Chapter One-Hundred Thirty-Eight
It felt like someone had shoved cotton into his ears.
Syaoran woke, thoughts jumbling together. He'd taken first watch, which might have explained his grogginess had he actually been tired when they'd all been sent to bed. He'd gotten used to sleeping whenever it was convenient during the journey. Or, rather, his clone had gotten used to it when they'd been jumping between dimensions every few days, and that habit had carried over to his own circadian rhythm. But he didn't feel tired, exactly. Rather, he felt . . . out of order.
He sat up, peering out the window. He'd expected the sunshine to be slanting in at a sharp angle from the east, but the light looked wrong. His eyebrows pulled together, and he focused through his disorientation. How late did I sleep in? he wondered, glancing at his companions. Kurogane had woken, though he rubbed his head as if he couldn't quite understand why. Fai had begun to stir.
With a jolt, Syaoran realized he'd never woken Fai up for his watch shift. Which means I left us vulnerable through the night.
"Is it my turn to take watch yet?" Kurogane asked, eyebrow twitching.
Syaoran winced. "I . . ."
"You were sleeping so peacefully," Fai said to Kurogane, his voice bright even as he yawned. "It would've been a crime to wake you."
"Idiot." The insult had no malice to it. Syaoran gave Fai a grateful glance, but he could sense the disapproval behind that smile. He looked down, shuffling his feet. Careless. I was careless to let myself fall asleep.
Fai stretched like a cat. "It seems it's time to wake up, at any rate. We've got places to explore." He stood up and pushed aside the curtain hanging over the bedroom doorway. Mokona bounced in ahead of them, and Syaoran ducked under Fai's arm and stepped into the kitchen.
It might have been the fact that he already felt uneasy about this world, but he immediately sensed that something was out of place. As if he'd seen an uneven picture frame, or a floor tile two shades lighter than its neighbors. He stopped, trying to pinpoint the source of his unease, when Mokona spoke. "There's no one here."
"I'm sure our hosts are out working," Fai said. "They do run an apple stall in the marketplace, and it is rather late to be waking up. Or it feels rather late." His eyebrows knitted together. "Hmm."
Something's not right here. "Does anything seem strange to any of you?"
"The food is gone," Kurogane said, staring at the middle of the table. "That woman made us food for this morning, but it's not here."
"Did Kurogane eat it all?" Mokona asked.
"No! Of course not."
"It is strange, though," Fai said, no longer smiling. "Last night, she spoke as if the stuff she'd made was specifically for our breakfast. Yet it's no longer here. Almost like . . ."
"Almost like last night never happened?" Kurogane suggested.
"Yes. Exactly."
Syaoran twisted his body, striding over to one of the windows. Impossible, he thought, leaning out and staring up at the sky. The sun hovered directly above them, in the same position it had hung when they'd arrived in this world. But that was mid-afternoon! There's no way we all fell asleep and didn't wake up until a few minutes ago. "Impossible." He ran outside, as if that would somehow refute the conclusions his mind had jumped to. Mokona hopped into the hood of his cloak as he hurried out, and his companions followed.
"What's impossible?" Kurogane asked, catching up to him.
Ignoring the question, Syaoran headed toward the marketplace. Like the previous day, people milled around, haggling with shop owners—their voices never reaching a pitch or volume that might indicate an argument—and chatting amongst themselves. And, like the previous day, the woman who'd taken them in was tending an apple stand. Please let me be wrong, Syaoran thought, walking toward the stall. Before he reached it, a sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him twist, and the boy who'd run into him yesterday collided with him. Syaoran reached out reflexively, catching the basket of apples exactly as he had before.
"Thanks, mister!" the boy said, grinning. "Are you a traveler?"
Syaoran stared at him. When he spoke, his voice sounded far, far away. "Yes."
"You'll like it here. The kingdom of Clow's a good place. Thanks again for catching that basket for me." The boy turned and ran off, just as he had the first time they'd run into each other.
The temperatures in Clow could reach dangerous heights even in winter, particularly at this time of day. But in that moment, Syaoran felt as if his body had been carved of ice.
"Did that just happen?" he asked hoarsely, turning to Kurogane.
The ninja stared after the boy, his mouth hanging open. "What the hell?"
"That was bizarre," Fai remarked.
"Hey mister!" the boy called, waving him over. Syaoran glanced at his companions, then hesitantly walked over to the child. "Thanks for the help back there. I got all the way here without spilling a single piece of our store's fruit thanks to you."
It's the same, Syaoran thought. Every word. It's exactly the same as what he said yesterday. "It was nothing . . ."
"I want to add my thanks as well," said the boy's mother—the same woman who'd opened her home to them the previous afternoon. "There's no controlling my boy."
Syaoran said nothing. Around them, a group began to gather. "Those sure are strange clothes," a man said. "Are you from some other country?"
It's not just them, Syaoran thought, tearing his gaze away from the boy and his mother. It's everyone. Like this world is nothing more than a loop, repeating itself endlessly. Never changing, except for us.
More voices, all familiar, rang through the air around them. "I see the three of you are wearing very different outfits. Does that mean you're all from different countries?"
"That's so great!"
"Everything is the same as it was yesterday," Mokona whispered, peering out from Syaoran's hood.
"Well, take your time while you're here. The festival is coming up pretty soon."
Syaoran wasn't sure which was more eerie—the fact that everyone was saying the exact same things they'd said before, or the fact that they stood in the same places, used the same friendly tone, and had no idea that they were performing the same scene from yesterday. Syaoran doubted that anything he or his companions said would change things now, especially considering that these people seemed to give no heed to their silence.
"It's going to be held over by the ruins," said one man in response to a question Syaoran had not asked. He pointed toward the ruins, and Syaoran turned to look at Kurogane, desperately hoping that this was only a nightmare.
"Have you arranged a place to stay?" asked the woman who'd taken them in before.
"No, not yet," Fai said quietly.
The conversation proceeded as it had the previous day, and Syaoran watched Fai try to steer the conversation away from what it had been. His attempts met with no success, and when the woman started leading them back to her house, they followed.
"Have you noticed that the sun is already setting?" Fai asked, his voice low. Syaoran looked at the horizon, lips pressing into a thin line.
"It must just be these few hours," Kurogane said.
"Yes, from late afternoon to some point during the night." They stepped through the entry curtain, where the woman and her child spoke the same words and performed the same actions as they had before. Once again, they sat down for dinner, ate nothing, and retired to their rooms.
"Okay," Kurogane said as soon as the curtain shut. "That was fucked up."
"Very succinct, Kuro-tan," Fai remarked. "Everything is being repeated. Just a small segment of the day. And now that we've interfered with the pattern, it's adjusted to fit with our presence."
"But we're still able to act independently of the anomaly," Syaoran said, pacing. "Which means that we must not be affected. Which in turn means that we did in fact alter the natural order of things by coming here, otherwise the people wouldn't have deviated from their previous pattern upon our arrival."
"What's the point of it?" Kurogane asked, stalking over to the place he'd slept the previous night. The things they'd left behind—their bedrolls and blankets, as well as the empty cans of food—seemed untouched by the altered flow of time.
"It could be some sort of plot by Fei-Wang," Fai said. "For what purpose, I can't say, but now that we've altered the original course of events, the people seem trapped in that arrangement."
Syaoran shuddered.
"We should test this for one more day," Fai went on, hesitantly. "We'll see if tomorrow is the same length as today, and whether anything at all has changed. After that, if we don't find any useful information, we'll return to our original plan and visit the ruins."
A murmur of agreement spread among the group. Kurogane sighed. "I'm going to look around the house and see if I can find anything. If the people here aren't changing their patterns anymore, they shouldn't object."
In other circumstances, Syaoran might have told Kurogane that poking around someone's house was an invasion of privacy. This time, it seemed wise to let it go.
As Kurogane headed out to the living room, Fai asked Mokona for the portable stove, which she'd stowed away after they'd eaten last night, and began cooking. Lacking anything else to do, Syaoran sat down on the other side of the stove, staring at the flames.
"You should go check on Kuro-pon. I have a feeling you'll find him hiding away in one of the rooms trying to knead the pain out of his shoulder."
Syaoran's head snapped up. "What?"
Fai's gold eye flickered to his face. "Did you notice that he didn't take off his helmet like he did last night?"
He frowned. "No. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Kurogane hides very little from the world, but he will hide his pain, if you let him. I can smell blood on him, and since we've been with him all day and haven't seen him punch anyone, there's a good chance that blood is his. I think the heat has irritated the flesh where his mechanical arm meets his shoulder."
"Oh." I didn't even notice, he thought, feeling a stab of guilt. He stood. "I'll . . . go see what I can do for him."
Stepping quietly, he left the bedroom and started poking his head into other rooms. He found Kurogane sitting on the kitchen floor, facing away from the door, massaging his shoulder with his opposite hand. He froze when Syaoran entered, then slowly lowered his hand. "What?"
"You're in pain."
"I'm fine."
"I love you."
Kurogane turned, as Syaoran had known he would. Those three words always captured the ninja's attention and held it. After a moment, he sighed and said, "I love you, too."
"Then why didn't you tell me you were hurt?"
"Because there's nothing you can do about it, that's why!"
They looked at each other for several seconds. Then, Syaoran sat beside him, unhooking the clasps holding the ninja's helmet in place and lifting it to expose Kurogane's face. The muscle in his jaw had gone rigid, and a wrinkle had formed on his forehead. His eyes had narrowed, not in irritation or suspicion, but as if he was struggling to maintain control of his expression.
Syaoran slid his hands down the side of the ninja's chest plate, pausing to unhook the straps holding it in place. The steel carapace slid away, and he set it on the floor next to him, his eyes never wavering from Kurogane's face. The man's expression hadn't changed. Syaoran ran his thumb over the joint where flesh met steel, feeling the swelling, the crust of dried blood.
"You hid this from me," he finally said.
"You'd have done the same."
No denying that, Syaoran thought, looking down. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You've got enough to worry about right now without me adding to it."
"If you don't want me to worry, don't hide your pain from me." Sakura said that once, he thought, unable to suppress a pang of longing at the memory. "I'd much rather you tell me when you're hurt than worry all the time about whether you're hiding an injury from me." He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the ninja's collarbone. "Even if I can't fix it, I'd at least like to know."
Kurogane sighed, wrapping an arm around him. "Fine. But if you start to coddle me like I'm some little kid—"
"I wouldn't dare." Relieved, he slid his arms around Kurogane's neck. "And there is something I can do about it, by the way."
Kurogane froze. "Is there?"
He nodded. "This country does have painkillers. I'm sure I can find something."
"Oh." The ninja blinked, looking a little baffled. "Uh, yeah, that'd be good. Thanks."
Smiling, Syaoran pressed his mouth to Kurogane's lips and stood. "We don't have to be alone anymore," he said, holding out a hand. The ninja took it, standing up with a grimace. "If there's one thing our enemy doesn't understand, it's loyalty. We're stronger together than we could ever be on our own, and as long as we remember that, we have the advantage."
Kurogane nodded. "We'll beat him. Whatever it takes."
Syaoran squeezed his hand. "Whatever it takes."