viii.
Back when they'd first gone to Russia, Kai hadn't so much as looked at Eri. For over a year. He hadn't looked at her, hadn't touched her, had very rarely spoken to her – and though it should have seemed a blessing, Eri had returned over and over to why. Why had he so suddenly forgotten about her? Left her behind? Handed her over to Chrono and Russian strangers to care for as though she were a spent doll?
Though the very thought of him left Eri terrified like the feeling of black ice through her bones, Kai also happened to be the only life Eri had come to know. She hated everything about him. She hated how much it hurt when he touched her. But more than that, she hated the empty space that was left behind when his hands were gone. At least his disgust and the pain it inflicted had been some solid sense of routine. Of feeling.
It was the first thing she thought about in the morning. The last thing to cross her mind at night. Today? Would he come for her today? No. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the day after.
But when he didn't – when only the Russian strangers bounded in with words Eri didn't understand, or when Chrono was the only face to peer around her door – Eri had felt herself crumble in the most awful muddle of relief and shame and frustration. She'd spent days curled up in a foreign bed and nights staring at foreign toys she'd cared nothing for. Hating herself. Feeling empty. Betraying every urge in her body by wishing for Kai.
The first respite had come when Chrono had found her crying. He'd scooped her up like something precious and had held her in his lap. He'd rocked her to sleep, saying nothing, leaving without a word and allowing Eri to wake up all tucked and warm in her bed.
He'd been the one to tell her that Kai hadn't forgotten about her.
He'd been the one to tell her that Kai was only negotiating with the Russians.
And after the year had passed, the second respite came. One day, instead of Chrono, Kai was the one to bring her lunch. To watch her eat. Then he'd taken her hand and had led her to a new room in the Russian house Eri had never seen. A room with the sheen of polished silver, cold and metallic and glinting in clinical darkness. It had smelled of chemicals. There'd been needles of all sizes. Chrono was there; two or three other faces Eri didn't know too. And throughout the entire process, Eri had only flinched instinctively. She hadn't made a sound. She hadn't cried.
She had only watched Kai, and marveled over the slicing pain she felt all across her body. How terrible and real it was.
Afterwards, her legs having refused to work no matter how well Kai had put them back together, Kai had carried Eri back to her room. And she, face in his shoulder, had thanked him.
Eri still hated it: the ooze of her own blood over her skin and watching her body being torn apart. But there was always relief. Relief that it had happened and relief that it was over. Sometimes, on weeks like this one, it was necessary to do two sessions instead of one. The pain was double. But so was the lethargic stupor that followed, and Eri invariably found herself relishing her drugged out weakness. Knowing her life still followed the same order as always. Knowing she'd hate herself the next day for how easily she accepted it all.
Usually, she woke up in bed with coffee on the bedside. This time, she woke up on the couch cocooned in a duvet. There was a coffee pot and a small sugar bowl on the table. There was a ballet performance of Coppélia playing on the TV, still in its first Act.
Eri's head was not on the pillow, but on something much warmer. More alive with the hard tense of muscle. Goosebumps raised themselves down her neck like small soldiers to attention. Agonisingly slow and nauseatingly gentle, fingers combed themselves through her hair. Sitting up would be torture. But she wanted to drink her coffee. With three - maybe four - teaspoons of sugar. She wanted to loosen the bandages around her arms and to restart the Coppélia performance.
Feeling a stake scrape itself down her spine, Eri pushed herself to sit.
Stiff agony.
Raw throbs through her limbs.
The pain was always double after double sessions.
For some moments, everything seemed to dot itself before her. Eri sat there, tightly bundled in the duvet and feeling herself sway though she was certain she remained perfectly still.
Next to her, watching through vacant golds, Kai was quiet. Black jeans. Slipper-clad feet crossed upon the coffee table. Purple sleeplessness had hung itself beneath his eyes, and there was a laziness about the way his fingers traced themselves down the back of Eri's head, catching onto knots. He tended also to be tired after double sessions, leaving any remaining work to Chrono and devoting all his remaining energy to smothering Eri with ominous, possessive affections.
Eri blinked at him, the red-hued haze receding from her vision. She was too tired to be disgusted by his closeness, too tender in too many places to do anything but lean into the way he dragged his fingers along the shape of her arm.
His voice was scratchy through the mask. "How do you feel?"
"Fine."
"You didn't eat anything before yesterday's session."
"I was still nauseous."
Under the accusing perk of his eyebrow, Eri shrank into the folds of the blanket. "We've spoken about this before, Eri," Kai said pointedly, less concerned for Eri than for everything else. "Things don't go smoothly if you don't eat first. You only make it difficult for yourself."
She couldn't stop her bottom lip's feeble quiver. "I'm sorry. I just felt so sick."
A forgiving sigh. Kai asked about her bandages, and Eri wordlessly squirmed her arms out from the duvet for him to take. To loosen their white confinements. There was always a fleeting horror in seeing her skin so mauled. No. She didn't even have skin anymore. She only had bulging scars in shades of pink, red, purple like mutations. Eri had to look away while Kai rewrapped the bandages, overly aware of her wrists in his palm. He never seemed particularly bothered by the gross mottles of flesh and tissue – ironic, all things considered.
A throb ran itself outwards from Eri's heart. Mirio would think they were disgusting, these mounds of scar all down her limbs and back and stomach. He'd planted a kiss on the back of her hand – oh, it made Eri shiver just to think about it; but he wouldn't do that if he could only see how close his lips had been to such vulgar deformities.
Bandages more comfortably constricting, Eri returned her arms to the safety of the duvet. She'd almost forgotten about Coppélia on the TV, its music little more than background noise.
"Kai," she murmured, eyes now set upon the scene of fluttering pink skirts and stage sets. "Can I phone Anya-chan a little earlier today? There's something important I need to ask her."
"Seems you've had a lot of important questions lately," Kai said. Did he suspect something? "You'll have to ask Kurono. You won't be phoning Anya this week."
Eri's back jolted itself into stiff straightness. "What?"
"She's going to be unavailable over the next few days."
"But why?"
"Don't get upset, Eri. It's unnecessary."
"But – but–" The roof could have caved in, the world could have ended around them. Her little oasis in the middle of the week, the immense promise it carried – thwarted with the sound of Mirio's voice fading into unattainable black at the back of her mind. Not to mention Anya's conversation being stolen away on top of it.
Like being slammed through the ribs with stone, Eri's innards did a sour tumble about themselves. She didn't notice Kai's fingers trace their way into her nape, and she had no strength to keep herself upright when he pulled her back down. Her head onto his thigh. His hand stroking its way along her hair once again. He combed out more knots; the softness of the touch left Eri unpleasantly dizzy.
Behind lids miserably shut, Eri tried to hold the image of Mirio in her mind's eye. All the little, secret things she'd discovered and buried in her heart. The stories he had told her like strange and brilliant tales. The way he poured tea carefully, looking odd with a tiny teapot in his big hands. His big, safe hands which had held hers, tiny and destructive.
Not like the way Kai held her hands. And how he'd kissed her knuckles! Just once. And if only he could do it just once more. Eri's fist clenched and loosened around the material of the duvet, and she tried hard to swallow a disappointed whimper. To disappear from Kai's hands into the darkness of her duvet cocoon, where she could play out in her mind a hush-hush little exchange of words.
Coppélia played in airy sounds in the background. Kai's fingers stopped against Eri's temples.
"What question could have been so important that you can sulk like this?" he demanded softly. "Just ask it now if it's so urgent."
Eri hadn't thought he'd make her say it. She reeled through excuses and hypothetical scenarios, questions she already knew the answer to. "It's – I was just wondering about… something… It wasn't that important."
"What something?"
"The – about the –" About lots of things. But nothing she could say out loud. Eri cringed against a burn which spread itself through her stomach and groin like a stab; and while she squirmed in frozen agony, inspiration struck. Cruel timing. But beggars couldn't be choosers.
"The operation." In a desperate charmedness, Eri reached her hand out from the duvet and took Kai's. She guided his fingers down her side and into the plain of skin between her hipbones, over one particular scar. She didn't know medical terms. But she knew their aftereffects. And Kai, now leaning over her in a stiff curve, knew exactly what she was talking about. "Why did I have to have it?"
His hand flattened over her stomach, dead in its gloved texture. "Kurono explained it to you years ago already."
"I know, but I forgot."
No, she hadn't. She remembered perfectly well what Chrono had said even if it had been years ago. She'd been thirteen years old and had gotten her first period. Days later, she'd woken up with a horizontal line of stitches down below her belly button and no ovaries left in her body. No more blood in her underwear in any of the years afterwards.
"It would complicate things if you were to get pregnant," Kai said blandly, as though he were talking about too much salt on a piece of chicken. His fingers curled against the skin beneath Eri's shirt. "Besides which, you wouldn't want children anyway. You yourself were a very irritating little girl, remember?"
Eri sighed, simultaneously loathing and relishing the hot weight of Kai's palm along her stomach. It was soothing over the acidic anxiety which burned its way outwards.
"Fortunately," Kai continued, running his thumb over one of the other scars between Eri's hipbone and ribs, "you turned out to be an acceptable adult. So much more well-behaved."
Well-behaved. Eri had nothing to say to that. Well-behaved, as if she were no adult at all. She didn't exactly feel like one, so uselessly drained and feeding herself into Kai's touch. The coffee was going cold in the pot. Coppélia moved onto its next Act. Eri, seeing and hearing through a dazed blur, closed her eyes once more and imagined the feel of Mirio's hand on her skin. She imagined it was his lap against which her head rested – indeed, a sweet image to fall asleep to, no matter how sick and sore she may have felt.
Well-behaved. She'd always been so well-behaved.