Takakura didn't get too far towards the closet before Mark was standing beside his seat facing him, "If it's just an almanac then let me see it" he said. Takakura only paused in his spot. It was a calm but absolute stop, his head seemed to move in slow-motion as it tilted over his shoulder.

"I took care of it"

Mark held the top of the chair in his palm still as he held his place.

"Takakura, that is my book. It was in my home-"

"I took care of it" he repeated with more grit and moved forward to the closet. His anger left him nauseated. Takakura didn't seem to really care or even consider this as an invasion. It isn't his call. From the closet, Takakura had withdrawn the futon and a bundle of blankets.

In the bedroom, Mark took the opportunity to surf through the empty room. Takakura was outside at the time securing his grip on the materials. It wasn't clear what the book being taken care of truly meant. Hidden or burnt to a crisp on the hot dirt.

Takakura's room was a small room, a simple room. There wasn't much to sifted through. Only a bed-side dresser drawer and a bookshelf. Then again, if Takakura went with the hidden option, then it could be somewhere least expected. Behind the picture on the wall? Taped under the bed?

He knew how much time he had until Takakura would enter and lay out the futon for him. He could hear him clearly now unlike when he was in the bath. On the bed-side desk, there was a empty photo-frame standing beside a small desk lamp. Mark didn't pay too much attention to it as he opened the drawer. Not much inside besides some dust and apparently the missing photo. As he picked it up from the drawer, he felt the heaviness that comes from snooping.

It was a pretty picture. A sunny day, the long wheat in the in the full fields suggest early fall, Takakura and a woman stood alongside the barn. Takakura looked some bit younger but still no spring chicken. The woman was beautiful none-the-less. Beautiful in the way someone's mother is. Her hair was puffy and big almost like Muffy's but black.

She was smiling and so was Takakura. And yet, there was something uncomfortable about the picture. Every second it remained in between his fingers, the more he wanted to toss it. Quickly, heavy steps ached against he closed door. He flicked it back into the drawer and shut the drawer.

A few more thumps on the door and Mark felt a sudden cascade of relief. Takakura sounded like he was kicking it with his foot.

"Can you open the door? Mark"

Mark was quick to get to the door, slowing before arriving to it. Takakura had the futon and blanket in a bearhug. Coming in, he suspended his stride momentarily and Mark could see over the bundle in his arms that his head was facing the bed. More closely, the bed-side desk.

Mark could feel his heart go on hiatus as the sweat rolled.

"Where are you going to set that down?" Mark asked. He couldn't have actually noticed. Takakura stepped to face him, slowly, a little too slow for Mark. "We could set it up out in the main room. I don't want to invade your room-"

"No, no, no. It is fine" Takakura said, stepping back in his original stride, seeming to have forgotten the whatever he had been focusing on. He immediately set it down on the other side of the room-opposite of the bed.

Mark was feeling uncomfortable with it. He has never really shared a room like this. Well, once, but that was when he was back in school in his hometown. A neighbor boy. They spent the night together but other than that he had never spent the night in someone else's room. It wasn't the shared space that he didn't like, it was sharing the space at night with Takakura that made him uncomfortable.

"No really"

"It's fine" There he repeated that tone. That grown-up voice. That, you're-going-to-listen-to-me voice. He smoothed out the blanket with his thick hands. "Let's head to bed"

"It's a bit early"

"'The early bird gets the worm' as they say" Takakura didn't face him and he went to his bed. There it was again. The wall that always seems to appear thick between them. Something about his tone, that adult voice that puts him at the higher elevation. Takakura was a friend of his father, right? So, it can't be odd that he talks to him like this- minus the cagey edge- after all, no matter how adult Mark becomes, he always will be the son of his pal. His father was twenty-seven when he was born but Takakura, despite being in the same class, looked as if there were forty or more years between them.

He still had his black hair streaked with tinges of penguin white. Wrinkles like folds in clothing creased the skin along his eyes and jowls. Still, he was a mountain of a man, towering over most people in the Valley, Mark would assume.

It had already become night and Mark had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to see. Still, he had no desire to set to bed-although he probably would have if he were in his own home.

There was a window in the room, small and square. It faced his home and Mark couldn't see through the blackness as he stood by the door.

His hand lingered on the knob. He couldn't really think of a reason to leave. Takakura, obviously just wanted him to stay the night and knows that he really has no relationships with the Valley folks yet. There was no use in resisting. Besides, over the years Mark has come to know the wonder of blackened dreams. Sleep was like an empty void, a pocket of time skipped. If he just went to sleep now then when he'd awake, he could leave. Hours of time unaccounted for and it'd be done soon.

"Fine. But tomorrow morning I'm leaving"

Pitch black rooms were none too odd to Mark. He had grown up on an isolated farm, quite the distance from the accompanying town. The street lights long worn and washed beyond the forest of trees and brush. Beyond them, the flatlands spread into obscurity. The nights were pitched in the blackness. The only natural source of light being that of the moon. But even that seemed faint after mother left.

Mark slept better than he would have thought. Sleep was welcome after spending an hour in pure silence- half silence. Takakura's breathing seemed to stifle it. That and with the slightest movement of Mark, the fabric's chafing created its own noise.

Early through the haze of unconsciousness, Mark felt himself swimming. In the darkness, all he saw were long yellow threads from around him. Over him, a blackened figure hung heavy. With no comprehension of this as he was opening his eyes, he didn't have the insight to be frightened.

As he came to, his body rose in a quick jerk. His adrenaline surged as his body was slammed back down by a fast hand.

This made him panic, He made a warble of a sound as his fear echoed from his chest, trying to sit up immediately. The figure came down on him with another hand.

"Go back to bed-"

He knew that voice.

Lights caught his eyes. Coming through the left window like small dashes of light, he saw them and slowly understood what they were. He tried to rise-a hand came again- and he struggled against it.

"Just stay in bed!" the voice shouted, now clearly Takakura to Mark. In his efforts to calm him, Mark felt more and more panic rise. In an unknown situation and in half-forgotten surroundings, he thought he was in danger. The light crossed over some beam and reflected just enough to be seen.

As he tried to raise again, Takakura tried to force him down again, but Mark was struggling too much with young vigor. Being a futon, Takakura must have been kneeling over him. Mark rolled and tumbled against him.

"Calm down!"

"Let go!" he fought. His body heaved under the new weight of Takakura moving on top of him. He twirled under him and tugged at the blankets and Takakura's clothes. His weight shifted and toppled over and Mark like a small animal dug out from under with his hands.

"Hey!" Takakura screamed for him, his voice hitting a sharp depth. It frightened him more.

Mark didn't wait, stop-halt-anything besides trying to propel himself off the ground. Takakura was a big man and tangled all the blankets with his legs and twisted around as a boar caught in a wire trap.

Mark steered with his back legs, kicking against the ground, pushing himself forward. His body couldn't raise higher than the low boards in his excitement to flee. His entire body hitting and flinging wide the door. In his haste, the door slapped back shut as he tried, so haphazardly, to rail through. In him, fear and vomit heightened. Takakura was right on him. Snatching his right heel as he escaped back through the door. Takakura, after yanking on his ankle, dragging Mark's leg back off his knee, raise a heavy fist as if we were to clobber him.

"Mark! Stop it right now! Everything's fine"

His insistent hollering was not what frightened him most at that moment. It was the wild lights bobbing through the windows, followed by the indiscernible rattling of voices beyond them.

"Takakura"

A male voice? It was distorted. Maybe through the warped wooden frames or in Mark's own fear. A sudden dismantling of some outside surface tension was made noticeable to him. Almost like the hushing of the summer cicadas. The outside seemed cooed to a silence and Mark, even in his own dire struggle, had forgotten his panic as he felt the house was somehow surrounded.

In it, a sudden quietness came that was soon evaporated by the long jerk of his Takakura's arm, hauling Mark back. Even so, Takakura hadn't even regained stability, Mark, young and limber, coiled and kinked his body trying to flee from the man raising himself from his stomach.

Those giant paws now gripping on the hitch of back of the knee, Mark recoiled a leg as a bullet was released by the sound of a hard crunch which he could only assume was Takakura's nose.

He didn't slow down, hesitate or show any glimpse of courtesy to the man as he bound from his knees to his toes. Not even after seeing the quick blurred out snapshots of red spurts obscuring him.

He was bound to run up and out and flailed around in zig-zags as he went. Ripping the doors off the hinges as he flung it open, Takakura called out,

"I couldn't hold him!"