! SPOILER WARNING !
This short is set immediately after the events of Lucky Child chapter 114.
! SPOILER WARNING !
Day 02: "Elementary"
In the hush of the quiet waiting room, Yusuke's voice rang like a tolling bell: "Do you know what Sha-rokku Ho-o-mu-zu is?"
Kurama, in his place in the chair at Yusuke's side, glanced at Yusuke without speaking. In the distance a nurse ruffled papers, murmuring softly to a doctor about a patient. The vending machine in the corner hummed. Elsewhere, another nurse placed a call on a payphone, informing a babysitter that he would be home late that evening. Aside from those unseen entities, Kurama and Yusuke were very much alone—alone and in the dark, metaphorically speaking. The fluorescent lights overhead cast blue shadows beneath Yusuke's dull eyes, placed an oily sheen on his slicked-back hair. A few strands had escaped their hold, however, falling against Yusuke's temple in a black fan. If Kei had been there, she would tease him about it.
But Kei was not there, now was she?
"Sha-rokku…" Kurama puzzled out Yusuke's garbled English for a moment, glad for a distraction. "Do you mean Sherlock Holmes?"
"Yeah." Yusuke nodded. "That."
"He's a character in a book. A British detective, as far as I know. Why do you ask?"
Yusuke did not speak. He merely stared at the floor, elbows resting on his knees, hands dangling limp between them. Disquiet turned Kurama's stomach, but he forced the feeling out of mind. They hadn't heard a word about Kei's wellbeing since she had vanished into the ICU, after which Kurama had phone her parents to give them the news of her sudden turn for the worse. In haste they had hung up, intending to close down the restaurant early and catch a cab to the hospital. The cab, Kurama reasoned, was a necessity. The hospital lay in the vicinity of the Kuwabara household, across town from both the Yukimura residence and Yusuke's apartment; it would take too long to travel there by train… and yet, they had reached the hospital with Kei in tow in record time thanks to Kuwabara and his intriguing new ability. And what an ability it was. Kurama wondered what had triggered the—
Now was not the time for that.
Shortly after calling Kei's parents, Kuwabara had rushed out of the waiting room, snapping that he needed to go for a jog to clear his head. Hiei soon followed, but Kurama suspected that Hiei kept watch from afar with the aid of his Jagan eye. Perhaps, Kurama cogitated, he could even view Kei directly, a feat Kurama envied with—
No. Seeing Kei splayed out across an operating table (if that was indeed the place she occupied) would turn even Kurama's iron stomach. Perhaps ignorance was bliss, after all.
"It's something Tex said," Yusuke said at last. "Right before she…" His voice dropped. "You know."
Brown eyes flickered toward the wide double doors across from them, their imposing bulk positioned on the other side of several rows of metal chairs. A sign above the doors revealed the identity of the facility they obscured: the intensive care unit, to which Kei had been so abruptly rushed upon their arrival in the lobby. One look had been all it took for the doctors to see her dire need for medical intervention, the ICU an instantaneous and obvious decision on their part.
Kurama understood why Yusuke could not keep his eyes off that door. Refraining from staring had been troublesome even for him.
Yusuke shook himself, as if waking from a deep sleep. "Anyway," he said, feet shuffling in agitation. "Tex normally talks about random crap I've never heard of, but this time it felt…"
Once again, he fell silent. Kurama leaned forward, a hand resting lightly between Yusuke's shoulder blades.
"What is it, Yusuke?" he said.
Yusuke's face spasmed; he blurted: "What if it meant something?"
Kurama regarded Yusuke in silence. He remembered that comment, uttered by Kei midway through their chat with Koenma about the Makers. It hadn't seemed significant at the time. Just an offhand remark, really… and yet, Yusuke looked so despairing. His eyes roved across the waiting room, counting the floor tiles, the ceiling tiles, the windows and doors and chairs one by precious one. Searching for distraction in lines of grout and particle board, Kurama could only assume.
Kurama did not need to count the tiles or the windows to know their number. He knew exactly how many tiles and windows there would be. He'd counted them before, after all. In a fit of cosmic irony, this was the same hospital where his mother had received treatment. Kurama knew what it meant to sit in this room and wait, powerless, for the end to come. And he knew how vital a distraction could be in those silent moments in a waiting room.
Still, he resisted counting the tiles. At least one of them needed to keep his head.
"What if it—" Yusuke's voice cracked; he cleared his throat and carried on. "What if it was a hint or something? Like, about what was gonna happen next? Because I'm going over everything she said before she…"
Yusuke hesitated, once more unable to articulate that Kei had collapsed, had seized, had nearly died in his and Kurama's arms before Kuwabara whisked her away to this hospital through an unexpected portal in time and space. Yusuke just shook his head, eyes squeezing shut, fingers tangling in his pomade-slicked hair.
"But it all just seems random," he said to the floor, hands straining at his scalp. "Like she didn't see this coming at all. Because she didn't do a damn thing to warn us, right?"
Once more, Kurama said nothing. He only watched as Yusuke raised his head, eyes locking once again on the doors to the ICU.
"But that can't be true," Yusuke muttered, more to himself than to Kurama. "She knows what's going to happen before it happens." Dark eyes slipped sideways, meeting Kurama's in a desperate quest for confirmation. "She knows."
And still, Kurama did not speak. He closed his eyes and wondered, instead, when the penny would drop. When Yusuke would come to the same conclusion Kurama had already formulated in moments of private contemplation. When Yusuke's mind—smart, but untrained—finally put the pieces together. Because, like Yusuke's, Kurama's mind had not sat idle as they languished in the waiting room. He had not sat idly by counting tiles on this particular trip to the ICU. He had also considered every last thing Kei had done or said prior to her collapse—the collapse that had left her white-faced and unseeing, hands shaking before her frail human body followed suit, before she'd been wheeled away like the shards of broken china, waxen and shattered and sallow—
Kurama opened his eyes, because in the darkness behind them, all he could see was her.
Kurama began to count the familiar ceiling tiles.
"She's supposed to know everything. Everything." Yusuke spoke with conviction even as his eyes reflected doubt immeasurable. "She's supposed to know it all. But this…" He faltered, head shaking, eyes aflame. "It's like she—!"
And then Kurama saw it—that light that brightened the depths of Yusuke's eyes, brown turning to amber in understanding. So he'd gotten it at last, then.
"She didn't know this was coming, did she?" said Yusuke in a low voice. "Something's changed."
Ah, yes. There it was.
Kurama put his hand on Yusuke's shoulder. Patted twice. Counted the ceiling tiles.
"Yes, Yusuke," he murmured. "Something indeed has changed." Full lips twisted, but Kurama felt no humor when he said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."
On the air between them, a lifetime of silence tread.
Yusuke and Kurama's eyes alike traced the waiting room.
318 ceiling tiles, Kurama concluded.
No more words were spoken, and they settled back in to wait.
I didn't expect to write about what happened to the boys after NQK collapsed at the end of chapter 114 (not so soon, anyway) but the prompt immediately called to mind NQK's mention of Sherlock Holmes in 114. Funny, that coincidence. I hope you liked this inside look at what's going on in her absence, not to mention the Kurama POV.
A few people caught that Kuwabara had apparently awoken his dimension sword at the end of 114, and this is basically confirmation of that theory. Great eyes, y'all!
Big thanks to everyone who came out to show chapter 01 some love! You have my heart: xenocanaan, cezarina, ladyofchaos, cestlavie, Kaiya Azure, Convoluted Compassion and various guests.