Author's note: Helloooooooooooooooooo... YYH fandom, are you out there?

CHAPTER 3

On a cool evening, Kurama and Kazuma arrived at the compound and cranked their necks up to view the top of Genkai's colossal stairs. Surrounding it were walls of lush green foliage, but between the trees they caught a brilliant sunset that painted golden stripes upon every step. They were enthralled on their journey to the doors. Kazuma smiled as a squirrel jetted for the brush and abandoned an acorn that toppled past his feet. Kurama appreciated soft singing of the wind chimes in the entrance way.

"Man, I forgot how nice it is, coming here," Kazuma trailed. "Too bad in like a couple of weeks this place is gonna get plowed by rain, huh?" He looked to Kurama, whose smile had momentarily lost its balance. "Sorry, that's probably not the best way to think of it..."

"You're not wrong, at least."

"Hey, do I look okay?"

Kurama looked to "the fourth wall". Kazuma always got like this if they were going to see Yukina. "Of course," he said. The irony is that they had already dated for months the previous year and it just hadn't worked out.

"She looked so cute last time I saw her. Like, beaming. You don't think-"

"She's not seeing anyone," Kurama told him, already knowing where this was going. "Even if she was, it wouldn't mean that she'd lost her feelings for you." Kazuma tried not to seem too tortured as he sighed, because he knew Kurama was right – about everything, all the time. "If you're meant to find your way back to each other, it will happen naturally."

"Yeah," he answered, sort of hugging the box of caramel corn he'd brought as a gift.

They rang the doorbell and waited. It always seemed to take Genkai a century to answer. When she finally did, they had been wondering if they should walk around to the back and were startled by the sudden crack of the door.

They set their coats and scarves on the wrack and stepped out of their shoes. As they followed her down the hall towards the dining room, a cluster of enticing aromas wafted past their noses. Then came Yukina, scurrying from the kitchen with a hot, steaming pot. Following her and also with a pot was... Hiei?! They barely seemed to notice they had guests, as she was too concerned about the table being set, and Hiei was relaying a very strange tale, with vigor.

"So the shepherd tells him the child he was to take and throw off the mountain-top came from none other than the Laius house – obviously the son of Laius!" Hiei raved into her ear as she set up each pair of chopsticks with care. Meanwhile, he slapped down the teacups without looking. When Yukina caught their guests in her peripheral, she looked up and made sheepish eye-contact with Kazuma, then delivered her brightest smile.

"Ahhh! Welcome!"

"Hey. Pay attention to me," Hiei said.

"I'm listening!" She assured him before they bobbed past Kurama and Kazuma for the kitchen again.

"Don't mind that brat," came Genkai's voice from behind, startling them again. She had disappeared, but was now heading for her cushion at the head of the table. "He's not trying to be a nuisance this time, he... he just is," she muttered, bringing a fresh cup of tea to her lips. It was as good a cue as any to sit down, so they took two cushions next to her and just kind of darted their eyes around. Genkai had been fixing an unfocused gaze in front of her with her nose nestled at the rim of the cup, but she still managed to read their minds. "Yeah, he's been here all week."

They could still hear his dark cackles echoing amongst the clinks of china in the other room. Kurama found the nerve to ask why he had been there all week.

"Because I'm too nice – that's why." The both of them stared, hoping she knew that this didn't exactly answer the question. "Yukina seemed to think it would be a good idea to show him what her homeschooling is like, and now I've created a monster."

Kazuma crinkled his nose. "You're homeschooling that brat? How does that even work?!"

"It just somehow does!" She exploded, propping up on her knees. "I thought he would hate it by day one, but he just kept coming back, and he got tired jumping worlds so now he just stays here! And listens to me with these intense burning eyes, and hijacks our discussions... Now Yukina can't get a word in edgewise."

Kurama giggled, which did not elicit a positive response from either of his tablemates. "Oh. I mean, that's- that's-"

"What do you mean he listens toyou?"

"He listens!" She repeated. "And I can't get him to stop asking questions!"

"He's not playing the 'why' game with you, is he?" Kurama wondered.

"No! They're useful questions! But enough of them to make me completely useless after class. I have to nap for hours. Makes me not want to assign homework. Not that we were having much of it before this situation, but he writes essays without being asked and drops them in my lap, and won't wait more than an hour for feedback. It's absurd."

By now, Kazuma seemed super curious what Hiei was writing about. With hesitance, he twitched his lips and asked half under his breath:

"Are they... are they any good?"

Genkai was frowning at the tabletop with her eyes wide. Before she answered, she swigged the last of her tea and slammed the cup on the table.

"They're brilliant."

The two of them gasped, then stared into space, trying to imagine all the novel things an angry, violent demon might have to say about Shakespeare... Aristotle... modern economics? ...Women's studies?

"I've asked her if she wants to kick him back out, and she just insists that he stay. Seems the girl likes being burdened."

While everyone was still in a daze, the twins came back, with Hiei balancing bowls up to his chin and still trying to talk.

"By now, when he knows he has made ritual of banging his mother for years – with two cursed children! – he stabs his own eyes out! HA! What a fool!"

"If you break those, you will pay for the new ones!" Genkai growled at him. He set them all down with a cringe-worthy clash and stood over Yukina as she set the last porcelain dish in the center of the table. With his hands on his hips, he declared:

"Now... isn't that a tantalizingly tale?!" At first, no one said anything. Yukina was practiced at keeping a smooth veneer in most situations, or perhaps she really did appreciate his enthusiasm. Either way, it was Kazuma who erupted into laughter. In fact, he was laughing so hard, he seemed startled by it and even blotted away tears.

Hiei went from tilting up his nose to caving into his own neck with a smoldering glare.

"Who invited you here?"

"I did," Genkai snapped. "And if you two even start at each other's throats, I can already tell you which one is going to get thrown out."

And so, dinner began.

Yukina sat next to Kurama, and Hiei sat next to her. The most he threw down the table was a timid "hello" to Kurama, which was not much less than he was expecting, but Yukina? She was surprisingly caught up in sibling banter and antic, exchanging things from under the table. The whole matter still made Kazuma uncomfortable, even knowing they were siblings now. Actually, it was worse because now he couldn't even argue that she should ignore him.

And it was making him jealous! That he so effortlessly incited her giggles. A part of Kazuma was sure he took that for granted.

Come dessert, they looked over from their pleasant conversation about the classes he would be taking at university in the coming semester. Hiei had centered a grape in front of his eye and rammed it with a spoon, so grape juice squirted all over the place.

Yukina covered her mouth when she saw that everyone was watching. Genkai was particularly unamused.

"HEY! If you have time for that, then surely you have time to clear the table." Unaware that this order was not for her, Yukina bowed in mild desperation and started collecting the empty bowls. "N-No, not- ugh."

She was too obedient for her own good. Once Hiei realized he was about to be left alone with this lot, he snatched up an empty dish and flashed out of the room, making all of Genkai's potted plants shake.

It was getting increasingly impossible for Kurama to pretend that this wasn't the most adorable thing he had seen in years. He tried to pick up where his sputters before dinner had left off. "Well... on the bright side, I've never seen Hiei so... ah-hum, engaged?In literature? I guess, in the past, I was sharing all the wrong stories."

"Ffff. Oedipus Rex isn't even the worst of it." His host rolled her eyes. "He found out about Vlad the Impaler and won't stop talking about how he wants a castle surrounded by the bodies of his enemies. Pierced through sticks, like shishkebabs."

Kurama scrunched his brow to feign that he sympathized but in all truth a lot of Hiei's fantasies were along those lines, and he had heard about them for years now. Rivers of blood... entrance gates that were perpetually on fire... Sometimes he even used to murmur about it in his sleep.

"Sheesh. How did Yukina end up in the same womb as such a twisted shit?" Kazuma still looked like he was in pain from laughing earlier, but he was serious.

"We may never know. Maybe what's pure and what's vile simply separates in these rare circumstances... like yin and yang... All I know is I'm exhausted!"

"Perhaps I can find a way to turn his studies in a more... productive direction," Kurama mused, suddenly.

Genkai gave him a funny look. "And by that, you mean?"

"Teach them, for you, the next time you need a break from it."

"You have time for that?"

"Yeah, Kurama – you have time for that?" Kazuma parroted. Kurama kept a cool air about it.

"Of course. As long as it's over the weekend. My time hasn't much been my own lately, anyway. I have some new neighbors upstairs that haven't been subtle, so to say, and... Well, it's so lovely and peaceful here."

"HMPH – was!" Genkai croaked. Kurama only responded with light, fluttery laughter.

Later in the evening, Genkai and the gingers had migrated to the sitting room and had been relaxing by her fire-pit. Yukina joined them, much to the discontentment of her brother, who hovered around the premises like a shadow waiting to reemerge with its caster. When this didn't seem like it would happen any time soon, his presence faded from the house, but was not untraceable.

As their guests were leaving, Kurama seemed to know the exact tree in which he was curling with a handheld game. In fact, he could spy his grouchy little face illuminated by the glowing screen from the right angle.

"Hiei?" Hiei blew a raspberry without looking at him.

"You two are still here?" Kazuma stopped beside Kurama and sort of giggled with his fingers in front of his lips, repeating the words. "Hehe, 'us two'?"

Hiei squinted. What did that mean?

"Not anymore. You're free to go back inside, if that is what you wish." This fox already smelled of shenanigans, but Hiei couldn't put his finger on it. "Well, goodnight."

His lack of response didn't seem to affect Kurama as he carried on down the steps. Kazuma followed him a certain ways but couldn't resist shouting obnoxious farewells in Hiei's general direction. He promptly heard a shuffle and a snap before an acorn jetted through the darkness and struck him between the eyes.