Last Chapter: Hiei visited Botan in her bedroom in Spirit World for a couple of nights, before inviting her to a party in the living world. Before she got there, Botan had a strange moment of unreality, where she had an encounter with the Lure. Hiei arrived and took her away from the Lure, bringing her to the party. Everything seemed fine there on the surface, but Botan witnessed a disjointed conversation between Yusuke and Shizuru, and also could mysteriously hear her favourite song playing.
Chapter 13: I See You
"I'm gonna destoy it."
"Get in line, Kuwabara! I meant what I said about what I'm gonna do to it!"
"Talk all you want boys, but I'm gonna be the one who wastes this bird-faced motherfucker."
With her last remark, Shizuru took the gun from her brother and aimed it at the screen on the arcade machine. Botan could not really remember leaving the party the night before, or her day at work, but she knew they must have passed, as she was back in the living world, in the early evening time, at Genkai's old place, watching her friends play arcade games with sometimes a little too much competitive spirit. They were all there: Yusuke, Kuwabara and Shizuru were huddled around the same machine, Keiko was explaining one of the games to Yukina and Kurama was playing a game on his own. It was a pleasant place to be, amongst her friends, with no pressure of any pending danger or too-long tasklist.
But something still felt just not quite right.
Botan was starting think that she would never get over what the Lure had done to her.
She turned from her friends and moved outside, into the sun. It was quite windy outside – as it did sometimes tend to be in early Springtime – and the wind caught Botan's kimono and ponytail, pulling them out to one side of her. Overhead, the clouds were rolling by, colliding with each other and merging, before being torn apart again. The fast-moving, shape-shifting shadows they cast on the land below was hypnotic to watch, and watching it helped ease some of her concerns. It reminded her of simpler things, things that brought her happiness without making any great demand on her or having any hidden cost. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, enjoying the sweet smell of growing grass that was so unique to the season.
When she opened her eyes again she felt drawn to look up into the tall trees along the line of the forest that lay beyond the complex: and she was not entirely surprised to see Hiei standing on a branch three quarters of the way up one of the tall trees, his back resting against the trunk of the tree, his arms folded over his chest. He was not looking towards her, and actually appeared to have his eyes shut and his head angled downwards, as though he had fallen asleep standing up. Which, knowing Hiei, was actually a possibility. Botan held out one hand, her oar appearing in it with a soft pop. She hopped onto her mode of transport and quietly drifted up towards Hiei's location, all the while expecting him to say something or move before she reached him. But, surprisingly, he stayed exactly where he was, eyes still closed, and remained silent.
Botan hovered directly in front of Hiei, pouting as she was overcome by both curiosity and irritation at his lack of acknowledgement of her presence. He would usually acknowledge her, even if it was just to tell her to leave him alone because she had interrupted his moment of peace.
He looked tired. Not so much in the way he was standing, just something about his face. Slight signs of weariness tugged the corners of his mouth downwards and changed the angle of his eyebrows. Botan leaned closer to him, tightening her grip of her oar with her hands and the backs of her knees to allow herself to move her face closer to his. He slowly opened his eyes, looking directly into her eyes with a strange, almost childlike look of wonder on his face. His eyebrows twitched and he unfolded his arms, raising one hand in the air between them, his fingers moving until he was pointing at her with his index finger. His eyes never left hers, and likewise, the look of wonder never left his face. Botan wanted to ask him if he was alright, but she was strangely captivated by the way he was looking at her: his expression was so soft, he almost looked like an entirely different person.
She blinked in surprise when he lightly touched the tip of his pointed index finger to the tip of her nose, crossing her eyes to look at his finger. Her eyes quickly shifted back to Hiei's face however when she saw one side of his mouth curl up into a lop-sided smile, a strange sparkle – that almost resembled joy – passing over his eyes. He opened out his hand and his fingers lightly touched her cheek, sliding towards her ear until his thumb came to rest against the tip of her nose, whereupon the other side of his mouth curled upwards into a smile that was unusually warm and well-meaning for him.
Botan reached up her hand and pressed his hand to her face, the warmth of his bandaged palm against her skin almost leaving the rest of her body feel uncomfortably cold in comparison.
"This isn't supposed to happen," he said, his voice so quiet, it was barely a whisper.
Botan smiled.
"But it can happen here, remember?" she whispered. "Just like you said: this is the place where we can be together."
The look on Hiei's face changed then, into one Botan could not quite place. His eyes moved from hers to her lips, and she could have sworn she heard a murmur of a growl rumbling in his chest. He made a small snarling sound, his top lip twitching to momentarily expose his teeth before he lunged towards her.
"For fuck's sake, Hiei!" Yusuke yelled. "Put your dick away and concentrate!"
Hiei paused, his mouth slightly open, his head tilted to one side. He was so close to her that she was sure any movement on her part, no matter how slight, would bring her lips in contact with his.
"Put it away, Hiei!" Yusuke called, sounding almost taunting. "Don't make me climb this tree and kick you in the nuts!"
Hiei growled, this time clearly in anger, leaning back from Botan and closing his mouth into a mouthful of clenched, bared teeth.
"Any time, Hiei!" Yusuke added.
"How did you put up with him all those years he was the "Spirit Detective"?" Hiei whispered to Botan.
"I heard that, Hiei!" Yusuke called up to him.
Hiei sighed and narrowed his eyes before grabbing Botan's kimono at her throat.
"What are you doing, Hiei?" she asked.
"What do you think I'm doing?" he snapped back.
He shook his head and then pulled at her kimono, leaning back as he pulled. Botan was forced to lean fully forwards as he pulled, but she clung fast to her oar with her hands and legs and was able to stall the movement.
"Let go!" he yelled.
"I can't let go!" Botan cried back.
She shook her head – the look on his face was wild – surely this moment was another anomaly of reality, another disturbance of her perception of reality caused by the Lure.
"Hiei!" Yusuke called up to them. "Look out!"
Hiei grunted, the look on his face softening slightly, his eyes rolling upwards. A shadow fell over them and the wild look returned to Hiei's face instantly, his eyes and his bared teeth almost glowing as the shadow darkened everything else around them. He leaned back further, stretching back to the full length of his arms. He looked borderline insane and Botan wanted to ask him why: but just as she went to, his expression faltered, his eyebrows twisting and his grimace fading. A moment later, something black swiped over his face and he released Botan, falling through the tree and out of her sight.
"Hiei!" she cried, reaching out a hand in the direction he had fallen.
She turned and looked up at his attacker, finding what looked like an ordinary crow from the human world, hovering behind her head. Its feet were poised in the air ahead of it, its toes ending in talons unbefitting of any bird from the human world, every one dripping with blood. Botan summoned her bat ready to attack the bird, but it backed out of her reach, before flying off over the treetops and out of sight. With a sigh, Botan banished her bat again and quickly flew down the length of the tree, her concern rising as she passed broken branches that marked the path Hiei had fallen through. He must have fallen the entire way, as there was damage the entire length of the tree, and she eventually found Hiei sitting on the ground scowling at Yusuke, who was crouched at his side.
"Hiei, are you okay?" Botan asked, leaping from her oar, which vanished behind her with a pop.
He growled and turned his head from her, but she dropped to her knees at his side regardless.
"What happened?" she asked him.
"Nothing, I'm fine," he grumbled.
On his other side, Yusuke stood up and moved a few steps away to join Shizuru, who was standing apparently waiting for him, her weight leaned onto one foot, her arms folded over her chest in something of a sassy pose that caught Botan's attention.
"It's been a long day, kid, and we're all getting tired, but you have to stop," Shizuru said to him in a low voice.
"Aw, come on, Shizuru!" Yusuke said back, his voice also low, although not quite so low as Shizuru's.
"You have to stop now," Shizuru said firmly. "You have to stop talking about Hiei's dick and my tits."
Yusuke smirked and his eyes sparkled.
"Never thought I'd hear you say the words "tits"," he said with a grin.
"Just stop, okay?" Shizuru asked.
"You know uh… That was my first masturbatory fantasy. You, saying the word tits. Not in the way you just said, more in a sort of "look at my tits, and come have a–"
"Yusuke, give it a rest, okay?"
"Hey, nights in Demon World can be long and lonely. So, you know, this just gives me something else to think about on those, uh, long and lonely nights, if you know what I'm saying."
"Seriously, stop."
"Okay, I'll stop."
"Good."
Shizuru started to walk away from him.
"I mean, you've given plenty of material to work with as it is," Yusuke added.
Shizuru turned her head, glaring at him over her shoulder.
"That's nice too," he added, turning to look at her. "You, from behind, looking back over your shoulder at me."
"Consider yourself lucky I'm saving my energy for eviscerating that bird-faced motherfucker," Shizuru warned him.
"So maybe some other time?"
Shizuru sighed and walked on, and Yusuke made a small noise of self-satisfied triumph before following after her.
"Yusuke."
He stopped at the sound of his name.
"Leave her alone."
Yusuke spun on his toes, throwing Hiei a scrutinising look.
"I mean it," Hiei added. "Leave her alone. And stop making light of this."
Yusuke opened his mouth as though he had a smart comeback, but his face slowly changed, and he nodded, before turning away again and walking off.
"What was that all about?" Botan asked.
"Nothing," Hiei replied, standing up.
Botan rose to her feet at his side, watching him brush stray pieces of foliage from his clothing.
"Come on, let's go."
Hiei started to walk away and Botan hesitated at first, surprised by his words. Once her initial shock had passed, she hurried after him, falling into line alongside him.
"Where are we going?" she asked him.
"Somewhere we can be alone," he replied.
Botan smiled and tried to hide her gesture behind her hands.
"Okay, Hiei," she said.
They walked on in silence, but it was such a lovely day, Botan was happy to go that way. They walked side-by-side, and moved in a straight line the whole way, over lawns, through part of the forest and up a slight incline before reaching the edge of the treeline. There they stopped, and Botan finally realised where they were: they were back at the peak of a mountain, the other side of which was cut into terraced rice fields, all the way down to the valley below, the mountain at the other side of the valley likewise cut into rice fields. Seeing them in the daytime was no different from when they had visited them at night: they still acted as a mirror, reflecting the sky overhead. Botan took a moment to watch the reflection of the clouds, still racing and rolling by. Again, she thought that the fields looked so much like the sky, she felt as though if she stepped into one of them, she would fall through the sky itself.
Botan took out her oar and moved to the edge of the first cut, moving until the toes of her sandals were overlapping the blades of grass. The wind was still quite wild, and she had to grip with her toes as every gust threatened to make her lose her balance, to push her over the edge. Biting her lip in concentration, Botan reached out her oar, blade first, towards the nearest pool of water. She started to lean forwards, but doing so again threatened to send her over the edge, and so she kept her back straight: but then she could not quite reach the water, the tip of her oar falling just short of its goal.
She swallowed hard, her mind going blank for a moment. Then, only one thing appeared in her head: an image of herself, opening her arms and letting herself fall forwards, into the field below. When she hit the water there was no splash, she merely fell through, and into the sky beyond, free-falling through the air. It was not a descent like the kind she felt if she was thrown from her oar mid-air, rather it was a drifting sensation. Falling, but falling in a way that felt comfortable, relaxing, easy. It was a nice feeling.
Botan banished her oar and peered down into the fields below. She wondered how it would feel if she took a running jump off the edge, if she threw herself out over the fields further down.
She only realised how lost she was in the idea when she heard a noise behind her that drew her back to the present. She turned around to see Hiei unsheathing his sword. She turned around and moved over to join him. He held the sword in his dominant hand, but let it hang at his side, as though he had no real reason for having withdrawn it. Botan frowned as she looked down at the weapon. She had never noticed before that it was black. The hilt, the blade, the entire weapon was black. She wanted to ask Hiei if it was a new sword, but she also felt that nothing was different, and maybe she had just not noticed it before. She felt foolish that she had overlooked such a detail, and so she said no more.
"I like it here," she said.
"I know you do," Hiei replied.
"I could stay here all day, watching the clouds rolling by," she added.
"Yes."
Botan sat down on the grass and Hiei sat down beside her. She turned to look at him, and found he was sitting with his leg nearest her bent at the knee, resting his arm on it, his sword still in his hand. She wondered if he thought they were in danger somehow that he had chosen to hang onto his weapon so. When he did not respond, kept his eyes forward, kept hold of his sword, Botan decided to use his moment of distraction to shuffle closer to him. When he still did not respond, she leaned toward him and rested her head on his shoulder. He did not relax any, but he did not object to her action, and so she closed her eyes and let herself relax at his side.
Botan opened her eyes and, for a moment, was unsure where she was. She sat up onto one hip and discovered that she had been sleeping on the ground, at the top of the mountain, overlooking the terraced rice fields. She took a moment to look out over the reflection of the night sky, admiring the reflected moon and the stars – there seemed to be so many stars visible, she could even see them reflected in the distant fields near the base of the valley – before remembering that she had not gone to the fields alone. She looked about herself, but so no sign or trace of Hiei. She was a little irritated that he had left without waking her, but quickly forget about it when her attention was drawn back to the fields below. It was such a beautiful view, she felt that would be happy to stay exactly where she was until the end of time.
Botan moved onto all fours and crawled to the edge of the grass verge, rising up to her knees and shuffling them to the very edge. She reached an arm out in front of herself, looking down at the reflection of it in the water. It was strange, hard to understand why, but the air felt different on her arm, as though crossing that line at the edge of the field, moving out over the fields, was like entering another world entirely. She let her arm fall to her side, taking one last look out over the fields before hunching down over her knees and peering over the edge, moving her head out over the edge of the field.
Although she had expected to see her own reflection looking back up at her from the water below, Botan was strangely not at all surprised when that was not the case.
"Can you hear me?"
Hiei's face was clear in the water ahead of her, but his voice sounded strange. It almost sounded a little as though she was the one underwater, listening to him. It was that odd, muffled way voices sounded when she had her head underwater. Maybe she was underwater. The sky and the fields looked identical, maybe she was not looking down into the fields, but rather she was underwater in the fields, looking up at the sky.
"Can you hear me?" he asked again.
"I can hear you," she quietly replied.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I just woke up," she said. "I was just… Looking."
"You were doing more than looking."
Botan straightened her neck, drawing back a little from Hiei's face in the water.
"Why did you come here?" he asked.
"You took me here!" she replied.
He gave her a hard look before releasing a hint of a sigh.
"I see," he said. "That's not good."
Botan frowned and tilted her head to one side.
"You shouldn't have come here," he added.
"You took me here, Hiei!" Botan argued back.
"Well, you shouldn't listen to me."
Botan narrowed her eyes.
"Did you hear what I just said?" Hiei asked.
"You just told me to stop listening to you!" Botan argued. "Make up your mind, Hiei!"
"Listen to what I'm saying right now. But after that, don't listen to me."
Botan pouted.
"You're not making a lot of sense, Hiei," she complained.
"Stand up."
Botan did as he asked.
"Now move away from the edge."
Botan took a step back.
"All the way away. Leave this place entirely. Don't come back."
"But I like it here–"
"Go. And don't come back. No matter what."
Botan sighed and rolled her eyes, but summoned her oar and sat onto it, turning her back on the rice fields. She decided she might as well go back to Spirit World, back to her own bed, and sleep somewhere comfortable. She aimed herself towards the nearest portal – which, being as close to Genkai's temple as she was, was not far – and flew to it, pausing just before she passed through it to look back. From the portal, the rice fields were invisible, shielded from her view by the forest she had flown over to reach the portal. The full moon was still visible, hanging in the sky just above the treeline, in a point in the sky that would be around the middle of the rice fields.
Silhouetted against the moon was a bird, hovering in place. It might have been that crow from earlier, the one that had attacked Hiei in the tree.
Botan watched the silhouette, bobbing in place with the rhythmic beating of its wings. It was just a bird, far away, but she felt that, if she tried to go back, the bird would attack her too, just as it had attacked Hiei earlier.
Or had that bird attack been a hallucination?
Botan turned her head and passed through the portal, returning to Spirit World. It was dark in Spirit World, but the sky was not that oppressive black it had been the past few nights. The air felt a little freer too, and, even passing Ayame's window, and seeing her still up and still active, watching out her window as Botan flew by, lacked the feeling of guilt and failure that it had before. Botan gladly took herself to her room, pausing by her open window, her eyes slowly drifting upwards. As it was not quite so dark outside that night, she had a better view of the crossed swords mounted on the temple wall. They were in fact made of black metal, and, viewed from outside, they were much, much larger than they had looked from inside her room looking out. So large, in fact, that the point of one sword was only inches away from the top of Botan's windowframe – which made it all the more unusual that she had never noticed them before – and the other sword was likewise close to the top of another window further down the row.
It was directly above Ayame's window.
Botan decided she would ask Ayame about them in the morning, and took herself inside, closing her window, closing her curtains, and settling down to sleep.
The next morning, Botan met Ayame when she was collecting her task list for the day. She flagged down the older ferry girl and nodded her head to indicate they should move away from the group. Ayame complied, and the moved to the side of the room.
"Ayame, what is the meaning of the swords on the temple wall outside our rooms?" Botan asked her, deciding just to come straight to the point.
"I think it has something to do with Hiei."
Botan's face dropped.
"Wh-what?" she muttered.
"What is it he says?" Ayame asked, unfazed by Botan's confusion. ""Live by the sword, die by the sword", right?"
"I don't think that's something Hiei says," Botan said quietly. "Also why would King Enma mount a giant homage to a demon on his temple wall?"
"Two crossed swords have a specific meaning," Ayame continued. "One is to protect the bearer, the other is to kill the bearer."
"I don't understand."
"It's "live by the sword, die by the sword"."
"Ayame, that doesn't make any sense."
"Think about it."
Botan opened her mouth to ask more questions, but Ayame walked away, leaving her reeling in confusion. She wished she had not bothered asking, as not only was she even less knowledgeable about why the swords had appeared on the wall, but she was starting to wonder if Ayame was losing her mind.
She headed out for the day, but passed it in a daze, all the while wondering if she had hallucinated her conversation with Ayame, as that seemed to be the only logical explanation for it. The only thing that brought her out of her reverie was when, near the end of her shift, she heard Hiei reach out to her telepathically, calling her to meet him at Kurama's house so that they could spend the evening together in the living world. Like a date, she told herself, her mood brightening for the remainder of her day.
Arriving in the living world at the end of her shift, Botan quickly found Hiei sitting on the doorstep of Kurama's house, looking strangely small and lonely: or maybe that was just how she perceived him, finding him there as he was. As she landed, he got to his feet, removing his cloak and tossing it to one side. Botan watched it hit the ground with a frown, confused as to why he would remove it to greet her. As he moved closer to her she shifted her attention back to him, blinking repeatedly in surprise when he walked up to her until their toes were touching, bringing himself so close to her, there was barely a sliver of air between them.
"Now remember Hiei, keep your dick in your pants this time."
Botan and Hiei both turned their heads to Yusuke, who had appeared behind and to one side of Hiei.
"Focus," Yusuke added.
A moment later he yelped and stumbled away from Hiei, leaving Shizuru standing behind him, her fist still poised in the air where she had punched him over the back of the head. He looked up at her and grinned.
"I like that too, you know," he said.
"You won't like it when I shove my fist down your throat and rip that smart-ass tongue out of your head," she warned him.
Yusuke straightened up.
"That wasn't sexy," he complained.
"Urameshi!" Kuwabara cried.
Botan and Hiei turned back to each other, and Botan wanted to ask him why there were so many people at Kurama's house – they had never had a group gathering there before, primarily because Kurama liked to keep anything to do with his demon life well away from his human mother – but as their eyes met, and she was reminded just how close Hiei was, Botan forgot all about the others.
"Can you see this?" he asked her.
He held up his hands by either side of his face, palms facing away from Botan.
"Your hands?" she asked.
"Yes," he confirmed. "Do you see them?"
"Yes…" she said slowly. "Is this some sort of test."
"Take my hands," Hiei immediately replied. "Both of them. Now."
"Okay."
Botan slipped her hands into his and he closed his fingers around her hands, at which point she realised something felt amiss: the bandages over his hands were torn and threadbare, and the skin on the palms of his hands and fingers was rough and cracked.
"You're hurt," she concluded.
"Never mind about that!" he said, almost shouting in her face. "Just listen to me."
"I'm listening," she replied.
"Listen carefully, and do exactly as I say, understand?" he said.
"I understand."
"You must do this."
"Anything."
"This is a simple thing. Just wake up."
Next Chapter: Botan wakes up and it seems like she was under the control of the Lure again. When she returns to Spirit World, it also seems that Koenma has lost a little of his faith in her as he deems her unsuitable to be left alone, and he tells her she must – much to her chagrin – be chaperoned by Ayame anywhere she goes until the Lure is caught. Chapter 14: Just Wake Up
