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It has been a week since he came to this place, since he put aside all thoughts of family and of love.
It is time that he has spent familiarising himself with the city and with the life that he has led since the fire.
He has met the woman who has tied to her life to his, has seen how very similar she was to Tsuzuki and had found an odd sort of amusement in this similarity.
He has made his place and then, in a calm, ordered, manner, had executed them with a precision that Tatsumi would have been proud of.
He had then settled down to wait, nervous anticipation as a firm knot in his stomach that he can not quite erase.
Then, at the edge of his empathic awareness, he feels him.
With the shadow and the fractured edges of his emotions so getting closer by the instant his fear begins to claim him and, taking a deep breath, he visualises how this encounter shall unfold.
Pictures him breaking away from the woman at the desk, the irritation he feels at being kept so long an emotion that is swiftly consumed by his antipathy.
Pictures the door opening and him stepping into the room.
Pictures the detachment he will express towards the other, how he shall raise the subject of his curse and then surprise the other by stating that he has no intention of threatening either his happiness or his life.
He has just begun to create an image of how matters shall continue from this instant when a slight sound from the hall tells him that he has arrived.
The door opens an instant later and as he steps over the threshold all of his careful planning and inspirational visualisations fall to pieces. For, faced again with the full intensity of his emotions and the undeniable proof that he lives still, he can think only of Kyoto.
Of the one terrible instant where he believed he had lost everything precious to him and the painstaking months that had followed that time.
A smile blooms onto his face and, after crossing the space between them; he leans towards him and says,
"I had started to hope that you had become interesting, bouya, yet it seems that that is not the case."
He wishes to respond, to find again the confidence that had brought him to this point in the first place and yet he knows that such wishes are in vain, knows that his fear has again gotten the better of him.
For the deepening of his smile he is also aware of this fact, indeed, but an instant later he enquires,
"Why did you seek me out bouya when you knew that it would come to this? When you knew that you shall never grow beyond me?"
Coarse, hot, anger ignites in his blood and, before he is aware, he has his hands about his throat, the contact causing his curse marks to flair into life.
"You see, even now you are tied to me, bouya." He remarks, his voice matching well the continued mix of amusement and calm that dominates his emotions.
With the memory of Kyoto, of the deep emotional scars that he had inflicted upon Tsuzuki, heavy still in his mind he allows his anger to push aside his fear and become as an invisible hand to level at him as he says,
"LET ME GO."
He breaks free from his grip but an instant later, the sweat on his forehead and the speed of his breath as the only tells that he has been at all affected by this psychic shockwave.
"It seems I was a little too hasty in my assessment of your progress, bouya." He remarks as he places a distance between them. "Thus you must believe that it hurts me to do this," his hand raises and the curse sparks again across his skin.
The pain that accompanies the awakening of the marks is so intense that, quite against his will, his body crumbles to the floor and attempts to curl in on itself.
"What are you doing?"
The enquiry is a hard rasping effort which leaves him exhausted enough that he is able only to hear him respond, "Exterminating a particularly resilient nuisance," before the world begins to swim out of focus.
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T: Don't kill me! Next chapter Sunday…review???