gaze again at the exact moment she felt that delirious rush of desire upon her last secret thought, and something in his eyes told her that last thought – and the others that had preceded it – might not have been so secret.
"I'm sorry…" she said softly. "What was the question?"
Hiei growled in the back of his throat, his face tightening in clear irritation.
"Why were you in that park?" he asked her. "You went there for a reason."
"I followed the…" Botan began. "I saw the…"
She swallowed and hesitated to consider her response. She was not too sure that she wanted to admit to Hiei that she had gone there searching for the Lure, least of all after he had come to Spirit World to talk to her about her experiences with the Lure.
"I saw something in the sky," she said, deciding to take the very advice he had given her, and base her lie mostly on the truth. "And I just came to see what it was."
"You got very close," Hiei replied.
"Close?" Botan echoed.
"You were right at the edge," he said, his voice softer. "I barely managed to pull you back."
He gave a slight tug on her hand, presumably to illustrate his point, but the action made Botan, still exhausted from the run, stumble awkwardly closer to him.
"You have to act now."
"Now…?"
"Now."
Hiei sounded so certain, and he was so close to her, and he was looking at her so directly. Botan questioned herself repeatedly in a matter of seconds, but her resolve remained solid: there was only one thing he could possibly mean. And so, she leaned towards him.
Botan had never actually kissed anyone on the lips before, but she figured it would be as simple as it looked, and so she had leaned in without much thought. At the point where the tip of her nose pressed against the tip of his she stopped. Not because she felt awkward that she had misjudged her angle of approach, but because she could feel something holding her back. Something physical. Something restrictive, locking her legs in place. Other than her head and her arm belonging to the hand Hiei was holding, she felt as though her entire body was being contained within some sort of energy field, tightly holding her in place.
"What are you doing?"
Hiei's voice was barely above a whisper, and a good deal lower and deeper than usual. When he spoke, she could feel his breath on her face, realising then just how close her lips were to his.
"I was going to kiss you," she answered honestly.
It was never easy to lie to Hiei, but it was impossible to even attempt it when she was so close to him, his eyes crossed slightly to look into hers.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because you asked me to," she replied.
"N-no I didn't," he said quietly.
"You said I had to act now. You're holding my hand. You pulled me closer."
Hiei paused before turning his head to one side suddenly.
"Be useful or shut the hell up!" he shouted, his voice raw and hoarse.
He sounded as though he had been through a difficult battle, physically drained but still mentally sharp.
Hiei hesitated there for a moment before turning back to face Botan, pressing the tip of his nose to hers. In the same moment that she thought it was odd that he had returned himself to that same position, she became aware that he had in fact moved closer, to the point that she felt as though they were breathing each other's breath.
"Why is this happening?" he asked quietly.
"I-I don't know," she replied. "You started it though."
"No, you started it," he whispered back.
"No, you did!" she protested.
"…Did I?"
Botan had never heard Hiei sound so unsure about anything in the entire time she had known him.
"This is about what you want, not what I want," he said, sounding as though he was back in control, sure of his words.
"What is?" Botan asked.
"What?" he echoed.
"What you just said," she said. "What did you mean?"
"I meant this is only happening because you want it to," he explained, in what sounded like a strained attempt to sound indifferent. "You're the one trying to kiss me, not the other way around. We are clear about that."
"Are we?"
"Yes?"
"You-you don't sound so sure. Are you sure?"
Hiei gulped, the sound so close, it was almost as though Botan had her ear pressed to his throat.
"I'm not like the others," he said in a low whisper. "Not in this way – not in the way you're thinking. You don't understand that. You are a servant of King Enma and I am a demon."
"I know that," Botan whispered back.
"I don't think you do," he whispered. "Not really."
"You don't know what I think!"
"I do."
"No you don't!"
"Where exactly do you think we are right now, woman?"
Botan rolled her eyes upwards, partly expecting to find that Hiei had taken her somewhere significant after his last words, but almost as soon as she broke eye contact with him he let out a groan and slumped towards her. She gasped as his forehead came to rest on her shoulder and his hand released hers.
"Hiei?" she said, turning her head toward him but only succeeding in burying her chin in his hair.
He said nothing, but also stayed exactly where he was. She could feel the weight of his head on her shoulder, almost as though he had passed out against her.
"Hiei, are you okay?" she asked.
It was as though he had fainted, though there was no logical reason why he would have.
"We have to get out of here."
Botan made to ask Hiei what he meant, but her words dissolved into a scream as he threw her over his shoulder and took off running at what she could only assume was his maximum speed, as it robbed the air from her lungs and made her ponytail fly straight out behind her head, only furthering the feeling that the skin was being pulled off of her face. Just as it reached the point where Botan was sure she was going to pass out – just as she had thought Hiei had done, moments earlier – he slowed to a halt and lowered her to her feet. Once she was steady on the ground, she gave him a questioning look, but his eyes were on something ahead of him. He gave a purposeful nod of his head in the direction he was looking and Botan turned around, gasping at the sight that greeted her.
"I thought you might like this," he said as she took in her surroundings. "You like human things, and the sky."
They were standing at the top of a mountain, looking down into a valley, the mountainside cut into terraced rice fields in every direction. The full moon was out and shining directly into the centre of the flooded fields, reflecting off the water and twinkling as a light breeze rippled the water. Looking at the higher up fields, the ones closer to her, Botan could even stars reflected in the velvety-black water.
"It's so beautiful," she gushed. "I've never seen them at night before."
The sight was stunning, the fragmented reflection of the sky that spread out before her, looking so much like another sky, she almost felt as though if stepped into one of the fields, she would fall through the stars themselves: but something about the idea of Hiei taking her to a scenic viewpoint seemed familiar, and not in a good way, and so Botan began to feel a sense of hesitation and uncertainty, so much so, that she took a step back.
"Sit down," Hiei said to her when she stepped back. "You seem tired."
Botan turned to him and let out a small, nervous laugh.
"You're not tired," she pointed out.
"It's nothing for me," he casually replied.
"I know…" Botan said with a sigh.
"Sit down."
"Okay."
Botan did as he commanded and sat down on the ground, crossing her legs in front of her.
"It's lovely here, it really is," she said. "But why did you take me here?"
Hiei sat down beside her, though, she noticed, a little bit away from her: not very far from her, but far enough that she could not reach out and touch him without stretching her arm and leaning over.
"You didn't collect the human soul."
Botan paused before slowly feeling her hand up her sleeve and retrieving her long task list. It was a little weathered from having been up her sleeve all day, but it was also, crucially, untouched. Botan had never abandoned her duties before, and she wondered what happened now that she had. Had another ferry girl gone to collect the souls she was meant to have collected? What if no-one had, what if all the souls she was meant to have collected were just wandering around aimlessly in the living world? Ayame had said there was a backlog of human souls because she had missed two days of work, what would it be like after her missing three days? Why had there been a backlog? Was the backlog made up of souls she had missed the previous two days? Did Spirit World just let souls build up in the living world?
"I, um, I was going to," she lied. "But there was something else I had to do first."
"Go back to the place where you last saw the Lure?" Hiei responded.
Botan pouted.
"I had a good reason for going back there," she said quietly.
"You need to move forward," he answered her.
"Yes, I know," she agreed.
"Stop looking for the Lure."
"I wasn't purposefully looking for it, I just thought I saw it."
"Stop thinking about it. Forget it and move forward."
"I suppose that's what you'd do, right?"
Botan turned to Hiei and he gave her a strange look from the corner of his eye.
"Not that I'm saying you would have been caught by a Lure in the first place," she quickly added. "Just that you would, you know, move on. From the Lure."
Hiei looked forward again and Botan copied his action, turning her head in time to see an owl swoop down over the mountainside. Looking directly at it, it looked dark, but the reflection of its underbelly in the fields below it appeared a brilliant white.
"I've been seeing things," she said quietly. "Things that don't make sense. I know I'm "awake" now, but I still feel like I'm under the Lure's control somehow. It's like… I see echoes of things that don't really exist."
Botan sighed.
"I know it sounds crazy, and it probably doesn't even make any sense, the way I'm describing it," she said. "But I just feel like… It's not over. Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes," Hiei replied, so immediately and so confidently, Botan instantly felt easier.
"I thought you were going to disagree with me," she said.
"It's what the Lure does," he answered. "It will pass. But you need to move forward."
Botan nodded.
"Okay, I know," she said. "And I have been trying to."
"Have you?"
"Yes! I went back to work–"
"You abandoned the first soul you were sent to collect. Did you collect any of the others?"
"Well, no, but I did intend to."
"You'll draw attention to yourself in Spirit World if you don't move forward."
Botan's face twisted.
"I think I've done that already," she said, looking down at her feet. "I think that happened when I became Assistant to the Spirit Detective. And it got worse when I went to the Dark Tournament. And then it got worse again when I went to the Demo World Tournament. In Demon World."
"It will get worse if you can't let go."
"I can't let go, though!"
"You must."
"I can let go of some of it, but not… Some other parts of it."
A short silence passed between them, during which Botan fiddled with her sleeves anxiously.
"When we were all gathered in Spirit World, and Lord Koenma first spoke to us about the Lure," she began quietly. "I thought it was just a demon that made you see things like… Having a nice new kimono, or going a nice party with all my best friends. I thought, if it did catch me, it would just show me things I obviously knew that I wanted. I didn't know it would – I didn't know it could – show me things I didn't know I wanted. And… That's the problem. It showed me things I didn't know I wanted, and didn't realise I wanted really badly, and now that I've seen what it's like to have those things… I don't want to…"
"Don't want to what?" Hiei pressed.
"I don't want to carry on without those things," Botan admitted. "But I don't really know how to get those things. And I don't understand how the Lure knew that I wanted those things. It didn't just show me things that I wanted, it gave them to me in exactly the way that I wanted them. But… It wasn't perfect. It was just imperfect enough that it seemed real. If it had been too perfect, I would have known it was fake. But… It was perfect."
"Life isn't perfect."
"I know! And obviously so did the Lure, because it knew to show me an imperfect life. That was perfect. I just… I don't know what to do."
"Move on."
Botan sighed loudly.
"It's the only thing you can do," Hiei reminded her.
"I can't move on, okay?" she snapped. "I can't! Not until I know why!"
"Why what?" Hiei asked.
"Why it showed me the things that it did!"
"You already know why. You said so yourself: it showed you things you want."
"It focused really heavily on something I didn't know I want. And now that it's shown me I do want it, I want it so badly, I just need to know why."
"If you want something that badly, you should just pursue it."
"That's easy to say when you're talking about something, but I am talking about someone!"
Another silence passed between them, during which Botan fiddled with her sleeves – at one point stuffing her task list back up when it threatened to fall out – and sighed a few times.
"It's you, Hiei," she eventually said, ignoring the tears blurring her view of the stunning rice fields. "I didn't know that I wanted you, but most of what the Lure showed me was about me getting you. And that's not possible. You said as much yourself."
"I didn't say it wasn't possible."
Botan paused, before opening her mouth to speak, but the struggling to find her voice for several seconds.
"You said you couldn't do it," she eventually managed. "You couldn't be with me."
"That wasn't what I said," Hiei replied. "Or what I meant."
Botan frowned, and tilted her head slightly.
"You said "I can't do this"," she pointed out.
"I can't come to Spirit World and have a spirit proposition me," Hiei replied. "Just as you can't come to Demon World and have me proposition you. It would be too dangerous for both of us."
"Oh, well, that's a good point," Botan agreed. "Spirit World probably would have had me arrested for saying what I did to you, and in Demon World, you'd probably be kicked out by Mukuro if she thought you were…"
Botan sighed and hung her head. She was unsure what she ought to do or say next: the only thing she was sure of was that she wanted to stay exactly where she was, no matter how impractical that would be in time.
"We're not in Spirit World now," Hiei said.
Botan nodded.
"Or Demon World," he added.
She nodded again, but paused partway through the gesture.
"What are you saying?" she asked, turning her head to look at Hiei at her side.
"Here, in this place, nothing else matters," he replied, turning to face her. "Here, it's just you and me."
Botan searched his eyes, waiting for him to say or do something to contradict what she hoped he was implying. When he neither did nor said anything, she allowed herself to dare to hope.
"Nothing else matters," she said, nodding her head. "It's just you and me. And if I said that I want…"
Looking him in the eye, it was a lot harder to outright say how she felt.
"And I told you, if you want something that badly, you should just pursue it," Hiei said.
Botan gulped before taking a step closer to him experimentally. She was still cautious, still sure that the moment would go sour at some point very soon.
"I think I always felt this way," she said. "I just… Ignored it, because, like you said, in our own worlds, it wouldn't be accepted."
"I understand," he replied, taking two steps closer to her.
He was close enough that she could easily reach out and touch him, and as soon as that thought occurred to her, she reached out a hand, falling just short of placing it on his chest, her fingers fluttering in the air between them.
"I just want–"
Botan stopped short when Hiei took her hand in his and pressed her palm to his chest. She gasped, though all she could feel was his shirt, the only real familiar, skin-on-skin contact coming from his fingers against her hand: that familiar warmth of his skin, the slightly frayed edges of the bandages over his palms.
"I just want…" she tried again.
She shook her head and found her eyes focusing onto the one thing she knew, without a doubt, that she wanted right then.
She just wanted to kiss him.
Botan closed the distance between them and Hiei crashed into her, landing in the same position he had been in before he took her to the rice fields: leaning against her with his head on her shoulder. It was not the move she had been going for, and she was a little disappointed to miss out on kissing him, but as she turned her head slightly towards him, the feeling of his hair brushing against her lips was strangely comforting in its own sort of way. She put her arms around him and closed her eyes. She had no idea what the rest of the night would hold for her, but, finally, she was at peace.
She had nothing more to worry about or question, because, finally, everything made sense.
Next Chapter: Botan tries to return to her usual routine and life in Spirit World, but she is consumed by thoughts of Hiei, who begins visiting her in her bedroom at night. Also, strange things keep happening around her, things that ultimately lead her to another encounter with the Lure. Chapter 12: Every Night
