Haruto couldn't remember ever feeling physically worse; his body ached and when his head wasn't throbbing, it felt tight like a drum. Chimera's tea hadn't helped much; all Haruto wanted to do was sleep. He couldn't justify wasting time, though, not when something odd had happened to the Gate in Yamaguchi. Odd wasn't even the right term for it, not nearly enough to describe the visceral horror Haruto had felt when he'd realized what had happened, but he couldn't quite think properly.
Haruto wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't hallucinating Chimera's attempts to be helpful, either; not that Chimera was unkind, but nurturing wasn't a word that described any Phantom, and especially not Chimera. It had been entirely serious in its threats to eat Nitoh, should he fail to feed it mana, and Haruto hadn't known it to have any tolerance for weakness at all. By all rights, he felt, it should be eating him and moving on to Mayu. Haruto groaned, trying to keep the sound quiet, but he discovered that it was a moot point.
No one else was in the room, although the congealing bowl of okayu on the nightstand still giving off the scent of ginger and scallions gave the lie to the vague hope that Chimera wasn't acting oddly. Haruto pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure, but it didn't help. He'd been fine the day before, he was all but sure of it.
The suddenness of his symptoms were what drove him to crawl out from beneath the blankets into the freezing room and dig through his pants pockets for Connect. Shivering, Haruto pulled Garuda out of its box at home and summoned the little PlaMonster for the first time in months. "I need you to look for anything unusual," he told it, his teeth chattering. The little creature darted out the window as soon as Haruto opened it, and he slammed it closed again before it could get any colder.
Only after Garuda was gone did it occur to Haruto that he had no way of remotely accessing Garuda's information without Koyomi's crystal ball, and would have to wait for it to come back. Unless, he thought, following Garuda around the city, or at least performing his own reconnaissance would help; it would cut down on the amount of time it took for him to get actionable information. He rubbed at his temples, willing the pain to go away, and started the laborious process of getting dressed.
Several layers later, Haruto was still cold, but at least he felt a little better; either the act of moving had helped, or he'd managed to distract himself. He wasn't about to examine himself any more closely, just in case he undid all his hard work. At the last moment before leaving the room, he remembered both the room key and his cell phone, and stuffed both into his jacket pockets. He took the elevator down to the first floor and went out a side door, shading his eyes from the overly bright December sun. The sky was far too blue to be comfortable.
Haruto left his bike where it was; riding it wouldn't let him move slowly enough to get any sort of impression of the surrounding area, not when he didn't know exactly what he was looking for. He put his hands in his pockets and walked toward the city, senses extended as much as possible for anything at all out of the ordinary. Several minutes into his foray, he thought Garuda could use some backup, and summoned Unicorn to assist its fellow PlaMonster. It raced circles around him for a few seconds before dashing off enthusiastically, and Haruto felt vaguely guilty for not paying more attention to the little creatures.
The city stubbornly refused to show anything out of the ordinary at first, just streets full of people walking from place to place with faces covered against the cold air. The sound of so many people packed into one place reminded him enough of Tokyo that Haruto suddenly felt acutely homesick on top of anything else, and he reached into his pocket for the Hope ring. It was exactly where it was supposed to be, and he felt a little calmer for having it against his skin.
Haruto wasn't sure how long he'd been walking when the cell phone in one of his inner pockets started ringing. He dug it out, eventually, by which point it had stopped making the obnoxious noise he'd inexplicably chosen as a ringtone. He looked at it, but the screen was stubbornly dark, and he sighed. He was in the process of putting it back when it began to ring again, startling him so badly he nearly dropped it. Nitoh's name flashed on the caller ID, and Haruto wondered why he hadn't replaced it with Chimera's. He shook his head at the thought and answered.
"Where are you?" Chimera demanded.
"There's something off," Haruto said.
"That doesn't – where did you go?"
"It's okay," Haruto tried to explain. "Garuda and Unicorn are looking for the source of the problem. Once I find it, I can deal with it."
"Come back. Now." Chimera did not appear to be convinced of a link between Haruto's symptoms and a potential situation. Haruto considered briefly and then discarded the thought that whatever was making him sick was also affecting Chimera's judgment; the Phantom was resistant to magic, for all that it needed to eat mana to survive.
"Garuda and Unicorn are on it," he reassured Chimera. "We'll fix everything."
"Soma Haruto, where exactly are you?" Chimera wasn't going to be dissuaded, but Garuda was flying toward him, and Haruto could see Unicorn dashing along the ground just below it.
"I have to go," he said, and disconnected the call. He couldn't tell what the PlaMonsters were saying, precisely, as they chittered excitedly and raced around him, but they'd found something. Haruto crouched down, picking up Unicorn and holding out a hand for Garuda to land. They refused to settle, Unicorn running up Haruto's arm to nose at his hair and Garuda pecking at his wrist. "Show me," Haruto said, and they both flung themselves in the same direction.
Now was the time to use Connect to summon his bike; Haruto revved the engine and followed his PlaMonsters through the city. They were still quicker than he was, darting around corners and down the street, and Haruto left a trail of disgruntled citizens in his wake. He called back the occasional apology at first, but following the PlaMonsters was taking all the concentration he had. He leaned forward, barely missing a street sign as he skidded around one corner, and then he saw it.
The PlaMonsters had led him out of the city proper and into what might have been a park; Haruto could see the tell-tale roof of a shrine over the treetops. He left the bike at the end of the road, running toward the Phantom standing on the steps leading up the side of the mountain. It didn't look quite right, though, limbs wide and almost amorphous as it straightened and spread its arms apart. Wire glinted from its center, and Haruto could nearly see a human form bound into the Phantom. Its legs were twisted around each other, its arms pulled up and back, head hanging down onto its chest. Haruto couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, but he felt the same sense of wrongness he'd felt with the butterflies.
The Phantom laughed, sending icy wind ghosting over Haruto's skin and cutting right through his clothes. He stumbled to a halt, unable to do more than wrap his arms around himself for several seconds. The Phantom moved closer, gliding bonelessly over the ground. It cast an eerie blue light visible even in the full sun, and threw off waves of cold. Haruto's hands were numb, but he could still move them well enough to scan his ring and initiate the transformation into Flame Style.
The chill did not abate with the transformation; if anything, it got worse, and Haruto dropped to one knee. His vision wavered at the edges as the Phantom kept approaching, tendrils lifting off its skin and reaching for him. Haruto knew with absolute certainty that if the not-Phantom touched him, he was going to die. He threw himself clumsily sideways, limbs stiff with pain and cold, and scanned Light. The resulting blinding flash bought him a few seconds to summon his primary weapon in sword mode.
The Phantom shuddered to a halt, tendrils snapping back into its body, and Haruto brought the SwordGun down in a Flame Slash. It bit deep into the Phantom's flesh and the human inside threw its head back and screamed. Haruto stumbled back, horrified. The Gate was still alive.
Barely keeping a grip on the SwordGun, Haruto scanned Bind, trying to contain the creature rather than kill it. There had to be a way to put it back, to suppress the Phantom without killing the Gate, even if it had fully manifested. The Phantom batted the chains aside, tendrils slicing through them, and Haruto tried again. The second attempt wrapped the Phantom, holding it briefly immobile.
"Can you hear me?" Haruto shouted at the Gate, but he didn't respond. He wasn't showing the tell-tale signs of despair, and if it hadn't been for the scream, Haruto would have been sure he was already dead. Haruto shouted again anyway; he had to try. The Gate simply hung in the center of the Phantom, lit grotesquely blue.
With an ear-piercing shriek, the Phantom burst through the chains and reached for Haruto again. He ducked to the side, and the tendrils crashed against a tree. Bits of wood and bark sprayed through the air, and Haruto dodged again. Sword Mode cut through the tendrils, and the Phantom pulled them back more quickly than Haruto's eye could follow. He tried to lift the sword again for a second Flame Slash, but it was too heavy for him to get the tip off the ground and he couldn't get enough air.
Haruto dropped to one knee and shifted the SwordGun to Gun Mode, leaden weights dragging at his limbs. Freed of the burden of standing, he finally had the energy to lift the SwordGun and aim it. He aimed for the Phantom's head, the only target where he could be more or less sure of not hitting the Gate inside, but his hands were shaking and he missed more often than not. The Phantom howled when struck, and charged forward.
"Not today," Haruto whispered, and scanned his transformation ring across the SwordGun. It chanted its standby charge, heavier each time. Haruto braced it against his knee and kept the barrel pointed at the Phantom. It was nearly close enough to touch before Flame Shooting erupted from the barrel and threw it back out of the trees and onto the narrow open space. Smoke rose from its skin, and Haruto could breathe again. He pushed himself upright.
The Phantom wasn't entirely defeated, but it was down at least for the moment. Haruto shook his head against the wavering at the edge of his sight and was rewarded with throbbing pain for his trouble. He slid to his knees next to the prone Phantom, careful not to touch it. He reached toward the Gate, not entirely sure what he was planning on doing with it, and something tackled him from the side.
Haruto came up swinging at the new threat, barely pulling the blow when he registered Chimera. The SwordGun left a furrow of displaced earth in an arc, its discharge blasting a hole in the ground and raining dirt. "What are you doing?" he hissed.
"It was a threat," Chimera said, entirely unfazed for someone who'd nearly caught a fireball to the face.
"It's down and out," Haruto said. "It's not a threat. Look at it." The outstretched tendril gave the lie to his words; had Chimera not knocked him out of the way, the Phantom would have entangled Haruto. Given that the last abnormal Phantom had tried to drain his mana, Haruto was fairly sure this one would have done the same. "Um," he said. "Thank you."
Chimera didn't acknowledge the thanks; he simply switched the object of his attention from Haruto to the not entirely helpless Phantom on the ground. After a silent moment of staring, he rose to his feet and paced deliberately toward it. It reached for him, and Chimera batted the tendrils aside. The Phantom scrabbled backwards, defensive now. Chimera grabbed the tendrils in both hands, grimacing, and snarled a deep guttural note.
"Chimera, stop." Haruto didn't know what, exactly, Chimera was doing, but he had an inkling, and he didn't like it. He slipped Engage on his finger. "Let me try to help."
"You can't visit the Gate's Underworld," Chimera said, looking at Haruto over his shoulder. "The Gate is already dead."
"He screamed," Haruto said softly.
"The Gate is already dead," Chimera repeated. "It just doesn't know it. Letting it go would be a mercy."
"I…" Haruto hesitated, and shook his head. "I have to try." He scanned the ring, and a portal flickered to life above the Phantom. It looked wrong, edges uneven and indistinct, the clean lines that should have been present warped and running into each other. "What?"
"You can't help him," Chimera said, not unkindly, and pulled the enveloping Phantom's center mass apart. The Gate dropped to the ground, unmistakably long dead now that it was no longer illuminated by the Phantom's eerie light. The portal flickered again and faded.
The Phantom shuddered, opacity spreading over its torn skin until it was as solid as anything else. Chimera's eyes narrowed as the Phantom's tendrils whipped around it in a frenzy, fingers bent into claws, but before he could make a move, Haruto had scanned his transformation ring to activate another Flame Shooting. The Phantom hit the ground hard, shock wave rippling outwards.
Chimera pounced on the escaping energy, drawing it inwards until there was nothing left of the Phantom. Haruto disengaged his transformation and left Chimera to it, turning to the body of the Gate. The face wasn't recognizable, but he could see the corner of a wallet peeking out of the Gate's pocket, and he carefully pulled it out. Handling only the edges, Haruto opened the wallet.
The driver's license inside had a Tokyo address, and a photograph that Haruto recognized; he'd last seen this man deciding to move overseas to rekindle his musical career. Haruto frowned at the license; its issue date was just a few months earlier, meaning the pianist had returned to Japan at the end of summer. "What are you doing out here?" he asked absently, not really expecting an answer from a dead man. He'd had spectacularly poor timing, Haruto thought; he'd returned to Tokyo just in time to get caught up in the Sabbath.
"We should go," Chimera said from far too close, and Haruto suppressed a flinch. He slid the wallet back into the Gate's pocket and stood, wiping his hands on his pants.
"Two is a pattern," Haruto said, heading for his bike. He'd nearly reached it when Chimera yanked him back, clamping a hand down on his forehead. "What are you doing now?"
Chimera frowned at him. "You're not as warm."
Haruto blinked. He hadn't noticed when the acute sense of malaise had dropped away, but trying to pin down exactly when he'd felt physically better, he thought it might have been at the defeat of the Phantom. "Just lucky, I guess," he said, but the words rang hollow. The first abnormal Phantom had hijacked his eyes, generating hallucinations of butterflies, and if the second hadn't been physically affecting him, it was a remarkable coincidence.
"They were linked to you," Chimera said, which was precisely the sort of insight Haruto had been hoping to avoid.
"We don't know that," Haruto said.
The corner of Chimera's mouth turned down. "You're contracted to me," he said. As if that settled the matter, he turned and mounted his bike, driving back toward the city.
Haruto squeezed his eyes closed, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. The abnormal Phantoms weren't Chimera's fault, and Haruto couldn't exactly blame Chimera for not being altruistic. It was perfectly reasonable that Chimera was worried about himself. Haruto climbed on the bike and drove slowly back to the hotel, still tired despite the effects of whatever the Phantom had done dispersing.
Chimera was sitting at the small table in the corner when Haruto walked in the door. The other chair had been pulled out, and the same bowl of okayu Haruto had avoided eating earlier was in front of it. Little wisps of steam curled invitingly upward, but Haruto had no desire to eat it. "Chimera," he said, but the Phantom didn't appear to be paying attention to him at all. Haruto dropped into the chair, picking up the spoon that had also thoughtfully been provided.
Stirring the runny white porridge did nothing to provoke any sense of appetite, but Haruto took a bite of it anyway. It tasted exactly as he'd expected, which was to say earthy and full of ginger. Chimera was watching him out of the corner of his eye, Haruto noticed, but for all that he hadn't wanted the okayu before he'd actually started eating it, he was suddenly starving. The porridge vanished almost too quickly, leaving Chimera with a vaguely satisfied expression and Haruto annoyed at being condescended to. He couldn't deny that he felt better, though, which only deepened his annoyance.
Haruto didn't remember unpacking as many of his possessions as were scattered around the room, and he began putting them back into his bag with ill grace. Chimera, for his part, remained seated, watching Haruto with hooded eyes. Haruto kept his mouth shut, pausing only when he folded the pants he'd been wearing the day before and realized they were significantly cleaner than the pants he was currently wearing. Transformation or not, he was covered in dirt.
"I'm taking a bath," he said. He was in the bathroom with the door locked before noticing that the combined shower and bathtub was a terrible place to soak, if he had to scrub down in it first. Haruto took a shower instead, lingering under the heated spray. It didn't quite compare to the soothing heat of a proper bath, but at least the water felt good on his skin, and he was less irritated by the time he'd dressed in cleaner clothes.
Chimera had failed to take the hint and pack his own possessions; there was no reason for them to waste an entire day with the influence of the Phantom gone. At the very least, even if the sun had already set, the evening was young enough to give them plenty of time. Haruto dropped his bag on the empty chair with a thump.
"We can make it to Tokyo by midnight," he said.
Chimera looked pointedly at the darkened sky. "Daylight's better for driving," he said, and the irritation flared right back up. Haruto took a deep breath and then another, trying not to say something he was going to regret.
"I have to look into these incidents," he started carefully.
"Why?" Chimera interrupted.
"Why?" Haruto stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words. "If I don't, who will? Gates are – are being trapped by Phantoms that aren't fully materializing. They're dying. This is my responsibility."
"Why you?" Chimera finally looked at him, still lounging in the chair as if completely relaxed, but Haruto could see the tension radiating off of him.
"Who else is there?" Haruto repeated. "Fueki trained me. I'm the only one that can handle something like this."
"You," Chimera said, "Or Mayu, or either of the other wizards Fueki trained, or whoever it was that taught him, or their students. You're not the only one."
"These are the people I couldn't save," Haruto snapped, and clenched his mouth shut.
"Two people isn't a pattern," Chimera said after a long pause. Haruto wasn't sure if that meant Chimera had given up trying to talk him out of his sense of responsibility or if he was just trying to change the subject, but he answered the question Chimera hadn't specifically asked anyway.
"It's less likely to be a coincidence than one." He sat on the bed. "Takagi – the musician – was in Tokyo during the Sabbath. It's not much of a starting point, especially if I don't know who the other Gate was or where she encountered a Phantom, but maybe this isn't the first time something like this has happened." Fueki's library might have useful information, if Haruto could stomach setting foot in the man's house again. It held too many memories.
"Am I part of the pattern?" Chimera asked, voice low. There was nothing uncertain about it, but Haruto couldn't read the tone.
"You're still alive," he replied, and a little of Chimera's tension drained away. "If we leave soon, we can make Tokyo by midnight," he said again. From there, it wouldn't take long to reach Fueki's home.
"Five minutes," Chimera said.
Haruto blinked, wondering if he'd missed part of the conversation. "What?" he said finally, but Chimera stood instead of answering and started neatly packing the remainder of what he'd apparently unpacked. He stowed whatever he'd bought, as well, placing each item with finicky precision. It was mind-numbing to watch, and when Chimera tugged at Haruto's ankle, he was almost glad of the distraction.
"You're on my socks," Chimera said, pulling at them hard enough that Haruto overbalanced. The ceiling seemed like a better view than Chimera's sudden need for precise order in his duffel bag anyway, and Haruto stayed where he was. The sound of running water came from the bathroom, and Haruto belatedly noticed that Chimera had gotten just as covered in dust and dirt as he had – more so, since Chimera didn't have the advantage of transformation armor. He groaned slightly as it occurred to him that if Chimera's new-found obsession with precision extended to bathing, he was going to be in there forever.
At least, Haruto thought, the noise of the shower wasn't unpleasant. He stretched, listening to the patter of the falling water. He opened his eyes to sunlight creeping along the wall and sat bolt upright. A blanket slid down to his waist, and he wasn't wearing shoes. How did I not feel Chimera taking off my shoes was his first thought, followed by the realization that they had wasted the entire day after all.
"Oh, good," Chimera said from the other bed. "You're awake."
"Why did you let me sleep?" Haruto rubbed his eyes. They felt sticky, but the lingering vestiges of whatever the Phantom had done to him were gone. "We should be in Tokyo by now."
Chimera leveled a supremely unimpressed stare at him. "Or you would have driven your bike under a truck because you were too exhausted to pay attention to the road," he said.
Haruto threw up his hands and struggled out from under the blanket. Three months and it was still impossible to hold a normal conversation with the Phantom, no matter how well he pretended to blend in well when other people were around. "Can we get going now?" he said.
The drive took longer than Haruto had expected, and it was well past full dark by the time they had navigated the highway and the ever increasing traffic as they got closer to the nation's capital. Fueki's estate was some distance outside the city, letting them at least avoid the worst of the congestion in the city itself, and Haruto elected not to visit the antique shop before starting his research. He justified his decision internally with the thought that he needed all the time and concentration he could get; Chimera didn't so much as blink when Haruto informed him of their destination.
It didn't occur to Haruto as he pulled into the long drive leading to Fueki's home that the estate shouldn't have been standing, unoccupied, essentially untouched since the man's death months before. He parked the bike in front of the darkened house, noting that the front door had been sealed closed. There was a sign he couldn't read in the dark, and he hefted his bag over his shoulder and headed for the back door. It was sealed shut as well, but there was a window on the second floor that he distinctly remembered didn't latch properly.
Chimera rolled his eyes when Haruto tossed his bag up on the roof, visible even in the dim lighting, but he swarmed up the side of the house like a cat. Haruto climbed up with somewhat more effort, pushing Chimera's attempt at a helping hand away, and jimmied the window open. He landed on the upper floor in his boots, feeling a brief pang at the inappropriateness of wearing shoes indoors, and pulled his bag in after him. Chimera followed, eyes reflecting what little light there was with an eerie glow.
Fueki's library was mainly kept on the first floor, but Haruto left his bag in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Belatedly, he noticed that it was the same room he and Chimera had used the last time they'd been in the house, but it was too late to remove the bag without it looking awkward. Chimera gave him an unreadable look anyway and followed suit.
"I'll be back," Chimera said at the bottom of the stairs.
Haruto, already searching for a light switch, stubbed his toe on the wall. "What?"
"I'll be back," Chimera repeated. "You don't need me for this."
"You have more experience with the history than I do," Haruto said.
"I spent most of it sealed inside a mountain," Chimera snapped, and yanked open the front door. Whatever had been used to seal it snapped off, taking part of the door frame with it. Chimera stalked out, leaving the door hanging unevenly behind him. Haruto tried to push it closed as best he could, finally managing to find a light switch.
The house was dusty, for all that no one had been in it, spider webs strung through the chandelier in the ceiling and across no few of the corners. Several drawers were half open and a chair was overturned, as if someone had been searching for something; Haruto righted the chair and closed the drawers. Whoever else might have been there wasn't his concern at the moment. Fueki's possessions, aside from the disorganization, appeared largely untouched, and Haruto started searching for information without really knowing what he was looking for.
Hours later, eyes burning, Haruto had to concede that his decision to simply start searching alone might have been an error. He hadn't found anything useful, although he'd seen a great deal of Fueki's notes and research on resurrection, and on how to use mana to reactivate a body and then resurrect a soul. Fueki hadn't been satisfied with the doll Koyomi had been; he had wanted his daughter's soul back. Haruto rubbed his eyes and wondered about the heart and soul of the Koyomi he had known; even if the doll Fueki had created hadn't had his Koyomi's soul, she had still had her own heart and personality, and Haruto had her soul in his pocket. Who was to say she wasn't every bit as real as the girl who had died?
None of which was getting him any closer to figuring out if Fueki had seen half-born Phantoms trapped in the dead or undead bodies of their human hosts. Haruto stretched, and eyed the materials that specifically had to do with the Sabbath. He had avoided them, at first, for the memories of both times Fueki had chained him to an altar and attempted to drive him into despair.
"Yo," Chimera said from behind him, and Haruto tried to climb the walls. He shoved his heart from his throat back into his chest where it belonged.
"Chimera," he said, with dignity, as if he hadn't just sent a chair skittering halfway across the room.
Chimera was far too amused for Haruto's taste, pushing the chair back toward the table. "Did you find anything?" he said.
"Since Fueki has actual books instead of anything searchable, no." Haruto crossed his arms and leaned against the table. He'd tried despite his expectations to see if Fueki had any sort of digital library, but there was nothing that he could find. Everything was analogue, making the process far more laborious than it by any rights had to be. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
Chimera shrugged slightly. "For some definitions of the word," he said, and refused to elaborate further. Haruto gave up, turning back to the stack of books he was starting to resent simply for existing as words printed on paper. The time he'd spent training with Fueki so long ago had told him exactly how the man had preferred to be organized, but that didn't mean Haruto had to like it. "By the way," Chimera added, before Haruto had gotten farther than opening a single cover.
"What?" Haruto asked absently. The volume in his hands had something to do with the Sabbath ritual, and he didn't know if he hoped for or dreaded finding more detailed information on the creation of Phantoms.
"Mayu wants to talk to you," Chimera said.
Haruto dropped the book.
"Hello, Haruto," Mayu said, stepping out from behind Chimera. He hadn't noticed her standing there, which was a fine lapse in observation.
"Uh," he said. "Mayu."
"Haruto," she said. "It's good to see you." What she did not have to say was that it had been weeks, if not months, since he had sent so much as a text message to anyone at the antique shop. She'd sent him messages semi-regularly, but he hadn't answered them.
"You too," he said.
"What are you doing?" Mayu asked abruptly.
"I was hoping Fueki had information on an, uh, odd phenomenon," Haruto said. "Not on it, specifically, but whether it's happened before."
"That's not what I meant," Mayu said. "When are you coming home?"
"I." Haruto couldn't meet her eyes. "I can't."
"We ran across two Phantoms that failed to properly manifest," Chimera said into the resulting silence, before anyone else could do more than draw breath. "They were trapped in their human hosts."
"You saw more than one?" Mayu said sharply.
"More than one?" Haruto echoed. "You – what have you been doing?"
"What you haven't," Mayu snapped. She'd changed, in the past few months. The Mayu he'd left at the antique shop with the vague directive to keep everyone safe wouldn't have taken that kind of tone with anyone she considered a friend. She drew a hand over her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's late, and I'm tired, and we have a drive ahead of us."
"We do?" Haruto said, and Chimera elbowed him in the ribs. Haruto capitulated; as much as he had wanted to avoid talking to the people who had also known Koyomi, guilt chewed at him now, and he couldn't reject Mayu when she was staring him in the face. "Uh, yes, I mean. Let me." He turned back to the stack of materials he hadn't looked through. "Let me just put these in. Something."
Mayu slipped a ring over her finger and activated a portal, sending the stacks Haruto indicated through it with an efficiency she hadn't had when he left. She sent the laptop Haruto had only cursorily checked as well, power cord wrapped neatly around it. Haruto felt another twist of guilt that she had had to effectively hone her skills without direction or help. "Ready?" she asked.
"The rest of our stuff is upstairs," Haruto said, but both of the bags they hadn't unpacked were in the doorway. "Or they're right there," he said, resigned. He couldn't stall any further, not without being more transparent than he already was.
The drive toward the antique shop was quiet, the roads mostly empty under the full moon. On the one hand, Haruto didn't have to immediately face Mayu and the fact that he'd essentially abandoned her. On the other hand, he had plenty of time and silence to think about what he hadn't done to fulfill the responsibilities he'd taken on of his own free will when he'd decided to become the Ringed Wizard in the first place. By the time they pulled up to the darkened shop, guilt and apprehension were a leaden weight in his stomach.
Mayu unlocked the door, holding it open for first Chimera and then for him. Haruto slipped automatically out of his shoes, walking in as if he'd never left, and then stopped. The furniture was exactly as he remembered it, although some of the stock had changed and the area where Wajima created the rings had expanded. Shunpei had decided to learn how to make rings, Haruto remembered. Neither of them were in the room, which was only lit with a single lamp.
"Your bedroom is still there," Mayu said. "Chimera –"
"I sleep with Haruto," Chimera said, showing her his teeth in an expression that in no way resembled a smile.
"I see," Mayu said slowly. "We'll see you in the morning, Haruto." She vanished up the stairs. He thought briefly that there was nothing stopping him from simply walking out the door, except for the relationships he'd badly damaged by avoiding them for months, and knew that he wanted to fix what he could.
"It's already morning," Haruto muttered. It was well past midnight, and dawn was only a few hours away. It almost wasn't worth sleeping, really, but Chimera was standing at the foot of the stairs with an expectant look, and Haruto found himself smiling despite the past few hours. Chimera shook his head slowly, his lips curling upwards at the corners, and Haruto followed him into the bedroom.
It was precisely as he remembered, too, but he paid no attention to it beyond making sure the door was firmly closed. Chimera proved every bit as distracting as Haruto had hoped he would be, driving away the guilt and apprehension and the leaden weight under his skin until there was nothing left but warmth and the pleasant fuzz of fatigue. Any energy he'd had before they'd started had deserted him with a vengeance, and he leaned into it when Chimera folded his arms around him.
Haruto meant to say good night, but the words that slipped out instead were, "I love you."
"Love," Chimera said softly, and Haruto belatedly realized what he'd just said. He wasn't in love with Chimera, couldn't be in love with Chimera; he'd had a crush on Kosuke, but Kosuke was straight and dead, and the fact that Chimera was wearing Kosuke's face had just confused him. Hadn't it? He hadn't been seeing the echoes of Kosuke in Chimera, though, not for a while. "You're an interesting man, Soma Haruto," Chimera said, and that wasn't specifically a rejection, not when Chimera was holding him a little more closely than before.
Haruto let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and felt Chimera chuckle behind him. He relaxed in Chimera's grip, against the Phantom's human form, and Chimera began to gently stroke his forearm. Definitely not a rejection, then, Haruto thought, and barely heard Chimera telling him to go to sleep.