Last Chapter: After an odd dinner party, that seemed to reset halfway through when it didn't go the way Botan wanted it to, Botan started to watch a scary movie with a FAMILIAR title.
Chapter 18: Can't Let Go
Botan gripped her fingers into Shizuru's shirt, the satin creaking beneath her grip. Shizuru, Keiko and Yukina seemed unaffected by what was on the television – they almost seemed bored by it, disinterested entirely – but Botan could feel herself sweating, the dampness on her forehead making her all the more aware of the bitterly cold air around her.
"Can you hear me now, woman?"
Botan tried to gulp, but she found herself incapable even of that simple action. Hiei – or at least someone who bore striking resemblance to Hiei – was on the television, dressed in a long overcoat, his hands in his pockets, his eyes staring out of the screen and directly into Botan's eyes. Directly into her soul.
"You're in deep this time. Very, very deep. I can get you out, I can help you, but you have to be willing. You have to want it. You have to rise up. You have to meet me halfway."
There was a long pause, a long silence. Botan noticed then that someone had switched out the lights in the room. She had not noticed anyone move towards the light-switch, but the room was dark. The curtain was open over the window, and although it was too dark to let in any light, from the corner of her eye, Botan could see the sky outside was still scattered with stars. So many, many stars.
"Answer me, woman."
Botan looked up at Shizuru to see if she thought it was odd that the movie so far only had one character, and all he seemed to be doing was talking directly to the camera: but when she looked at where she expected Shizuru to be, she only saw pillows and bedsheets, bunched up and in her arms. She frowned, slowly opening her arms and letting the linen fall to the bed before shuffling onto her knees. She moved onto all fours to peer over the edge of the bed, finding the cans of soda and packets of snacks neatly organised, but no trace of Keiko or Yukina there.
When she heard the clinking sound of something knocking on glass, she looked up, across the room at the television, where she found the main character from the movie knocking on the other side of the screen.
"Untie your pink panties and focus your attention over here, idiot."
Botan felt something drop in her chest, that feeling she got when she had been caught doing something she knew she ought not to be doing.
"I'm tired. I'm pissed off. I've been humiliated. I have no patience left."
"Did-did you ever have any patience?" Botan asked warily. "Ever? For… Anything?"
The character smiled, a lop-sided smirk that misaligned his eyebrows.
"Well now that I do have your attention, maybe we can strike a deal," he said.
"Shizuru promised me this wasn't going to be a scary movie," Botan complained.
"Forget about that. Just listen to me. I will do something for you if you will do something for me. Understand?"
Botan crawled awkwardly off of the bed and across the bedroom floor, stopping a few feet short of the television. There she sat back onto her heels, looking up at the television screen, which appeared almost unbearably bright as the room seemed to be getting darker with every passing second. The television, however, remained bright, the image of the man's face – that looked remarkably like Hiei's face – remained perfectly clear.
"I will look up your skirt as often as you like, in any situation of your choosing," he said. "But you must first swim."
"Swim?" Botan repeated.
"You've fallen under," he replied. "I can't reach you down there. It's a wonder you can even hear me."
"I can hear you," Botan said, nodding her head. "Can-can you hear me?"
"Yes, I hear you," the face on the television confirmed. "I hear it all. All of it. Even when you think I don't, I can hear you. I can see you, too. You probably don't think that I can. I'm sure this ugly mongrel bitch tells you otherwise. And I can see that you've fallen under. You need to swim back up."
"S-swim back up? But I'm not – I'm not underwater."
"Yes you are."
"No I'm not–"
The television blinked into darkness and Botan suddenly became aware that she was drifting in the air. She looked about herself, but all she could see, in every direction, was a night sky full of stars. She moved her arms and legs experimentally, and found that it almost felt as though she was underwater, but she felt more like she was drifting, hovering, high in the sky. She turned herself around in the same way she would if she was floating in water, before performing a somersault, the sensation again feeling more like she was underwater than in the air.
"I don't know which way I'm supposed to go!" she called out.
She expected the television – or at least the character from the movie – to appear before her again with an answer. She kept moving, around to the side, around over herself, looking about the entire time: but she neither saw nor heard the character from the movie again. Eventually, when she saw no way out of where she was, she started to move downwards. Or at least, she thought she was moving downwards. If she stopped, she could feel herself slowly, slowly sinking, and so she assumed the direction she was naturally moving in was down. She had to swim to move, but it still felt as though she was moving through the air, falling through the sky, only at a much, much slower pace than gravity would normally dictate.
Botan continued moving, the activity feeling effortless, but her mind growing weary as she went, as though she had been awake too long. The more she thought about it, the more tired she became, and the more she longed to just go to bed – her bed, her own bed in Spirit World – and sleep.
And then, as though her greatest wish had somehow manifested into reality, Botan drifted down into her bed.
She cuddled into her bedsheets, and fell asleep almost instantly.
Botan awoke with a jerk, her entire body flinching as though she had just collided with the surface of her bed. She looked about herself, finding that she was in her bedroom, and the only unusual thing was that she was still fully clothed, and lying on top of her bedsheets rather than under them. She pushed herself up and bent her knees up under herself before sitting back onto her heels and looking about the room.
Everything looked the same. Everything felt the same.
She moved over to the edge of the bed and placed her feet on the ground, noticing then that her feet were bare. The wispy shag on the rug that ran alongside her bed felt ticklish between her toes. She curled her toes around it, seeing little tufts poke out between each toe. It was a soothing sensation, a feeling of being home.
Although, she was not entirely sure how she had gotten home: she was sure she had just been at the Kuwabaras' house, at a dinner party.
Botan shook her head, shaking off the thought, and set about getting ready for another day of work, shortly heading out to the living world to commence collecting souls. The first soul she was due to collect was in a multi-storey shopping mall. Apparently it was an older man that worked nightshift as a security guard there, who had fallen asleep on the job and passed away at his desk. Botan knew the place well: although the mall was not in Sarayashiki, it was in a nearby, larger, city, and it was somewhere she occasionally visited with her girlfriends for a day out. Knowing it as well as she did, she flew in through the multi-storey carpark, into the adjoining mall proper, and into a corridor that led to the security office. Inside the sizeable office, she found her target slumped at his desk, in front of multiple television screens, all showing various images around the mall.
One of the screens flickered as Botan started across the room. Then another. And Another. By the time she was halfway across the room, all the screens had dissolved into a bluish grey static. Then, just as they had flickered to static one at a time, the screens all began to flicker to something else. Every screen, gradually, changed to show exactly the same thing. By the time Botan reached the desk, she was looking at three rows of seven screens, all showing the same television programme. Or film. Or footage.
It was the image of a man, standing, the camera looking up at him from the ground. Or lower. Below his feet. Below the ground.
Beneath the water.
He knelt down, his face coming closer to the screen, his features distorted by the ripples surface of the water. His hair was flattened down at the sides of his head, he looked wet, as though he had just come out of the water, and was looking back down into it. The camera filming him was beneath the water, looking up and out at him.
Botan was beneath the water, looking up and out at him.
He moved his mouth, but his voice was distorted, the muffled noise of hearing someone speak from underwater. Botan made to take a step closer to the screens, but found that her legs were already hard up against the desk and she could not move them. His face came closer to the surface of the water, closer to the screen, and his features became a little clearer.
"H-Hiei?"
Botan's voice was so soft a whisper, it sounded ghostly to even her own ears. The man on the screen – who looked like Hiei and also that actor from those movies Shizuru kept making her watch – said something, the sound louder, his mouth movements suggesting he was shouting, but his words were unfortunately no clearer, still reaching her ears as that muffled drone of listening to something from underwater.
"I-I can't hear you," she said.
From the corner of her eye, she became aware that the man's spirit had left his body, and was hovering in the air above, and to one side, of her.
"Who are you talking to?"
The voice had come from the direction of the spirit, but the voice that had spoken was not that of an old man. It was the voice of a young girl. It was the voice of the Lure.
"I can't hear you, Hiei!" Botan shouted at the screens, desperately looking between every one of them, hoping that one of them might be real somehow.
"It's just a film," the Lure's voice said to her, again seeming to come from the spirit hovering over her. "No-one on that screen can hear you."
Hiei – of the actor who looked just like Hiei – shouted again, speaking slower and more carefully. Although Botan's ears still could not make out his words, his face was close enough to the surface of the water that she could read his lips: it seemed like he was asking her to take his hand. She shook her head.
"I-I can't!" she shouted back at him. "You're on the other side! I can't reach you!"
She tried to lift an arm, to reach a hand out towards the screens to demonstrate the distance between them: but suddenly her arms felt as though they were pinned at her sides, contained in place, just like her legs, pressed against the desk.
"You're hallucinating, Botan."
Botan resisted the urge to look at the spirit hovering at her side, even though its last remark did tempt her to look. Although she was stuck, although she could not hear Hiei, she could see him, in three rows of seven screens, three rows of seven copies of his face, and his eyes, looking directly at her, regardless of which screen they were coming from, looking into her eyes so intently.
There was a sudden eruption of noise, like a large boulder striking water, and water shot out from every screen, splashing over the console and desk, barely missing Botan. She blinked a few times in alarm before focusing on the centre screen, the screen in the very middle of the middle row of screens, where she saw a hand reaching out towards her. Everything around her fell into silence as she focused her eyes onto the fingers stretched out towards her face. The bandaging around Hiei's hand was scorched and torn, stray lengths of bandaging floating around his hand, which itself looked wounded, the skin dark, dry and cracked, and small, hairline cuts randomly over his fingers, hand and arm. Small clouds of blood were floating up from the cuts. A bubble rolled around the tip of his middle finger before shooting up the length of his arm and into the screen beyond, where it broke on the surface of the water.
She was underwater, and Hiei was at the surface, reaching a hand down to her.
"If you can see my hand, take it!"
His voice sounded as though he was still talking to her from outside of a body of water she was apparently immersed in, but she could make out his words this time.
"Take it now!"
With a little effort, she managed to lift an arm, reaching her hand out to his. She touched her palm to his, but her fingers would not close to secure her hold: however Hiei did not hesitate to close his hand around hers, his grip firm, his skin warm despite being under cold, cold water. He started to pull, but she was caught fast by her legs. She strained to wrap her fingers around Hiei's hand, a sharp jolt passing down her hand and into her wrist as she did so.
"You're hurt," she said.
"If you can feel that, you can swim to the surface!" Hiei answered her.
His voice sounded raw, tired, irritated, desperate. It was not a tone she often heard him use. Something really bad must have happened. She clenched her hand around his and placed her free hand onto the desk to steady herself. As she tried to lean forward, her hand at first slipped under her: the desk was still drenched with water. She moved her hand to a small lever, taking hold of it and hoisting herself up, using her arms to pull her weight until she was able to get one knee up onto the desk. Her knee skidded a little, unstable on the slippery surface, but Hiei's grip on her hand was unwavering, and he had pulled her arm higher, forcing her foot that was still on the ground onto her toes.
"Faster, woman!"
Botan made a noise of complaint that turned into a squeak of pain as he pulled on her hand, her shoulder straining. Her back foot lifted off the floor and she quickly bent her knee, bringing it onto the desk beside her other knee. From there, she shakily stood up, yelping in alarm as her own hand disappeared through the middle television screen.
It was at that moment, as her hand burst through the surface of the water, that Botan realised she was the one underwater.
Her hair was loose, floating around her, the sleeves of her kimono were like wings as she moved her arms through the water. She opened her mouth, but doing so drew in water, into her lungs, pushing out any air. She started to choke and panic, and Hiei jerked her arm again, as though reminding her which direction she needed to move. The television screen was too small, she would never fit through it, but she was moving towards it regardless, her arm through the screen up past her elbow already. She tried to speak, tried to tell Hiei that she would get stuck, but she could not even breathe, let alone talk, and so she moved closer, helplessly, hopelessly, to the screen.
There was another, mighty roar of water and Botan's face broke the surface.
She tried to breathe in, but immediately began choking. Hiei was still holding her hand, still pulling her upwards. Her entire body lifted out of the water and for a brief moment, she teetered on her feet, upright, on the edge of a row in a rice field, before losing her balance and falling forwards. The force of her landing knocked the water from her lungs, which she coughed up over Hiei's face.
He closed his eyes, wiping a hand down his face before opening his eyes again, fixing them onto hers.
"Sorry," she managed to choke out as she continued to cough a little.
"Idiot!" he snapped back at her. "Do you have any idea how close you came to hitting the bottom?"
"Wh-huh-what?" Botan coughed.
"You've been sinking the entire time," he snarled back. "Falling deeper, and deeper. It's taken me far too long to reach you!"
"I did-didn't even kn-know I was uh-under water."
"You're not under water. But you are drowning. And you will lose a lot more than your breath if you don't stop this!"
Botan finally managed to steady her breathing a little, crossing her eyes to focus on Hiei. She was lying on top of him, his body half submerged in the water of the rice field, the night sky reflected all around him. He looked tired, exceptionally angry – even by his own worst standards – and his face was covered in small cuts.
"What happened to you?" she asked.
"Nothing," he replied, his tone dripping with sarcasm, as though she had just asked a ridiculously obvious question.
"You're hurt," she pointed out.
"Not as hurt as you're going to be if you don't stop this!"
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're doing everything! All of it!"
"I didn't give you those cuts on your face… Did I?"
"Physical wounds are meaningless, and nothing compared to the mental torture I've had to endure!"
Botan put one hand onto Hiei's chest and pushed herself up a little, to better focus on his face, intent on asking him what he was talking about: but when his face changed, she hesitated. His eyes widened and his pupils shrank. His eyes darted between her hand on his chest and her eyes.
"What is this now?" he asked, pointedly looking at her hand as he said "this".
"I was just steadying myself," she replied.
"You need to get your hormones in check, woman!" he snapped.
"Hormones?" Botan echoed. "But I'm not… Unless… Wh-what are you implying?"
"I'm not implying anything! You're the one who's fantasising about me in tight pants because you want to get a better look at…"
Botan frowned and tilted her head, unsure what Hiei was implying.
"You want to try to figure out the size of my…" he tried, his voice trailing off again.
In the distance, Botan could have sworn she heard Yusuke calling out the word "dick". Hiei growled, baring his teeth like an animal, the gesture somehow only making the weariness in his eyes more evident.
"Alright, listen to me, and don't think about anything else other than what I'm saying to you, understand?" he said.
"I didn't want you to wear tight pants so that I could look at – well – you know," Botan said quietly. "I just wanted to know what your legs look like. You always cover them up."
"I could say the same thing to you."
Botan frowned as something in Hiei's expression notably shifted. His eyes, which were still looking directly into hers, almost seemed to change shape, and she actually saw his pupils dilate.
"What?" she muttered.
"You don't – you don't wear form-fitting clothing on the lower half of your body either," he mumbled back, as though trying to make his voice both quiet and difficult to understand.
"I have those… Striking blue leggings," Botan quietly pointed out.
"You never wear those around me."
"I did one time."
"With a long damn coat that came to your knees. What sort of cruel trick is that?"
"Well, I always wear them with something long. They're quite… Sheer… Keiko said she could see my underwear through them, she said I should wear long tops and coats over them."
"Why the hell are you letting that woman tell you how to dress?"
"Keiko is very fashion conscious."
"She dresses like a librarian in a nunnery."
"What does a – how do you even know what that is?"
"Why does that even put you off? I thought you liked it when others can see your underwear."
"I never told you that."
"You showed me it often enough!"
"Why are you getting angry about it?"
"Because you showed me it, but you never showed me it!"
"What?"
"You want me to see and I want to see it, and you're showing it to me, but you've never shown it to me! I've been hanging here all day in the cold and I still haven't seen you flashing your ass in my face!"
"Hiei!"
Botan's head snapped up, and she looked about herself in confusion: Yusuke sounded so close.
"Put your fucking dick away and finish this!"
Hiei growled, the sound so close to Botan's ear, the rumbling vibration of his efforts passing into her hand, still pressed against his chest.
"Look at me, woman!"
Botan looked into his eyes, finding his pupils had shrunk, his gaze once more focused and determined.
"You have to wake up!" he said.
"Wake up?" she repeated. "But I'm not asleep! I was underwater and-ah!"
Botan yelped as Hiei vanished beneath her with a pop, her body dropping into the flooded rice field with a small splash.
"H-Hiei?" she said, reaching a hand out to the surface of the water around her.
She touched one finger into the water, rippling the reflection of the sky overhead.
Or was she looking directly at the sky already?
Was she lying on the water looking at a reflection of the sky, or was she lying on the surface of the water looking up directly at the sky?
Or down at the sky?
Botan yelped again as any sense of solidity beneath her passed and she began to fall. This time it was not through water, it was through the air, through the sky, falling down and falling fast. As she fell, she heard voices, but they sounded a little as though she was wearing them from under water.
"Where the hell are you going?" she heard Yusuke shout.
"You shouldn't be going anywhere!" she heard Yukina say, with surprising determination.
"It's not working!" Kuwabara said, sounding frantic.
She could hear air rushing by her ears, she was still falling, moving faster than ever.
"Please stop!"
Botan frowned, her head twitching. She had never heard Ayame sound so distraught in all the time she had known her.
"You don't have to do this! Let me do it! Give me one more chance, please!"
Botan tried to say her name, tried to ask her what was wrong: but she could not make her voice project or her mouth move to form the words she wanted to say.
"Get that," she heard Koenma say. "And that."
"It's so small, Sir," an ogre answered him.
"I don't care, get it!" Koenma snapped back.
Botan thought her descent was slowing and finally it stopped. She had landed on something soft, but she was still surrounded by darkness. Everything went quiet, and it stayed that way for a long time before she started to hear the sound of crockery being moved around clumsily, the sound arriving at her ears so suddenly, it was almost painful to listen to. She moaned and writhed around and blinked her eyes several times before finally finding herself looking at something definable.
"Botan?"
It was Ayame.
"Oh, Botan!"
Ayame collapsed to her knees at Botan's bedside.
"I didn't think you would ever wake up!" she gushed.
Botan slowly looked around the room. She was back in her bedroom, but the room felt unusually warm, there was a buzzing sound resonating around the room, a sound she recognised from somewhere, somewhere bad.
"I'm making tea," Ayame said, pointing over her shoulder.
Botan looked in the direction her fellow ferry girl had indicated and found herself looking at Ayame's pretty floral teapot, two bowls for tea and an urn of hot water.
And a zip-lock bag of crushed leaves, flowers and berries.
"I… What happened?" Botan asked.
"You were taken by the Lure, Botan," Ayame replied. "It was holding you… It was holding you in a…"
Ayame covered her mouth with one hand and she appeared to have tears in her eyes.
"Ayame?"
Botan made to sit up, but her arms would not support her weight. She gasped in momentary panic, watching as Ayame, with pale, clammy, shaking hands, slid up one sleeve of her kimono to expose her arm.
Botan stared for a long time at the round open wound on her arm. Seeing it, she could then feel it. On the arm she was looking at, on her other arm, on each of her legs. It was a hole, an indentation, in her arm, deep, dark red in colour. The skin around it was swollen and rosy pink, stretched tight into a raised ring all around the wound. The veins in her arm were pronounced and dark, and visible like bolts of lightning, emanating from her wound.
"It put its…" Ayame began. "It injected the same spots as last time. And the time before. I wanted to heal the wounds for you, but–"
Ayame stopped abruptly, turning her head sharply to the door. Botan followed her eyes, finding that her bedroom door was wide open, and, as she watched the open doorway, one of the large, foreboding guards from the Spirit World prison stepped into sight, his body so large, the top of his forehead was hidden behind the doorframe, his shoulders also so wide they were partially hidden behind the doorframe.
"Visiting hours are nine to five, Miss," he said in what almost sounded like a threatening tone.
"I'm making tea," Ayame answered him.
She was trying to sound brave but she was quivering all over like the last leaf clinging to a tree branch on a blustery autumn day.
"You have five minutes," he told her.
"I won't leave before then," she said, her voice starting to quiver. "And I will be back tomorrow."
She stood up and walked a little stiffly back, picking up her teapot, and clanking it awkwardly against a bowl, where it rattled in her shaking hands, as warm, golden brown tea poured from the spout.
"Visiting hours?" Botan asked, looking at the guard, still standing in her doorway.
He moved his eyes to her, a look of disgust appearing on his face.
"Why are you standing there?" she asked. "This is – this is my bedroom. This part of the temple is for ferry girls only. You're not allowed up here."
"Yes, that's right!" Ayame said, sounding almost as though she had started crying. "You shouldn't be here! You're not allowed to be here!"
"Miss, I said the same thing to Lord Koenma," the guard said, moving his eyes back to Ayame. "But he insisted we detain her here. I said we should have thrown her into a cell with all the other petty criminals, but Lord Koenma insisted that she should be detained here instead."
Botan stared at him for a moment, but his eyes remained on Ayame. She turned her attention to her colleague, who rapidly shook her head as their eyes met.
"You're not being detained, Botan," she said. "And you're not a "petty criminal"!"
"She's addicted to Lure venom," the guard said to Ayame. "That's something not even demons are dumb enough to get involved in. She's reckless and dangerous. She assaulted–"
"She did nothing wrong!" Ayame argued. "Now please, stop wasting the time I have left with her with your disgusting lies!"
Ayame began pouring tea into the second bowl and the guard sighed before stepping to one side, disappearing from Botan's line of sight.
"Ayame?" Botan asked. "What's happening?"
"It's nothing, Botan," Ayame lied. "Don't worry about it. I made us some lovely tea. Here."
Ayame brought over a bowl and placed it on Botan's nightstand. She then picked up the second bowl and lifted it to her lips, taking a sip.
"It tastes bad," she said, almost sobbing. "I got it wrong!"
Botan shook her head.
"Your tea is always lovely, Ayame," she said. "Can you pass me mine please?"
Ayame looked hesitant, but eventually put down her own bowl and brought over Botan's lifting it to her lips to help her drink it. The warmth was welcome, and, despite having felt as though she had been underwater a lot lately, Botan felt suddenly dehydrated, and she drank eagerly. Ayame withdrew the bowl after a few gulps.
"More," Botan said to her.
"Take your time," Ayame replied softly. "You're still sick. You might bring it back up. You need to keep it down."
Ayame looked down into the bowl.
"Does it taste okay?" she asked.
Botan could not taste anything. She just knew that she was thirsty and Ayame was holding a bowl of liquid rehydration.
"It tastes incredible," Botan replied, trying to keep the irritation and desperation from her tone. "More, please."
"It still tastes bitter," Ayame muttered miserably as she lifted the bowl to Botan's lips again.
Botan began gulping down the tea, finding the strength to lift her hand to Ayame's, forcing her to tilt the bowl further, allowing her to finish the drink.
"I tried my best," Ayame said.
"It's perfect," Botan insisted.
"No it's not," Ayame said miserably, before taking a sip of her own bowl. "I can't even get this right…"
"If you don't want that, give it to me," Botan said.
Ayame frowned but Botan nodded encouragingly. Ayame slowly moved the bowl towards her, and again Botan found the strength to lift her arm and guide the bowl to her mouth, quickly finishing Ayame's drink. She was a little unsure what was happening or how she had ended up in her bedroom, but in that moment, all she cared about was how thirsty she was and just how good Ayame's tea tasted.
Next Chapter: Botan is back in reality, but she has been confined to her room, contained there under the same conditions prisoners of Spirit World are contained. Koenma tells her it's for her own good, to stop her going back to find the Lure again, but Botan is so weak from her encounter with the Lure, she couldn't possibly go after it. Ayame seems hopeless and hapless and Botan wonders what it wrong with her, especially when it's revealed that she has done something very, very bad. Chapter 19: You Have to Wake up
