Chapter Eight
The sun peered through the curtains, sitting on the horizon as it shed its blinding rays across the living room.
"Kurogane, are you going to help with dinner?" the magician asked, as if their confrontation this afternoon hadn't happened.
The ninja glanced up. "Since when did you start calling me by name?"
The mage pretended to think about it for a second. "Actually, I was trying to decide if it would sound better to use your real name or the nicknames. What do you think?"
"You called me by name Tokyo, too. Why?"
Fai shrugged. "Don't you prefer it that way?"
Kurogane glared, annoyed that it had taken the mage this long to call him by name. He'd hated the nicknames from the moment the idiot had first spoken. Big Puppy, Kuro-pon, Kuro-rin. The most recent one was more annoying than all the rest: Daddy. The mere insinuation that he filled in as some father-figure for the group, or that he even liked kids, irked him more than he would've believe possible.
Maybe it was the mocking way the magician had said those names that bugged him so much. The nicknames weren't exactly sarcastic, but the singsong voice the mage used to address him reminded him of children running amok. Or maybe it was the fact that, if he'd really wanted to be a father figure to someone, he would've had kids.
He sighed, hearing dinner sizzle on the stove behind him. "My regular name is fine," he said, not bothering to decipher the mage's reason for giving up nicknames. Sunlight streamed in through the window, laying gold patches across the floor.
The kid should've been back by now, he thought, staring at the light patch. He'd expected Syaoran to find his way back hours ago, or to have given up the blindfold and found his way back without it. It didn't exactly worry him that the kid was taking longer than he expected. The boy could've easily found a place to rest and added a few hours to his quest that way. It wasn't unreasonable that he'd come wandering in after traffic of the streets thinned out a little.
"Time to set the table," Fai announced, flipping a flattened disk of ground beef in the frying pan to sear the other side. The ninja rose from the couch and moved toward the cupboards. He grabbed four plates, in the habit of doing so after a week of dragging the boy over to the table for meals. After a moment, he put one of them back and set the other three on the dinner table.
Dinner passed with little fanfare. Without the kid here, conversation flowed freely between the magician and the princess. A few times, Fai tried to drag him into the conversation, calling him by name twice, hoping for him to get over their argument.
Kurogane responded with terse, one-syllable answers. After several failed attempts to engage him in conversation, Fai gave up and spoke only to Sakura and the white pork bun.
The boy still hadn't returned by the end of dinnertime.
Fai went to bed a short while later, still grinning even though it was his turn to sleep on the floor. Sakura picked a snoozing Mokona off the arm of the couch and carried the manju bun to her room, closing the door behind her.
Two hours passed. By the time Kurogane gave up on waiting for the kid to return, the streets down below were almost totally devoid of cars, and the sidewalks were barren except for the quick movements of workers returning home from the late shift. He went to bed, figuring the kid would slip back into the apartment while he slept.
The following morning, the ninja left his bedroom and walked over to the kid's, expecting him to be asleep. Kurogane knocked on the wooden door, then paused a moment, waiting for a response.
"Kid, you in there?" he asked, when there was no answer.
No response. Kurogane pushed down on the metal handle, surprised when it moved freely. The kid usually locked his door at night.
As the door swung open, he realized why. He's still not back?
He closed the door, feeling the first twinge of actual worry since leaving the kid out in the city.
The others were starting to wake. Fai popped his head out of their shared room first, too sprightly for this early in the day. "Good morning, Kurogane!" he sang, twirling as he swept through the living room. The ninja wouldn't have thought hearing his real name would be just as annoying as hearing those stupid nicknames.
"The kid's not back."
The magician went still for a moment, then resumed his spinning. "Didn't know you were still waiting."
"I'm going to look for him. It's possible he's wandering around in the lobby." He grabbed Souhi off the coffee table, not because he thought he needed it, but because it didn't feel right to go out without a sword on his hip.
"Try to be back in time for breakfast."
Kurogane ignored the magician, walking over to the front door and opening it wide.
He never made it passed the threshold. A piece of cloth sat prominently on the industrial gray carpet, laying in an untidy clump where it had been left. From the amount of fabric, one would naturally assume it was a bundled up T-shirt, or some similar garment, tossed casually aside or dropped on the way in.
He knelt down, not wanting to believe the thoughts racing through his head. As his fingers wrapped around the soft, slippery fabric, though, he knew.
"What's wrong?" Fai asked.
Slowly, he stood, the folded up piece of fabric laying flat across the palm of his hand and spilling over the edges of his fingertips.
"Kurogane-san?" Sakura asked, rubbing her eyes as she peered out of her room.
"He was here."
"Who?"
"The kid. Shit, he must've overheard us yesterday."
Fai gave the blindfold a guarded look, as if some of the kid had rubbed off in the folds, and it was disturbing the magician simply by being within sight. "Well."
"I'm going to be gone a while," was all the ninja said.
The pain in his stomach eventually overshadowed the pain in his heart.
The sky was lightening, the sun just barely peeking above the horizon. Syaoran glanced up, surprised at how early it was getting light out. He stared for a moment, the pale pink streaks of light carving their image into his retinas.
Sighing, he wiped his face. He hadn't cried all night, but his face was sticky with half-dried tears, and his throat ached almost as much as his shoulder. The pain in his stomach had graduated beyond the stage of gnawing hunger and into a more painful degree of emptiness. He knew if he didn't eat soon, he would start getting lightheaded.
Syaoran stood, not realizing how tight the muscles in his back were until he tried to straighten them out. The stiffness in his spine didn't go away even as he trudged back toward the main part of the city.
Used to trying different foods from every country he visited, he stopped at the first food vendor he saw and ordered the only thing available at the stall: spiced pork ribs drenched in some kind of sauce called "barbeque." He pulled a handful of napkins from the metal square and took his meal to the first bench he saw.
He ate until he felt sick, using up all his napkins in the process. Since he didn't really feel like going back to the apartment complex, where he'd have to face the apathetic looks and evasive movements of his traveling companions, he wandered through the city, window-shopping. He walked through a store with clothes for every occasion, then a candy shop that seemed somehow out of place in the busy city, as if it was too whimsical to be sitting next to a street littered with discarded paper bags and drink containers. On impulse, he bought a square of fudge big enough for his companions to split. Perhaps a peace offering would diffuse the tension a bit when he got back.
That about used up what pocket money he'd had with him when he'd left. He wandered a while more, keeping track of his location so he would be able to find the apartment complex when he grew hungry again. Much of this time, he spent people-watching. Mokona must've been close, because he understood every conversation around him.
He'd wandered in a series of loops all around the two-mile distance from the apartment when he saw the familiar figure walking through a park, dressed all in black. For a moment, he thought it was Kurogane, searching for him. Feeling guilty for troubling the ninja when he was already on thin ice with everyone else, he started in that direction, walking slowly on his sore feet.
He was only a few meters away when he realized the man in black wasn't the sword master. He paused, wondering why the tall man had looked so familiar to him from behind, then turned to go back.
"Going so soon, Syaoran?" Hearing his name come from someone else's lips startled him enough to make him look back. Before he even saw the face attached to the voice, he realized why the man had looked so familiar to him.
"Seishirou-san."