Warning: Hints and spoilers of the future arc and choice arc are in the following chapters.
Contact
Hibari Kyoya sat at his desk in a chair. The seat was old and worn, soft with time. His chair faced the window and fog condensed on the window pane. The morning was very quiet and still, but was cracked every few moments by the twitter of a bird.
Inside, the room was clean and warm and embers of a fire crackled in the corner. On the desk sat an address book held together by twine, several folded newspapers, a steeping cup of tea, stationary, and a pen. He picked up the pen, took a piece of paper and began to write.
Yuka couldn't move her arm in the hard, plaster bandage. Her eyelids hung half open, her entire body shut down, crashed in a sense, more like a computer than any car—she looked fine on the outside. Her blood pressure was low, too low, and the White Spell Nurse made a note of it as she checked the vitals.
Then, the uniformed practitioner carefully flicked the needle, making sure no air bubbles were in the painkiller, and then, she inserted it into the IV tube that dipped under the girl's bandage. The clear medicine was like the water under a frozen lake. It was no laughing gas, just numbness that shut down nervous system. Yuka's eyelids closed fully by the time the nurse emptied the syringe.
Thoughtfully stepping away, the she wondered if this child truly was the same woman, the same Yuka, so sedated, and yet, still bursting with so much pain.
A clean, crisp note sat on the corner of his podium. A piece of hay in his mouth, the strong-chinned man handed out the weekly assignments to the members of the Foundation. They were all smart and able men. Some were lawyers, some were police officers, some were civilian vigilantes, and some were still in high school. All had proven their worth to his boss. All had earned some bit of respect from the isolated cloud. He was proud of them.
After the meeting, he called a young man over. The police officer bowed and Kusakabe handed him the note.
Rest, rest.
To her left, the clear IV tube attached to the dripping bag of saline.
To her right, a bedside table with a bouquet of lilies and poppies, get well soon cards with computer typed messages.
The color gray washed the floor and the walls, and even the window had a tinted film, the sky outside neutral. The clean, salty, latex smell made the flowers seem plastic and the nurses seem mechanic.
Several times a day she would awaken when the anesthesia wore off. And, she would smile, feeling the soft bed-sheets. Nothing truly entered her mind. Only the most primal gears were turning, her entire environment null and void, locked away in a more complex side of her brain. It would be just her and her body, but not even that. Just her and her forgetful soul, drunk on the waters of Lethe. But then, she would remember. And her eyes would tip, like saucers on the edge of a table, in the direction of the unnaturally white bandage. She would imagine what her skin looked underneath. She would see the damage very clearly, very vividly. There would be dried blood. Curled flaps of skin. A butter white layer of arm fat, stained red. The pink flesh, disturbing as a dead animal on the side of the road, insides leaking out and melting onto the pavement.
A cess pool. A tar pit.
Her body was broken, but she could feel nothing.
The reality of it? Well, it was simply hygienic now. Cleaned. The dried blood washed off. The skin iodinated. Closed in by walls numb-dumb gray. Comforted by the biting, white bandage. Laved in drugs.
How could any part of her be curled, raw, clotted and stitched?
Despite her numbness, she could still feel the ring in her hand. The pain washed over her, a pain no nerve suppressing drug could friction slow. It slid through her, shooting sparks like metal tailpipes against pavement, the screeching, the grinding. The regret. The stupidity.
She was pathetic. She had no sense.
The circle of red grew on his chest, a flower she wished had never bloomed.
"Shit!" the young man swore, lifting the coffee-stained note from the table. He wiped up the spill with a paper towel and then, he patted the note dry. He unfolded it and sighed. The ink message was still intact. Then, he folded it into quarters and slipped it into his pants pocket. He would carefully dry it later.
Yuka didn't feel like salsa on fire, like her dance teacher had once said. Some switch was turned off and the room was too dark to look for it. Her body was a dead weight on the mattress, her demon for movement gone. For every dancer has a demon just like every writer has a muse.
"Do you know where you are?" he smiled. Yuka could only look at him through the nook of her eye. He had white hair and interesting eyes. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he stood swaying back and forth on his toes and his heels. A sturdy man with longer, black hair stood by the doorway, watching them, arms crossed over his chest.
"Or, perhaps, I should ask, do you know who I am?"
"No," it came out soft, a whisper, a cat squeezing out of a tiny place.
"I wasn't sure," he mused. "You can call me Byakuran," he said, waving off the introduction like signing his name. Yuka was still dizzy. She took a deep breath.
"Is this Nami General hospital? My Aunt? Is she okay?"
Byakuran's eyes squinted with his smile.
"You are at the Milliefiore base, in Italy, Yuka-chan, and you don't have to worry about your Aunt." He looked over to the man at the door. "Genkishi, she is worried about her Aunt. Her child self is so sweet!"
"Yeah, I'm Yuka." She had barely registered what he said. "But… Italy? How did I?" her voice questioned, stumbling over saliva.
Where was Lal Mirch? Where was Dino? Her eyes shifted to the stranger introduced as Byakuran, then shifted to the white bandage.
The bandage. The grinding regret.
Dino. Lal.
Because if they weren't with her….
A little paper, rolled up as thin as a cigarette, now coffee-stained, switched hands underneath the table. The recipient was tapped three times on the foot. When he smiled in response, the other guests thought it was in mockery of the black suit's odd hairstyle.
"Thank you for everything Byakuran-sama, but can I ask one more question?" So the ten year bazooka was responsible. How could she tell this was the future? She ate the conversation like spoon-fed ice cream, and it felt good to talk to someone, anyone, even though she passively listened.
"Of course~"
"Do you know… do you know where my mother is?" The word felt like a lump, a lump she had sat on all night. What kind of person was she now? Did she have a fight with Lal Mirch and Dino? Did something happen? Her mother was the only reason, the only possible reason, that she wouldn't be with them. If her mother was here, maybe it would be all right. A mother in a large and cozy sweater to her hug her close. It's okay. It's okay.
Byakuran pulled over one of the visitors' chairs with a sweeping motion.
"I do, actually," he said, sitting.
"You do? Is she here?" She thought about getting up, but this man, this kind, kind man, he would help. His smile was disarming.
"No," he said slower, "she is in Vendicare Prison."
"Prison. Oh… in prison."
"What is it?"
"No, its nothing."
"Go on."
Yuka looked from Byakuran to the black-clad escort, aware that she had only just met them. They felt like her entire world now and it was easy to surrender her thoughts.
"Well, it doesn't make sense. She was set up, I bet!" Mothers don't belong in jail. They don't belong with serial killers and rapists. They were honest and hard-working, the best of women, whether with a tray of cookies or a briefcase. Mothers were love! Yuka tried to remember everything Lal Mirch had said about her mother and Yuka knew it. She didn't belong in prison. She didn't belong cold and wet and alone with metal and chains. She didn't belong hidden from the rest of the world.
She didn't belong hidden from her.
Her mom was for her. And just for her.
Meanwhile, Byakuran opened his cool, fresh eyes from his smiling squint.
"I believe Kali Mirch knew what she was doing." But, Yuka didn't eat what Byakuran suggested.
"Is it as bad as they say it is?"
"I believe we have gone over one more question."
"But is it?"
"Don't worry, Yuka-chan, don't worry! We made a deal, which, of course," his indigo eyes widened, "of course, you do not remember."
"A deal?"
"You are working for me in exchange for your mother's release."
"Really? You can do that?"
"Oh, I can do a lot of things," he grinned, breaking open a plastic bag of marshmallows.
A brown-tinted scrap switched hands on the bridge in the park late at night. The ducks quacked, but otherwise, the two men were alone. The giver tipped his hat and left. The recipient opened the note curiously.
"Damn bastard does it all," he chuckled. Then he tore off a corner and spit his chewing tobacco into it, and chucked it into the pond.
"Now, may I ask you one question, Yuka-chan? It will be quick. I know you need your rest."
"Yeah, that's fine."
"Where do you stand with Hibari Kyoya, of the Vongola." Unnoticed by Yuka, Genkishi stood up straighter in the doorway, his eyes more piercing. Yuka paled to Byakuran's favorite color, the tailpipe screeching through her.
"I… don't know."
Byakuran chuckled.
"Your younger self is very interesting." He got up. "You have not changed back into your older form, so that means Sho-chan's little device must be up and running. Hope you get well soon!" On his way out, Byakuran stopped in front of Genkishi, who bowed his head. Byakuran picked a little piece of lint off of the Phantom Knight's Black Spell uniform.
"Watch her, Genkishi."
"Master." His eyes switched back to Yuka, who had rolled over to go back to sleep.
"Hey toots, give this to your boyfriend for me. Tell him if he gets this job done, I'll forget about the bet he lost." She kissed him with her pouty lips, very sensually, and he wished she was really his woman. The posh stripper had a very elegant gait and didn't belong in this club. Before his arm could lace around her back, she pulled away and pushed him down into the chair. Soon lost in the hot, crowded club, the brown, torn note was held like a tip between her two fingers.
The teapot crackled, the metal expanding from the heat of the red burner. Yuka stood in a kitchen on the Black Spell side of the base. She blended into the ebony cabinets and dark granite counter in a black training uniform. Genkishi observed her leaning in the doorway with a hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He was so still, like a green pond's glassy surface, his blink, like a skating bug, too small to create any ripples. Genkishi wasn't watching her. He looked at the floor in a sort of meditation.
Nonetheless.
"I don't need supervision to make tea."
Now, it wasn't that Genkishi was bugging her. It wasn't that she disliked him, either. It was just that, well, Yuka couldn't cry. She had vaulted up in front of all these strangers. Where was she? Who was she? Italy? Millefiore?
"I'm just waiting for the drink."
"I can call you when it's done."
"I'd rather stay." Why couldn't she be alone? It was humiliating. She didn't need supervision like some little foolish child. She stared at the pot, willing her face blank. Her mask had slowly returned, even though it now hung with a sort of cheap, broken elastic band. The mask itself made of, perhaps, thin plastic and dull paint.
Lal and Dino.
She looked again over her shoulder, refitting the mask, her face numbing, yet her eyes hurting. She had never struggled so hard against emotion and it left her with an empty, hollow headache. Genkishi had the poise of an old hunting dog, an old black dog she never knew as pup, and she couldn't get why he followed.
Yuka poured the tea into two mugs. Even though her hands didn't shake, even though her breath didn't hitch, she still feared this teapot would also clatter to the floor, these cups break, this hot, hot liquid mix with her hot, hot tears. Concentrating on her lung muscles, setting her mind only on the way she breathed, Yuka walked over to Genkishi and held one mug out to him. She tilted her head upward to look him in the face. He was no lean frame, roughly her height, like the prefect. Taut muscles stretched his Black Spell jumpsuit. He had such control in the way he took the mug with both hands, cupping the bottom and holding onto the handle.
"What does it mean that I am your partner?" He wasn't friendly or easy-going like Yamamoto. He wasn't a domineering ass like you-know-who. He was just silent.
"It doesn't matter. You are not your older self," he replied.
"What do you mean?" He seemed so dark with his silence. She eyed him over the rim of her mug, blowing on the drink. Tea. It was the only calming substance around. Genkishi smelled his, but didn't bother drinking or blowing on it.
"Byakuran assigned me to you." Yuka looked down, thoughtfully, and Genkishi continued. "If anyone gets in the way, they die." Was he smiling? She looked up from the cup she decided was too hot for now. No, he was still deadpan, calm.
"He wanted you to protect me?" Insulted haughtiness emerged from her loose lips. Knight in shining armor?
"So you weren't disturbed at work. It needed your complete attention." Yuka took a deep breath, training her entire mind again on her diaphragm. It still came out a sigh. Frustrated with herself, she turned around and went to the kitchen table, sipping and smelling the steam.
"My research needed my complete attention…," she repeated.
"Mmm," he grunted. The door closed heavily behind the Phantom Knight and she heard his heavy boots tap back down the hallway.
Alone.
Finally, she cried into the warm, dark liquid. A different cry. A sane cry.
He had always wanted to be a writer, and she admired him for it. He had talent. How he collected those monstrous debts, how he got sucked into that world of crime, well, she didn't think it would be forever. She gave him the piece of paper and repeated his creditor's message. He looked away from her, but she kissed him on the forehead.
"I love you," she said. "You'll be fine."
"You don't know what I've gotten into," he replied and sank his head on the keyboard.
Byakuran, with a crescent-shaped pair of shears, snipped a yellow lily from the stem of a flourishing plant. He lifted it to his face, caressing the bottom of the flower, to study it closely. He loved the way the sickly yellow was mottled with little red spots, as if the flower had witnessed a murder. As if it had opened into bloom at the slash of a jugular. The tongue-like petals seemed to have lapped up the fresh, hot life.
Tossing the flower into a wastebasket, Byakuran returned to the singular glass table on the rooftop garden. It was bedecked with a pitcher of frosty lemonade, more sweet than sour. A white porcelain bowl held jumbo marshmallows looking like frogs eggs in milk. He sat down. Lippi would be on time, but the Millefiore boss was early. He had gotten through afternoon snack faster than he had expected, the desserts more filling than usual. Listlessly, he shifted his gaze to the roof's radio beacon, covered in satellite receptors and transmitters. It ruined the view.
Sighing, he speed-dialed the number he comically kept as his ICE contact.
"Sho-chan~ I'm bored," he said, smiling at the phone's webcam. His college bud had a puffy set of head phones on and a t-shirt of his favorite band. He seemed relaxed, but only for the first second of the phone call. The next moment, his rear kissed the floor because he had lost his balance. Silly Shoichi.
"Byakuran-san!" The headphones were off, stowed under the computer panel.
"Don't worry, Sho-chan. I don't expect you to be working all the time."
"Sorry, Byakuran-san."
"It came to my mind to call you this afternoon," he smiled cheerfully.
"Why? Is something the matter?"
"I missed you~"
Shoichi Irie sighed. It looked like his stomach was hurting again, the way his eyebrows knit.
He did a bad job hiding it. The way he paled, shaking slightly as he pulled himself together, typing on his computer to make it less noticeable. Shoichi's act was like white out. Byakuran could scratch it off with his pinky.
"Well, we have found nothing in Namimori. We've caught no activity related to the Vongola that backs up the rumors of their base. There's not much to report."
"I know that. Everything is going smoothly."
Shoichi pushed up his glasses, then crossed his arms.
"How is everything on your end? Has something happened?"
"The weather is simply perfect.
"Byakuran."
"We could play beach chess, like back during spring break."
"Please be serious."
"Ah, well, one of the Black Spell members seems to have been replaced with her younger self by the ten-year bazooka." Yes, his stomach was definitely pained. But Byakuran didn't suggest he take anti-acid. "Curious, how she hasn't poofed back yet. They say people return after ten some minutes."
"Yes, that is very odd," Shoichi agreed.
"She came in quite a condition, too. Made quite a show."
"What happened? How is she?"
"Oh, bleeding, muttering things unlike her," Byakuran waved it off.
Shoichi looked shocked.
"Is she okay?"
"Hmm. She's alive."
"Who is she? Which Black Spell member?"
"Oh, Leo-kun's here! I must be off, Sho-chan!"
"Byakuran-san, wait!"
"Bye-bye~" He waved his index finger, a little 'nuh-uh-uh I'm in charge of the conversation' to his cell phone's camera. Then, he snapped it shut. Phoning Shoichi was always entertaining.
"Leo-kun, what's your report? You look thirsty, you know. There's plenty of lemonade." Byakuran would offer anything except his fluffy treats.
"Uh, no thank you, uh sir."
Byakuran leaned back in his chair, playing with the apps in his phone. He was humming a little to himself, now. "Go on," he piped up.
"The Varia Assassination Squad is mobilizing. However, there is no definite indication of which base they plan to attack—"
"Don't worry. I can take care of that."
"Eh, um, you can? You mean you know where they will attack?"
"Yup. You see, I figured this would happen."
Byakuran eyed Leo like candy.
Leo ruffled through the sheets on his clipboard.
"Anyway, there isn't too much to report beyond the usual, sir. Their communication systems are under our complete surveillance and we have men watching the airports." Byakuran tilted in his seat, looking past Lippi and to the rooftop door that had squeaked open.
"I don't need the door held open for me," Yuka commented. She clutched a watering can with two hands. How cute. Her white knuckles twisted on the pail. What would she do if he ripped it away from her? Oh, but he couldn't. At least, not today.
"Don't wander off. Water the plants later, if you want," the Phantom Knight said. Then, he nodded to Byakuran who, recognized it with a motion of his hand, and placidly left, closing the door behind him. In a sense, Genkishi was cute too. Like a Doberman. They made lovely pets.
"Is that the Black Spell girl from the past?" Lippi asked, glancing at the approaching girl.
"You know her?"
"Oh, well, White Spell doesn't talk to Black Spell very often, sir. I've just heard about it. I apologize, but I didn't know you had meeting scheduled so early, today. I'll leave." Lippi bowed, keeping his arms regimentally stiff by his side. Then he left, passing Yuka without looking at her, without introducing himself. Typical White Spell.
"It's nice up here. I can see for miles."
"Do you like Millefiore?"
"I do." She brushed the hair out of her face. "And to answer your question from before, I think my relationship with Hibari Kyoya was a mistake. That's how I feel."
He perked up. Byakuran was so used to lies. So used to magazine cut letters pasted on blank white paper.
"I'm glad to hear that you will not be against the mission, then."
"No, I'm not. When I woke up this morning, I got the report you sent concerning my mother," she replied, and he noticed the color had returned to her face since her time in the infirmary. There was something strong and new in her voice. Secrets fell open to him, not bloomed open, but fell open, like the way a dead flower bud falls apart with age. "I felt much better this morning. My arm doesn't hurt as much. I think it's all going to be all right." Byakuran remembered telling his secretary to inject a little hope into the information. "Everything is for the best."
Then, Yuka went off to water the bush of lilies he had recently clipped. The Millefiore boss took the bowl of marshmallows onto his lap, smiling as he bit into the softness. If these synthetic hunks of sweetness really were bad for you, why did they taste so good?
Genkishi waited for Yuka in the lounge just below the rooftop. His eyes were closed and he sat up straight, perfectly straight, bone-crackingly straight. He didn't have to open them to know the girl had come back from her meeting.
"The Vongola must not have been right for me," she said, not with any sadness, but more like a conclusion someone else had told her. "It's nice here. I can do what I want."
"As long as you are loyal to Byakuran," Genkishi said and opened his eyes to look at her. She didn't look like she took him seriously. She looked young and stupid. He didn't think he would have to beat anything into a woman like her older self.
"Why do you keep them? You don't use them."
"Excuse me?"
"Your swords. Why do you have four?"
Genkishi stood up. He wasn't used to this from her.
"Come with me." They began down the hallway, ignoring her pointless question, Genkishi in front, Yuka trailing a few steps behind. She still didn't know her way around the massive base. She couldn't really do what she wanted, like she had said. She could only shadow him around the base. Her statement was a contradiction; She had no freedom. Yuka tapped the pocket of her uniform jacket and didn't notice his passive curiosity.
"You like Byakuran a lot?"
"He saved my life."
Maybe she was silent because he didn't look the type to be saved.
"I like him, too. No one has ever helped me find my mother. It's kind of strange, that now, she suddenly exists." Pathetic. Only fixated on her damn mother, but who was he to say. His life belonged to another. His honor belonged to another. Genkishi was a man of few friends. He stopped and turned around outside a training room.
"Since you don't have any memory or experience to work on your research, you can help me train."
"Train?" She looked at his sword and at her bare hands.
"Don't worry. I won't touch my swords."
"No sword, huh?" She studied him for the first time now. His toned muscles, exercised every day, lean and fit. He could swim 500 meters in just under six and a half minutes with weights on his wrists and ankles. He could kill without unsheathing his sword, just by injecting some flame into his indigo box. "I think I can take you."
The White Spell secretary, pretended to rummage through his paperwork, and when he knocked his pen off his desk, he surreptitiously slipped the torn and coffee-stained remnants of a note into his left boot.
Yuka didn't know how to prove to him that she was feeling better. She didn't know how to say that her demon had returned, although that little flick of electricity still needed its strength. Yuka had a new chance at life, a caterpillar turned butterfly. She wouldn't be returning to the past, the ten year bazooka somehow broken. She was on a one-way road, everything black and white, everything disgustingly uniform, but maybe that was for her. And right now, she had to work with it. She had to work the system. The Millefiore system. The prison system.
She had no courage to rebel here, to stomp her foot down and demand what she wanted. Her mom, but Dino and Lal Mirch on top. They were out of her reach. So she would adapt. She would change her identity, her side in the chaos of this mafia world. Because she wasn't really changing, was she?
She was just becoming her future self.
Yuka removed her black jacket to reveal a gray tank top underneath. Maybe there was something wonderful in a uniform. Like equality… no she still missed the colors. But gray, it wasn't so disgusting. This uniform belonged to her older self, and a blonde business-like woman came to her mind, strong and independent. No, this outfit wasn't so disgusting. She followed the Phantom Knight into the training room. She never had considered this before, but when she looked at Genkishi, patient Genkishi, and at his black uniform just like hers, her heart thumped with pride. He didn't threaten her. He didn't call her foolish and weak. She did not have to stiffen at any insult. Neither did he flirt with her, which was, perhaps, the greatest relief.
He had manners, and in that sense, a knight was better than any punk.
"I am happy here." Her expression was wreathed in placid stoniness. Her face was relaxed, the usual turbulent muscles lost. "I know I was a part of the Vongola before, but maybe, this family is better for me. That whatever made me change was for the best." The Black Spell lieutenants were a rowdy bunch, but still greeted her warmly around the pool table. She could imagine getting along with them.
Yuka almost asked Genkishi what her future self was like, whether she was professional or boisterous, hot-headed or cold, but Genkishi spoke first.
"I don't care if you're happy." And with those words, something smashed into her ribcage. "Training begins now." Or at least, the pain of being smashed in the ribcage. Nothing had hit. She hadn't heard anything approach her. In fact, he was still standing a few paces in front of her, a black line against a gray wall. She clutched her midsection, searching for broken ribs, but there were none.
"What"—but something whacked her on the back of the neck and she fell forward, hands spread on the cold floor as pain shot up the nerve the knee-cap was supposed to protect. And something dark took over her soul just then. Like thin, thin string that had been slack all around her suddenly tightening like a noose. And she felt this prickling all over her body, pins and needles, uncontrollable, as if thorns ran along her bones and sawed at her flesh whenever she moved. And something black sprouted where she had been hit, a throbbing ball of pain. Still, she got up and fought off the weird sensations. It must have grown into her head now because a deep dark jungle with vines hanging down like trailing intestines had replaced the indestructible walls.
A delirium? Was she back in the nightmare she had escaped ten years ago? She wasn't naked. The uniform still clothed her She looked at her hands. What weird things they were! Such freakish unnatural shapes. Vision vibrated, passing in and out of her like a broken, wobbly pendulum.
Suddenly her heart screamed and her eyes closed shut. Can hearts scream? It felt like a hundred bubbles popped inside her chest, her heart eaten by them, melting in acidic froth. Thoughts came to her from some esoteric space and gripped her mind like harpoons under thick skin and put her mind in chafing harness, a bit that made a horse's mouth bleed.
The jacket.
No.
All she had was a jacket.
It was a lovely jacket.
So many possibilities.
Wrap it around his neck.
Shove it down his throat.
She could even bite off the buttons, the metal clinking on her teeth, and push them into that soft and sensitive place known as the eye socket.
Thoughts whizzed into her mind as everything turned black, but she couldn't move. The pain chained her, trapped her in this one spot. She couldn't speak. She couldn't open her mouth. And her eyes were closing, but everything she felt was a great as a bloated whale's carcass washed up on the beach. A slimy log wrapped around her foot and her ankle and it squeezed and it squeezed while her heart continued to sizzle. Tighter and tighter. More slimy jelly, heavy and wet, flopped onto her shoulder and squeezed and squeezed until her arm gave out. And one more slapped on her chest and pulled itself around her neck and up the back of her head. Sound was muffled. Colors like the back of a butterfly took over her the vision of her closed eyes, mixing with the dark black strings that cut her innards when she twisted and thrashed.
And she couldn't resist anymore. She couldn't doit anymore.
She just couldn't.
Genkishi looked down at Yuka, watching her thin hair slide weakly down her face. He couldn't see her expression, but her wrecked and heaving body, covered by a mountain of his spectral sea slugs, satisfied him. He could barely distinguish where one jellied mass started and ended on the pile, their colors like paint thrown on canvas, blending, blurring, and bleeding into little pools. With a thought like the snapping tick of a second hand, one of the slugs exploded.
Put her in pain.
The command rang in his mind like a sermon. After he returned his flaming pet to its box, he jealously watched the White Spell uniform take the girl away, nodding to him and mentioning the infirmary. As Genkishi left the training room, he thought about how he didn't belong in black.
The sky is best cloudless, when the azure blue rules deep and proud. Yuka opened her eyes to face the drowning blue. Tree leaves rustled from the wind and when she turned her head, she saw green branches rising over the rooftop's parapet, the living pieces flowing with the air. Everything around her glowed with peachy warmth, and she realized this was sunlight.
Yuka didn't want to push herself up to be alert, to take in her surroundings. She just wanted to melt into the world around her, let it become her, let it breathe her. The rush of rubbing leaves and the salty-sweet smell of world after it rained. She wouldn't mind if it ended right here, cradled by the yellow-green light, between the arms of the rooftop and the face of the sun. She didn't mind if she took her last breath and did nothing, nothing more. Right here, everything was the way it was meant to be.
That was until Yuka felt something nudge her arm. Her eyes opened from her dozy squint. What she saw caused air to rush back into her lungs. Hibari. Hewas standing above her, leaning against the wall, eyes closed just like hers had been. No ghost, all flesh! And nature, she forgot about it. Her life wouldn't end here. She couldn't fade away. He was alive! She lifted herself up on her elbow.
"You!"
He opened his eyes a little bit to look down at her, then closed them.
"You're ruining it."
"You're not dead!"
He looked at her again, this time irritated.
"Why would I be dead?" Her eyes swallowed every inch of him, memorizing it all. Everything about him, so calm and steady, and she needed that. Even though he stood above her, even though she was looking up to him, he was still next to her. Beside her. There was no cockiness. No arrogance. All her feelings percolated to her face: relief, thankfulness, respect, for all that she had wanted… she couldn't look at him anymore. The feel of her smooth jade ring slipped into her palm like a soapy bubble. Her face, her rabid-fire emotions, there was nothing covering them up. Like papers blown off a desk by a fan. Her great waters flowed straight down, no barriers to filter or divert them. Her face cried for what hurt so bad but felt so good. This place. This person.
He was down on his knees, next to her, at her level.
"What's the matter?"
"Don't look," but his hand was already on her shoulder and he had already turned her around.
"Don't look." Why were her thoughts and her words the same? She wished her hair were longer so she could hide under it.
"Hey. What"—The feel of the ring was replaced by his hand—"are you doing?" He squeezed it hard and there was a growl in his voice, but it didn't seem that way to Yuka because he was pushing the hair away from her sticky cheeks.
And there she was.
Bare before him.
Bare, but big bare, not small bare, not tiny bare, not short bare, but enormously bare with her face inches away from his own. Her bareness, dressed in globs of fat tears and a weak smile, was big, so big, she thought her heart would break from the way it hurt. But his lips were there and he made it go away. He was kissing her and holding her hand. His jacket had slipped off his shoulders and he was in his clean, white uniform shirt. Her hands came to the fabric, her palms moist. She put everything she felt for him, everything that had been building up in her, everything she wished she could tell him instead of drown in fear and loathing and knives—instead of stabbing him—all into pressed lips. There were no boundaries and there were no limits. All space and time was theirs and he agreed with her and she felt his agreement in the way he pushed into the kiss, his words in his touch.
Kissing him was like kissing the ground and thanking it for never giving way, the world's strength pulling her up as his kiss deepened. Yuka squeezed his hand, and more tears fell, but she could breathe.
She could breathe.
What was she before this moment?
Mukuro chuckled watching Yuka's sleeping face. He sat next to her on the infirmary bed and his demonic eye glowed with a small dying-will flame. As Leonardo Lippi, Mukuro had carried her into the health wing and pretended to sign the check-in sheet. All he had to do was smile cutely at the receptionist. He told the nurse that the girl had fainted, nothing serious. He told the nurse he was trained as a medic and he could take care of it. Of course, he locked the door behind him.
What would Kyoya think of what he was about to do?
The illusionist put his hand on her forehead, beginning the details of the younger cloud in the dream, having washed her first in his favorite world, a sterilizer. There was a method to madness, after all, just like any doctor's operation. A method to manipulation.
Some people call it psychology.
Oh!
Oh-ho!
She was crying. Her mind was crying and, on the bed, one of her fists was balled up, clenching something. What was this? Was her younger self in love with the cloud as well? With surgical curiosity, he told his puppet prefect to pick up her hand and her fist relaxed.
On the bitter white sheets, her claws gave way revealing a throbbing indigo flame, a coin-sized ghostly halo. Her skin underneath it blistered where it burned, white skin peeling back painlessly, he knew, the nerves destroyed. Putting his hand near it, a sort of sensor hovering over the energy, his two hell rings twitched on his fingers, trying to pinch him with short hot pricks.
The illusionist's smirk was a warped crystal ball.
"Kufufu."
His red eye ordered the dream to be gentle. For Mukuro Rokudo knew to blow gently when kindling a flame.
Yuka could feel a nasty purple bruise behind her neck. She didn't have to see the purple, blue, red, and green splotched that twisted on her wounded back to know of the injury. But she couldn't feel anything wrong with her left hand, mittened in white gauze, and that's what scared her. How could she not feel an injury? She was on no narcotics. The kiss—the dream! The dream.
She sat up on the sick bed, bringing her gauze-wrapped hand to her drawn up knees. Her good hand came to her mouth, touching her lips…. It was only a dream. She took a deep breath, but a sharp pain stabbed at her lungs. It was the kiss of a ghost.
And then, Genkishi.
Why?
He had hurt her badly. Her back felt worse than any training-punishment administered by her Aunt. How could she have traded Lal Mirch and Dino for this? There must be something, anything, oh what! What could make Millefiore better than Vongola?
"My, my, my~ You shouldn't be moving."
She turned her head to see a man with long hair in a black trench coat and leather pants observing her from one of the visitor's seats against the wall. It was ten years later, but it was definitely him. That Mukuro Rokudo, who returned the knife. The knife. The knife? Where was it?
Shining with violet murkiness, she found the pocket knife solid in her hand. She couldn't wrap her fingers around it in time, her hand oddly weak. Mukuro swiped the object from her person, flicked it open and read the blade aloud, more for himself than for her. She didn't reach for it.
She didn't want to see it, really.
And she wondered how it could manifest like that. As if a cloud of microscopic gnats had merged into one.
"To my fire, my perfect delight, and my perfect agony." A satisfied expression weaved onto Mukuro's face. Yuka wondered what her connection was to him. Her heart felt like a net of little pebbles that could never form one solid rock.
"I will hold onto this for when the time is right."
"Why are you here?" The way he smiled at her was exactly the way he fought Hibari ten years ago: playful and poking.
"Your younger self is such a bother," he replied. "Isn't it obvious, Yuka-chan?" He flicked the blade closed and dropped it into his pocket. Then, he removed a dirty note, covered with the oil of many hands.
"Why, you are a traitor."
He handed over the note, demons dancing on his lips. Yuka's expression was priceless.
"Have a nice day."
Mukuro turned around and left, his long hair trailing behind him like the fins of an elegant fish. She didn't see the black trench coat mist away into a White Spell jacket. She didn't see the red eye turn blue as he took one last peek over his shoulder. No. Her eyes were lost on the note. Her hands were already shaking. The signature, the elegant black markings like the curling feathers of a blackbird, made her bite her lip.
Kyoya.