Chapter Thirteen
The kid ate as if he thought all food was just going to vanish from this dimension.
Kurogane kept an eye on him, glancing up surreptitiously as he looked for signs that this was too much for the boy. Syaoran kept his head down, not speaking, barely slowing enough to observe table manners. Kurogane wondered if it was anxiety or hunger that drove him to eat so fast.
Maybe both, he decided, as the boy cleared his plate. The kid stood up, retreating from the table. Without a word, he skittered over to the sink and started scrubbing his plate clean with manic intensity.
It was all a little disturbing—the fear evident in his every motion, the silence with which he endured the cool glances of his clone's friends. Most troubling of all were those fleeting moments when the kid looked at him as if he was begging him to make things okay.
Kurogane wished he knew how. At this point, there were few things he wouldn't do to remove the hopelessness written bold across Syaoran's face.
He was willing to give the kid everything except what he'd tried to elicit in his strange, desperate advances.
Syaoran retreated to his room, locking the door as he usually did. Does he lock it because he thinks we're going to hurt him, or does he lock it to put a wall between himself and what he has to face every time he sees the others?
Conversation resumed, however somberly, as soon as the boy was gone. "He doesn't usually eat with us," Sakura murmured, twirling a pile of leftover spaghetti on her plate without actually lifting it to her lips. "He did this morning, too." Her face had changed, though it didn't look quite as gaunt as Syaoran's had a few days ago. It was more like she'd grown too distant from her old self to look like the same girl who'd lost her memories.
"Yes, it's unusual," Fai said emptily, bringing a forkful of spaghetti to his lips and swallowing it. Kurogane wondered if he even needed to eat. Did he still need sustenance beyond Kurogane's blood, or did he eat simply to preserve some illusion of normalcy? Everything had changed since Tokyo. Even something as minuscule as keeping the same eating habits seemed miraculous.
Everything changes, Kurogane reminded himself. The few constants that remain serve to remind the world that nothing else is as reliable. That was something his mother had taught him, between her duties as a miko. And then she'd been gone, too, along with his father, and the grief had broken him for a time.
His morose train of thought led back to the boy. Was the kid in mourning, as he had been? Was that why he was acting so broken lately, when he'd been perfectly functional for weeks? Had he realized the extent of what he'd lost?
Kurogane stood up. "I'm sick of this."
"But you've hardly touched your dinner, Kurogane."
Damn you, he thought. "It's not the dinner. I'm sick of the way you're all sulking like there's nothing to salvage in this world, and I'm sick of watching this group fall apart." His eyes grazed both their faces, but neither Fai nor Sakura met his gaze. "Whether you two like it or not, we're all on this journey. If you don't shape up, we're not going to be functional when we really need it."
They both seemed taken aback by his words. It was the first real flicker of emotion he'd seen from either of them in weeks.
It took everything he had to stop there, before he said something he might actually regret. He turned away from the table, grabbed his sword from where he'd leaned it against the wall, and stalked over to the door. "I'm going out," he snarled. And you'd all better think about what you're doing while I'm gone.
Kurogane left the apartment, and slammed the door behind him.
Syaoran heard the front door slam.
He heard a lot of things, beyond the paper-thin walls of his bedroom. Some of what he heard was a direct result of having his ear pressed to the sheetrock as he tried to remember that he still had a purpose here, with these people, that his Sakura was waiting somewhere for him.
Tonight, it was different. It wasn't peace he found in their conversations, however grim. It was anger. Kurogane's anger, more specifically. And because it was, directly or indirectly, related to him, Syaoran felt compelled to sort it out. By the time he made it out of his room, however, Kurogane was gone.
Fai and Sakura stared at the door as if they couldn't really comprehend the ninja's departure. Syaoran's heart gave a little shudder when he saw Sakura, as it always did whenever these days. Someday, when our enemy has fallen and it's safe, I'll tell you about the other Sakura, he vowed, unable to tear his eyes from her face even when she noticed his staring.
There was something frigid in her gaze, like a layer of ice over a shallow pond. Secrets twinkled in her eyes. Syaoran wondered if Fai knew any of them.
Behind Sakura, Fai shifted, turning back toward the table. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, but before Syaoran could process Fai's expression, he jerked his head down to stare at his feet. He shuffled toward the door, stepping into his shoes before turning the handle.
"Where are you going?" Fai asked.
He hesitated. Before he'd even left his room, he'd been compelled to follow the ninja wherever he went. Logically, he knew Kurogane couldn't leave permanently, but even a temporary separation would deepen the fissure in their little group, and if there was any way to stop that, it was his duty.
Besides, they needed to talk.
"I'm going out," Syaoran said vaguely.
"You don't have a coat," Fai said, and that was the closest thing to genuine concern he'd heard from the magician since Tokyo.
"I'll be fine." I'm always fine.
Syaoran began to wonder just how long he'd been lying to himself.
Fai frowned, but didn't press the issue. Syaoran abandoned their decrepit apartment and ascended to the main lobby, moving quickly to catch up to Kurogane. The glass of the exterior doors had fogged with cold, but it wasn't until he was outside that he realized it was snowing. Fat, white snowflakes drifted down from an opaque sky, illuminated by the yellow glare of the street lamps, leaving the sidewalk crusted with a thin layer of ice. Frigid wind whipped at his sheer clothes, stirring the snowflakes so they danced like stars moving through the blackness.
The treacherous beauty transfixed him, taunting him with its purity while threatening him with its frigid touch. For one precious moment, he forgot why every tick of the clock made him ache inside, why every minute seemed to stretch on for hours in this aptly named world.
Syaoran abandoned his musings. Standing in the entryway of the apartment complex wasn't going to help him find Kurogane. He needed to start walking.
The streets around him were crowded, but it didn't take him long to catch sight of the dark figure looming over everyone else. Even at a distance, Kurogane's height made him stand out.
Syaoran cut through the crowds, wondering why foot traffic was so thick. Despite his limited exposure to the outside world, the elegant wreaths and colored lights hanging from every surface tipped him off to some local holiday, a grand, festive celebration by the look of it. The decorations seemed horribly out of place in this city where games of blood were fought for money and warring criminal syndicates lurked in shadowed alleyways. But he kept pushing through the crowd, weaving his way toward Kurogane. Though his smaller stature should've made it easier to slip through crowds, Kurogane seemed to travel faster still, the sea of people parting around him. Several times, Syaoran lost sight of him in the throng, until there came a point where he wasn't sure he was heading in the right direction at all.
Then Kurogane's head popped up among the sea of faces, banishing the fear from his mind as a light bulb banished the dark.
The crowd thinned out a bit after a while. Many people moved in and out of decorated stores, paper bags overflowing with items that had no rhyme or reason. A gift-giving holiday? Syaoran wondered, maneuvering around a woman with three shopping bags hanging from her arms—
—and accidentally slamming into a thickset man rushing in the opposite direction.
The impact flung Syaoran from the sidewalk, and, not anticipating the sudden drop-off of the curb, he lost his footing. His arms wheeled in a futile attempt to regain his balance, adrenaline shooting through his veins.
I'm going to fall straight into oncoming traffic, he realized, just as two glaring headlights pierced his pupils.