A/N: From this point onward, depression, self-harm and other sensitive issues might be shown, portrayed or discussed in this chapter and others to come. Reader discretion is advised for those who are sensitive to such matters.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN – THE SHADOWS IN US ALL (YuKi)

The hospital had an air of coldness that bit through Naoki in spite of the warm clothing he was wearing. Even though there were people about, the atmosphere was often subdued, almost depressed. Perhaps that was because there were always people being wheeled in atop gurneys or carried on stretchers from one room to another, each bearing a sign of sickness or injury. Doctors and nurses conversed in silent, terse tones about the progress of certain patients. Footsteps tapped against the polished floors in a silent but enduring cadence. Sometimes, the dismal ambience would be punctuated by buzzes from the hospital's PA system as clerks called upon a queue of people that waited patiently as they sat on a row of chairs. In general, the hospital's aura seemed to convince everyone to go about their business quietly. Naturally, that wasn't often the case—there were times when the volume would pick up as doctors and nurses would hustle past to tend to a patient in need of emergency care.

Naoki knew that must have certainly been the case when her mother's good friend and former colleague Tsuru Kobayashi was rushed to the hospital a couple of days ago. She had been found unresponsive by her sister Tsukiko in their apartment, and had been under intensive care ever since. Naoki's mother had been notified about the incident, and as shocked as she was about what had happened, no one was prepared for the presumed cause of Tsuru's predicament—according to her sister, she had apparently tried to take her own life by overdosing on medications.

Naoki knew Tsuru relatively well; there were times when she came over to visit and have long talks with his mother about their former jobs and the things that they were currently busy with. Though she was small and rather reserved, Tsuru Kobayashi was nice and friendly, always bearing a small gift such as sweets or pastries whenever she came over and always insisting on helping his mother clean up whenever they finish having tea together. In a way, she reminded Naoki of Yuri, and somehow that made the news of her attempted suicide all the more shocking.

The visit was planned late in the afternoon, after Naoki had come home from school. His mother had been anxious and rather fearful of the idea of being alone on her first hospital visit to her friend, and had thus requested him to come along. Having nothing urgent to do, Naoki had obliged her; it also helped take his mind off of Yuri and what had transpired since his second—and possibly last—visit to her home. Though Yuri showed no more visible signs of anxiety that Naoki could see, she seemed keen on avoiding him outright, though he knew that it was more out of shame and anxiousness than resentment on her part.

His mother soon returned from the nearby reception desk, gesturing for him to come along. As he stood up from the waiting area where other people sat and waited, Naoki did not know what to feel; for one thing, though he felt relieved about leaving the hospital hallway's dismal aura behind to enter the room where Tsuru was confined, he also dreaded the anticipation of seeing his mother's friend in her current state.

Outside the room, Tsukiko was waiting for them. She greeted the two of them as cordially as she could, though Naoki could see the signs of shock and worry that still gripped her. Her face was pale, and her round eyes were bloodshot. Her hair was askew, with wayward locks sticking out in some places. When she shook hands with them, Naoki noticed that she was trembling slightly, and her fingers felt almost deathly cold.

After exchanging what subdued pleasantries they could with one another, Tsukiko gestured with her hand. "Let's get inside," she said hoarsely, motioning towards their room's door.

As he entered the room with his mother behind Tsukiko, Naoki began remembering certain memories that he had of hospitals. Just a few years back, he had gone with his parents to Yamanashi to visit his eighty-two-year-old grandfather one last time before he passed away peacefully. A few months later, he had gone with them once again to Tochigi briefly to visit his aunt and uncle right after the birth of his cousin Genzo. On both occasions, Naoki had been an observer to the emotions that ran high then, and here he was again in a similar scenario.

Tsuru looked as if she was simply sleeping as she lay on her bed, but that image was marred horribly by the presence of the thin tubes that snaked their way around her arms and were connected to some sort of machine. The worst part was the sight of the tube that was inserted in her mouth, which Naoki sensed was part of the respirator that pumped air into her lungs and helped keep her alive. A nearby monitor beeped its quiet but steady rhythm as it kept track of her heartbeat. Naoki's mind wandered back to the last visit he paid his grandfather, though that seemed slightly better in comparison because there were less tubes and machines present.

"How is she?" his mother asked silently.

"I d-don't know," muttered Tsukiko. "The doctors are still monitoring her vital signs and breathing and whatnot. I don't know half of what they say sometimes, but the nurses tell me that unless something changes, there's n-nothing to worry about."

"How about your parents? Your other relatives? Are they going to arrive soon?"

Tsukiko swallowed as she stifled a dry sob. "Y-Yes. They should b-be arriving in the city by tomorrow."

"That's good to hear."

Silence fell once again. Naoki could not blame his mother or Tsukiko for having nothing else to say at the moment. All he could do was to observe Tsuru's comatose form, imagining if she would ever wake up from her ordeal, and how many before her had passed on in the end. Unlike in novels where a reader had full insight and scrutiny over a certain character's inner demons, real life was all about unpredictability and the way people fought and endured through it, and there were times when some grew tired of it all and looked for ways to escape.

As time passed, the silence was slowly broken as the inevitable question was asked: did Tsuru ever show signs of depression? Naoki listened as Tsukiko narrated how she saw nothing to indicate that her sister suffered from such a powerful illness. Looking back at it, it was indeed hard to deduce from Tsuru's cordiality that something was wrong, but then again, wasn't that always the case with the people who take their own lives? Smiles and gestures often paint a story that was a whole lot different from the shadows that dwelt inside a person. Tsukiko admitted that the only times Tsuru ever seemed down and out was when her boyfriend left her, and when she was laid off from her second job as an accountant. In spite of these experiences, Tsuru had managed to get by normally, and Tsukiko did not see the need to ask if anything was amiss. At this point, she tearfully began berating herself for not seeing the signs, but Naoki's mother comforted her and reminded her that knowing when to see these signs was never easy to spot, let alone get her sister to admit about the inner turmoil she was enduring.

The visit lasted for more than an hour. After going as far as she dared with her questions, Naoki's mother did not want to ask anything else while Tsukiko was still evidently reeling from shock and grief. Any attempts to talk about something else never took off, not with the sight of Tsuru right in front of them. A nurse came in every twenty minutes to check on the life support machine. Other than that, there was very little movement and energy inside the room.

Later on, in the passenger seat of his mother's car, Naoki broke his silence. "Do you think she'll make it, Mom?"

His mother sighed sadly. "I have no idea. You heard Tsukiko—as long as the doctors are still monitoring her vital signs and don't have answers yet, we can't know for sure what will happen. Of course, I'm praying just as much as she is that Tsuru will pull through."

"I hope so too. It's just terrible. Reminds me of the time Grandpa was about to go."

"I know. This one is really different, though. The last time Tsuru came for a visit, she looked better than ever. She was carrying this little box full of assorted sweets—you remember them, right? The sweets I shared with you and your father that one time?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"She said that she was planning on getting some help to start her own sweets shop. She always said that in the office, back when we still worked together. She never liked working in an office, no. She wanted to start her own business with Tsukiko. That day, she asked me if I knew anyone who would be able to help her, and I referred her to a few acquaintances. She was so happy when she left. Kept thanking me over and over, telling me that I was a real lifesaver." At this, his mother's voice trembled a little. "If anyone had gone back in time to tell me then that Tsuru would . . . w-would end up like this, I wouldn't have believed them no matter what they said. Not a chance.

"I wanted to ask Tsukiko on whether Tsuru bore any signs or did any . . . you know. Alcohol, drugs, self-harm, those kinds of things, they're always possible signs. But poor Tsukiko would've freaked out if I asked her that. I mean, you saw how she reacted when we asked her about Tsuru being depressed."

For a moment, Naoki remembered Curt Morgan, whose vices and problems were tackled in a vivid representation in Dreams from Dystopium. He wondered whether that was how it was for those who were in the same boat as him. The thought also made him remember reading and analyzing with Yuri and how much he was starting to miss that, though not as much as he missed her.

"And to imagine Tsuru drinking alcohol or doing illegal drugs . . . no, it can't be that," his mother continued, though Naoki mused that she might only be thinking out loud at this point. "It can't have been. You'd see signs—withdrawal, the eyes, anything. Tsuru never had that. No, she can't have been drinking or drugging or hurting herself. We would've noticed if she did, right?"

Naoki nodded. "Yeah. Out of all that, self-harm seems to be the most subtle one because you can hide that with a lot of things—clothes and makeup, for instance."

At that moment, he stopped at the sound of his words. The idea popped up in his head as sudden as a twist in the novels he had read before.

"Self-harm." "Subtle." "Clothes."

Yuri. Her sleeves. Her forearm.

Her knives. The red stains.

Naoki would have laughed at the idea at how the words involuntarily formed a haiku in his head, but he couldn't even smile. He echoed his mother's words in his mind. No, it can't be that. It can't be.

"Son? Are you okay?"

He blinked. Though he could not see his own face, he knew he had paled at the thoughts he was having, enough for his mother to notice. He cleared his throat, trying to compose himself in spite of the dread welling up inside him like a slow burn. "I'm fine. I just . . . remembered something that I've read about . . . a-about self-harm, that's all."

Of course, that was a bit of a lie. Naoki knew about the concept of self-harm, but he was not yet too familiar with it to the point where he could tout what he was thinking in an attempt to connect it with this new possibility that Yuri might be . . . might be . . .

As soon as they arrived home, Naoki went upstairs, booted up his laptop and immediately began reading up on self-harm online. Though the subject was not exactly the type that was prevalent at first glance on the internet's trending topics, he soon found numerous articles and websites that spoke of the issue. Naoki saw how they identified self-harm not as a disorder, but rather a behavior that was a possible effect of certain illnesses and disorders. One thing eventually led to another as Naoki opened up tabs about anxiety, taking his time to read through them as deeply as possible. As he kept reading, he began to imagine if he would really like what he would find in the end.

The articles all posited the same message: anxiety as a disorder can lead to self-harm in people, which then came in different forms—obviously, cutting was one of them. Still, Naoki needed something more than just the medicinal or scientific approach to the discussion of self-harm and cutting in particular, so he opened a few more tabs and looked for actual firsthand accounts of those who practiced self-harm. In this day and age, such things were made present across the internet in the hopes of telling others that they were not alone, and that there are those who have gone through similar ordeals and battled through them successfully.

As time passed, however, Naoki slowed down. His initial dread had ebbed away slightly to help his mind register a few questions. Was Yuri actually engaging in self-harm? Was he simply overreacting to the ideas given by what he said, a grave aftereffect of the hospital visit? True enough, the red stains he saw on Yuri's sleeve were odd, but he had given her the benefit of the doubt and imagined that they were indeed ink stains. Somehow, it was hard to imagine that Yuri would actually have a darker reason behind those stains, and yet with his penchant for analyzing things and looking at facts, he could never discount the idea that it was all possible. Right now, all the evidence he had seen thus far pointed to the idea that Yuri could be practicing self-harm out of a certain disorder or mental illness. If such was the case, more daunting questions presented themselves. Was Yuri practicing self-harm as an outlet for her anxiety? Was she depressed, even? And if one or both cases are true, then what can he hope to do?

After an hour's worth of reading and researching, Naoki began to understand the psychological and emotional weight behind the idea of self-harm a lot better. It was hard for him to read something that was no work of fiction, but real descriptions made by actual people who had gone through pain in such a way. Still, he found himself unable to look away as he read, imagining that at a pace like this, he would have to skip dinner. Though he had no way of knowing what these people sounded like, their words gave him a sense of familiarity about them, as if they were friends talking to him and anyone else who would read their stories. One spoke of how self-harm provided him a sense of control whenever the pressure of his job would start piling on him; another used cutting as a sort of punishment for her shortcomings towards her significant other; one had simply grown to like the sensation that the pain gave him, even though he knew there was something wrong with what he was doing. Some explained how they had felt so numb that they needed the pain to make sure they were still able to feel something, anything. Others simply preferred physical pain over emotional pain, and thus found solace through the practice.

When he had read all that he could digest for now, Naoki sat back in silence. Again, nothing was final until he found out whether the connection between self-harm and Yuri was true. It felt like he was simply grasping at straws, though it made sense when he looked back at the evidence.

Briefly, he wondered how he would approach Yuri to try and find out. It had become difficult to talk to her since his last visit, and she seemed keen on avoiding his glance even in class. Though Naoki wanted to talk to her again, he found himself unable to force Yuri to do so, not wanting to add any more to the pressure he had undoubtedly given her before. Still, now that he had deduced the possibility—not a fact yet, he kept telling himself—that Yuri was engaging in self-harm, he felt that he could not stand by idly anymore. He considered asking for help from his fellow quadrumvirs—there was no doubt that he could use their personal judgment and even a bit of offhand humor at a time like this—but he felt that the less people that got involved in this, the better it would be for Yuri.

He stood up and glanced outside his bedroom window. Night had already fallen. The lamps lining the neighborhood's streets cast their light against a few trees, creating elongated shadows on the road. As he stared at them, they reminded him of scars.

Yuri was not alone. Libitina was with her every step of the way.

It was The Shadow Over Innsmouth all over again, only this time it was Libitina who was starting to discover her true heritage in its horrific fullness instead of Robert Olmstead. For Yuri, it had been rather obvious—The Portrait of Markov had been sending signs and clues for several chapters now—but rather than having Libitina revealed as a failed experiment who had been smuggled out of the nefarious cult's facility by her companions in the past, it appeared that she was intentionally allowed to escape and left alone by the cult so that her mysterious "Third Eye" can develop in full in an environment that can succeed where the cult had failed. It was this eye that was the source and cause of many of the novel's preternatural scenarios, and it is implied that it is what keeps Libitina tied to the eldritch dimension that the cult has ties with, hence her powers and clairvoyance. In the struggles she faced with her friends and family throughout the novel, with all the stress and grief she felt at watching her companions suffer and the rage she felt at her former captors, Libitina slowly unlocked the powers of the eye. In the end, as she tracked down the cult's origins in search for answers, she had done the facility's work for it. As the Third Eye began to be explained more and more, the eye symbol embossed on the book's cover made a whole lot of sense now.

Yuri felt rather guilty at the thought that she was breaking the agreement she made with Naoki about not reading in advance. Though their lunchtime discussions had been put on hold ever since her anxiety kicked in, she had tried her best to stay true to the agreement and not read any new chapters from Markov. In the end, her desire to be lost in another world after having been trapped in the shocking but cathartic paradise of physical pain won her over. There was also the comfort of knowing that she was not alone, and that she had these fictional characters to turn to.

Of course, that also fed her the wrong ideas. In Markov, Libitina was suffering from the conflict of realizing that her powers and upbringing made her a terrible monster, especially as she finds out that her tendency to let her emotions fly gets her friends into trouble. In that vein, Yuri could relate to the heroine more than ever. How many times in the past had she caused trouble by being too excited or unsuccessfully keeping her emotions and thoughts in check? Granted, she did not put the people around her in danger with her actions and words the way Libitina did, but she felt troublesome enough. Moreover, there was the deep, dark secret that she hid, her own Third Eye to hide, growing stronger the more cuts she made.

Still, Yuri clung on to the idea that Libitina was fighting back. She was trying to fight the power within her, and stop the Third Eye from ever coming alive and taking control of her being. Like Natasha and her shadows, Libitina fought with the hope that she would live normally. Given that it seemed futile given how powerful the darkness advancing toward them was, Yuri marveled at their courage and determination to remove the taint inside them, and she knew that she could also do what they were doing. Now that the exams were over, she could start doing just that by picking up the pieces. Of course, that would be a daunting task indeed. It was like a drug addict promising to stay clean and steer clear of his addiction, or a drinker wishing to stay sober after cursing the effects of alcohol on a bad night. They can say all they want about change, but the shadow of a relapse was always lurking around the corner, ready to ruin everything all over again.

With nothing else to worry about for now, Yuri was thankful that her anxiety had eased down just enough for her to avoid grasping another one of her knives. Still, it lingered to the point where she could not interact with people properly, let alone with Naoki. Since the day he came very close to finding out what she was hiding beneath her sleeves, Yuri had always made sure to wrap clean bandages tightly around her forearm, never taking chances even when the cuts had begun to dry and heal. She knew that she would never feel safe and secure until only scars were left, but she also did not know when and if she would take up her knives again. To distract from these thoughts, Yuri had done her best to write down how she felt with a pen and the paper on one of her notebooks instead of using a knife and the skin of her forearm. It hadn't been easy, though; the more she struggled to jumpstart her writing to become productive, the stronger her urge to cut became. It also did not help that she was just a short distance away from her knives. To control her urge, she made it a point to police herself by writing in the presence of her grandmother, striking up conversations with her so that she would not feel compelled to leave the room and let one thing lead to another. In the end, her efforts had paid dividends as she managed to start writing a few things. Soon, random words became writing prompts for a poem, and she managed to find the time to start articulating her words.

Bathing was slightly more difficult to circumvent, for she could never stop the pain that came whenever she would wash her forearm. Every time the water ran across her cuts, and every time she carefully cleaned them with soap, the stinging sensation surged through her and made it feel like her arm was on fire. Yuri would hiss and gasp, shuddering as she let the pain run its course. Often times, the dried cuts would open up and bleed slightly from the washing, her blood mixing with the soapy water and trickling down her arm. Her skin, having grown pale from all the times she had wrapped it so very tightly with bandages, threw the colors into sharper relief and made the spectacle look like red cracks on porcelain. After that, it was only a matter of drying and bandaging her cuts.

Even with all her precautions and her attempts to start keeping things under control, however, Yuri knew she wasn't out of the woods yet. She still felt obligated to bridge the gap that she had created between herself and Naoki. Perhaps if she managed to bring things back to normal and act like nothing ever happened, Naoki would be none the wiser about what he had almost discovered during his last visit. After all, she had kept her scars hidden for the vast majority of her teenage life, so to keep on lying and hiding would be easy for her to accomplish. It was better than the alternative of avoiding Naoki for the rest of her life, for how could she bring herself to avoid the person who had made her feel wanted and appreciated? How could she stray so far from the one who showed her that she was not a ghost, immaterial and fleeting, but rather a person who was—or can be—whole?

Tomorrow would be her chance to work on that. Yuri hoped that she would pull through as she had always done. If not, her knives would be there to help her all over again. Whether the thought comforted her or not, she could not say.

The longer the week wore on, the more Naoki realized that he couldn't even rely on his friends if he wanted to. Even now that the exams were finished, Daisuke and Akihiro were both absent for most days, making him wonder if something was up with Natsuki and Sayori or if they were simply busy with other things. Meanwhile, though Kenta was with him during lunchtimes as always, he looked to be worrying about something, though he wouldn't give him any clue as to what that was. So far, no one had spoken to him about Monika's next get-together, but he was fine with that. There were more important things to worry about in the meantime. And so, he began to observe Yuri discreetly and watch for anything peculiar about her behavior.

One of the things that Naoki always considered viable proof was the fact that he had never seen Yuri wear short-sleeved articles of clothing. For the majority of the time, she was either wearing their long-sleeved school uniform or other forms of long-sleeved attire, like the sweater she wore during the first get-together with the rest of the gang. Their P.E. uniform made use of a short-sleeved short, but Yuri always wore arm sleeves with that as well. It was an odd thing for Naoki—odd enough to be considered proof for his musings, but it was also partially debunked by the idea that some of their other classmates also occasionally wore arm sleeves for P.E. Perhaps Yuri simply preferred wearing long-sleeved apparel, and her wardrobe at home was limited to such articles of clothing.

The second idea that Naoki had to go with was Yuri's interest in knives. From what he had read, cutters often used razor blades and knives, and some of them had admitted to even collecting these blades and keeping them hidden away to use whenever the urge to cut struck them again. Still, given her penchant for liking things that she admits are odd at times, perhaps Yuri was simply interested in knives the same way she was interested in horror novels or aromatherapy. And besides, people always had weird hobbies and things that they liked to collect, so what made Yuri different from them? Nevertheless, Naoki clung to the fact for now.

Yuri's anxiety was his third and most obvious piece of proof. Admittedly, Naoki was no expert, but from what he had read online Yuri showed a lot of the symptoms of social anxiety, and her bouts would be characteristic of generalized anxiety disorder. Naoki saw it in the way she second-guessed herself whenever she stated an opinion, and immediately apologized for any verbal slight that she feels she might have incurred, even when there was none. He saw it in her reluctance to speak in front of other people, and the way she was always afraid about being intrusive or out of line. Whenever these things got to her, coupled with the pressure of tackling something important or failing at that task, Yuri would panic and crumble, as he had seen firsthand when they had studied together and when he last visited her. Could her anxiety be severe enough to the point where she got around to practicing self-harm? There was still the possibility that Yuri was depressed, though the notion of her having anxiety was more plausible than that at the moment.

Lastly, and perhaps both the most subtle and the most glaring evidence of them all, there was Yuri's tendency to grab her forearm whenever she felt too nervous. Naoki had always treated it as a mannerism of sorts, much like how people twirl their hair or fiddle with their thumbs and fingers whenever they spoke. However, given that Yuri always grabbed the same forearm that bore the red stains he saw, Naoki had become unable to shrug the thought off.

Try as he might to look for new signs or get back with her all over again, Yuri still seemed keen on avoiding him. Even during lectures when the two of them would exchange what notes they needed, she kept her distance and took on everything alone. Twice, when she got up to excuse herself from the class and go to the bathroom, Naoki wanted to follow her and intercept her in the corridor, but that had been too straightforward for his taste. If he wanted to get close enough to prove his assumptions correct, he needed to bond with Yuri again.

In his mind, however, it all seemed off. With the way he was observing Yuri from the sidelines as he tried to find a way to bridge the gap between them and hopefully find out more about her possible self-harm issues, it was like a betrayal on his part. It felt like Yuri was a wrongdoer whom he was monitoring closely in order to see if she would do something bad. Naoki knew it wasn't like that, but given how secretive his approach was, it felt like so.

His worry seemed unneeded, however, when he encountered Yuri as he was entering the 3-C classroom after lunchtime that Thursday. He was just walking through the door when she bumped into him in her hurry to leave the room. Yuri looked flustered, ready to apologize profusely as she raised her head, but her face turned red the moment she saw that it was him that she had bumped into.

"Hey there," said Naoki, smiling nervously.

Yuri looked breathless. "I'm s-sorry for bumping into you like that!"

"No, that's fine," he said. "I wasn't looking where I'm going. Are you okay?"

"I'm f-fine." Yuri attempted to smile as she brushed away a lock of hair from her face. For Naoki, it felt like they were meeting each other all over again.

"Anyway, you were going somewhere, right . . . ?"

He gestured outside the room. Yuri snapped to attention as she remembered what she was supposed to do. "Oh, yes, I was g-going to go to the restroom. E-Excuse me."

"Sure, go right ahead!" he said, standing aside to let her pass. For a moment, he considered following through with the thought of intercepting her halfway when she came back, but he decided to let things run their course for now.

When Yuri returned five minutes later, Naoki simply sat in his chair, wondering if he should continue their interaction earlier. It was the opening that he needed to break the tension between them, he knew, and he did not want it to go to waste.

Once again, Yuri seemed to do his work for him as she spoke up. "How have you been? I apologize if I haven't b-been talking to you too much over the past days."

Naoki hid his surprise with a short laugh. "Don't worry about that, I'm doing fine. How about you?"

"I'm feeling slightly better. C-Compared to before, I mean."

"That's good to hear. I was actually really worried that I made you feel worse. You know, after my last visit and all."

"No, no, you didn't!" Yuri managed to laugh a bit nervously. "I was just r-really embarrassed because you had to see my clothes w-with those stains and all. I can get a little c-clumsy sometimes with how I work. . ."

Once again, Yuri pressed her hand against her forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze. Naoki observed this gesture keenly; it was indeed the same arm that wore the sleeve with the stains.

"That's okay," he said, smiling. "I'm just glad I'm able to talk to you again."

In no time at all, the two of them began speaking to each other more, at least until lunchtime ended and their classes resumed. It was as if nothing had ever happened, as if one of them had simply been sick and was absent for a few days before returning to school. Though Naoki was happy about it all, the pressing matter of finding out what Yuri might be hiding dampened his spirits a little. The thought hung a veil of foreboding around the two of them, something that he could feel whenever his mind brushed against the thought—and somehow, he sensed that Yuri felt it too.

When school ended that day, the two of them lingered for a while near the gates. Other students passed them by, their spirits not dampened by the late afternoon chill as they made their way downtown. Kenta, who had just finished talking with some of his friends on the basketball varsity team, waved goodbye at them as he made his way home. Long after their classmates had left, the two of them sat on a bench near the gates, speaking and catching up.

"I really miss our discussions," Naoki admitted after a while. "I haven't read Markov in a while, so I've tried binge-reading some of the old ones for a while. I swear, Hallowed gets better every time I reread it."

"A-About that. . ." Yuri fidgeted anxiously. "I may have, um . . . read in advance."

"In advance?" Naoki repeated, slightly confused at first. "Oh, you mean you continued reading Markov?"

"Yes, and I'm really sorry for that!" Yuri cried out, looking as if she had just uttered a disgusting remark. "I didn't know w-what to do, and I couldn't resist, so I—"

"No, no, no," said Naoki. "It's fine, Yuri. Don't apologize for that. It's not like that's gonna mess up any of our future discussions, right?

"But—"

"Yuri, it's okay."

A short silence fell. Yuri still looked unsure on what to say. To further calm her down, Naoki went on. "You know, you remind me of my mom. There are times when we'd watch some T.V. series together, and she'd feel guilty for watching new episodes while I'm in school. I'd come home and she'd apologize immediately for being two or three episodes ahead of me," he said with a chuckle.

In spite of her nervousness, Yuri laughed a little as well; Naoki could tell that she was relieved that he had let her in. Encouraged by this, he went on, "And there was this one time when Kenta, Daisuke and I started getting into this nice anime series back in middle school. What we didn't know was that Daisuke already had the manga that the series was based from, and he knew more about what was gonna happen than Kenta or I did. While we were watching, he would 'accidentally' let a couple of spoilers loose by implying what would happen. Well, Kenta might seem slow at times, but he's smarter than he looks. When he figured out the spoilers on his own, he threw a fit and stopped watching with us because he knew that any more spoilers would drive him up the wall."

Yuri looked on in wonder. "I never thought I would relate to Kenta in any way. I mean, I wouldn't want to be spoiled on what I'm reading too." She sighed guiltily. "But I s-suppose I shouldn't be saying that, not when I'm the one r-reading in advance. . ."

"Hey, you may have done that, but you haven't spoiled anything for me or anyone, okay?" he stated with a gentle tone. "Anyway, even though Kenta continued watching on his own, I stuck with Daisuke because it was nice to have someone explaining some of the stuff that was going on sometimes. I mean, look at me—I don't exactly look like an anime fan who knows a lot, right? Sometimes, especially with the ones that have a lot of action and fighting and whatnot, it can be hard keeping track of some things, because it's a bit different from reading."

"Oh, I know what you mean," Yuri admitted. "It's one of the reasons why I can't seem to g-get into manga and anime."

"Well, if we ever want help with that, we can always ask Daisuke and his good friend Natsuki, right? Who knows? Maybe we can get them and the others to become interested in reading horror novels! Do you think The Portrait of Markov is a good way to start things off for them?"

"P-Perhaps," said Yuri, her eyes twinkling as she grinned. As happy as he was with the fact that he managed to speak with her again, Naoki remembered the pressing issue he would eventually need to address. Staring into Yuri's lavender eyes and watching her timid but wonderful smile, he found it hard to believe that she might be suffering from something. Then again, Tsuru Kobayashi was a testament to just that, and he dearly hoped there was no one else among the people he knew that was going through a similar ordeal.