Chapter Twenty Seven

I wasn't summoned to Aizen's throne room again—in fact, neither Usagi or Grimmjow mentioned him even once or asked me what, exactly, he wanted. And now that I knew what he had wanted in the first place and had concluded that, yeah, he had totally got it, I wondered why I hadn't been sent home yet.

Was I supposed to stay here until I died? Or was there something bigger at play? Or had he simply forgotten about me now that he had done as he wished to Hideki?

I didn't really want to stay there until I died; who knew how long that would be. Had Mom and Mizuri given up on me yet? Had they accepted the fact that there was a chance I wasn't coming home?

Or had they even thought that there was a chance of me coming home in the first place? I knew my mother well enough—there wasn't a very big chance of her writing me off as dead immediately. Of course, that would have been if I was the Kaori without a condition, the Kaori that hadn't tried to off herself before.

If I was a different Kaori, I wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place.

I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about that—being abducted and taken to Hueco Mundo had changed me, but I wasn't sure if it was for better or for worse just yet. It would probably be a while before I knew the extent of the changes, how deeply the ordeal had changed me.

I already knew one of them—I had come to terms with Hideki, and he had stopped telling me to kill myself and others; I understood a little more now, like why he was there, that he wasn't just a figment. When I got back, I wouldn't have to take my medication anymore, and I could go through life without being a doped up zombie Kaori.

But I wasn't sure if I wanted to leave.

We continued to go out into the desert daily, slowly but surely getting farther and farther away from Las Noches as the days went by—but only so far as I could walk. I knew for a fact that Grimmjow could travel and way Gin and Usagi did, but he hadn't even attempted to do so with me since he had first dragged me out of way of the car.

Not that I was complaining—I didn't like that way of traveling. I also didn't much like the fact that I was supposed to just take it for granted, explanation or no. It wasn't like anyone had even thought to give me an explanation, let alone a warning,

But from the looks of things, Grimmjow was really getting the hang of fighting with only one arm. I wasn't sure if that was necessarily good or bad, but it must have been for a good reason, right?

Why don't you just, I don't know, ask him or something?

The reason I didn't ask—because I had thought of doing it before Hideki had snidely said anything—was mostly because I didn't want to know the answer.

Typically when we finished in the desert and returned to Las Noches, we would bathe—which was still pretty awkward, let me tell you what—and then he would drop me off back at the rooms for what seemed like ages when I spent it alone. In truth, it was likely just a couple of hours that I spent alone while he was off doing who knew what.

More often than not, I was sound asleep by the time he got back, exhausted from the trek through the desert and relaxed from the warmth of the springs. I would still wake up too hot in the middle of the night, Grimmjow sound asleep half on top of me, his mouth pushed into my shoulder or the crook of my neck.

I wasn't sure when he figured the too-close contact wasn't close enough for him, but it wasn't entirely unbearable.

In fact, it was almost a little nice.

But that didn't stop me from pushing him off of me and pointedly rolling over onto my side, sliding back into sleep in a matter of minutes.

My knuckles were starting to improve.

My fingers still hurt when I tried to bend or curl them too far, and there was no doubt that straightening them was mostly out of the question. A loose fist was about the extent of my dexterity when it came to my hand. Slowly but surely, we had started to wind the bandages up looser and looser as the days progressed, scabs starting to form at the very edges of my still open wounds.

It didn't make much sense to me—the scrapes on my knuckles should have already been scabbed over and mostly gone; what the hell was going on?

Grimmjow couldn't quite make heads or tails of it either.

We were sitting on the bed, my legs tucked up underneath me, injured hand held out for Grimmjow to look at. He had a loose hold on said hand, hunched over it as he tried to make heads or tails of why the hell it wasn't healing. His lips were drawn back in an almost-sneer, tip of his tongue sticking out between his teeth as he thought.

I leaned forward to get a better look at the damage; I hadn't really tried to look at my hand since Grimmjow had first bandaged it. Every time we had checked on it, I had looked away pointedly because I didn't want to see any sort of leftover evidence of the fact that I thought I could punch a voice that existed mostly to me.

My knuckles were still raw, though there was no blood to be seen. Small scabs had started to try and form around the edges of the wounds, like it was still actively attempting to scab over.

I glanced up, only to find that Grimmjow's face was mere inches from mine, contemplative look on his face. He was staring at me intently.

"What?" I asked quietly, unused to the small distance between our faces when we were both awake. "Is there something on my face?"

"No," he said, letting go of my hand. It was an action I only barely noticed, so focused on the proximity of our faces as I was. In the back of my mind, I felt his arm slip across my waist, saw him tilt his body just enough so that the wall was supporting him in our awkward position.

"Oh," was all I could think of to say. I was leaning toward him, getting closer, closer, closer-

"This is less than six inches," he whispered-

and killed the moment.

I bust out laughing, pushing him away from me, nearly knocking my head into the wall as I did so. Grimmjow's forehead landed on my shoulder, his arm still around my waist.

"Why would you say that?" I asked once I had got my breathing under control, heart still fluttering in my chest.

"Because you said my lips didn't belong less than six inches near from yours at any given time?"

I made a strangled noise in the back of my throat as Grimmjow raised his head to look at me again, one eyebrow quirked upward and a confused look on his face. How could he not pick up on any of the hints I had just been dropping.

"One would have thought that if I hadn't wanted you to, I would have pushed you away with how slow you were moving!"

"I thought you had forgotten? I was giving you time to push me back."

I dashed a hand across my forehand before pushing said hand back into my hair, pushing it out of my face. "Oh my god. You're dense!"

"What." He was pulling away from me, his arm sliding across my back so he could sit up straight and move away from me.

"Okay." I laid a hand over the top of his where it was on my hip, stilling him completely. "Listen closely: I want you to kiss me." I wasn't entirely sure when I had come to this decision, but if felt right.

"You what."

I groaned and smacked my forehead, falling back into the wall and clawing at my face, eyes closed. "This is aggravating!"

Actually, Ka-chan, it's really pretty funny to watch. From the perspective of an outsider, that is.

You're not helping.

I'm not trying to help; you're still six as far as I'm concerned. Honestly, I've been doing my best to keep you from getting to this point in the first place.

Great. That was a mutiny in my book. But that also explained why I couldn't remember trying to punch Grimmjow in the face, I supposed. I hadn't known at the time that Hideki was capable of wrenching control of my body from me, but it made sense now.

Of course, if that was his way of trying to not "get to this point in the first place," he hadn't tried very hard. As far as I knew, that had been his first attempt—most, if not all, of the others were him trying and failing to reason with me. It could have been because of the fact that Grimmjow had hit me back the first time, or it might have been because Hideki knew he could do more with words than otherwise from past experience.

"Did you say you wanted me to kiss you?"

I opened my eyes a teeny weeny little bit, moving my hand away from the front of my eyes, and was met by Grimmjow's own bright, bright blue ones less than six inches from my own.

Less than six inches! Hideki shouted in my head, voice reverberating across my skull.

"Yeah," I admitted weakly, mortification beginning to set in. Why had I said that out lout? I shouldn't have said that out loud.

"Good; just checking." His face was slowly getting closer and closer to mine, and I could feel the beat of my heart picking up again.

And then our lips were sliding against each other clumsily and tentatively; his arm tightened around my waist and my nose bumped into his cheek-

And then Hideki was screeching in my head, loud enough to make me jerk back and smack my head against the wall, making it hurt even worse.

"You ruin everything!" I shouted out loud before I could manage to stop myself, both hands coming up to hold my forehead like that was going to help with the pain and the ringing in my ears.

"What—Kaori, what the fuck is wrong."

Hideki had stopped screaming and I could practically feel him being smug in my head as I thought about how I was going to explain this one.

"Uh," I started awkwardly, kiss mostly forgotten. Grimmjow was pretty much lying on top of my again, his arm pinned under my lower back. "Well. Erm. Voice in my head is acting up?"

It was the lamest possible excuse I had ever heard come out of my mouth; the most depressing thing was that it was the truth.

"What? Is it still mad at you for trying to punch it in the face?"

I took a shaky breath; that had likely been the first and only time in my memory that someone had actually just accepted the fact that the voice in my head was a part of me and that I wasn't actually crazy and just rolled with it.

"I think so. He's not incredibly fond of you either, so I'm sure our, uh, recent actions haven't been his favorite thing in the world."

"Oh really?" I did not like the smirk on Grimmjow's face, or the way his voice lowered just a little when he spoke.

. . . okay. So maybe I did.

"What did—how—I don't-"

Two.

He had two arms.

And he was covered in blood, so I wasn't entirely sure what the hell was going on.

He was grinning, too, a blood thirsty smile that made me take a step back, angling my body toward a corner out of instinct.

But that's not the smartest thing, Ka-chan—if you're backed in a corner, how can you run?

Okay. So we already knew my instincts sucked. Like, really bad.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said, grin losing some of it's bloodthirsty edge.

I almost asked him if he really wanted to bet on that, but I held my tongue, eying him carefully. The new arm looked like his and, form the looks of it, moved naturally, so it wasn't like he got the blood all over him by ripping off someone else's arm and having it placed on his body.

That not being medically possible was beside the point, seeing as he had a large hole in his stomach and had been since I had first seen him on the sidewalk.

"So I take it I'm not hallucinating?" I said cautiously, relaxing just a little.

"What? No." Grimmjow screwed up his face and shook his head, putting a hand in his hair. "Do you need to touch it or something? Make sure it's actually there?" He motioned with a hand to the arm that was up in the air, his hand in his head—the arm I was very used to him not having.

"Why would you phrase it like that?" I demanded, the confusion I felt earlier dispelling. It was replaced by mortification and embarrassment—mostly for him.

He simply rolled his eyes at me, lowering his arm and shrugging his jacket off. There was no scar that I could see anywhere near the former stump, no telltale sign that he hadn't had an arm there just a handful of hours ago. It looked exactly like it had before he had lost it.

I took a half step forward, interested for a moment in actually looking at where his stump used to be, and then noticing that he was a lot closer than he had been initially.

"Well at least you know how to fight with one arm for future reference. You know, in case you go around and get it chopped off again," I said, leaning back a bit, completely unsure about the distance between us.

Grimmjow rolled his eyes at me. "Like I would actually let that happen again."

"Yeah, but you didn't mean to have it happen in the first place, so. You know. There's that. And I said just in case."

Instead of responding, he scooped me into a tight hug—which was odd, especially since he had A.) never hugged me before and B.) This was probably the first full body contact we had had while we both had two arms.

This is weird, I thought. But I like it.

There was another meeting.

This time, he didn't return with any extra limbs.

Instead, he returned with a scowl on his face and his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulder's hunched up. Usagi walked in behind him, frowning, shutting the door firmly once she was totally in the room. I rose off of the couch and looked at both of them; neither of them were sending out any kind of warm, cuddly vibes. Which was kind of weird, because they had been mostly cuddly vibes when they had left.

Quietly, I sat back down on the couch as Grimmjow stalked past me. Usagi, on the other hand, sat down primly next to me.

"The meeting didn't go well," she explained without hesitation, settling back into the couch and crossing her ankles. "I wasn't there, of course, but I caught the gist of it from well-" She waved a hand in the general direction Grimmjow had gone in—toward the bedroom—and placed her other hand on her forehead. "-mainly from the way he's acting."

Almost looks like he wants to do something he shouldn't, Hideki mused; I could nearly hear the smirk in his voice.

I hoped he wouldn't—he had only just got his arm back, and the consequences would likely be more dire than simply a missing limb if he disobeyed orders again.

"We have, however, been invaded. So there's that."

I froze, confused. Tilting my head to the side and twisting my body to face Usagi I asked, "Invaded?"

She pulled her legs up onto the couch, hugging her knees to her chest. "Yeah. You know. Invaded. There are intruders in Hueco Mundo—unauthorized guests, if you will."

I could feel my breathing shift slowly from the even, normal breaths I took constantly to the quick, rapid ones that made my lungs feel like they were collapsing and the world was closing in on me at an agonizing rate.

"Of course, it's not like they're going to make it far or anything. They're barely at the first line of defense as it is, and they're lucky that made it there."

That. That was not quite comforting, but it assuaged my panic just a bit.

"So what do we do?"

"We sit. We wait."

After a while of sitting in silence, Grimmjow came out of the room and plopped onto the empty spot on the couch, right between Usagi and I. His hands were in his pockets, and his feet went onto the table immediately, and the scowl was still firmly in it's place on his face.

And then he leaned over, his head falling onto my shoulder and the rest of him pretty much crushing me into the sofa. The scowl was still firmly on his face, and Usagi didn't even open her eyes at the sudden weight shift—either time.

The three of us stayed like that for a while longer until Usagi said, "Grimmjow. Ulquiorra's fighting Ichigo."

Grimmjow launched himself off of the sofa immediately, kicking over the table as he did so. I pressed myself back into the cushioned back, trying to make myself as small as possible and just out of the way. I didn't know who Ichigo or Ulquiorra were, but Usagi and he must have.

And they probably weren't meant to be fighting, from the looks of it.

"The table didn't do anything to you," I said lightly, eying the fallen piece of furniture. "It didn't deserve that kind of harsh punishment."

He stopped his angry stomping, turning his head to look at me for a moment, furious look on his face. I could only hope that it wasn't directed at me purposely.

And then he pointedly righted the table, which was looking a little more worse for wear than it had before Grimmjow had mercilessly attacked it with his foot.

"Happy?" he asked, sounding anything but.

"Sure," I said, shrugging a shoulder just a bit. I almost asked him to apologize to the piece of furniture, but I knew I wouldn't get that much out of him.

All things considered, I was pretty happy. Despite the whole invasion, Grimmjow stalking murderously through the room thing. And the fact that Hideki screamed every time Grimmjow kissed me—though I had powered through the noise in my head that I hadn't had to pull back because of a headache.

But everything else seemed to be going okay.

Grimmjow returned to his grumpy stomping and storming around the room, though he steadily avoided even bumping into the table once. I, on the other hand, relaxed a little, halfway attempting to take a nap.

"Grimmjow," Usagi said again sometime later, pulling our attention to her. Her eyes were still closed, face screwed up in focus. "Ichigo lost to Ulquiorra."

Grimmjow didn't look like that was precisely what he wanted to hear. In fact, he looked like that was the last thing he wanted to hear, ever.

"Shit, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?" The tension in the room increased; I could feel it weighing down on me, see in the fury of Grimmjow's expression, the tense set of Usagi's entire body.

"Well gee, Grimmjow. Let me think—you're awfully good at abducting people," I said jokingly, trying to make light of the situation at hand; a situation I didn't know much about, if I'm being honest. Except he got a gleam in his eye and a look came across his face that I did not like—it was a look of realization, one that I had a feeling he only got when he was hatching a plan.

"That's actually-"

"I was just kidding!" I shouted, throwing my hands up into the air and fighting the urge to rip my hair out. "You shouldn't run around abducting people!"

"But what if said person had already been abducted in the first place and I was, uh, returning her to her, uh, friend?"

"Then I guess that would be okay?" What was that, reverse abduction? A return? Yeah, hi, I would like to return the friend we abducted—I have the receipt, don't worry.

"What if said friend was the one I wanted to kill?"

"Whoa there, hold the phone. Are you suggesting kidnapping a girl you people already abducted, using her as bait, and then killing her friend?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Why would you actually admit that to someone." I was appalled for a moment, and then I realized that the people I had fallen in with had almost no morals whatsoever. It was to be expected, almost.

"Because it sounded like a good idea at the time?"

I groaned and rolled my eyes. "Stop telling me what you're going to do—I don't want to have to rat you out to anyone at any point if what you're going to do is discovered and you weren't actually supposed to be doing it," I said, holding up a hand to stall anything he was going to say.

"Okay. Whatever. Just—Stay here, okay? I'll be back in, like, two hours. Promise." I raised an eyebrow sceptically, though the earnest look on his face told me that he was telling the truth.

But if he was going out to fight and possibly kill someone, it was hard to tell if he was going to come back. What if they were stronger? What if there were outside factors? What if he wasn't actually supposed to be doing that? What if his abduction plan when wrong in eight different ways and there was no way to make up for it?

This friend of the girl must have been one of the intruders; when Usagi had told me about them, she had sounded a little nervous, almost like she had seen what they could do. And who knew how much more capable they were now that they had a motive?

From the looks of things, there was more at play than just what I had gleaned from Usagi and Grimmjow, though they wouldn't tell me the entirety of it. And Hideki was no help at all; he hadn't really been since I had punched him in the face—or tried to, at least.

"Hey." I looked up, frowning at Grimmjow, who placed a hand on my head, grinning. "It'll be fine. Two hours, remember? Probably less."

"All right," I said. "I guess I'll be waiting?"

"You had better fuckin' be." And then he bent down and kissed me, which took me off guard for a moment before I kissed him back, completely unused to the new development.

Usagi made a gagging sound in the back of her throat, prompting me to laugh as Grimmjow pulled away. Hideki made screeching noises throughout the ordeal, shouting about burning his eyes out with acid. Honestly, it was easy to drown him out at that point—I had gotten plenty of practice in the past few days.

"I—ugh," she said, hands over her eyes as she made another gagging sound. "No. Did not need to see that."

Grimmjow just smacked her on the back of the head before he went out the door, slamming it behind him and leaving Usagi and I to lounge around for the next few hours, waiting.

The time trickled by slowly; Usagi sat on the couch with her eyes closed, hands folded across her stomach, head tilted back so it was pillowed on the back of the couch. She shifted occasionally, moving a leg here or there, her eyes fluttering open and then shut again.

I, for the most part, lazed on the floor, feet kicked up onto the couch. I dozed off once or twice, coming awake whenever Usagi make some sort of noise. Otherwise, we didn't speak as we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

The next thing I knew, Usagi yelped and jumped off of the couch, moving to the door before I could even get my head off of the floor.

"Wait, what-" The door slammed shut behind her, and I was alone. I scrambled up off of the floor, all flailing limbs and two failed attempts to stand.

By the time I had found my feet, Usagi was back. She looked manic, mouth half open and her breathing a little labored.

"Wha-"

"Here, put these on. Quickly." Usagi held a stack of black and white clothes out to me, her fingers digging into the material. I eyed them questionably, but took them from her hands anyway with one hand, the other already moving to strip off my shirt.

I tossed the hooded shirt I had been wearing to the side, keeping a hold on the shirt that had been in the pile Usagi had handed me, dropping the rest of it to the floor. I pulled the white shirt over my head, realizing with a start that it was the same shirt I had worn when I had first been abducted—it had been cleaned and was now spotless, not a single drop of mud or blood on it.

I hesitated for a moment—why did she still have these? Why had she told me to put them on?-before yanking my shorts off and tossing them in the same direction I had tossed my shirt, kicking my sneakers off simultaneously. I snatched up my black skinny jeans from off of the floor, the denim just as worn as it had been on the day I had worn them, and still just as pliable instead of stiff like I had almost expected them to be.

Pulling them on over my feet, I jumped up, yanking on the waist of them. I was buttoning them by the time I landed on my feet, grabbing the zipper and pulling it up before I was reaching for my purple sneakers, fingers already searching for the laces to untie them.

I stood on one foot as I jammed a shoe back onto my foot, tucking the laces inside without bothering to tie them; I then jumped, switching legs and repeating the process.

Before I had my foot back on the ground, Usagi was shoving my messenger bag at me, jamming the strap over my head and onto my shoulder before letting the full weight of it fall against my side.

"What are we-" I finally thought to ask, only getting out half of the question before Usagi was turning around, strutting to the door like the room was on fire and we needed out, out, out.

"We're going," she said briskly after I had cut myself off, looking over her shoulder and jerking her head toward the open door. I stumbled toward her, completely intent on following her out, and then I remembered:

Stay here, okay? I'll be back in like, two hours. Promise.

"Why are we going? Grimmjow said-" I yelped; Usagi had a death grip around my upper arm, her nails cutting into my flesh, turning the area around where she had grabbed bright, bright white.

"Come on."

I dug my feet into the ground, stubbornness kicking in. "No," I said decisively, desperately wishing I had stopped to tie my shoes instead of blindly following an order; they were trying their hardest to slip off of my feet and leave me barefoot and have me struggle for traction against Usagi that way, and I was not having it.

"Kaori! Come on, we've got to go now!" She tugged on my upper arm just a little to try and get me moving; my feet nearly came up and out of my shoes with the action, and I pulled back against her.

"But—We're supposed to stay here, Usagi!" I argued, leaning back as if that would help me win.

"He didn't keep his promise, Kaori—so we can't keep ours."

Wait. What. What did she mean? Didn't keep his promise?

"No, that's not-"

"He's dead, Kaori. Now move."

I froze for a moment, shocked. He was what.

In that moment, she tugged a little harder on my arm, and my legs moved to follow her automatically, matching her stride instinctively.

Dead?

Grimmjow and dead did not belong in the same sentence. They didn't even belong in the same paragraph, not when one was directly referencing the other. He couldn't be dead; he had said he would be back in two hours, and that everything would be over by then.

I think she's telling the truth, Ka-chan, Hideki said in my head, voice solemn.

It felt like the world was tilting under me, sliding, sliding, sliding-

I fell onto my face, arm coming out of Usagi's grip, messenger bag flying up over my head and landing on the floor in front of me. I pushed myself up onto my hands, breathing uneven.

Grimmjow was dead—there was no way to see for myself, no way to confirm what she said was true. But she had said it with such finality, so certain of her words, and she had never lied to me before. Why would sh e start now? She had no reason to.

Taking a deep breath, I decided I would panic later.

I felt numb, a stern resolution taking it's place inside of me as I stood back up.

"Where are we going, then?" I asked, voice wavering as I squared my shoulders and pushed my messenger bag back to where it was supposed to be; strap on my shoulder, bulk of the weight over my butt.

"I'm taking you home, Kaori."

Right. Okay. Home. To where Mom was, and Mizuri and-

Well. I guess that was all that there was at home. Mom, Mizuri, and then there would be questions to answer. Likely an endless amount of psychiatrists to see, different drugs to put me on to get rid of Hideki. I would go back to walking Mizuri to school, back to being a shut in.

And I didn't really want that—I wanted what I had found in Hueco Mundo, what Usagi and Grimmjow had come to offer me: Companionship, adventure, a way to drive off the loneliness and stigma I had come to know back home.

We're on speaking terms now, remember? Hideki said when I started following Usagi again. You won't be completely alone. You don't have to take whatever they decide to give you—there's a toilet for a reason, you know.

Usagi was slowly but surely picking up her pace, and I was doing my best to keep up with her as she did so—all of those days of walking and running in the sand seemed to have payed off a little, since it wasn't quite to hard to keep up with her, but I wasn't sure how long I could go on. Stamina wasn't something I had an endless amount of, no matter what I wanted to really believe.

I had forgotten just how restrictive skinny jeans were when I was trying to run.

Without warning, she darted down another, smaller hallway and I had no choice but to follow, nearly stumbling over my feet as I made the turn. I almost ran straight into Usagi just a few steps; she was standing still, having stopped when I wasn't paying any attention.

A rift of sorts had opened up in front of her, a massive gaping hole. It was completely black inside, and I couldn't see around it—I could, when I lifted my head and looked up toward the ceiling, see a sort of jagged edge at the top, moving and bobbing like it was waiting.

"Are you ready, Kaori?" Usagi asked, turning to look at me. Her face was hard, jaw set; she looked rigid, her entire posture defensive. But she was holding a hand out to me; her fingers were shaking, a barely noticeable tremble that resembled the near constant tremor of my own.

My answer was no, but I couldn't manage to voice it. Instead I took her hand, squeezing it tightly, focusing solely on what was going to happen in the next few minutes and nothing else. I pushed everything else out of my mind, my fears about going back to what I was before entering Hueco Mundo, everything I was feeling up to that point, my hesitation about leaving at all.

We entered the void together, and I felt my throat closing up as my vision went black for a moment. Then a dripping noise reached my ears, the pattering of rain hitting concrete, and I had to squint as light entered my vision.

Usagi's grip on my hand tightened for a moment, and then she was tugging.

We stepped out into an alleyway, rain driving into concrete and the sky a solid slate gray as water dumped onto us. I was drenched the second I stepped out of whatever it was we had just been in, and shivering less than a minute later.

"Where am I?" I asked hollowly, turning to face Usagi. She was just as drenched as I was, her normally luxurious green hair flat against her head.

"Wherever he took you from," she answered. Her face was tight, eyes shining brightly in the dingy gloom of the alley.

"Oh." I looked down the alley, straining my eyes to figure out just where exactly that was. My voice was quiet to my ears, drowned out by the noise of the rain smacking against the concrete furiously.

"I guess this is goodbye, then," she said quietly. And then she hugged me, one of her arms wrapping around my shoulders and the other one set on the back of my head, pushing it gently into her chest. Her hugs were normally warm and comforting—this one was cold and it conveyed too much of what she was saying. It made what was happening real. "It was nice to meet you, Kaori."

She let go of me, and there was no smile on her face this time.

And then she was gone, like she had never even been there in the first place.

And I was alone in an alleyway, the rain coming down on me in sheets.

Ha. Ha. Oops?

DO NOT FEAR-that is not the end. I'm not that mean, I promise. But I'll see y'all Monday! Have a safe weekend, and maybe leave something in that cute little review box down there?