Chapter Two

The door reverberated in its frame, hinges protesting against the repeated impacts. "Boy!"

Syaoran braced himself against the other side of the door, every hit sending a jolt through his spine. His pulse pounded in his ears, a steady beat to underscore the sound of Kurogane's fists slamming into the wood.

"Boy!"

There was a final, splintering impact, and for a moment, Syaoran froze, fearing the ninja would break down the door, that the consequences of his rash decision would rebound against him before the ninja could calm down.

It was quiet. Like the silence after the end of the world.

Finally, he heard Kurogane curse softly beyond the door, heard the soft footfalls of his retreat. Syaoran exhaled silently, leaning against the abused door. A juncture on one of the hinges had come loose, leaving the metal dangling. How am I going to fix that? he wondered. Adrenaline made his hands tremble, and he wrapped his arms around his chest in an effort to still them.

He wasn't sure if he felt exhilarated or terrified. On one hand, he'd effectively proven that he wasn't simply a blueprint for his clone—the Other would've never even considered doing such a thing. Plus, he'd gotten a reaction. Albeit a harsh reaction, but he was definitely the first thing on someone's mind right now. But on the other hand . . . Kurogane wasn't an exceptionally forgiving person. Honorable, yes. Protective, yes. But not the kind of person to forget something so rash. Syaoran had probably damaged their relationship more in the past thirty seconds than the Other had when the magic binding him had broken.

This can't end well, Syaoran thought, curling up on the cement and closing his eyes. After a few minutes, the chill of the floor drove him to his ratty mattress.

As the last wisps of adrenaline faded from his bloodstream, the pains of his body began to make themselves known. A deep ache pulsed in his shoulder, in time with the steady beating of his heart. From the intensity, he had to consider the possibility that his shoulder had cracked when Kurogane had slammed him into the wall. I deserve worse than that, he thought miserably, drawing the sheets close around his body. A weaker ache lingered in his elbow, where he'd smashed it into the sheetrock in his flight. The wall is probably cracked. Someone will have to fix that, too . . .

His upper arm was bruised from the force of the ninja's grip—again, nothing more than he deserved or would've expected if he'd had more time to consider his actions. His hip hurt from when he'd slammed into the doorframe as he'd fled. A few minor scrapes and bruises, likely from the brief scuffle. Except for his shoulder, it was nothing that wouldn't heal before the next chess match. I'll have to see him again when it's time to go to the arena, he realized. Would Kurogane's anger have subsided by then, or would seeing Syaoran only bring it back into sharp focus? The latter seemed more likely, and the thought of facing him again was enough to make him wish he had never left his room to begin with.

There was nothing he could do to mitigate the consequences of his foolish impulse. Next time he had an urge to force a reaction, he'd suppress it.

Even if this had been the first time anyone had treated him like something more than a ghost.

"Fuck," Kurogane hissed as he stalked away from the door. The wood had splintered, leaving a softball-sized dent where his fist had connected, and his knuckles were bleeding. He couldn't be sure, in this shitty apartment, whether the door had actually caved in from the repeated impacts, or if water damage had warped it before they'd ever arrived here.

Kurogane didn't care either way.

He stalked over to the tiny bathroom and turned the knob on the sink. After a few seconds, the faucet started streaming cold water into the basin. He rinsed the blood off his knuckles, holding them under the icy water until they stopped bleeding.

He didn't allow himself to think about what had just happened.

He wrapped some gauze around his knuckles to keep the scrapes from reopening, then headed to the living room. For a moment, he considered walking back over to the boy's room and demanding an explanation. Before he could, he caught sight of the crumbling dent in the sheetrock. "What the hell?" He moved closer, scrutinizing the volleyball-sized hole. It was about level with his elbow. Gleaming brass pipes peeked out between the cracks.

Fragments of the last few minutes flickered through his mind. The kid drawing closer, his own hand coming down on the boy's sternum and shoving him into the wall, the sound of sheetrock crumbling.

Damn it.

Kurogane focused on taming the fury in his chest. He'd always had a volatile temper, always known he'd had one. Even so, it was rare for him to lose control of it so completely, and now that his rage was cooling, he had to survey the damage.

In addition to the hole in the wall, there was a smaller dent about a foot away. The bedroom door was also conspicuously beaten up.

There were sandwiches on the floor.

The sandwiches. A metallic taste filled his mouth as he realized that was the only thing the boy had left his room for. After almost twenty hours without visiting the kitchen, he had to be starving. That stupid brat, he thought, snatching the sandwiches off the cement. Sheathed in plastic, they'd remained in tact. I told him to take care of himself. He should've taken these with him.

He stalked over to the fridge and tossed both sandwiches on one of the empty shelves. As he looked over the barren refrigerator, he realized why the boy had chosen that moment to abandon his room. Of course. The mage and the princess are out shopping. He doesn't want them to see him like this.

Kurogane slammed the refrigerator door hard enough to make the appliance wobble. He couldn't decide whether the boy's reluctance to interact with the rest of them was contemptible or just pathetic, but thinking about it made the simmering anger in his chest threaten to boil over, so he returned his attention to the cracks in the sheetrock, trying to think of an explanation that wouldn't sound ludicrous.

After all, it wasn't like he was about to tell the others what had happened. The mage would never let him live it down, and the princess would find a way to convince herself that this was somehow her fault.

Besides, the actual explanation was so ridiculous, he wasn't even sure he believed it himself. It wasn't as if the boy could harbor any feelings like that toward him—so far as Kurogane knew, he was in love with the princess. No, it has to be something else, he thought, pacing the length of the living room. But what could he want that could possibly benefit from doing something like that? The corner of his lip twitched, prickling from the unexpected contact.

Stupid to worry about it, he finally decided. Stupid to even think about it.

Hours passed, and the pit in his stomach deepened.

Syaoran had realized minutes after lying down that he'd dropped his sandwiches at some point during the confrontation. At first, he'd considered going out to retrieve them, but he hadn't been able to pluck up the nerve to face Kurogane, and when Fai and Sakura returned from their shopping trip, he gave up any notion of going out again until everyone was asleep.

So for hours, the hunger gnawed away at him, twisting through his belly like a dagger, mingling with the guilt so that he was forced to lie there, clutching his abdomen. All the while, noises from outside taunted him—the sound of pots and pans banging together as Fai prepared dinner for the others, the sound of water boiling, of dry noodles cracking and falling into water. Most torturous of all was the smell of oregano and garlic and tomatoes that seeped underneath his door with false promises of food.

He knew the others would let him eat, if he asked. But they wouldn't be expecting him to, after weeks of eating separately. Every bite he took would be one taken from their plates, stolen from under their noses.

"What happened to the wall?" Fai asked at one point, voice rising with surprise. Syaoran tensed, listening, praying Kurogane would say nothing, hoping that if he did say something that it would be an exceptionally rare lie.

"I punched the wall," Kurogane had grumbled from the couch. Syaoran sunk back into his sheets, numb with relief.

"Why?" Fai asked.

"The bathroom sink backed up."

Before the magician could respond to that, Kurogane silenced him with a threat. Syaoran pulled the pillow from under his head and used it to cover his ears. Even then, he heard Fai assessing the damage, endured the torment of the boiling water, suffered maddening breaks in conversation that indicated everyone else was just a little too tense to shatter the silence.

Syaoran wondered how long it would take for him to go insane.

Because they didn't have a chess match to worry about tomorrow, the others stayed up late, watching TV from the tiny screen. As usual, Sakura was the first to go to bed. Fai followed to tuck her in for the night. Syaoran allowed himself a moment to envy their closeness, then berated himself for his jealousy.

Fai went to bed shortly after that.

Syaoran listened for the moment when the television would shut off. There was little else to do between chess matches, and while Mokona had determined that there was a feather in this world, it was too distant to be tracked, and they had no efficient way of combing the city. The general consensus had been that they'd wait for signs of the feather's presence, for someone to come out and flaunt its powers, then work on getting it back.

After an hour, Syaoran began to wonder if Kurogane had fallen asleep sitting in front of the TV, and that was why he hadn't heard the ninja go to bed. But because there was no way to be sure, no way to know that he was safe from prying eyes, he just curled up tighter and listened to the protests of his stomach.

He could feel his self-control crumbling the longer he laid there. It wouldn't be long before the hunger pangs would force him into the kitchen, regardless of who was watching. Even if he could endure that, he'd still need to venture out to the bathroom eventually.

He stood for the first time in hours to pace the room. Perhaps he could scrape by on two journeys outside his room each day, once after everyone went to bed and once before they woke. It wouldn't be healthy—his muscles were already beginning to atrophy from all the time he spent holed up in this closet-sized room—but he could survive it if he had to.

Outside, he heard the TV shut off. Finally, he thought, letting out a breath. For the third time that day, he pressed an ear against the wall to listen.

Kurogane passed from the couch to the bathroom, preparing for bed before finally retiring to his room. Syaoran heard the door click shut.

He knew it would take a few minutes for the ninja to fall asleep, possibly longer after what had happened this afternoon. But his hunger would no longer be ignored. He hurried to unlock the door, pausing to listen for approaching footsteps. When no one came, he turned the knob. The broken hinge protested, creaking louder than usual. I really, really have to fix that, he thought, slipping out of his room.

He scurried over to the fridge and pulled it open, flinching at every sound, every harsh slap of his bare feet against cement. He had to hurry and find something to eat before one of his companions woke up wondering what he was doing in the kitchen. His eyes roved the now-loaded shelves, searching for something easy to make that would sustain him.

His gaze froze on the stack of sandwiches in the back of the fridge.

I can't believe he didn't throw these away, Syaoran thought, snaking his hand around an unopened jar of pickles to get at the plastic-sheathed sandwiches. He pulled them out and cradled them to his chest, heart thumping painfully under his ribs. Had Kurogane left them here on purpose, or had it been an afterthought? Was it some sort of scruple regarding the conservation of food that had driven him to save the sandwiches here instead of tossing them? Or had they been left there to flood Syaoran with fresh guilt upon seeing them?

His stomach clenched painfully, and he stopped wondering. He pulled a couple fruits and vegetables from the drawer to supplement his meal and closed the fridge.

Syaoran returned to his room, locked the door, and ate for the first time in over twenty-four hours.