Haruto was freezing, in the too-light jacket that he'd been wearing inside. He'd been too upset to get something heavier on the way out the door, and then Chimera had been solicitously distracting enough that Haruto had just needed to get away. He hadn't thought about the cold while standing still in the sunlight, and it wasn't until his fingers were nearly frozen that he'd regretted not having at least a pair of gloves.
The city spread out below him as he stood with his back to the stone garden where Fueki had tried to return Koyomi's soul. Haruto had wondered, since then, whether success on Fueki's part would have essentially meant the death of the Koyomi that he knew; she had been an animated magical construct in the shape of Fueki's daughter, without the original Koyomi's soul or memories. Haruto had never known the original Koyomi, and it was his friend whose essence he carried with him. Had his Koyomi met the soul of the original, in some sort of afterlife, Haruto had also occasionally wondered.
It hurt, letting his thoughts go over what-might-have-beens and how Fueki hadn't thought of Haruto's friend as a real person, but Haruto couldn't stop himself from probing at the thoughts. He knew that were Koyomi there, she would have told him to stop being ridiculous. But of course, if Koyomi had been there, he wouldn't be thinking about how her father didn't acknowledge her existence, in that he wanted the soul of his daughter rather than the doll that he'd created.
Obscene, that's what it was; what Fueki had done was obscene. His failed attempt at a resurrection had been an act of creation, even rooted in the utter destruction of the first Sabbath, and for him to disregard it was selfishness and inhumanity of the highest order. Or that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, Haruto told himself, and stepped away from the edge of the cliff. He settled at the base of a column, below the manacles still hanging half-open from the day of the second Sabbath.
"That's not what you're really upset about," he said, quietly enough that any passersby – not that he expected any – wouldn't be able to hear, and hugged his knees against his chest. It was a little warmer, that way, and he tucked his fingers into the space behind his calves. They tingled a little, as some of the chill receded, and he dropped his head forward.
The Joy ring, Shunpei's attempt at creating happiness, had been horribly wrong; Haruto could see it now, at the remove of several hours and the cold wind driving at nearly every inch of his body. He'd felt light, when he put it on, and the relief at not having to carry the weight of pain had been so great that he hadn't had room for anything else. When Chimera had pulled it off his finger, the crushing burden of reality had almost been too much. He hadn't been able to breathe, under the responsibility of laying Koyomi to rest and getting Chimera out of Nitoh's body and the prospect of living without Koyomi or even a facsimile of Nitoh, and even the prospect of going on without Chimera.
Haruto curled more tightly around himself, breathing as deeply and evenly as he could against the memory of everything pouring over him at once. Wearing the ring, though, would have gone worse very quickly; he hadn't cared. He'd felt a momentary burst of warmth for his friends, but it hadn't been able to sustain itself in the face of the relentless barrage from the ring. He hadn't been able to see it at the time, but it was all too clear now.
Shunpei had tried so hard, too; Haruto was going to have to find some way to encourage him to keep working while at the same time making sure he never made anything in that vein again. Maybe Wajima could help with that, Haruto thought, and the added responsibility eased slightly. Shunpei was a good ally and a better friend, and the last thing Haruto wanted was to cause him distress.
"Pity he hadn't made that while Fueki was still alive," Haruto muttered into his jeans. If he could have put that on Fueki's finger, it would have neutralized him quite effectively.
The phone in his pocket buzzed again, and Haruto reluctantly pulled it out. He didn't get to it before the call went to voice mail, but the lock screen cheerfully informed him that he had six missed calls and twelve text messages, and he felt that all of it was overkill. The most recent call wasn't from anyone at the shop, though, it was from Rinko. Haruto frowned.
None of the texts were from Rinko; they were mainly from Shunpei and Mayu, as were the rest of the missed calls, and they wanted to know where he'd gone. There was a single text from Chimera, consisting of a question mark. Haruto sighed, and called Rinko back.
"I hear you're back in Tokyo," Rinko said without preamble.
"It's good to talk to you too," Haruto said dryly.
"Has Mayu gotten you up to speed on the current situation?" Rinko asked, ignoring the statement entirely.
"Uh," Haruto said. "Situation?"
"She's been helping," Rinko said. "At first it was just Phantoms, although I think we've – well, mostly it's been Mayu. Most of the Phantoms are gone; we've gone from a couple a week to one every two or three weeks, and the last one was almost a month ago."
"That's good," Haruto said. None of what Rinko said sounded like it merited the phrase the current situation.
"Until this week, anyway," Rinko said. "We've seen three Phantoms as of yesterday, including the weird one."
The hair on the back of Haruto's neck stood up. "The weird one?" he said carefully. Mayu had mentioned something about seeing one of them, too, but he'd lost track of it in the chaos of coming home.
"When Mayu, uh, defeated it, it left behind a body," Rinko said. Haruto could hear the tapping of a keyboard in the background. "Wakabayashi Kaneko. The name familiar to you?"
Haruto shook his head, remembered that Rinko couldn't see him over the phone, and verbalized a negative.
"She is – was – a student at Todai." Rinko paused and tapped at the keyboard again. "Studying agriculture. She was from Aichi, but she's been living here for the past three years."
Something sparked in the back of Haruto's brain, but it wouldn't come to the forefront. He left it alone; if he didn't prod at it, he might be able to coax it into conscious thought. "What happened?" he asked.
Rinko blew out a frustrated breath. "That's what I was hoping you could tell me. Mayu was just as surprised as I was when what we thought was a Phantom turned out to be a college student."
"I've seen similar cases," Haruto told her. "Twice. The Phantom didn't properly separate from the Gate before maturing, but the Gate still died."
"Wakabayashi wasn't dead," Rinko said. "At least, not until – the coroner couldn't pin down a time of death." Paper rustled in the background. "This was day before yesterday. Tuesday. He thinks she died sometime between Friday and Tuesday, and isn't willing to commit to anything more specific. Wait, did you say you've seen this?"
"Twice," Haruto said again. "I've been looking through Fueki's library to see if there have been similar incidents in the past, but I haven't had any luck so far."
"Three times makes a pattern," Rinko said. "Where?"
Haruto told her, adding that he'd known the second victim.
"The piano player?" Rinko sounded surprised, and saddened, and Haruto wished he hadn't had to deliver bad news about someone with whom she'd been acquainted, if only briefly. "Damn. Who was the other one?"
"I have no idea." The wind picked up and Haruto shivered.
"I didn't know he'd come back to Japan," Rinko said.
"He had a Tokyo address on his driver's license," Haruto said, and the same something pinged off the back of his brain, more strongly than before. It stubbornly refused to come into full view, and he gave up chasing after it.
"So what I wanted to talk to you about," Rinko said, and Haruto twitched.
"That wasn't it?" he said.
"What? No. I mean, yes, but not exactly. There's more." Rinko paused long enough for Haruto to hear the keyboard for a third time. He was starting to dislike the sound intensely. "Apparently Wakabayashi vanished a few weeks ago. There's a missing person report, filed by her roommate, dated the 3rd. However, she was acting weird before disappearing. Wrecking things and denying she'd done it, pranks with odd lights that she'd also denied, and then she collapsed. When emergency services took her to a hospital, she was apparently just asleep."
"That sounds like mana drain," Haruto said slowly. "But she shouldn't have been able to expend it without training and equipment, even if she was a Gate."
"That's the thing," Rinko said. "Some of the lights described looked a lot like the portals Mayu uses. And you. She walked out of the hospital in the middle of the night, after she'd been admitted for observation, and no one saw her until, um. Yes."
"Did the Phantom separate from her completely?" Haruto asked. He couldn't dwell on the Gate's death, or on the wasted potential on yet another of Fueki's victims; he had to compartmentalize it into useful information if he wanted to prevent it from happening again.
"It did," Rinko confirmed. "Just after we saw the body. Mayu destroyed it."
"That matches what I saw." Haruto dropped his forehead to his knees again. "I think you're right about this being a pattern."
"Can you…" Rinko trailed off.
"I don't know. I need to look through the rest of Fueki's archives, in case we're not dealing with something entirely new." A guilty pang went through him; the books and Fueki's probably-useless laptop were back at the antique shop, but Haruto had completely forgotten about them in the face of his own personal problems.
"Keep me posted," Rinko said, without a trace of condemnation; she just assumed he was doing everything he could. "I'll let you know if we find another one."
"Or I'll let you know," Haruto said. Better to prevent the abnormal Phantoms than just react to them though it was, he had no idea how to go about finding them before the Phantom started to break free. The very least he could do was go back to the antique shop and keep looking for clues in the past.
The drive back was colder than the drive out, but it didn't occur to Haruto until he was nearly at the shop that he could have used Connect to pull a warmer jacket out of his closet. The cold had frozen his brain, he decided, and parked his bike next to Chimera's. Blowing on his hands to warm them up, he walked the short distance around the shop to the front, but the scene visible through the rarely-opened curtains on either side of the door caught his attention.
Chimera was sitting cross-legged on the couch, staring into a cup of tea, while both Wajima and Shunpei cast wary glances at him from across the room. Mayu sat opposite Chimera, paging through what looked like one of Fueki's books. Haruto tamped down the inexplicable rush of jealousy; she was doing what was supposed to be his job, and she was more conscientious about it than he had been. It's not like you've been around to help, he reminded himself, but all that did was bring the guilt back without dispelling the jealousy. Haruto took another few seconds to smooth out his expression before walking through the door.
"Welcome to – oh, you're back," Wajima said, immediately followed by, "What happened to your jacket?"
"Nothing," Haruto muttered. He could feel how cold he was now that he was inside, and now that he was in something resembling a comfortable temperature, he started shivering. "I didn't bring it."
"Where did you go?" Shunpei didn't quite drag him into the center of the room, but it was a close thing. Haruto shook him off. "We've been trying to call you for hours."
"I was, uh." He couldn't say he'd been busy; all he'd been doing was try to get a handle on his own thoughts, which made him worse than useless. "Sorry," he muttered.
"Welcome back," Mayu said absently, and pushed one of the books toward the couch. "Come help."
"We saved you dinner," Shunpei said helpfully, and Haruto escaped to the kitchen with a sense of relief. He couldn't help but notice that Chimera hadn't so much as looked at him the entire time, much less said anything. Haruto bit his lip, staring at the plate Shunpei had thoughtfully set aside. He didn't feel like eating, although the vaguely hollow sensation through his middle told him he was probably hungry.
Stop causing trouble, he snapped at himself, and picked up the plate.
"Haruto," Mayu said, from the living room, and he poked his head around the doorway. "When you have a minute," she added. "You should eat first."
The reminder from yet another person to meet his basic physical needs, as if he couldn't do it on his own, made Haruto want to do precisely the opposite in a fit of pique, destroying the fragile sense of equilibrium he'd managed while talking to Rinko. He took a deep breath and ignored his irrational emotional response. It didn't help that he could see that Mayu kept looking at him while he ate, and then looking away, and he ended up scraping the majority of what Shunpei had thoughtfully saved for him into the trash.
He'd gotten as far as cleaning and washing the plate, and was in the middle of drying it and his chopsticks when he felt rather than heard someone come into the kitchen. He glanced over his shoulder to see Chimera lounging in the doorway. "What is it?" he asked.
"I want out," Chimera said.
"Out?" Haruto didn't follow.
"Out," Chimera repeated, and gestured at himself. "This is not acceptable."
"I need more time." Haruto finished drying the plate; his hands had finally warmed up in the hot water, but he still felt chilled down to the bone. "There are things going on."
"There will always be something going on," Chimera said, pacing closer. "There will always be another case, another Phantom, something else to fight. You made me a promise, and I intend for you to keep it."
Haruto opened his mouth to tell Chimera that he'd work on getting Chimera out of Kosuke's body as soon as he'd taken care of whatever was causing the abnormal Phantoms. What came out instead was, "I'll miss you." What was it about Chimera that kept twisting his words around? Haruto pressed his lips together, looking away from whatever reaction Chimera had, and tried again. "As soon as I can. As soon as we've figured out whatever is creating new Phantoms and stop it."
"Miss me, or miss Nitoh Kosuke?" Chimera said, after several seconds of silence.
Haruto whipped his gaze back around, glaring at the Phantom possessing his dead friend's body. "I meant you," he ground out. "You know I'm not talking about Nitoh."
Chimera crossed his arms, leaning against the door in a gesture so unlike Kosuke that Haruto almost couldn't tell that he was wearing Kosuke's face. "Are you really sure about that?" he said. "That you're not just stalling because you miss your crush, and I'm the closest thing you can get?"
Haruto punched him in the jaw. He regretted it as soon as he did it, although not because of the action itself. The blow barely turned Chimera's head, but it felt as though Haruto had broken every bone in his hand. He backed off, cradling the injured appendage. "That's – I think we're done here," he said, and walked out of the room before he could say something else he regretted. "Mayu," he said, and she took a long enough time to meet his eyes to make it clear that she'd heard every word. It wasn't as if either of them had been trying to be quiet. "You wanted to talk to me about something?" he said.
"I, uh," she stammered in an uncharacteristic display of uncertainty. "It can wait," she said finally, and nudged a heavy volume toward him. "I could use some help, though." As if it wasn't his job to begin with.
Fueki's archive made for a dry distraction, but at least he could pretend to concentrate on it and not talk to anyone. Haruto didn't want to think about anything except the problem at hand, not when Chimera had finally demonstrated that it was capricious and inhuman and that it didn't actually feel anything at all for anyone outside itself.
By the time Haruto was ready to call it a night, the living room had emptied and his hand had stiffened enough that moving it was painful. He closed the volume he'd failed to find anything useful in and went looking for something resembling ice. There was nothing, but a long soak in the bathtub during which he tried very hard not to think of anything at all loosened the muscles enough that he could at least bend his fingers. Nothing felt broken, he thought, and laughed that after a year of fighting Phantoms without serious injury, he could have broken his hand on a friend's face.
That was if Chimera could even be considered a friend, Haruto thought dully, thoughts running free now that he was actively drying off and putting on his pajamas. He was more attached to Chimera than he'd thought he was, more than he wanted to admit, but he wouldn't deliberately back out on their agreement, no matter what Chimera thought. Try to persuade Chimera to stay a while longer, maybe, but Haruto wouldn't actively try to manipulate the Phantom. Chimera wasn't in the bedroom when Haruto went in, and he had no idea where he had gone. He told himself he didn't care, but it took him a long time to fall asleep.
Chimera remained largely absent for the next few days, surfacing only long enough to remind Haruto that he hadn't vanished and that he still had expectations regarding the contract before going wherever it was that he went. The bike stayed in the little cul-de-sac next to the shop, not moving at all, and Haruto thought Chimera couldn't be going far. He resolutely refused to dwell on what the Phantom was doing, reminding himself over and over again that Chimera wasn't human and never had been, and that pining after him would only cause trouble.
It still hurt.
Haruto pored over Fueki's archive as a distraction, searching through each volume for anything resembling the abnormal Phantoms both he and Mayu had encountered, but there was nothing. Most of the information seemed apocryphal at best, and there were some accounts that Haruto, after puzzling out the archaic language, doubted entirely. Mayu did no better, for her part, alternating between the laptop and the physical books.
"This is hopeless," she said on the third day, closing a particularly heavy volume with a bang and dropping it on the floor. Haruto jumped, nearly dropping his own book. He'd nearly finished it, not that he'd found anything helpful. Every mention of creating a Phantom seemed to assume that the Gate died during the process and that was the end of it. "Didn't he have his own notes?"
Haruto frowned. "Now that you mention it," he said. There were a few lines scribbled here and there in the margins of some of the books, but there was a distinct lack of anything Fueki himself had written. Given what he'd been trying to do, there should have been an extensive set of notes somewhere. Although why Mayu thought they would be useful, he had no idea. "Did I miss something, back at the house?"
"If we're going to look, it has to be today," Mayu said. "It's being torn down."
"What, what?" Haruto did drop the book this time, and it narrowly missed his toes. "Why?"
Mayu shrugged. "No one to claim the property, so it's been sold off."
Of course, Haruto thought, but he still hated that there would be one less memory of Koyomi. "Let's go, then," he said, standing.
"What, now?" Despite her words, Mayu was on her feet almost before Haruto, and she beat him to the door. "Are you coming?" she asked.
Haruto remembered warmer clothing, and the two of them made good time moving out of the city. He was surprised when a third bike fell in behind him and he glanced over to see Chimera's distinctive machine; Chimera himself wearing the usual inadequate amount of clothing. On the up side, Haruto told himself, Chimera was at least wearing a helmet. Mayu was much less sanguine, when she looked over at a stoplight, but Haruto motioned for her to just keep going. Despite looking very much like she wanted to argue, Mayu obeyed.
"So what are we doing out here?" Chimera asked brightly when all three of them had parked near what had been Fueki's house. It hadn't been touched, as far as Haruto could tell; he'd had a momentary flash of anxiety that everything inside of it would have been removed in preparation for demolition, but apparently not.
"Seeing if Fueki left notes," Haruto said.
Chimera made a face and elected to wander toward the beach rather than join them in the house. Haruto watched him sit on what had to be freezing sand, stretching as though he were enjoying the summer sun rather than the dubious warmth of the tail end of December. With an unpleasant jolt, Haruto realized that it was nearly Christmas. There hadn't been decorations in the shop, although if he thought about it, there had been displays of lights throughout the city. He just hadn't paid attention.
"What?" Mayu asked, and he shook his head.
"Nothing. Let's go inside." If Fueki had had a set of notes, Haruto was forced to concede some time later, he'd hidden them well. There was nothing to be found. "Did he have anywhere else he, you know." Haruto gestured. "Stored things."
Mayu shook her head. "We were trained here. Or at least I was trained here."
"Maybe he had some sort of base of operations as Wiseman," Haruto said, but there was no one left alive who would have been able to answer where it might have been. He and Kosuke had been thorough in defeating Wiseman's closest allies.
"Haruto," Mayu said, sounding hesitant.
"Hm?" Haruto turned, not really paying attention through an attempt to reason out where Fueki might have situated his other base of operations.
"It's about Chimera," Mayu said, now past hesitant and deep into reluctant. Something about the tone finally pulled Haruto out of his rumination, and he blinked.
"What about Chimera?" he said.
"I know – I mean, you're – it's not really my – I'm worried," Mayu said, the words tumbling over each other in a rush.
"He's not going to rampage around, if that's what you mean," Haruto said, not sure what she was getting at. "He's been patient for the last few months, he's not going to start anything now. Not before we finish this."
"What? No," Mayu said, blinking. "I meant I'm worried about you."
"I'm fine," Haruto said. It was even mostly true; he was fine, or he would be, because he had to be. No one else could do what he did, even if Mayu was improving in leaps and bounds. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"I'm worried about the possible side effects," Mayu said.
Haruto almost didn't parse the sentence at first, it made so little sense. "The what?" he said, finally.
"Possible side effects," Mayu said again, and when it still made no sense to Haruto, she elaborated. "Of the repeated mana drain."
Haruto blinked. "It hasn't happened that often," he said, which was true. He hadn't been in enough protracted fights, especially not since Fueki's failed plans, not that Chimera had anything to do with it.
"Are you sure?" Mayu pressed, still inexplicably looking worried. "I know you trust him, but."
Haruto began to think they were having two entirely different conversations. "Chimera?" he hazarded, and at Mayu's nod, he frowned. "What does he have to do with anything?"
"I know you know what you're doing," Mayu said, hands up in defense, "but I'm just worried that he's – I don't want – if you're okay with him draining your mana, then okay, but I just want you to know that I'm here for you as a friend."
"Draining my – you think Chimera is feeding off me?" Haruto couldn't stifle the urge to laugh; Mayu was so far off base that he could only find it funny. "That's… that's ridiculous."
"You – you didn't know?" Mayu sat down, burying her face in her hands. "Maybe I'm wrong," she said, voice muffled. "But when I walked in on you that morning, I was so sure."
Haruto opened his mouth to tell her Chimera was doing no such thing, but he suddenly wasn't sure. He thought he would have known if Chimera was pulling energy out of him, would have felt the drain and the fatigue, and it occurred to him how well he slept every time he and Chimera were together. The implication was like a blow to the gut, made worse in that he couldn't say with any certainty that Chimera wouldn't have drained his mana without his permission; Chimera might very well have interpreted it as his right under the terms of their contract. "I, uh, I need a minute," he said.
Whatever reply Mayu might have made was cut off by the sound of a commotion outside. "The police?" she said instead; technically they were breaking and entering. It didn't sound like law enforcement, though, not unless Rinko had failed to tell them that the police had been equipped with grenade launchers. Haruto dashed outside, grateful for the distraction, looking first for Chimera and second for the source of what he was almost sure had been an explosion.
Chimera was still on the beach, but he was no longer alone. A Phantom easily twice his size was advancing on him, and he was surrounded by chunks of rock and debris. Haruto didn't think he was bleeding, but he didn't pause to find out. He ran forward, pulling the Flame ring out of its customary place and scanning it across the WizarDriver. Mayu was right behind him, beige armor settling over her as she ran. Haruto had the same brief thought as always, the question of why her armor looked so different, before he put it aside.
The Phantom on the beach swung massive arms ending not in hands but in what looked like heavy stone disks at Chimera, and Chimera rolled out of the way just barely in time, ducking directly underneath the Phantom's legs. A bolt of energy lanced out of his hands, catching the Phantom right below the waist, and Haruto heard Mayu choke.
"Did he hit it where I think he hit it?" she said.
Haruto started to smile in response, although she couldn't see it under his armor, and then a violent wave of nausea ripped through him. He disengaged the transformation just barely in time, leaning against one of the stones and unable to focus on anything else. He was dimly aware of the fight in the background, Chimera dancing around the Phantom and beating it into the ground.
His physical distress told him that the Phantom fell into the non-standard category, but by the time Haruto regained any measure of control, it was too late to stop Chimera from killing it. The Phantom raised its arms, clearly nearly at the end of its rope, and made as if to bring its conjoined hands down to crush Chimera; Chimera, channeling Buffa, ducked under the Phantom's blow and pushed off the sand to slam both feet into the Phantom's chest. It fell, shaking the ground with a crash as its chest split open and a human body tumbled out.
The nausea abated suddenly enough to leave Haruto lightheaded; he pushed Chimera aside and ran forward. The Phantom's form flickered in and out, half-present in a disorienting enough display to threaten to bring the nausea right back, and Haruto tried to ignore it. The man now lying on the beach wasn't quite dead; he struggled weakly, trying to move away, eyes rolling in terror. Haruto skidded to a halt, dropping to his knees.
"It's okay," Haruto said, but the man was too far gone to listen. He just continued to thrash, limbs growing more sluggish and uncoordinated. "Don't move," Haruto said, trying to hold him still. Even he could tell that the former Gate was dying, and the struggle was just making it worse. "Chimera, give me the Joy ring."
"I will not," Chimera said, from outside the space created by the Phantom's half-faded body.
"Now!" Haruto snapped without looking, and whatever tone he'd used seemed to work, because he felt the ring drop into his outstretched hand. Haruto slipped the ring on the Gate's least-mangled finger, working it over the broken joint, and scanned the ring across his belt.
The effect was instantaneous; the Gate went from terrified to completely relaxed, and he looked at Haruto with something resembling sanity. The barest hint of a smile curved his ruined mouth, and he closed his hand around Haruto's.
"It's going to be all right," Haruto said softly. He held the former Gate's hand as the man died with some semblance of peace. It took him a moment after the former Gate's chest had stilled to get himself under control again; when he thought he could speak without screaming, he removed the ring and flipped it toward Chimera. "We need to know who he was," he said, and his voice barely wavered at all. Either the Phantom's body had dissolved with its host's death, this time, or Chimera had disposed of it, and Haruto did not want to know which one it was.
Mayu stepped forward, looking as upset as Haruto felt, and started going through what was left of the man's pockets. Haruto couldn't quite make himself do the same thing; he just stared at what had been a human being.
"I have an ID," Mayu said. Haruto reached for it; the driver's license – gold status, the Gate had been a conscientious driver – showed a Tokyo address, and a name. Haruto committed both to memory, wiped down the license and the wallet, and replaced them. Mayu frowned at him, and Haruto shook his head.
"We should call Rinko," he said. His voice was thick in his throat, and it took him two tries to stand up. Chimera was watching him with an unreadable expression, soiled Joy ring still in his hand. When he saw Haruto looking, he paced over to the water and began rinsing the ring in the ocean. Haruto texted Rinko instead of calling, after looking at his phone for several seconds, and then left the remains of the Gate on the beach without looking to see if Chimera and Mayu were following.
Haruto didn't want to talk to either one of them, using the acquisition of a glass of water as a pretext to avoid speaking, but it didn't last long. Chimera was watching him with narrowed eyes, but it was Mayu who actually spoke.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"It was the Phantom," Haruto said shortly. "I'm fine."
"You have adverse reactions to the corrupted Phantoms?" Mayu said.
"Every time," Chimera said, traitor that he was. Haruto jammed his helmet onto his head and drove off while neither of them were looking directly at him.
Haruto was unprepared when Rinko herself showed up at the antique shop much later that evening; it was close to midnight, and she looked exhausted, but when he opened the door she folded him into a hug. "Welcome home," she said.
"I'm back," he replied, but it made him smile a little. "I wish it was under better circumstances."
"It's not exactly something I'm not used to," Rinko said, which Haruto had to concede wasn't exactly wrong. Between Rinko's day job and the help she'd given him, she'd seen quite a bit.
"I didn't know who else to call, about the, ah." He swallowed. "About the Gate."
"Ah." Rinko sat down opposite the couch, automatically taking the chair nearest Haruto's usual spot. He mirrored the action without thinking about it, the familiar dynamic giving him a little of a sense of stability. "Kojima Takashi, born 1968, graduated high school, then college, and has worked full time as an accountant at the same company since 1991. Married in 1994, no children, wife passed away in a car accident last year. He was reported missing when he didn't show up for work two weeks ago and wasn't in his home." Rinko paused, fingers moving across the screen on her phone. "He didn't take time off when his wife passed away, or after that; he's been putting in overtime hours for the past several months."
There was something there, closer to the surface, but Haruto didn't quite have it yet. "Did he – was there a similar pattern before he vanished? Pranks? Lights?"
"His coworkers did report some odd lights in his office on a Friday," Rinko said. "But he denied seeing anything, and no one wanted to push it any farther. He didn't go in to the company over the weekend, which he'd been doing, but it wasn't until Monday that someone went looking for him."
"There's something I'm missing," Haruto said. He could feel it, nearly clear enough to take shape, but he knew that if he pushed at it, it would vanish.
"If you're missing something, then I am, too." Rinko sighed. "I can't tell if these people had anything in common at all, except that they were all Gates."
"Gates who apparently half-generated Phantoms without another Phantom to send them into despair." Haruto rubbed at his eyes. "I'm sorry you had to come out here so late for nothing."
"Hey," Rinko said, and she was smiling when he looked at her. "It's not nothing. I'm glad you're back."
"Yeah, me too."
"I miss Nitoh," Rinko said unexpectedly.
Haruto choked out a little bit of a laugh. "Yeah, me too. It's been weird, with – with Chimera."
"I can't imagine," Rinko said. "The Sabbath was hard on everyone, but." She bit her lip. "It was rough, to lose two people on the same day, and having you leave so soon after that wasn't easy either."
Haruto froze, the pattern he'd thought he'd started to see finally coming clear.
"I'm sorry," Rinko was saying. "I shouldn't have said that."
"What? No," Haruto said. "Rinko, the Gates, the abnormal Phantoms, they were all in Tokyo during the Sabbath."
"Wait, what?" Rinko sat up straight. "Do you think there's a connection?"
"I don't – I don't know." Haruto stood and started pacing. "Gates tend to be attracted to large numbers of people, that's why Wiseman sent his team to hunt Gates in Tokyo to begin with. It might just be coincidence, since Tokyo has more Gates than the rest of the country, but…" He trailed off, chewing at his lip. "But I don't think that it is."
"Something during the Sabbath, then?" Rinko asked carefully. "We all had our mana drained, until Chimera broke the connection."
"Which doesn't do anything to a normal person," Haruto said, feeling his way along the potential connection. "Just makes them tired. Like me," he added with a self-deprecating laugh. "A wizard having mana drained doesn't have any other adverse effects."
"But the Gates," Rinko prompted.
"I don't know." Haruto flung himself back onto the couch. "I have to – there might be something." The table was still covered in part of Fueki's library. "Something in the way that Phantoms are created. I don't know enough."
"If you keep looking at it from this end, I'll see if I can find any other missing person reports with similar circumstances," Rinko said, and stood. Haruto walked her to the door, closing it behind her and then leaning on it.
He was on to a pattern, he was sure of it. There had to be a connection between the Sabbath and the abnormal Phantoms, something that was driving some of the Gates to despair and not others. A chill ran through Haruto as he remembered what Rinko had probably put together immediately; Shunpei and Rinko were both Gates, had both been at the Sabbath, had both been forcibly drained by Fueki's ritual. Haruto felt sick at the thought of either of his friends turning into one of the abominations he'd seen; he knew he shouldn't be more horrified at the thought of it happening to someone he knew, but he was.
Swallowing hard, Haruto pushed off of the door and opened one of the volumes he'd gone through before; it had had sections he hadn't thought relevant on his first read-through, but now that he had more of an idea of what he was looking for, he needed to revisit everything he'd already checked. There was no time to waste in sleeping, not if Rinko or Shunpei could be in danger. Haruto suppressed the impulse to check on Shunpei right that minute; his friend wouldn't thank him for waking him, and at least two of the reports had recorded incidents happening before the Gates had disappeared.
"Shunpei is fine," Haruto muttered to himself. "Rinko is fine."
His mind wouldn't quiet, though, and let him work; what if Mayu was next, he thought, or Yuzuru, or Yamamoto, even though he didn't think wizards would be vulnerable. What if he himself fell victim to the obscenity that the half-born Phantoms became? Haruto dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and knew he would rather die, which wasn't helpful.
"What are you doing?" came Nitoh's voice, and Haruto's head snapped up.
It was Chimera, not Nitoh, and if he hadn't been talking to Rinko, he wouldn't have been startled. It was just that seeing Rinko had brought back memories of the previous year with surprising intensity, and between the sense of nostalgia and Chimera's recent withdrawal, it was hard not to see Nitoh at first. Haruto looked away, back to the book on the table. "I think I have a lead," he said.
"That's good," said Chimera. He dropped onto the chair that Rinko had vacated earlier, swinging one leg over the side. "What is it?"
"Why do you care?" Haruto snapped.
"I care," Chimera said, looking hurt. He had no reason to look hurt; he was the one who had been draining Haruto's mana behind his back, and then had the temerity to claim that Haruto was using him as a substitute for Nitoh.
"You think I'm just using you because I can't get what I want," Haruto said. "Why do you care about what I'm doing?"
Chimera tilted his head back, eyes half-closed. "I care that you handle your situation and then fulfill your contract, Soma Haruto," he said, and now Haruto couldn't see Nitoh in him at all.
"Right," Haruto said. "Because you don't care about me, either. You just want out."
Chimera stretched its lips in what wasn't a smile, wide and brittle and almost a caricature of happiness. "You think you know me?" he said. "You think you know everything." He stretched, the chair creaking around him, and Chimera settled with both feet planted gracefully on the floor. "You don't even know how much you don't know, Soma Haruto."
"I know you've been draining mana from me every time we're – we're together." Haruto couldn't quite keep his voice from hitching, despite his efforts to keep it even.
"That was never a secret," Chimera said, so easily that Haruto almost didn't catch the acknowledgement.
"You violated – you should have asked first," Haruto said. He would have given Chimera his mana freely, especially if it would keep Chimera from hunting innocent potential Gates.
"We had a contract," Chimera said. "You give me what I need. Those were the terms."
Haruto didn't have an answer for that; he settled for ignoring Chimera entirely and flipping through the volume in front of him. Having Chimera's unsettling stare pointed at him made it hard to concentrate, though, and when Haruto found himself re-reading the same page for the third time and still not retaining any of it, the last frayed bits of his temper snapped. "Go somewhere else," he said.
"I don't think so," Chimera replied.
Haruto snatched the volume off the table, piling others on top of it and heading for the stairs. He was not going to get into a shouting match with Chimera in the middle of the night, in the middle of the antique shop. He had better control of himself than that.
Chimera followed him, drifting languidly up to attach himself to Haruto's wake without apparently expending any effort at all despite Haruto's rapid pace. Haruto stopped abruptly, half-hoping Chimera would bump into him and give him an excuse to physically push the Phantom away. Chimera brought himself to a halt bare millimeters from Haruto's back, almost but not quite brushing against his jacket. Haruto spun around, the edges of the books in his hands catching on Chimera's chest. He lost his grip at the unexpected resistance, and they tumbled to the floor.
"Stop following me," Haruto said, voice tight.
"I'm not…" Chimera blinked and looked away, mouth working as if he couldn't get the words out. "I don't want to," he said, finally.
"I don't care!" Haruto pushed Chimera back, or tried to. The Phantom might as well have been a statue rooted to the floor for all of the effect Haruto's effort had. Haruto gave up, glaring. "I don't care what you want, just leave me alone! I'll get you out of Nitoh's body and you won't have to put up with it or with me! I just – I have to – I can't…" His voice had risen until he wasn't quite shouting, but it trailed off at the end under Chimera's unblinking gaze. "I can't lose Shunpei and Rinko," he said, almost inaudibly. "Not them, too."
Chimera tilted his head to the side, as if looking for a new perspective, and Haruto suddenly hated the gesture. "Too?" he said.
"Koyomi. Nitoh." Haruto swallowed. "You," he couldn't help saying, because he'd somehow gone and gotten attached to Chimera no matter what Chimera had been doing behind his back.
"You say lose as if you had me to begin with," Chimera said, and somehow that was the worst of all of it. The bottom dropped out of Haruto's stomach, and his traitorous knees wobbled before he locked them in place.
"Yeah, well, sorry for making assumptions after months of screwing," he said, when he could get his voice working again. "I'm sorry to impose my feelings on you, when all you wanted from me was my mana. I'm sorry that you thought I would deliberately stall figuring out how to set you free just because I love you."
Chimera finally blinked, mouth dropping open just a little, as Haruto heard the words leaving his mouth without being able to stop them.
"No, I mean, that's not what I – I have to go." Chimera was between him and the door, and the only avenue of retreat was the stairs. Haruto didn't get more than two steps before Chimera caught him by the wrist in an unyielding grip.
"Do you mean that?" Chimera said, voice low and uncertain.
Haruto sat down heavily on the stairs, shoulder twisting just a little past what was comfortable in its socket as Chimera failed to let go. "Yes. No. I don't know." He didn't know if he was desperately clinging to Chimera just because he'd lost too many people in too short a space of time, or if what he felt ran deeper; all he knew was that he didn't want Chimera to leave.
Chimera sat next to him. "You're interesting, Soma Haruto."
Haruto laughed bitterly. "Interesting. Thanks." He tugged at his wrist, but Chimera still didn't seem inclined to give it back. "That's not usually what people like to hear after accidentally telling someone they love them."
"Was it an accident?" Chimera shifted his grip, stroking Haruto's palm with a callused thumb.
Haruto closed his eyes, leaning against the wall. "Maybe."
"You seem much less certain than you did a moment ago."
Haruto couldn't tell if Chimera was mocking him, or if he was genuinely confused, and he was suddenly too tired to deal with it. "Yeah, well. I'm sorry. I won't impose on you. Just pretend I didn't say it, and as soon as we deal with this, I'll figure out how to set you free. I promise. I'll even keep giving you mana, you don't have to sleep with me to get it."
"It's not an imposition," Chimera said.
"What did you just say." Haruto sat up straight, turning to face Chimera and finally managing to pull his hand out of the Phantom's grip.
Chimera cocked his head to the side again, and Haruto resisted the urge to tell him to stop. "It doesn't…" Chimera paused, and Haruto could almost see him searching for words. "I don't mind," Chimera said. "I have very few feelings about most humans, except for you."
Haruto blinked, trying to work out exactly what Chimera was trying to communicate. "Are…" he said hesitantly. "Are you trying to tell me that you like me?"
"Perhaps," Chimera said. "I'm not quite sure."
Haruto dropped his head against the wall again. It made a satisfying thunk, and he repeated it multiple times, until Chimera interposed a hand between the two.
"I suspect that might cause damage," Chimera said, and he was looking at Haruto with an expression that clearly expressed that he thought Haruto had lost his mind entirely.
"Damage," Haruto choked out, suddenly unable to stop laughing. "Damage," he said, because Chimera's look of skeptical worry had only deepened and Haruto needed to explain what was so funny. He couldn't get past the single word, though, because it set him off again. "You," he tried again. "You break my heart, and then you're worried about damage," he got out finally, and the laughter fled as quickly as it had come.
The books still scattered over the floor caught his attention; his responsibilities didn't stop just because he was having a relationship crisis with someone who was going to be gone in a matter of weeks anyway. Haruto heaved himself to his feet and started picking them up, smoothing out the pages of the ones that had landed badly, and took them back to the sofa where he'd started. If he tried to take the books upstairs, he was just going to end up falling asleep over them, and that wouldn't help anyone. Chimera watched with narrowed eyes until Haruto headed for the kitchen with the intent of brewing coffee; he hated it, but he needed the caffeine.
"What are you doing?" Chimera asked, carefully neutral, from just outside the door.
"I have work to do." It was rare that anyone in the shop drank coffee, but Haruto knew there was some in the back of one of the cupboards. He just had to find it, and he eventually did; it was tucked behind a bottle of vinegar. The water was nearly boiling by the time he'd found it, and Haruto had to move quickly to measure out the grounds into a filter and put the cone over a mug. He couldn't suppress a yawn as he poured the first measure of water over the coffee; and added more grounds to the filter.
"Can I help?" Chimera sounded almost contrite.
Haruto blinked, startled enough by the question that he nearly overfilled the coffee cone. He let go of the button on the water heater just in time. "I - I guess," he said wearily. He didn't have the emotional energy to argue with Chimera any more than he already had, and if the Phantom wanted to actually be helpful, Haruto wasn't going to stop him. Not using what resources he had just because they were having an argument wasn't going to do anyone any good. While waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, Haruto explained to Chimera exactly what conclusions he'd reached and what he was looking for in Fueki's books.
"Those won't help," Chimera said.
The first sip of coffee nearly scalded Haruto's tongue, but he kept drinking it anyway. "What do you mean?" he said when he'd drained half the cup. It wasn't helping him feel any more alert.
"It's not applicable." Chimera swung up to sit on the very limited open space on the counter, feet dangling freely. "Your Fueki only wanted to create wizards. That was the reason he was targeting Gates."
"Okay?" Haruto leaned on the counter opposite Chimera and stirred some sugar into the coffee in a vain attempt to improve the taste. He thought it made it worse.
"The process of creating a Phantom…" Chimera grimaced. "It's hard to explain."
Haruto wasn't going to grab Phantom and shake him until answers came out, he told himself, and this time he was actually going to do what he intended, no matter how it had turned out the last time, and he had only been shouting a little bit, and Haruto yanked his wandering attention back to Chimera, who was looking at him expectantly. "I'm sorry," Haruto said. "Could you repeat that last part?"
Chimera sighed exaggeratedly, which was absolutely not a gesture he'd learned from Haruto. "I said, when you use that ring of yours to destroy the inner Phantom, you block the Gate's potential. Without suppressing the Phantom, the Gate can't become a wizard."
No part of that was new information, really. Haruto nodded. "Okay?"
"So when the Gate doesn't fall into despair, the potential for the Phantom is still there," Chimera said impatiently.
"But the Phantom is only born when the Gate does fall into despair," Haruto said. "At the hand of another Phantom."
"You're not listening," Chimera said, and given that Haruto was at that particular moment draining the coffee cup, it was hard to argue.
"I am," he said anyway, trying to look as though he were completely focused on Chimera.
"Fatigue is adversely affecting your comprehension," Chimera muttered, just loud enough for Haruto to hear, and just before Haruto could protest, he raised his voice and continued. "Despair disrupts the Gate's Underworld," he said. "Which is what lets the Phantom form. It's not the only way to damage the Underworld."
The caffeine might finally have been kicking in, connecting Haruto's thoughts to what Chimera was evidently trying to explain. "Because of their mana?" he said.
Chimera looked pleased. "Yes."
"Let me see if I have this straight." Haruto put down the empty cup and paced back and forth across the kitchen. "Any potential Gate can fall into despair – not fall into despair, but have their Underworld broken enough to allow a Phantom to be generated, if their mana is disrupted somehow."
Chimera nodded and opened his mouth, but Haruto wasn't done.
"So the Sabbath," he said, pacing more rapidly. "The Sabbath pulled mana out of everyone, not just Gates, but only the Gates would have been affected long-term, if their Underworlds were disrupted enough to let the Phantoms start to generate."
"That might be possible," Chimera said, a speculative expression on his face. "The Sabbath was uniquely disruptive."
Haruto stopped pacing suddenly. "It was – I – we stopped the ritual, but it was already too late."
"We?" Chimera snorted. "You had nothing to do with stopping the ritual."
Chimera wasn't wrong, but Haruto shook his head. "I should have – I shouldn't have let it get – this is my fault."
He could see it clearly, now; the Phantoms, slowly maturing after each Gate in Tokyo had been damaged just enough to allow the process to start but not enough for the newly-created Phantoms to form fully. The new Phantoms were tangled up in their Gates' Underworlds just as Chimera was tangled up in Nitoh's body, unable to fully break free while the Gates' bodies couldn't take the strain.
Haruto thought he might throw up everything he'd just drunk and pressed a hand to his mouth. It wouldn't have happened if he'd found a way to stop Fueki, if he hadn't left Nitoh on his own, if Haruto had been able to help Koyomi sooner.
"Don't be ridiculous," Chimera snapped, and the nausea eased.
"Shunpei and Rinko," Haruto said, the syllables running over each other. "I – they don't – their inner Phantoms were destroyed. I destroyed them."
Chimera shrugged, bored with the topic of Haruto's friends. "No inner Phantom means nothing left to be generated," he said. "They're probably safe."
It still wasn't right that Haruto felt such a wave of relief in knowing that his friends weren't likely to fall victim to the aftereffects of something that still had the potential to affect dozens or even hundreds of people; Haruto didn't know how many potential Gates there were, and he couldn't tell by looking. Even Koyomi hadn't been able to tell, although she'd been able to see Phantoms when they wore a human skin. That Shunpei and Rinko were safe just meant that Haruto could focus on fixing the problem, he thought, but he still felt guilty for being relieved.
"I have to –" he started, and then broke off. Chimera looked at him quizzically. "I can't identify Gates," he said, frustrated. "There's no way for me to tell, and if I can't tell who's a Gate, how can I tell when their Phantoms start to break free?"
Chimera pressed his lips together. "You can't monitor the entire population of Tokyo," he said flatly. "It's impossible."
"I can't just leave them to die, either!" Haruto's voice cracked, and he wrapped his arms around himself. "I can't – if I find them soon enough, maybe I can undo the damage."
"There are hundreds of Gates in Tokyo," Chimera said. "Not including the ones that might have fled, after the Sabbath. Like the one we found in the middle of the woods," it added helpfully.
Haruto hadn't even considered the Gates that were no longer in Tokyo, although it seemed obvious in hindsight. He'd seen the first two abnormal Phantoms in completely different parts of the country, after all. He sank down onto the nearest chair and buried his head in his hands at the prospect of what now seemed like an even more insurmountable task.
Chimera crouched in front of him, inexplicably dismayed. "What?" it said.
"I don't know how to fix this," Haruto whispered.
"I just told you, it's probably too much for you to handle," Chimera said with an air of being reasonable, as if he'd handed Haruto a solution instead of making everything worse.
"I have to figure out how to identify the Gates," Haruto said, ignoring Chimera's total lack of support for handling what was slowly developing into a crisis. "Before the Phantoms start to break free."
"Soma Haruto," Chimera said, but Haruto wasn't listening. Fueki had figured out some way to identify Gates, on the night of the first Sabbath, after which he'd sent out Phantoms to find them. Haruto blinked, looking at Chimera.
"Can you identify Gates?" he asked, interrupting whatever Chimera was saying.
Chimera closed his mouth with a snap, not looking happy at the question and where he clearly saw it going. "Not easily," he said. "Not while I'm tethered to this body."
"But you can do it," Haruto pressed, ignoring the word tethered.
Chimera sighed and sat back on his heels. "You're lucky I like you," he muttered, and Haruto pushed back at the pleased little flutter that the words evoked; Chimera didn't mean what the words implied, he'd said as much, and Haruto didn't have the time or energy to deal with it. Oblivious to Haruto's internal struggle, Chimera continued speaking at a normal volume. "If I slip out of this body as far as I can, then I can tell Gates apart. But," it held up a finger to forestall Haruto's excitement. "If I do that, this body starts to die."
"Oh." Haruto remembered the demonstration Chimera had given him months before, the eeriness of Chimera's half-visible true body while Nitoh's body started to fail without the Phantom's support. That put him back to square one and the need to develop a reliable way to find Gates. Haruto eyed Fueki's library; the man had to have figured something out, unless he'd just kidnapped Phantoms to begin with. Haruto considered that avenue and tabled it for potential exploration later. "I'll figure something else out, then," he said for Chimera's benefit; the other man was giving him an expectant look.
Chimera frowned. "Obviously," he said, but he was still looking at Haruto as if he wanted something.
"Unless you know some other way to find Gates," Haruto said, not really expecting Chimera to just pull out another solution. It occurred to him that he and Mayu should really have asked their resident Phantom ally about the process of generating Phantoms to begin with, rather than spending so much time going through Fueki's amassed literature.
"I don't," Chimera said, irritated for some reason. "Would you let it go?"
"I can't," Haruto said. "I have to fix this."
"Why is it –" Chimera stopped and took a deep breath. "You don't need to try to fix it right now," he said.
"Every minute I waste is another minute that those Gates are losing." Haruto reached for the volume he thought would be the most useful, based on what he remembered. Chimera put his hand on it and refused to let Haruto pick it up.
"After months, I don't think a few more hours will make a difference," Chimera said.
"Those months happened because I wasn't paying attention to what really mattered," Haruto said, aware as he was saying it that the sentence made no sense. There was no way he could have known what aftereffects the Sabbath would have, particularly if it had taken months for the Gates' Underworlds to break down enough to allow the abnormal Phantoms to break free to begin with. It still didn't matter; he was supposed to protect Gates, not let them die.
"You can't possibly be serious." Chimera stood, releasing the book so abruptly that Haruto lost his grip on it and it hit the floor. "You are serious." He shook his head. "Fascinating."
Haruto frowned at Chimera's retreating back. The Phantom – he had to get used to thinking of Chimera as a Phantom, and not as a human, and certainly not as someone or something he had feelings for – had no reason to be so upset, he thought dimly. For a moment, Haruto wanted nothing more than to run after Chimera and undo the widening rift between the two of them, even if that would only make it harder to let Chimera go in the end. He got as far as standing and taking the first step before he stopped himself and went to make more coffee instead.
"Get it together, Haruto," he said to the electric kettle. "You can't always get what you want."
It seemed monstrously unfair, though, that he couldn't have anything he wanted; not a long and happy life for his closest friend, not the chance to confess to his crush, not even the chance to fall in love with someone who wasn't a wizard or a monster with an expiration date. Haruto measured coffee into the cone, each scoop counting something he couldn't have. The kettle finally beeped, and he turned to it gratefully.
"I should have seen it coming," he murmured. The drip of coffee into the mug overshadowed his voice, so he kept talking. "I knew he doesn't feel things the way we do, I knew he was only with me because he was using me for mana while waiting for me to fix him. Even if he put up with me being selfish, and stubborn, and finding somewhere for – for Koyomi."
Months, and it was still hard to say her name out loud. Haruto resolutely picked up the cup of black coffee and took it back into the front of the shop. He picked up the book off the floor and began to page through it. He had work to do.