Rin couldn't get the reports out of his head. Every spare moment he had, he thought about them. Over lunch, on the train ride home, in the first early seconds of the morning when he was awake but the alarm hadn't gone off yet. The stupid things were perfectly ordinary. But, of course, that was what made them so interesting.
The first real chance he got to study them, he settled in for the long haul, ready to stare at the ink on the page until his eyeballs went numb. The first real chance he got, though, was on the Shinkansen to Hiroshima that weekend. It wasn't until about the fifth time Daphne sighed that he picked up on the fact that the expression was directed at him. He looked up from his tray table and over at her, blinking to get his vision to refocus on something that wasn't text on paper right in front of his face.
"What?" he asked.
"Remember how you griped at me for twenty minutes on the platform that you wanted the window seat?" She raised her eyebrows accusingly. "Twenty minutes of 'but Daphne you don't even like to look out the window' and 'I had to spend all week in the office, so I should get to see the sun' and now you're not even using it."
"I am technically in the sun," he replied, gesturing at the ray of light coming in through the window and falling across his chest. She just rolled her eyes at that.
"I would be in so much trouble if I was doing what you're doing," she grumbled, and folded her arms. She slumped down in her seat to close her eyes.
"Do you want to sit by the window?"
"No. My eyes are shut now. See?"
"I'll trade you, Daph."
She shook her head. "Nope."
Rin glanced outside, at the fields and towns passing by at a hundred and seventy-five miles an hour. As he looked, the buildings became denser, rose taller. The recorded voice came over the speaker system and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we will soon be making a brief stop at Nagoya. You will have only…" Rin stopped listening. The train slowed. He glanced back at Daphne in the middle seat of their row, her eyes shut. She was right. If she had been doing work things, Rin would have been pretty pissed off.
"I wanted to get as much of this figured out as I could before we get there and have to start working on it," he said. "This is the first free time I've had."
Daphne didn't even crack open her eyes when she responded. "I'm not mad that you're doing work, Rin," she said. "I only wanted to point out the discrepancy between your words and your actions. With work. And with the window."
The train pulled into the station and came to a stop. Things beeped, announcements were made, people got up and grabbed their luggage and bags and departed the car, other people got on. A man took the aisle seat next to Daphne, nodding at both of them as he sat. The train lingered at the station for a minute or two, then started off again, rapidly gaining speed as it pulled away from the platform. Sheepishly, Rin watched out the window as it happened.
"You're right, Daph," he said softly. "I'm sorry. This isn't how I wanted to start our vacation."
She picked up his hand and touched her lips to his knuckles. "Thank you."
"I'll stop if you want?"
Daphne shook her head. "Keep studying by all means. I don't want to look at them. At least one of us should know what's going on." Her eyes opened and she smiled at him, linking their hands together. "I'm happy."
"You're sure you don't want the window?"
She laughed. "I'm sure."
Rin was skeptical, but Daphne generally wasn't one to say things she didn't mean. She shut her eyes a moment later and rested her head on his shoulder. Comforted, Rin picked up the reports and studied until they arrived at Hiroshima Station.
From Hiroshima Station it was a quick transfer to a local train to Miyajimaguchi, and from there a short walk to the ferry port, where they boarded the boat that would take them across the bay to the island. The air was so much warmer this far south in spite of the cloud cover. Rin had forgotten about that. He and Daphne sat on the outside deck of the ferry to watch the approach to Miyajima. The terrible speakers on the outside of the boat combined with the noise from the engine and the wind made it impossible to hear the little program on the overhead about the shrine and Otorii gate.
"Remember how Yukio missed the boat?" Daphne asked, sitting back to look at Rin and laugh.
"Jesus, yes."
Rin snorted and then cracked up just thinking about it. Yukio in his suit, shouting and waving his hands from the dock on the mainland side as the boat pulled away. Yukio running along the shoreline in his suit, red-faced and completely out of breath by the time he reached the shrine. Everybody had given him shit about it for the rest of the day.
Daphne cuddled up next to Rin, the wind blowing her hair so she had to tuck it behind her ears to keep it out of his face. "I'm glad we decided to do this," she said.
Rin put his arm around her shoulders. "Me too."
Suddenly, Spirit could feel them. She could feel them coming across the water. She had never felt beings like these before—two powerful pinpoints that only grew in power the further they ventured into her radius. Perhaps it was that she could simply sense them better the closer they came, but she could not be sure. She had not encountered anyone before who felt like they did.
Spirit shut her eyes. She shut her eyes and she opened her olfactory core, smelling, smelling the air. The pinpoints—they smelled like Gehenna.
Spirit swept down from the mountain.
For ease of travel on public transportation, Daphne and Rin had each packed a smaller, separate bag. For Daphne, this came in the form of a backpack infinitely easier to carry than Rin's sad little roll-behind piece of luggage. He'd knocked one of the wheels off during a field mission to Seoul and hadn't remembered to replace it before the trip. The other wheel barely rolled as it was, so Daphne stifled her laughter as he dragged the suitcase off the ferry, cursing down the whole gangway.
"Just pick it up," she said, turning around in time to see Rin get caught in the exit gate she'd just passed through.
"Sweet hell," he grumbled.
"Why did you pick that one?"
"I forgot it was broken," he replied. After a moment's disorganization, he struggled through the gate, but tripped over the luggage in the process. Daphne outright snorted, which earned her a glare. "And you know I can't carry a backpack."
He gestured with his head at Kurikara in its scabbard and cloth slung over his shoulder. Daphne shook her head.
"You could carry a backpack if you would just use your seal."
"I don't like it. It feels weird."
"It feels weird because you never use it."
Rin wasn't listening, fighting instead to get the long handle on the luggage pushed back down to the inside so he could carry it without those two long bars in the way, but the handle didn't seem to want to retract. Daphne was sympathetic of course. Seals were uncomfortable. She should know, having four of them.
Fairly early on after the Morpheus incident, she and Rin had decided to create seals and get the accompanying tattoos in case they ever had to carry each other's blades in an emergency. It had been an easy add-on for Daphne, having carried Castor and Pollux and Helen of Troy in seals since she'd received them as a girl. But for Rin, the adjustment of going from zero seals to four had been a little too extreme. He'd thrown up during the ritual and been jittery for weeks afterward.
As if to prove a point, Kurikara slipped from Rin's shoulder and clattered against the luggage handle. Rin tried to shrug it back on, but ultimately the sword just got in his way.
"Here," Daphne said and put out her hand.
Hunched over the suitcase, Rin glanced up at her. "What?"
"Give me Kurikara. I'll carry it."
He opened his mouth to protest, but Daphne simply rolled her eyes and yanked the blade away. She pulled the loose collar of her shirt sideways and pressed the end of Kurikara to the geometric blue flame tattoo over her heart. The words to the incantation crossed her mind, but she still had to physically push to get the blade to go in. Seals were like piercings. Take the earring out too long and the hole will close up.
Rin watched, unconsciously rubbing the space over his own heart where his seal tattoo for Kurikara was—just simple black ink, his father Shiro's name in kanji. Across his back and shoulders were three elaborate, intertwined laurel wreaths for Daphne's blades. Those had been the ones that had made him puke.
"Thanks," he said.
She smiled. "Sure."
Even without Kurikara, Rin still had a tremendous amount of trouble with the suitcase handle. Just as Daphne started to laugh, she felt something strange that turned her blood to ice. She was being watched. The sensation made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and she actually turned around instinctively. No one was there. Just as suddenly as it had come over her, the feeling vanished—like a portal to Gehenna had opened and snapped shut. It left her feeling slightly unhinged.
"What's up?" Rin asked, hunched over his bag.
Daphne surveyed the ferry station, running a careful eye over every inch, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.
"I don't know," she replied.
Rin wound up carrying the suitcase with the bars still extended, struggling out of the station to the pick-up and drop-off point where a man was waiting with a van. He waved when he saw them.
"I began to worry you had missed the boat," he said, hurrying forward. His name was Chiba and he and his wife ran the ryokan where Rin and Daphne had spent their honeymoon and where they would be staying for the weekend. They greeted each other with the appropriate bows and Chiba took their luggage out of their hands. "I am happy to see you."
"Thank you," Daphne said, smiling at the look on Rin's face as Chiba loaded both the backpack and the suitcase into the van with professional ease. "We're happy to see you as well. Thank you for picking us up."
Chiba shook his head and shut the back of the van. "My pleasure, my pleasure. Did you want to come to the inn now or shall I just take your things?"
Daphne glanced at Rin and he shrugged, so she looked back at Chiba and replied, "I think we'll walk around for a bit. We'll come up before too long."
The innkeeper nodded and smiled, and kept nodding and smiling, bowing a little as he returned to the front of the car and climbed into the driver's seat. "Please call if you would like a ride."
Daphne smiled. "We will."
Chiba pulled away waving, and Daphne waved back until he was out of sight. Rin eyed her curiously.
"I thought you wanted to go straight there and have a bath."
"Yeah, well, that was before I felt a weird, very distinctively demon presence with its eyes on my back," she replied, and grabbed his hand. "C'mon."
Rin stumbled behind Daphne for a moment since she'd taken off like a shot, but got his feet under him as they reached the road and the first of the little waterfront shops and restaurants. In spite of himself, Rin really did love Miyajima. He'd gotten this bee in his bonnet that they had to have a destination wedding, and Daphne had flat out refused to get married at the top of Kyoto Tower, so Miyajima had ended up as a compromise location, but Rin still loved it. It was just so damn charming with its sleepy seaside atmosphere, the maple leaves on the manhole covers, the wild deer all over the place. He got caught up in watching the tourists take pictures of a group of deer as they passed and nearly forgot why they were hurrying in the first place.
"Wait, did you say distinctively demon?"
Daphne nodded. She had her military face on. She was hunting for something. Rin didn't know what, so he just let her pull him around like a dog on a leash.
"In the ferry terminal, while you were messing with your luggage, I felt something."
"What?"
She shook her head. "I'm not sure. It was brief."
They kept hurrying, the street passing on their left, the water on their right. Distracted, Rin found himself staring out across the bay instead, admiring the dusty green-blue of the water under the cloud cover. It was so quiet here, even the traffic on the road more subdued. He smiled, thinking about the morning he'd woken up in Hiroshima two years ago, put on his wedding clothes, and come here to marry Daphne. He pulled her to a stop.
"What?"
She'd turned toward him to ask the question, so he took her face in his hands and kissed her. "Nothing," he replied. "I just love you a lot."
Her expression softened as she smiled. "I love you, too, Rin," she said and gave him a kiss of her own, though a split second later, she jolted away and looked into his eyes like she'd been electrocuted.
"There!"
She flipped around, hunting again, but turning to face him again a second later as she said, "It's gone… Did you feel that?"
Rin shook his head. "No."
With a sigh, Daphne ran a frustrated hand through her hair. "It was so strong. I don't know what it is. You really didn't feel it?" She looked at him and her eyes were full of concern. It happened sometimes where Daphne's hallucinations would come back. She'd hear things or see things or smell things that weren't there, especially while she was under stress. Maybe it was a delayed reaction to work or one in anticipation of the favor they'd agreed to do for Mephisto. Smiling, Rin looped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in to kiss her forehead.
"Don't worry about it," he said.
She nodded. "I'll try."
Together they started walking again, this time at a more leisurely pace. They strolled in and out of shops along the waterfront, bought a couple of ice creams, arriving eventually at the stone torii gate and the lion-dog statues on either side of it that marked the entrance to the shrine grounds. Daphne found a bench by the water and sat down to finish her ice cream. Rin's was long gone.
An hour-ish had passed since they'd left the ferry terminal. Miyajima seemed to have worked its Miyajima magic on Daphne in the meantime. She'd relaxed, kicked back on the bench next to him with her legs extended and her ankles crossed. He was such a fool for her. He'd realized that a long time ago, but it hadn't changed anything. Leaning over, he kissed her cheek, then the space behind her ear, her neck. She laughed.
"Let me finish my ice cream," she said, biting into the cone.
"I'll help…"
He tried to go after the ice cream, but Daphne shoved her hand into his face and pushed him away.
"No you won't."
In the following battle for control of Daphne's arm and by extension her hand and the cone it was holding, she ended up shoving the whole bottom half into her mouth all at once and laughing as she chewed, which really just made her look like a mess. Rin started to laugh as well, which made Daphne laugh harder, and some of the stuff from her mouth fell out, but she caught it, and they just kept laughing—that is, until Rin was struck by a feeling he instantly recognized must have been the one that got Daphne all worked up.
It was cold and dark, whirling slowly, but quiet on the surface like deep water with the sensation of a thousand eyes like stakes sticking to every inch of your skin all at once. An electric shiver ran down Rin's spine. He looked at Daphne. She looked like how he felt.
Then it was gone.
"Okay, I definitely felt it that time."
Daphne swallowed. "Any ideas?" she asked, her voice hoarse.
Rin shook his head. "I've never felt anything like it."
Spirit was learning.
When it came to beings as powerful as these, observing meant being observed in return.