There was a washing machine on the first floor, and Haruto dumped his entire load of clothing into it and started it on autopilot. Not thinking took him to the shower, also on the first floor. Each movement was careful and deliberate, taking up all of the attention he had, from turning on the water – he couldn't figure out how to turn on the heater, so the water was freezing cold and stayed that way, but that was all right – to the slippery sensation of soap to the second stream of liquid ice. He was shivering by the time he was clean and dry, and reached for his pants before remembering he'd stuffed them into the washing machine along with everything else.
"Dammit," he cursed under his breath. The belt was on top of the washing machine, along with Connect. It took him two tries to get the ring on his finger, but the portal opened readily enough and gave him access to his closet. He'd closed the portal and put the pants on before it occurred to him that he also needed a shirt, particularly since the washer cycle was significantly less than halfway through and there was no dryer. "Of course there isn't," he said, and scanned Connect again.
Error, said the belt.
Haruto buried his face in his hands and felt he should have seen the end of his mana coming. It wasn't like he'd had much in the way of reserves after the Sabbath. He mentally shied away from the fight itself, but the aftermath played out behind his eyes in stark unforgiving color. Koyomi, telling him to let her go. He'd taken her home, at her request – not here, not to the house where she'd grown up, not to the house she didn't remember, but to the antique shop where she'd had a new life. He'd taken her to where she'd been happy, surrounded by friends.
He hadn't just let her go – there was no way he could, not Koyomi, not his closest friend and the only other person who knew what the first Sabbath had been like. She was the only person who truly knew him at all, and he couldn't let her die. Koyomi had pitched Please across the room, though, when he'd tried to infuse her with mana again, her stubborn determination coming to the forefront at exactly the wrong time. Haruto had had to watch her slowly fade, telling him the entire time that it was for the best, each word more painful than the last until there were no more words.
Koyomi hadn't even left a body to bury; the construct that had housed her essence had dissipated into a shimmering cloud, as so many magical constructs did, fading to leave the essence of her soul in the Philosopher's Stone. Haruto had picked it up, and it had done something he'd never seen before – it had transmuted under his touch to a ring, without any further outside manipulation. It had whispered hope to him, in Koyomi's voice, and it was the only reason he hadn't broken down completely then and there.
Gremlin had, for once, not picked the absolute worst time to interfere; if he'd shown up to steal the Philosopher's Stone while Koyomi was still breathing, Haruto would have murdered him in cold blood, human face or no. As it was, Haruto had seen the welcome surprise of Nitoh – still acting odd, the way he had after disrupting the Sabbath, but unmistakably Nitoh – lurking outside the antique shop and deflecting Gremlin's assault.
"What did you do," Haruto muttered into his hands. "Nitoh, what did you do." He couldn't use Nitoh's nickname, not when he was already scraped raw.
"I told you, Nitoh isn't here," came Nitoh's voice, and Haruto flinched. His vision wavered and he stumbled sideways into the washing machine before the world righted itself, and he saw Chimera wearing Nitoh's face standing just outside the door. "He set me free," Chimera said. "And I let his soul go."
Haruto took a step toward the monster that had murdered his friend, the monster that he'd slept with barely an hour after Koyomi had died, not knowing exactly what he wanted to say but knowing that it couldn't just stand there looking at him as if everything were perfectly normal, and woke up staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. He blinked at it, and got the sun full in his eyes when he turned his head in an attempt to figure out where he was.
"Your shirt is dry," said Chimera from somewhere behind him. The Phantom wearing Nitoh's skin was fully dressed again, sprawled out over a chair and giving Haruto an extremely bored look when Haruto finally figured out which way was up and got his feet planted firmly on the ground. He hadn't bothered to replicate Nitoh's careful hairstyle, the one consistent piece of grooming Nitoh never let go regardless of where he'd been sleeping. The disheveled mess Chimera had just pushed away from his eyes only served to drive home that Nitoh was gone. "I said," Chimera repeated, "your shirt is dry."
"What?" Haruto couldn't quite parse the words at first, until Chimera extended a hand with something in it and shook it impatiently. Haruto took the shirt, stiff from drying over something that clearly hadn't been a clothesline and smelling of the outdoors. He looked down to see that he wasn't wearing a shirt, and remembered that he'd tried to pull a new one through a portal.
"Put it on," Chimera said impatiently, still staring at him.
Haruto did, feeling better with the warmth against his skin. Chimera held out his jacket, and Haruto put that on, too, only realizing how cold he had been when he was starting to warm up. His teeth chattered, belatedly, and he clenched his jaw to make it stop. "Why," he said, his voice breaking halfway through the syllable. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Why are you still here?"
"I like the jacket," Chimera said, stroking the garment in question and still staring at Haruto without blinking. "It was wet. I had to wait for it to dry."
"Yes, but." Haruto rubbed his eyes; they felt grainy and dry, and he was thirsty. How he could feel physical discomfort when his entire world had fallen apart, he didn't know. Koyomi, and Nitoh, and what he'd done with Chimera, and – he'd vanished without telling anyone where he was going. Haruto reached for his cell phone, finding it in his jacket pocket, and he'd ruined it by putting it through the wash. It wouldn't turn on. He put it carefully back in his pocket, because it was always possible that something could be salvaged, instead of pitching it at the nearest wall.
"This keeps making noise," Chimera said, holding up Nitoh's cell phone. As Haruto watched, the phone powered itself down. Chimera looked at it, shaking it slightly and frowning. "Oh."
"I have to go." Haruto stood, searching for Teleport. He couldn't handle Chimera staring at him from Nitoh's eyes, not right now. Chimera was a problem that was going to have to be handled, but Haruto didn't think he could do it. He also didn't think Chimera posed a threat to the general population, to be fair, but if it came down to it, Mayu could probably do something. Teleport slid onto his finger, and Haruto remembered something else before he opened a portal.
The hope ring was missing. It wasn't in any of his pockets, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd had it. He thought he'd had it when Gremlin had shown up, but he didn't know if he'd brought it with him when he'd dragged Chimera to the stone circle in search of whatever had happened to Nitoh. Haruto squeezed his eyes closed and tried to breathe. He wasn't going to panic. He could retrace his steps and find Hope. He hadn't lost Koyomi's soul, just misplaced it, which was no improvement.
"Are you looking for this?"
Haruto's eyes popped open. Chimera held out the hope ring, safe and intact, on one outstretched palm. Haruto snatched it away, feeling Koyomi's essence untouched within the ring. Chimera had done nothing to it, other than pick it up and keep it from getting lost. "Thank you," he whispered. The edges of Hope bit into his palm deep enough to hurt.
Chimera tilted his head to the side, hair falling in his eyes. He brushed it aside impatiently. "It's important to you," he said, voice inflected upwards at the end as if he weren't sure whether or not he wanted to ask a question.
"I don't know what you want," Haruto said suddenly.
Chimera regarded him, blinking slowly enough that Haruto thought he was closing his eyes before he focused his gaze directly into Haruto's. It felt invasive, as though Chimera were looking past Haruto's eyes and directly into his Underworld. "I need your help," Chimera said, the words coming hesitantly. No, not hesitant – Chimera was reluctant, not wanting to admit to insufficiency.
"My help," Haruto repeated.
"I'm." Chimera grimaced, the expression looking odd on Nitoh's face. "I'm trapped," he said, gesturing at his body. "Can't get out."
"Is that why you – " Haruto stopped himself from using the word murder to describe what Chimera had done. "Is that why you let Nitoh go?"
"I couldn't leave his Underworld while he was still there," Chimera said, in the tone of someone explaining something perfectly obvious to a not particularly bright student. "But now." He wrinkled his nose and gestured again. "This."
It wasn't possible. Phantoms didn't get stuck in their human progenitors; they broke free and the person died, or the person forced them into the subconscious and gained the right to learn how to use magic. Haruto shook his head slowly. "That's not how it works," he said helplessly.
"Do you want to see?" Chimera went limp, body draping almost obscenely now over the chair in which he'd been sitting. He wasn't breathing, and the color drained out of his face.
"Chimera?" Haruto was across the room before he could blink. He'd almost used Nitoh's name, seeing his body abruptly appear to die.
Do you hear me? came Chimera's voice, faintly. He didn't sound like Nitoh, but like the Phantom Nitoh had occasionally called forth into the real world to help in a fight. Haruto, kneeling at Nitoh's side, closed his eyes and listened.
"I hear you," he said.
Do you see me?
Haruto opened his eyes again, feeling foolish, and looked. There was a shimmer, in the corner, that took on the shape of the Phantom Chimera as he stared. It was still faint, still translucent, but recognizable. Chimera yawned, displaying pointed teeth, and crouched down until it was face to face with him.
Do you see? Chimera said again, and Haruto could see the tangle around its feet linking it to Nitoh's body. Chimera flexed and the threads tightened, weaving themselves further around the Phantom.
"What is it?" Haruto had never seen anything like it; twice in two days, now, he'd come across something new embedded in the death of a friend.
Chimera melted back into Nitoh, color returning to his face as he took a shuddering breath. "Don't know," he said. "Help me get rid of it."
"I don't even know what it is," Haruto muttered. Chimera did not seem to be impressed, simply watching Haruto as he stretched out each of his limbs one by one.
"I am perfectly willing to solve this problem on my own, Soma Haruto," Chimera said with a glint in its eye that said that Haruto would not like whatever solution Chimera found. "But your company is not unpleasant."
Everything Haruto had wanted to say to Nitoh, everything he hadn't said because Nitoh was too aggressively straight or too rigidly adherent to social expectation, every word that had tumbled through his mind when Chimera had kissed him and whispered that Kosuke wanted that came rushing to the forefront of his mind with a vengeance. "Is – is he…" Haruto started to ask.
Chimera straightened, moving slowly and deliberately until he was sitting entirely upright. "I believe our friend is at peace, Soma Haruto," he said, each word sounding carefully chosen. "But if you do not wish to help me, I will not presume upon you any further."
"I'll help," Haruto said, half unintentionally. He couldn't do anything more for Nitoh, couldn't thank him for what he'd done in disrupting the Sabbath and saving the lives of countless people at the cost of his own, but he could help Chimera in Nitoh's name. He could try not to see Chimera as a monster who had murdered his friend, and instead see someone trapped and lost. "I'll help," he said again, more firmly.
Chimera smiled, teeth looking somehow more pointed than Haruto remembered.
"I don't." Haruto paced across the room and back. "I don't know how," he said. "I don't know how, yet, and before I do anything else, I have to lay Koyomi to rest." He hadn't intended to say that, about Koyomi, but the idea had been growing since Hope had formed in his hands.
Chimera shrugged, apparently satisfied now that he knew he had Haruto's cooperation. "Kosuke was fond of Koyomi, too," he said.
Haruto blinked against the sudden tears, but one escaped anyway. He tried to brush it away before Chimera saw. "He was," he said. "Everyone was."
Chimera stretched his spine, coming up onto his feet in one graceful motion. He was moving more easily than he had the day before, with more certainty and coordination. Haruto wondered in the back of his mind whether that was because Chimera was getting more used to a human body or whether that body was binding him more tightly over time, and dismissed the question. Even if it was a matter of time, Koyomi came first.
"We're – I'm going home," he said. "You're coming with."
"I have no contract with you," Chimera said, flashing pointed teeth again. "Certainly not one that includes instruction."
Haruto lost his tentative grasp on his emotions, and frustration that hadn't seemed important a few seconds earlier bubbled over. "If you want my help, you're going to follow my directions," he said.
"Complete obedience?" Chimera raised one eyebrow. "This is the term of our agreement?"
"What? No." Haruto did not want to strangle Chimera. He was not volatile. He was perfectly calm. Everything was fine. "If I tell you not to do something, you don't do it. If I tell you we're going somewhere, we go. In return, I help you, and I won't tell you to do something that will put you in danger or cause you undue distress."
"Agreed," Chimera said, with a note of finality, and held out a hand. Haruto took it, feeling a tingle of mana, and wondered exactly what kind of contract he'd just apparently signed and sealed.
"We're going home," Haruto said, sliding Teleport back onto his hand.
"Yes," said Chimera, and paced across the room to stand at his shoulder. Up close, Haruto could feel the Phantom, unleavened by human presence. A wizard might feel a little different than a non-magic-user, and Haruto couldn't feel anything different from an immature Gate at all, but Chimera gave off a distinctly inhuman aura. It was both intriguing and unsettling.
Haruto rolled his shoulders back and opened a portal to the antique shop. Given the deluge of noise when he stepped through it, followed by Chimera, he thought Shunpei had slept there; it turned out that it was late afternoon, not morning, and he spent an inordinately long time explaining to Wajima and Shunpei both that he was perfectly fine. Neither of them were happy about Chimera, either, and then Mayu walked in the door.
"No," she said.
"I – what?" Haruto, trying to convince Wajima that nothing was wrong, except that everything was wrong, had his entire train of thought derailed.
"What happened?" Mayu circled Chimera, looking at him with equal measures of horror and fascination. Haruto dimly remembered some of his high school classmates looking at pinned insects with the same expression, and he felt defensive on Chimera's behalf. Chimera shouldn't be seen as a specimen, as something less than human, although Chimera wasn't human, didn't have a human heart. It was oddly hard to remember that Chimera was a Phantom.
"I saw you," Chimera said to Mayu, apparently just as unimpressed with her scrutiny as Haruto.
"Yeah, but that was – how did this even happen to you?"
Chimera turned to Haruto. "She sees more clearly than you do," he said. "Perhaps it is her assistance that I require."
"I seem to remember a contract," Haruto said before he thought about how Mayu might be the better person to handle Chimera. Mayu hadn't had an unrequited crush on Nitoh Kosuke, as far as he knew. Mayu's judgment wouldn't be clouded by unresolved emotions. Mayu hadn't lost her closest friend – but, Haruto remembered, she had lost her twin sister.
"So we do," Chimera said, appearing oblivious to Haruto's internal conflict. If he caught on to any of it, he didn't show it, fading rather neatly into the background and leaving Haruto to field questions on his own.
Actually attempting to leave the following morning sparked a whole new round of argument when Chimera flatly refused to ride on the back of Haruto's bike. If Haruto wanted to be fair about it, Chimera and Haruto's travel bag didn't fit particularly well, not to mention the assorted odds and ends of Nitoh's belongings that Chimera had decided were to travel with him.
Haruto did not want to be fair about it.
That the majority of the day was wasted in finding and then acquiring what Chimera considered to be an acceptable vehicle nearly drove Haruto into leaving on his own, no matter that he'd reminded Chimera about their alleged contract. Inexplicably, it wasn't money that was the sticking point. Chimera produced a not insubstantial stack of bills from somewhere, and Haruto didn't want to know if Nitoh had had weirder priorities than he'd thought to begin with or if Chimera had done something potentially shady. Either way, Chimera could have just bought a motorcycle, but he'd decided to be picky about it, and only Haruto's sense of responsibility kept him from leaving Chimera to deal with Mayu anyway, contract or no contract.
When he finally made a selection, the vehicle Chimera chose wasn't technically operational. Getting it to a state Haruto considered satisfactory – which was to say, running – took the following morning, but Chimera wasn't happy with it until he'd done something else. And then another something else. By the time Chimera had tweaked the bike to his liking, it had been two full days and Haruto was beyond ready to just leave without him. The sympathetic expressions he kept getting from everyone he knew made his skin crawl.
"What are you even doing?" Haruto asked on the second afternoon, sitting on the ground with his back to a wall and watching Chimera perform arcane and mysterious manipulations to the guts of the bike.
Chimera didn't answer until he'd finished doing whatever it was he was doing. He wiped his hands on a rag that had been used often enough that Haruto didn't think it was taking any of the grease off Chimera's skin at all. "Do you want me to show you?" he asked, dropping the rag.
"Not really." Haruto let his head thump against the wall. The sky was washed out, halfway between overcast and clear. It fit his mood perfectly.
Chimera grinned unsettlingly, which Haruto could barely see at the edges of his vision, and went back to work. He kept up a running commentary, explaining what he was doing and why, until Haruto abruptly got up and left. He didn't need to know more than the absolute basics of how the bike worked; if something went wrong, he could always teleport it to a mechanic. His route was interrupted by Chimera manifesting in front of him, expression serious.
"Soma Haruto," he said, and then seemed to be at a loss for words.
"Please tell me you'll be finished by tomorrow," Haruto said. He'd given up on leaving before it got dark, not that he'd really picked a direction to go.
"Tomorrow," Chimera said, and then leaned over to kiss him.
Haruto let him, at first, and then found one hand tangled in Chimera's t-shirt and the other pulling Chimera closer. He didn't want to let go, when Chimera stepped back, but he uncurled his fingers.
"Tomorrow," Chimera said again, and went back to the bike, leaving Haruto to wonder what, exactly, had just happened.
Haruto left most of his rings stored in the box the violet golem had thoughtfully made; he could always collect what he needed with Connect. Hope remained stored safely in his pocket; Chimera had given it a look Haruto couldn't read when he'd worn it, and Haruto had felt more comfortable with it out of sight. Chimera hadn't seemed to pay attention when Haruto had put it away, but something about his body language was a little too attentive for Haruto's peace of mind.
The bundle on the back of Chimera's bike had grown while Haruto wasn't watching; it had acquired Nitoh's tent at some point, and the formerly mostly-empty duffel bag was full. It sat securely on the bike, which had also gone from dull and somewhat battered to clean, shiny, and still somewhat battered. It fit Nitoh perfectly; as long as Haruto couldn't see Chimera's expression below the half-messy hair he still refused to style, he could almost believe that it was Nitoh after all. Chimera looked over his shoulder and ruined the illusion.
"Are you ready?" he said, having the nerve sound impatient.
"I've been ready for two days," Haruto muttered. He started the bike and took it out of town. He could hear Chimera's engine over his own, a distinct growling sound that wasn't unlike Chimera's Phantom voice. Haruto wondered if he'd done that on purpose, and then wondered if he'd wasted an afternoon just so Chimera could get the engine to make a specific sound. He decided that he wasn't going to think about it.
Haruto went west, first, dodging traffic out of the city and finding no fewer cars out on the highway. He switched to back roads, not knowing them well at all but trying to go in the same general direction. He had a vague idea of laying Koyomi to rest along the western coast of Honshu, with the sound of the ocean against the setting sun. He also had the vague idea that the act of driving cross-country would be quieting, if not precisely soothing; he'd always felt at peace with the road unspooling beneath his tires.
The relative silence of the road only served to put him farther into his own head, despite knowing he should be more attentive to his immediate environment. There were several near-misses before traffic thinned out, and Haruto felt they'd been going long enough to stop for a few minutes. He pulled the bike off the road, hearing Chimera do the same, and put down the kickstand.
"Your driving is reckless," Chimera said neutrally. He wasn't wearing a helmet, which was going to get them in trouble.
"You're driving illegally," Haruto retorted. The engine modifications were bad enough, being technically illegal as they were, but he didn't think they'd be noticed. The bike wasn't specifically louder than it had been, just different-sounding.
"Nitoh Kosuke has a license," Chimera returned, sounding smug. Haruto thrust Connect onto his finger and pulled his spare helmet off the top shelf of his closet, shoving it into Chimera's chest.
"No," he said. "You're going to get us pulled over and in trouble. Wear it."
Chimera looked at the helmet dubiously, and then back at Haruto. "Is this an instruction?" he said.
"Yes." Haruto didn't know what Chimera meant and didn't care. "Since you can't legally ride the bike without one, yes. Yes, yes, yes."
Chimera took the helmet, conveying distaste in every line of his body, and fastened it to the top of his duffel bag. Haruto sighed and went to fill his gas tank. Chimera mimicked him again, down to putting on the helmet when it was time to leave. Traffic dropped off further as the roads wound deeper into the mountains, and by the time Haruto decided it was time to stop for the night, they were the only vehicles on the road. It was also possible that they were entirely lost; Haruto had no idea where they were relative to anything else.
They must have been relatively close to a major road, or at least close enough to easily reach said major road; Haruto found their back road approaching a small hotel from behind. It looked as though it didn't see much business, an impression borne out by the teenager at the desk and the dusty condition of the room. It wasn't expensive, and it had indoor plumbing, and that was the extent of what Haruto wanted out of it.
"Soma Haruto," said Chimera, when Haruto had kicked off his shoes at the entrance of the room and stood there not really looking at the small space. It was a traditional room, futons rolled up in the corner and mats covering the floor. A low table sat against one wall.
"Mm?" Haruto moved away from the entrance and sat cross-legged on the tatami. There was one window, covered in paper screens. He left the screens closed.
"I require mana." Chimera's contract with Nitoh had involved mana, which hadn't occurred to Haruto at any point over the past several days. Nitoh, if he remembered correctly, had fed Chimera once or twice a week with Phantoms and Ghouls, but there weren't any running around.
"How did you get mana before you were sealed?" Haruto asked, sidestepping the question Chimera hadn't technically asked. He stretched out onto his back, feeling the distinct texture of tatami through his shirt. It had been a long time since he'd been in a traditional room.
Chimera flashed his teeth at Haruto. "The environment was different," he said.
Haruto decided he didn't want to know. "I'll figure something out," he said. If it came down to it, he knew he could feed Chimera through the Please ring; he'd done it when Nitoh's belt had been stolen, although Chimera, by all accounts, preferred to find his own food.
"There is a Gate nearby," Chimera said.
Haruto sat up. "You can't hunt a Gate," he said. "Creating a Phantom kills the Gate."
"I know that," Chimera said. "I have no plans to end a human life."
"Good." Haruto lay back again. The ceiling was stained with what might have been water damage. "That's not something that's acceptable. Ever."
Chimera might have sighed, but he didn't argue. "Do you not need to eat, Soma Haruto?"
"Not hungry," Haruto said, which was mostly true. That trying to find something resembling dinner was more trouble than it was worth was the rest of the truth. "I'm going to go take a bath," he said.
Chimera wasn't in the room when Haruto got back, although he'd spread the futons out along the two unoccupied walls. Haruto blinked at them for a moment and shook his head. Part of him felt that he should be curious about where Chimera had gone, and whether he was off hunting the Gate that he claimed was nearby, although Haruto had no idea how Chimera could possibly know. The rest of him felt that Chimera, once having given his word, wasn't likely to break it.
The door opened again before Haruto had much time to dredge up the will to argue himself into going to look for Chimera in any case. Chimera pitched something in Haruto's general direction, and he caught it reflexively. It turned out to be a rice ball, wrapped in seaweed and then again in plastic. "Thanks," Haruto said. Chimera shrugged in response and started digging through his bag. Haruto left him to it.
The rice ball wasn't anything special, but Haruto wouldn't have cared much even if it had been. The taste of mayonnaise in the center caught him by surprise; seeing Nitoh's face and body without his ever-present container of mayonnaise was suddenly jarring. Chimera caught him at it, his brows lowering in clear displeasure.
"Why do you care?" Haruto snapped, putting the rice ball on the table.
"You can't help me if you don't keep yourself functioning," Chimera said calmly.
Haruto opened his mouth to tell Chimera exactly what he thought of his interference and then closed it again; it wasn't worth the argument. He finished the rice ball, although it tasted like dust, and then lay down on the futon under the window with Hope in one hand. He ran his fingers over the surface of the ring, the ridges and lines familiar enough that he didn't need to see it. His moment of not-quite-introspection was interrupted by Chimera flopping down beside him in a very Nitoh-like gesture. Chimera's next move wasn't like Nitoh at all, no matter what Chimera might have said about what Nitoh had wanted; he leaned over to kiss Haruto on the mouth.
"Chimera," Haruto said. Chimera ignored him and slipped a hand under the waistband of Haruto's loose sleeping pants. "Chimera," Haruto said again, taking Chimera's wrist before he'd gotten more than a fingertip brushed across his clear target.
Chimera looked at him, unblinking, dark eyes utterly inscrutable. "Soma Haruto," he said, voice steady and without inflection. Haruto had the impression nonetheless that Chimera was asking a question, but he wasn't entirely sure what it was. He let go of Chimera's wrist, choosing not to think about what it implied about him, that he was willing to sleep with the monster that had killed his friend just because it wore his friend's face.
He'd expected nightmares, afterwards, but instead he slept heavily and without dreams, and woke with nothing resolved and nothing expiated.
Searching the beaches and mountains took on a kind of rhythm, in which Haruto chose his direction based on his own internal prompting, but no physical location was right to hold Koyomi's soul. He kept Hope in his pocket, never on his hand, sometimes bringing it out if he thought he might have found somewhere Koyomi would like to sleep through the rest of time. Chimera watched with interest at first; interest slowly turned to boredom, and boredom slowly turned to frustration as a few days lengthened into a week, and then weeks, and then months, and Haruto still hadn't found anywhere that made the restlessness fade.
Some places had too many people, others were too lonely, or too quiet, or too bright, too loud, too full of the marks of humanity and empty of humanity's saving graces. In Ishikawa, Haruto discovered a pack of rogue Ghouls hiding with no direction or purpose; the Gate that might have made a Phantom to direct them had died before he could fall into despair, and whoever had tried to build an army far from Tokyo had just left the situation in limbo.
Haruto dispatched the Ghouls, with Chimera's enthusiastic help, and Chimera looked satisfied for the first time in days. He slept next to Haruto that night, or at least lay close enough to share body heat in the bitter cold. Haruto wasn't sure that Chimera actually slept; if he did, it was less than Haruto himself.
Fukui brought brightly colored autumn leaves and rain, and Chimera flatly refused to ride in the wet. He insisted that Haruto study his link to Nitoh's body again, but Haruto was reluctant to look so closely. In Tottori, Haruto discovered that the more regularly he slept with Chimera, the less impatient Chimera was; being able to sleep without nightmares afterwards was just another reason to do something they clearly both wanted. By the time they had reached the westernmost tip of Shimane, however, Chimera was again beginning to throw sideways looks at Haruto no matter what kind of distraction Haruto tried to use.
December sunlight eased Chimera's overt frustration a little, and Haruto turned their route inland for the first time since reaching the coast to begin with. He regretted it before they'd spent more than a few days in Hiroshima, with its heavy air of history and reminders of what had gone before. Haruto avoided the city entirely, but the prefecture bore its name with the long memory of the wronged, and that was no place for Koyomi.
Hiroshima's southern coastline faced Shikoku, and Haruto sat for a long time on a dirt road overlooking the ocean. The sky glittered, hard and pale blue with the sun high overhead, and the waves broke feebly over the dark sand. There was no wind, but Haruto pulled his jacket around himself anyway. He felt no internal pull one way or the other, the tug he'd thought he'd felt bringing him this far gone entirely.
"What are you doing?" Chimera asked, after Haruto had been listening to the surf without moving for what felt like hours. It might have been.
Unaccountably frustrated at the interruption, even though he hadn't had a purpose in mind, Haruto snapped, "The same thing I've been doing."
Chimera gave him the same unreadable look that he'd been wearing almost constantly, the one that Haruto was beginning to interpret as doubt that Haruto had any sort of purpose at all or the ability to accomplish it even if he did. Doubt that Haruto was ready to let Koyomi go, and was dragging Chimera around the country on a fool's errand with no end in sight. Doubt that Haruto would fulfill his part of the vague contract they'd made and signed, and Haruto suddenly felt incredibly tired.
"I'm…" he said, and fell silent.
"I will continue to be patient," Chimera said, but there was an edge to his voice that said that his patience had its limits and that Haruto was approaching them. "Nitoh Kosuke respected you."
What Chimera did not say but what Haruto heard was that Chimera found him lacking, and that the only reason Chimera was still following him around at all instead of returning to Tokyo and Mayu and an actually competent wizard was because of Nitoh's regard for Haruto. He tightened his grip on Hope in his pocket, but for the first time, the faint hum of Koyomi's soul failed to be any sort of comfort. Haruto withdrew his hand, looking away from the suddenly too-bright sunlight, and turned the bike inland.
"We're not going to cross the water," he said, voice rough, and headed west.
For all the impatience Chimera might have shown, he still made no move to actively resist or move against Haruto's vague course of action, until they reached Yamaguchi. Even then, Chimera at first only regarded the remote and rural area with a sort of disdain, until Haruto first saw the butterflies.