Chimera hadn't planned on being present for whatever confrontation Soma's friends had up their collective sleeves; despite having gotten mana from Soma, it was still looking forward to hunting for Gates. Not that it intended to let the Gates die, as Soma had been very clear that causing human death was unacceptable, but it needed more mana than it could get from Soma alone. Its plans were derailed by Mayu walking into the bedroom without so much as a by your leave.
"Stop hiding, Haruto," she said.
As Soma was still asleep, he didn't answer. Chimera, since the statement hadn't been addressed to it, didn't bother to answer either. It did, however, pull Soma slightly closer in a clearly possessive gesture and gave the intruder a level look. Whatever Mayu wanted, she had to understand that first and foremost, Soma belonged to Chimera.
Mayu blinked, looking from Soma to Chimera and back again. "So that's what you meant," she said, this time clearly speaking to Chimera despite looking at Soma with an expression that Chimera did not like. There were shades of judgment underlaid with worry, as if Mayu actively disapproved of what Chimera and Soma were doing and thought it was going to damage Soma on top of it. Chimera decided it had gotten better at reading human expressions in the time it had spent with Soma, and then that Mayu deserved an answer to the question she hadn't technically asked.
It gave her the smallest of grins, barely showing its teeth. "Yes," it said.
"I can hear both of you," Soma said, less dead to the world than previously assumed and leading Chimera to wonder if he was adjusting to having his mana drained on a regular basis. "Good morning, Mayu."
"Don't you good-morning-Mayu me," she said. "What do you think you're doing?"
Soma appeared to consider the question for a moment. "Getting up?" he hazarded, but he pulled the sheet more closely around himself. The faded remnants of Kosuke's memory told Chimera that it had something to do with nakedness in front of the opposite sex, as if it mattered. Soma was Chimera's; it didn't matter who else saw him.
"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it," Mayu said, a note of bitterness in her voice. She closed the door, leaning on the wall next to it. "You left," she said, her voice breaking just slightly.
"I know," Soma said. Neither of them appeared to remember that Chimera was in the room, and Soma had him all but pinned to the bed by the simple measure of lying half on top of him. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry." Mayu looked down. "Do you know what I've been doing, for the past three months?"
Soma shook his head.
"Rinko and I have been hunting the leftover Phantoms." It didn't escape Chimera's notice that Mayu left off any honorific when naming the cop who'd helped Soma the previous year, but more importantly, the wizard had just given him a valuable piece of information. Chimera thought briefly that Soma's little road trip had been even more ill-advised than it had seemed, but without the road trip, Soma wouldn't belong so undeniably to him – to it, Chimera corrected itself.
"There are leftover Phantoms?" Soma sounded horrified, and guilty. It was unpleasant to hear. Chimera shifted, trying to move Soma a little closer to it, but Soma was pulling away. He nearly stood before remembering what he wasn't wearing, and settled for sitting on the edge of the bed with half the sheet wrapped around his waist. "I didn't even think – Mayu, I'm so sorry."
"I tried to tell you," Mayu said. "You never picked up the phone."
"I know." Soma, for all that his body language was directed toward Mayu, still wasn't looking her in the eyes. "But Koyomi…"
"Haruto, Koyomi is gone. The rest of us are still here." Mayu clapped a hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I know how you felt – feel about her."
Soma shook his head slowly. "You're not… you're not wrong."
"It was still tactless," Mayu said. "And I'm still sorry I said it like that. But we needed you, too."
"The Phantoms," Soma started.
"Not just the Phantoms!" Mayu pushed off the wall, flinging her arms upwards. "It's not just that we – I needed your help and you weren't there! Haruto, you idiot, we were worried about you!"
"Oh." Soma twisted his hands around in the sheet in his lap, dragging the edge perilously close to slipping right off. Chimera eyed it with interest. "I wasn't alone," he offered.
"Haruto." Mayu squeezed her eyes shut. The gesture didn't seem to quite convey whatever she was aiming for, and she buried her face in her hands for a moment. "Haruto," she said again. "Chimera is a Phantom. Chimera doesn't count. Chimera would most likely eat you as soon as protect you, and are you really trying to tell me I should be giving you more leeway because you're totally fine, you have a monster on your side?" She looked over Haruto's shoulder and her eyes widened, apparently remembering that Chimera was in the room. It gave her a jaunty little wave with one hand. "I mean," she said, and then nothing. "No offense," she muttered finally.
Chimera laughed soundlessly, letting her see its teeth without breaking eye contact. She wasn't exactly wrong on any count, and it couldn't get upset over the truth.
Soma, for his part, didn't appear to notice the byplay; he was staring at Mayu, trying to meet her eyes for the first time since she'd come in the room. "I," he said, and then squared his shoulders. "I dropped the ball," he said. "I let all of you down. Mayu, I'm sorry." The earnestness in his voice was one of the things that Chimera loved about Soma, his ability to put his heart and soul into whatever he was doing.
"Yeah, well, it's not just me you have to apologize to," Mayu said, and then tentatively, "Are you leaving again?"
"Not for a while," Soma said, which was excellent news to Chimera as well. "I'll be downstairs in a few minutes."
"Shunpei made breakfast," Mayu said. "That was a few hours ago, though."
"I'll make lunch?" Soma offered.
"Haruto," Mayu said, exasperated but with a note of warmth to it, "we all know you're a terrible cook. Stay out of the kitchen."
"I'm not that bad," Soma muttered, and Chimera took pity on Mayu in a bid to get her out of the room as quickly as possible.
"Yes, you are," it said, leaning over to drop a kiss on Soma's cheek. Soma was startled enough to leap to his feet, forgetting the sheet entirely, which led to Mayu vanishing adroitly out of the door and slamming behind her. Soma was left standing in the middle of the room, gloriously nude, looking from the door to Chimera in rapid succession.
"I'm not," he muttered finally, searching for his clothes.
Chimera contented itself with simply watching, which unaccountably made Soma blush, even after all this time. Definitely interesting. Chimera grinned at him, which had the effect of making Soma move faster.
"You're not getting out of this," Soma said, stabbing a finger toward him. "Put your clothes on. You're coming with me."
"As moral support?" Chimera said, testing the words.
"Yes. Exactly. Moral support."
Chimera had been under the impression that Soma had already had the difficult part of the conversation his friends expected, which explained nothing about his current state of nerves. It shrugged and lazily climbed off the bed to find its clothes. It no longer dressed like Kosuke, not after three months of being the sole inhabitant of his body, instead wearing the simplest possible combinations of clothing.
As a result, despite Soma having a head start, Chimera was fully dressed first.
"You're going to freeze," Soma said, looking him up and down.
Chimera looked down at itself. It had on a perfectly respectable pair of jeans, Kosuke's boots, and a t-shirt. It had even remembered socks and underwear, which had been easy to forget for the first few weeks. "No, I'm not," it said. "I tolerate a much wider range of temperature than you do, Soma Haruto, even if I'm trapped in a human body."
Soma threw a long-sleeved shirt at him, pleasingly soft and fuzzy but with a distressing blocky and colorful pattern. "Really?" Chimera said.
"Looks good on you," Soma said. "Especially since your hair is still brown."
Chimera paused in the act of pulling on the shirt. "Is it supposed to be another color?"
Soma laughed a little. "Nitoh dyed it," he said. "Wait, did you cut it? At all?"
This time, it was buttoning the shirt that was interrupted by Soma's increasingly odd questions. "Why would I cut it?" Chimera asked. "Is there something wrong with it?" Come to think of it, Soma's hair was darker than it had been, and longer.
Soma reached for Chimera's head, bending it downward and searching through his hair. Chimera permitted it for a few seconds before moving out of Soma's grasp. "It isn't growing," Soma said, sounding mystified.
"Is it supposed to?"
"You – yes." Soma ran a hand through his own hair, which had the effect of making it stand up in odd places, and grimaced. "Yes, it is." He eyed Chimera again, and it took a few moments for Chimera to figure out that Soma was looking at his hands. "Your fingernails," he started.
"There is nothing wrong with my fingernails," Chimera said. "Same length they've – they're supposed to grow, too, aren't they." It sighed, resigned. "Humans are odd, Soma Haruto."
"No, that's very interesting." Soma looked like he wanted to reach for Chimera's hands. Chimera moved prudently out of arm's length.
"Aren't you supposed to be going downstairs?" Chimera prodded. It had no particular desire to be part of whatever emotional confrontation was coming next, given how the last one had been rather awkward, but it also had no desire to have its human body examined for flaws. Particularly when said flaws implied that it wasn't necessarily alive after all, and when said examination was bringing him no closer to escaping the body.
"Downstairs." The corners of Soma's mouth turned down. "Right." He looked Chimera up and down one more time. "I guess that's okay," he said, and Chimera rolled its eyes. Soma had no room to talk; he'd put the WizarDriver on for the first time in weeks, if one didn't count the instances in which he'd deliberately gone hunting Phantoms, and Chimera felt that it clashed with both his pants and his shirt. "What?"
Chimera gestured at the Driver. "That," it said. "What gives?"
"What do you mean, what gives?" Soma looked down at the belt and its attendant transformation device.
"You haven't been wearing that regularly," Chimera said. "Only when you found something to kill."
"That's not – I mean," Soma started, and shook his head. "This is supposed to be my job," he said. "I've neglected it."
"That little girl telling you something doesn't make it true," Chimera said, stretching. The fuzzy shirt, despite its awful aesthetic pattern, was incredibly comfortable, and he wondered if he could find one in a solid color.
"Mayu isn't – I'm not going to argue with you about this," Soma said. "Stop trying to stall. We have to go downstairs."
"I'm not the one justifying picking up old habits," Chimera said. "You're the one who was all gung-ho about reconnecting with old friends and then started dragging your feet."
"You're still moral support," Soma said. "Come on."
The atmosphere on the first floor wasn't exactly charged, but there was a slick indefinable sort of tension when Chimera followed Soma down the stairs. It took up a position behind Soma and to his left, traditionally his weaker side during a fight, although it couldn't quite have said why it took that specific action. Soma's friends were hardly likely to attack him physically.
"Welcome home, Haruto," said old man Wajima, and some of the tension melted away. He ignored Chimera entirely, though, which was fine by Chimera. Shunpei nudged Wajima, and the old man glanced to the side before acknowledging Chimera. "You may stay as long as Haruto is here," Wajima said.
"Sir," Shunpei hissed. The odd form of address threw Chimera for a moment until he remembered again that the teenager had attached himself to Wajima as a student, which meant he was showing respect to his mentor. Wajima regarded Shunpei stolidly for a moment, declining to say anything else. "I'm glad you're here," Shunpei said. "Both of you."
"Thank you," Soma said. "I know, uh." He coughed, covering a barely audible break in his voice. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."
Mayu, seated on the couch in what Chimera remembered was Soma's usual spot, shifted positions ostentatiously enough to make a very noticeable sound.
"If it's all right," Soma continued, sounding oddly diffident, "I'm not going anywhere for a while. Mayu has been handling leftover Phantoms, and I'd like to help her with the remainder of that task."
"You can have it if you want it," Mayu said. "Or I'll help you."
"Mayu's starting college!" Shunpei blurted out, face split in a huge grin. "In March! She passed her entrance exams and everything!"
"Shunpei!" Mayu said, sounding as if she very much wanted to be annoyed but couldn't quite manage it.
"I couldn't help it!" Shunpei waved his hands in front of himself defensively. "I'm just – it's so wonderful that you're going. Not that she's going far," he said to Soma. "She's still staying here."
"That's wonderful," Soma said to Mayu. "Congratulations."
"Thank you," Mayu said, halfway between demure and fiercely proud. It was an odd look on her, a sense of false modesty that didn't fit what Chimera had seen of her over the past day.
"Oh, and there's this!" Shunpei vanished into the back of the shop.
"Perhaps we should wait," Wajima said, but the exhortation fell on deaf ears. Shunpei re-emerged waving an innocuous-looking ring carved of yellow stone with silver engraving. Chimera eyed it; it looked similar to nearly every other ring Soma used, with the engraving in the stylized shape of a dragon. "Shunpei," Wajima said, and sighed. "Perhaps we should let Mayu test it."
"But," Shunpei said, face falling slightly.
"It's all right," Mayu said quickly. "I know how much you wanted Haruto to test the first one."
Soma looked between the three of them, a smile slowly spreading across his face. "Shunpei, you made a ring!"
"Three," Shunpei said. "Though the second one doesn't do much of anything useful. But I wanted you to be the first one to use the first one I made. Because. You know.'
"I would be honored," Soma said, and if Chimera hadn't known better, he would have said Soma was absolutely sincere. He might even have been partly sincere; as far as Chimera could tell, his joy in his friends' accomplishments was genuine. But he had been so focused on his memories of Koyomi and finding an appropriate place for her soul to sleep that Chimera doubted anything else carried a significant amount of weight. "Do you have any idea what it does?" Soma was asking.
"Um." Shunpei rubbed the back of his head. "Not really."
"That's okay," Soma said, with another smile. This one included Wajima as well. "That's usually how it goes."
"I was trying to put good thoughts into it," Shunpei said. "I know that's not how the process works, but I wanted it to be something nice."
"I'm sure it will be," Soma said, and slipped the new ring on his finger. The Driver around his waist looked somehow more natural here than it had in the bedroom, as if Soma were more comfortable wearing it or was at least pretending that he was. Chimera sprawled in a chair opposite Mayu's seat on the couch and tilted its head to the side to watch what – given what it knew about Shunpei – was sure to be a disaster.
Soma flipped the lever to switch the Driver's mode, and the standby chant echoed through the shop. Surreptitiously taking a deep breath, Soma scanned the ring. Chimera made a brief internal wager as to whether or not the ring would work at all, but the Driver successfully read it and announced its name.
Joy Please! the Driver called. Chimera sat up straighter.
From the angle where it had chosen to sit, Chimera couldn't quite see Soma's face. Even so, it could see that as soon as Joy had successfully scanned, Soma had changed significantly. His body language was looser, as if a great weight had fallen off his shoulders and he was subsequently barely tethered to the ground. Chimera didn't like it, even before Soma stepped up to Shunpei and wrapped his arms around him without warning.
Shunpei, being Shunpei, hugged him back. Soma said something quietly into Shunpei's ear, not meant for the rest of the room, but Chimera heard it anyway. Soma was thanking Shunpei for an amazing gift, and Shunpei's face lit up. Soma let go of his friend, squeezing his upper arms one last time before drawing away, and his gaze fell on Wajima. Chimera still couldn't see Soma's face, but the last remnants of chill Wajima had been harboring melted under whatever expression Soma had, and Soma hugged him, too.
Whatever Soma said to Wajima, Chimera couldn't hear it. Wajima stiffened, though, pulling away from Soma with a worried look. "Are you sure?" he said.
"Yes," Soma said. "I've never been so sure of anything in my life."
Wajima nodded abruptly, and gave Chimera a resigned look. "It's not that I don't trust your judgment, Haruto," he said quietly. "But I have reservations."
"I understand," Soma said. "It'll be okay. You'll see."
Chimera frowned at both of them, pushing the hair out of his eyes. It didn't bother him, normally, but for some reason, today it felt wrong. He'd barely recognized the minor sense of dissonance for what it was when it was pushed out of his mind by Soma turning around so that Chimera could finally see his face. He was smiling, brilliant and utterly empty, face blank despite its nominal configuration into what should have been an expression of joy. Chimera couldn't help it; he recoiled without thinking.
Out of the corner of its eye, Chimera saw Mayu's reaction. She smiled back, body language warm and welcoming, while Chimera tried to push farther back into its chair. The chair toppled over, spilling Chimera onto the floor. It rolled and came up on its feet, the hair on the back of its neck standing on end. Everyone in the room was staring at it with identical expressions of surprise, except for Soma. Soma's face was still empty, for all that it was arranged in what should have been an expression of warmth.
Chimera stepped backward without thinking about it, carefully circling around until it had the door at its back.
"What's wrong?" Soma asked. The awful smile had faded somewhat, but it was still tugging on Soma's features.
Chimera shook its head. "Take it off," it said.
Soma finally frowned, tilting his head to the side. "Why?" he asked, and then repeated, "What's wrong?" He stepped closer to Chimera, trapping it between against the door. Chimera couldn't open the door, not when the door opened inwards and it was pressed against the infernal thing. Its only option was to physically remove the ring from Soma's hand.
"It's all wrong," Chimera growled.
"I haven't felt like this in – in months," Soma said. "Years. Not since before my parents died."
Chimera reached for Soma's hand, not trying to be stealthy about it in the slightest. Soma avoided it gracefully, moving lightly and as if he hadn't noticed Chimera's movements at all. He circled around and laid his hands on Chimera's shoulders. He seemed taller, standing as relaxed as he was, and Chimera couldn't suppress the feeling of looking up even though it knew Kosuke and Soma were the same height.
"I meant what I said," Soma murmured, too quietly for anyone else to have heard, even if their hearing was enhanced the way Chimera's was. "Last night. I love you, and I'm not afraid to say it any more."
"That isn't love," Chimera snarled, not bothering to keep its voice down. "That thing is affecting your judgment."
"I feel happy," Soma said softly, stepping closer and pressing his lips to Chimera's jaw, just below where it met Chimera's ear. The familiar gesture felt obscene. Chimera flattened itself against the door, but it couldn't move any farther away. Over Soma's shoulder, it could see Soma's friends – his found family – watching with varying degrees of shock. Wajima wasn't looking at them at all, while Shunpei's mouth was literally hanging open.
Mayu locked eyes with Chimera when it looked at her, expression full of intensity as though she were trying very hard to convey something important. Chimera had no idea what; it was too busy trying not to crawl out of its skin as Soma leaned against it. Soma's heart hammered madly against Chimera's chest, rhythm rapid and just slightly uneven, adding to the sense of wrongness.
"That isn't happiness," Chimera said, and pushed Soma away.
Soma tripped and went sprawling, hands spread wide, and Chimera seized its opportunity. The Joy ring slipped off his finger easily, and Soma gasped in a ragged breath of air. His shoulders bowed inward, the emptiness draining out of his face to leave desperate longing behind. It lasted barely half a second before he slammed a mask of indifference over it, but Chimera had seen it.
"That," Soma said finally, still sitting on the floor. "That was remarkable." He sounded out of breath. Chimera unobtrusively moved the ring out of his reach, and Soma pushed to his feet without looking at anyone else. "I need some air," he said to no one in particular and vanished quickly enough that the door failed to close properly in his wake.
Chimera stood slowly, looking at the ring. It could see now that the stylized dragon was smiling, wearing the same empty expression as Soma had been. It was a remarkable piece of craftsmanship, to pack such an eerie expression so clearly with so few lines. Chimera tried to crush it in its fist.
"Here, now," Mayu said, rescuing the ring. Chimera hadn't even managed to dent it, although a mark was already blossoming in its fragile human palm. Mayu handed the ring off to Shunpei and ran her fingers gently over Chimera's borrowed skin, probing carefully at the bone beneath. Chimera hissed in pain and tried to pull its hand away, but Mayu's grip was surprisingly strong. "Let's put some ice on that," Mayu said.
"I'm sorry?" Shunpei said, looking quizzically at Chimera.
"Later," Mayu said, guiding Chimera into the kitchen. Chimera cast a glance over its shoulder at the still-open door. "Give him a few minutes," Mayu said, as if she knew Soma better than Chimera did. It had to concede that she wasn't wrong, though, and the ice pack felt good on its now throbbing palm.
"You saw it, right?" Chimera said, keeping its voice low.
"Saw what?" Mayu asked. She sighed, rearranging the towel around the ice pack. "I believe that you don't want to harm Haruto," she said carefully, as if choosing each word deliberately.
"That – that ring is harmful," Chimera said. It couldn't say exactly why Soma's empty face had unsettled it so much, only that the influence of the ring had smothered every trace of Soma.
"I haven't ever seen him look so happy," Mayu said. She tied off the ends of the towel, holding the ice tightly against Chimera's borrowed palm.
"It didn't look like Soma Haruto," Chimera said. "It was wearing his skin, but that wasn't him."
"You're being melodramatic," Mayu said tartly.
Chimera snorted in derision and left the kitchen. Someone had shut the front door while Chimera had been failing to make Mayu see reason, and it left the door hanging open again as it went to find Soma before he did something unadvisable.
Soma hadn't gone far; he was just around the side of the shop, staring moodily at his bike. It was dusty from the trip the night before, and Soma reached out to pull a leaf out from underneath the headlight before he saw Chimera watching.
"Do you want something?" he asked, clearly not wanting company.
Chimera shrugged, wandering over to the bike and tugging on the leaf Soma hadn't touched. It crumbled under his fingers, and he rubbed the dust against his thigh. Soma watched him, looking more annoyed than anything else, and Chimera circled the bike. There was a twig caught in the rear taillight, which must have been there since they'd taken the bike into the woods a thousand kilometers away. It was wedged in tightly enough that Chimera needed both hands to dig it out, and when he looked up, Soma was frowning at him.
"What happened to your hand?"
"Nothing." Chimera bent the twig in half, the dry wood snapping cleanly under very little stress, and then again, dropping the pieces to the ground.
Soma sighed, drawing both hands over his face. "Could you give me some time alone?" he said.
"No," Chimera returned, leaning carefully on the bike and deliberately misinterpreting Soma's words. "You're far too interesting to leave alone."
"That's not what I – Chimera." Soma folded his arms across his chest, looking like nothing so much as a sulky child. He was losing the edge of mania and despair that he'd worn when he'd fled the antique shop, body language shading into annoyed resignation. "You know that's not what I meant," he said, finally.
Chimera showed his teeth in what wasn't meant to be a smile, but Soma smiled at him anyway.
"Are you okay with staying here?" he asked, the question coming entirely out of left field as far as Chimera was concerned.
"Don't know why I wouldn't be," Chimera said. It didn't particularly care where it slept.
"Of course not," Soma said. He approached the bike tentatively, as if trying to work out how to dislodge Chimera without actually touching it; Chimera didn't feel like making it easy, which resulted in a somewhat awkward dance that left Soma pressed up against Chimera's side. "I was going to go for a ride," Soma said eventually.
Chimera left his arm where it was, comfortably draped over Soma's shoulder. "Are you okay?" he asked abruptly. The question wasn't quite motivated by wanting Soma in working order to fix Chimera's problem; he found that he actually cared about the answer. It was an odd sensation, similar but not quite the same as the sense of camaraderie he'd developed for Kosuke.
Soma went suddenly tense, and Chimera glanced over. Soma was looking at him suspiciously.
"What?" Chimera said, and it came out more defensively than he'd intended.
"Thank you," Soma said, squeezing Chimera into a quick hug that somehow turned into Soma inserting himself between Chimera and the bike and leaving Soma free to climb onto said bike. "I'll see you later," he added, and drove off without actually answering the question.
The ice was starting to numb Chimera's hand; it pulled the now-sodden towel away, looking speculatively at the road in the direction Soma had gone, and prodded mentally at the fact that it had actually wanted an answer. At some point over the past few months, Soma had wormed his way into Chimera's regard, and Chimera would be put out if something happened to him. Soma's little half-asleep declaration the night before had nothing to do with it, Chimera wanted to tell itself, but it had to admit that it had liked hearing the words.
"This is ridiculous," it said, squeezing the towel. The cold water stung against its bruised palm, and it grimaced before dropping the towel on the ground and mounting its own bike. It had intended to hunt immature Gates, but that was before Mayu had casually announced that there were still Phantoms running around.
The little PlaMonster Nitoh had occasionally used came when summoned, circling Chimera once before flying off in search of some sort of disturbance, while Chimera went in another direction to see what could be found.
Despite Mayu's statements, Chimera found nothing but frustration; there was no sign of any Phantoms at all, nothing it could sense either on its own or with the Green Griffin, and it also failed to run into Soma at any point. The city was teeming with people, all going about their individual business with the stolid security of a population that knew it wasn't going to fall prey to monsters despite the events of the previous year.
Chimera ended up on a bridge, bike parked on the walkway, leaning over the railing. The Griffin wobbled back, commanded to return once it had neared the end of its energy. It folded in on itself and Chimera stored it away again for recharging, but of course it would charge on Chimera's own energy and just deplete Chimera's limited mana stores further. It thought about slipping out of Nitoh's body as far as it could to find an immature Gate instead of a Phantom, but knowing that it could find a Phantom instead made it oddly reluctant to hunt Gates.
It's not like the Gate would be harmed in the process, it argued with itself; Soma wasn't damaged by repeated mana drains, after all. Or not much.It occurred to Chimera that it hadn't stuck around after draining any of the immature Gates it had hunted along Haruto's road trip to see what might happen to any of them, and it therefore did not actually have verifiable data regarding its assumptions. That it was vaguely disquieted by this realization it blamed entirely on Soma and his sensitivities, Chimera eventually decided.
The sun had dropped below the horizon and the air had gotten chilly enough that Chimera was gathering odd looks from passersby before it returned to the antique shop, but it was finding that it enjoyed the cold. It hadn't had much of an opportunity to experience weather, not when its true body was all but impervious to changing temperatures and had been sealed for centuries, and it was a little surprised to find out that it actually had a preference. Chimera flexed its borrowed fingers, feeling the cold air against its warm skin, and wandered into the antique shop without looking up.
"Where's Haruto?" it heard Shunpei ask.
"How should I know?" It lowered its hands and looked around. Mayu had gone, at some point, and the only two people in the room were Wajima and Shunpei. Chimera wondered distantly how the shop managed to stay open without any actual customers in it, but Shunpei was now wearing a distressed expression and not quite wringing his hands.
"Weren't you with him?" Shunpei asked.
"No?" Chimera said. "Soma doesn't need a babysitter," it clarified, because Shunpei wasn't looking reassured in the slightest.
"He's not answering his phone," Shunpei mumbled, perhaps not understanding that Soma not answering a phone call was definitely not a sign of trouble. Half the time he didn't appear to remember that he had a cell phone.
Shunpei hadn't been asking a question, though, which meant that Chimera wasn't required to give a response. It wandered through the shop, absently picking up and examining the various bits and pieces of kitsch that had been collected and were ostensibly part of the shop's inventory. It could feel Wajima's eyes tracking it, and without meaning to, it began to move like a predator.
"Shunpei," Wajima said sharply, and Chimera suppressed a flinch at the sudden sound. It had been nearly utterly silent in the shop, except for Shunpei slowly backing away, and Chimera flicked its gaze over to the teenager to see him behaving like prey.
Chimera grinned at Shunpei, just to see what he would do; Shunpei paled noticeably and slowly retreated to where Wajima stood without taking his eyes off Chimera. Chimera relaxed its stance, standing up straight and without either aggression or submission, letting its face go blank. Shunpei sidled around Wajima, vanishing into the area of the shop reserved for crafting the rings that Soma used, and Chimera turned its gaze to the old man.
"Your actions will have consequences, as long as you are under my roof," Wajima said. The words weren't a threat, merely a statement, filled only with quiet confidence. Wajima had nothing of submission in his stance, either, simply a certainty that he was in the heart of his territory. Chimera regarded him thoughtfully, tilting its head to the side. The old man had no basis for such surety, particularly given the less than subtle hostility he'd been displaying toward Chimera, but he was part of Soma's found family.
"I do what I please," Chimera said, flicking a finger lightly against something that looked delicate and rocking it on its stand. The little ornament wobbled and then steadied, no worse for the wear, but Wajima had come down firmly on the side of antagonist as far as Chimera was concerned.
"Causing Haruto pain will have consequences whether you're under my roof or not," Wajima said, not having backed down in the slightest during Chimera's miniature power play.
"Why would I cause him pain?" Chimera said, pacing slowly around the shelf until it was no longer between it and Wajima. "He's the only one of you I actually like."
Wajima blinked suddenly, the overt air of hostility easing sharply. "In that case, you're welcome as long as he's here," he said, but it had distinctly less of a reluctant overtone than when he'd said the same phrase several hours before. "Try not to break anything." He turned his back on Chimera and followed Shunpei's route into the back of the shop.
Chimera stared after him, not entirely sure what had just happened. Or – it knew that Wajima was less likely to try to murder it in its sleep, but it wasn't clear on the why. It hadn't said anything out of the ordinary, and it was fairly sure that telling the old man that it essentially actively disliked all of them was insulting. It shook its head and went to make tea. Kosuke had liked tea, and Chimera sometimes found it soothing in the face of aggravating confusion.
Shunpei had migrated into the kitchen ahead of him, and Chimera recognized the odd scent as an attempt to make dinner; it had needed the visual cue to identify what it was smelling as edible. Shunpei looked at it with wide eyes, still acting like prey even though Chimera wasn't actively trying to move like a predator, and actually flinching when Chimera started rummaging in the cupboards for tea.
"I'm not going to eat you," Chimera said. It could have, given that Shunpei's status as a Gate meant that he was capable of generating mana. Out of curiosity, Chimera laid a hand on the back of Shunpei's neck; the contact sharpened its perceptions, and it could tell that the Phantom Shunpei might have generated had been destroyed.
"What are you doing?" Shunpei said, voice only wavering a little.
"Soma Haruto killed your Phantom," Chimera said, pulling its hand away. "Even if I wanted to eat you, there's nothing appetizing there." It deliberately did not mention that it could still siphon off the mana that Shunpei was generating and dissipating; without having suppressed his own Phantom, Shunpei would never learn to direct his mana, nor would he be able to generate significant amounts of it, but it did seem like a waste that what little there was didn't get to be put to use.
The statement, despite Chimera's tact, did not appear to make Shunpei feel any better, if his expression was any indication. Chimera ignored him and made the tea around Shunpei's initial immobility and his subsequent hesitant attempts to continue cooking, sending Soma a questioning text almost as an afterthought while waiting for the water to boil. It finally withdrew from the kitchen, tea in hand, to claim Soma's spot on the couch. It wasn't a particularly comfortable couch, but Chimera drew up its feet to sit crosslegged around the hot cup of tea. The heat contrasted with the vague chill of the air was just as enjoyable as the cold wind it had felt while driving, and it caught itself thinking that staying in Kosuke's body was perhaps not the horrifying fate it had first assumed.
Chimera narrowed its eyes at nothing in particular; it was getting complacent, if it was starting to feel that being locked in a human body was any sort of acceptable, and it was fast approaching time for Soma to hold up his end of the bargain. Or at least, the end of the bargain that didn't involve providing a steady supply of mana. The tea grew cold in Chimera's borrowed hands as it sat quietly, running through the now-familiar tangle of threads binding it to Kosuke's body over and over, looking for a weak point that didn't seem to exist.