Chapter 5
"Yato!" Hiyori popped up; startled and confused as to where she was or what happened.
Yato quickly stood up holding his Sekki and ready for a fight. "What's wrong?!"
She looked around and realized she was in her room lying in her own bed. How did she get there? She didn't remember much from the night before. "Sorry. I didn't know where I was. How did I get home?"
Yato slunk back in the computer chair. "Yukine," he exhaled as his regalia reverted back to human form and plopped down on the floor beside him and yawned. "You pretty much passed out on the way home last night. Your parents were already asleep so we just brought you through the window."
Hiyori observed Yukine falling asleep against the wall. "Have you guys been here all night?"
Yukine opened one eye and nodded. "We weren't sure what would happen. We tried to stay up all night but Yato fell asleep a couple hours ago." He gave Yato a sideways glare.
"Ow! Hey! I've been up for 24 hours, what did you expect?!"
"Yukine," Hiyori interjected, "were you in your Sekki form all night?"
He rested his head against the wall. "We didn't want to take any chances if a phantom popped up while you slept."
"I'm shocked it didn't," Yato added. "You must have slept without dreaming."
Hiyori thought back and noticed she didn't remember having a dream. "I guess I must have been really tired," she chuckled nervously. Looking around, Hiyori immediately felt sorrowful. Had they really stayed up all night waiting for a battle that may or may not come? How can they possibly do this every single night? And even when she's not sleeping, potentially having her soul slip out would mean they would have to be on edge all day as well. She knew they wouldn't be able to manage not sleeping day or night.
"Don't worry about it," Yato jarred Hiyori's thoughts as if he knew exactly what she was thinking about. "Yukine and I will come up with a plan."
Even Yukine turned to Yato confused. "How are we supposed to do that? We can't leave her alone even for a second!"
Hiyori felt a sharp pain in her chest. Was Yukine mad at her? Thinking about the last few days, he hadn't seemed overly thrilled about the situation. In fact, she hadn't even spoken to him much. It was like he was avoiding her.
As she lifted her hand to her chest, Yato mimicked her movement. Looking at each other, both confused, Yato and Hiyori decided to drop it. But in the back of her mind, Hiyori wondered if Yato just felt what she was feeling?
"Yukine, I'm going to try to find some answers. Some other gods must know more about curses and how to lift them. You stay here with Hiyori until I get back."
Without even saying goodbye, Yato left out of the window and scampered off into the distance leaving Hiyori and Yukine in an awkward silence.
"Well," she began, "I don't have any plans today so maybe we could go to the library and I can do some research on curses."
"Maybe," he replied sharply, looking up at the ceiling.
Hiyori felt hopeless. It seemed even Yukine had given up on the idea of anything working. Her stomach growled, distracting her from her thoughts and she heard Yukine yawn again.
"Why don't you get some rest in my brother's room? I'm going to go downstairs and get something to eat. I'll wake you if something happens."
Yukine debated internally for a moment. "I don't know. Yato will kill me if something happens while I was asleep."
"Yukine, his bedroom is not that far away. And don't worry about Yato. We both know I can handle him." They both chuckled.
"I promise, if anything happens I will go straight to you and wake you. Besides, you can't just not sleep."
Yukine agreed and made his way to her brother's bed. Once he threw himself over the pillows, he almost instantaneously fell asleep and Hiyori could hear him snoring away. She sighed in relief and headed downstairs to see her mother and father sitting at the table drinking coffee.
"Good morning!" Hiyori greeted them.
"Oh Hiyori, good morning!" her mother waved and ushered her into the room. "I was wondering when you were going to wake up."
"You got in pretty late last night. Did you go to the parade?" her father asked while reading the paper and sipping a steaming cup of coffee.
"I did actually," Hiyori returned. "It was a lot of fun."
"Your father and I ventured down that road a bit last night and saw your friends Yama and Ami. They asked if you were going to the parade but I thought you'd be with them." Her mother looked over at Hiyori curiously.
Oh shit. What could she say? She's never outwardly told her parents about Yato and Yukine. For a long time it was like living in a fairytale that only she knew about. She'd tried to introduce Yama and Ami to them a couple of times but they forgot about them right after. Yama even commented to Hiyori how cute Yato was and that he was very charismatic. When Hiyori asked her a few days later if she wanted to hang out with Yato again, she didn't remember him. Hiyori quickly deflected the conversation but inside she realized that this was her life now. Even if Yato and Yukine were a permanent part of her life, nobody would ever know or remember them. How would she explain them to her parents? How would she explain them to her future friends or even a future husband? They would think she was crazy.
"It's ok if you were with a boy," her mom stated matter-of-factly. "Your father and I know you're getting to that age. You're almost an adult. I'm honestly shocked you haven't met a boy sooner."
Hiyori laughed nervously. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
"When do we get to meet him?" her dad asked firmly from across the table.
Meet him? Why? It's not like he would remember either of them anyway. "Well," Hiyori searched for the right words, "it's really nothing serious. We've been friends for a while but he's not really worth meeting right now."
"Any guy you are hanging around is worth meeting," her father lowered his paper and peered at Hiyori. "Even if it's just for safety purposes. You are almost an adult but until you are I'd like to at least know what kinds of boys you're spending your time with."
Hiyori sighed regretfully. She should never have mentioned going to the parade last night. At least she would have been able to lie her way out of the conversation if she had said she was just at the store or at the library.
"Speaking of which, I need to go to the library later today. Did you guys need me for anything today?"
Her mother shook her head. "Not that I can think of. If we need you we'll text you. Why don't I make you some breakfast?"
Breakfast sounded perfect.
Hiyori took her time eating not wanting to rush the morning. The longer she could give Yukine to sleep the better. Once she was done she helped her mother with the dishes and while she wasn't looking, Hiyori snuck an extra plate of food to her brother's room were Yukine was busy snoring still. She placed the plate on the table beside the bed with a glass of water. Afterwards she busied herself with cleaning and chores she hadn't been able to do with all the other things going on in her life. She had completely forgotten about the matches she had recorded on TV and meant to watch.
"The hospital called," her dad bellowed from the back of the house, "I have to head in for a bit."
"I'll come with you to help the front desk," her mother chimed in. "Hiyori, will you be ok by yourself for a bit?"
Hiyori nodded and waved her parents off from the front door. Now was the perfect time to watch a match on TV while she was waiting for her laundry to finish washing. She plopped down on the couch and turned on one of the recorded matches. Hiyori finally relaxed for the first time in a while and she ended up losing track of time. The washing machine had finished long ago and she knew she wouldn't have much time at the library if she didn't hurry. She put her clothes out to dry and went to wake up Yukine. She opened the door slightly and peeked in to find him already up and scarfing down the plate of food.
"I didn't want to wake you earlier so I just left it for you for later," she told him.
"It was perfect, thank you Hiyori. I really needed it." He put the empty plate on the table and rubbed his still-sleepy eyes.
"Thank you, Yukine."
"What for?"
"I know what you're doing isn't easy and I know it's been stressful. But I really appreciate you hanging in there and helping me."
Yukine turned and smiled at the floor, his face turning red. "There's a lot I'm still learning. I'm stronger now than I was before, but that doesn't always mean I'm stronger in every aspect."
"What do you mean?" Hiyori sat next to him on the bed.
"I can draw borderlines and perform incantations to protect Yato and defeat our enemies. But neither Yato or I specialize in living and human emotions."
"You definitely know more than Yato does," Hiyori joked.
Yukine laughed. "That's true. But even I sometimes forget that living humans emotions are still different from my own. I'm already dead so I don't have to worry about time or make big life decisions. But you do because you still have a whole life to live, Hiyori. It's easy for me to say that some things don't matter because to someone who's no longer alive, they don't. But I have to remind myself that those things still matter to you."
"What kinds of things?"
"Your relationships with people. I've had to accept that relationships are going to come and go for me. Nothing is ever set in stone. But your relationships in life are important and even life changing. I can tell myself to walk away from someone even though it hurts because I know over time it won't hurt as much. But you don't have the kind of time I do."
Yukine's voice broke and he clenched his fists.
"Yukine?"
"I was so quick to tell Yato to cut your ties. I knew it would hurt us both like hell but if meant saving you from this prison then I was willing to do it. But then I thought about how you'd saved me that one night during my ablution. You could have walked away. You could have let me die and that would have been the end of it. I would be gone and Yato would have been happier. At least he wouldn't have almost died. But you called out to me and helped bring me back from that dark place."
Hiyori could see tears falling in his lap.
"You know you are important to us. And I know we're important to you. I want to fight for our friendship while I still can!"
Their eyes locked and Hiyori fought back her own tears. She couldn't find words so instead she leaned in and embraced him. Hiyori finally understood what Yukine had been feeling all this time. It must have been difficult to try to explain it until now. When she thought he was mad at her for having to fight for her, he was actually struggling with his own emotions. Of course Hiyori wouldn't completely understand the differences between a spirit and a human, she knew they both cared about each other and now understood one another.
"I'll fight for you, Yukine, if you keep fighting for me!" she wept.
"We'll do whatever we can to help you. We'll stay with you to whatever end."
After a few minutes, they both wiped their faces and Hiyori excused herself to the bathroom. After she washed her face with cool water, she left with Yukine to the library. Luckily it wasn't too far away. She took a local bus to the nearest intersection and they walked the rest of the way. Once they arrived she went straight to the non-fiction section and grabbed as many books as her arms could carry. Anything that mentioned curses or spells she pulled from the shelves and made a pile on the closest table.
"There has to be something in these books. I can't be the first person to experience this." She flipped through several pages of the first three books and dropped them on the table.
"There's so many different ones though," Yukine picked up a book and started researching as well. "Every culture has their own types of curses. We'll be forever looking for your specific curse."
"Maybe we need to narrow it down." Hiyori got out a pen and a notepad from her bag.
"How so?"
"Well, we know that the curse is mainly effecting my dreams. Even when my soul slips out, it's sending my spirit into a dream realm and trying to trap it there. Maybe we need to find a curse involving dreams."
"That's true. Let me go back to the other isle and see what I can find."
Hiyori sat down with her already large stack of books and began thumbing through them. One by one she ran her finger down the index pages looking for anything pertaining to dreams and curses. Each one was a disappointment. Some of them mentioned nightmares and using them to drive a person insane. Some of them described people using dreams to communicate curses or reveal them. After about twelve books she was beginning to lose hope when a small, old book fell onto the floor by her feet. The label was so worn she couldn't understand what it said. She didn't remember pulling it off the shelf either. Opening it up to the contents, she quickly realized it was a book of spells.
"Yukine!" she shrieked. He came running over to her. "Look!"
She pointed to a page detailing a spell called the Abysmal Nightmare. "It says that sometimes demons can be cast to trap a person's spiritual self inside a perpetual nightmare. The idea is that the person gets so lost in their dream that they can't find their way back to reality. At first, the person would seem like they are comatose to others but the longer their soul is trapped in the nightmare the weaker their body becomes and eventually die."
"Who would come up with such a spell?"
"It says that only the most powerful casters can conjure such a demon. Once the demon has been summoned, the only way to satisfy it is by giving it a soul. It won't go back to the darkness without one. The demon will continue to hunt for the soul is was summoned for until it has it."
"Does it say how to counter it?"
She scanned the words quickly for a solution, but it said nothing about a counter spell. "It doesn't say. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe I'm doomed until it takes my soul." Hiyori dropped her head on the desk in defeat.
"There has to be a way to break it. Yato would be able to find a way. Don't give up Hiyori. We'll figure it out."
Hiyori and Yukine put the rest of the books back and went to check out the spell book at the counter. The librarian told them the book wasn't one of theirs and that she had never seen it before so Hiyori was welcome to keep it. The day was coming to a close and they were both mentally exhausted from looking through so many books. Hiyori just wanted to get home and forget about it for the rest of the day. They grabbed the bus home and got off a few blocks from her house. Neither one of them spoke. Hiyori wasn't sure what to even say.
Yukine felt useless. He couldn't imagine what Hiyori was feeling. She'd just found out she was cursed and that as far as she knew there was nothing she could do about it.
Hiyori stared at the sidewalk as she made her way down the road. Where did she turn from here? How do you fight something you can't control? Who would want to do this to her? Of course her friendship with Yato has brought its share of enemies but usually she was just a pawn to get to him. This seemed personal. Whoever cast this spell wanted her and only her. But why?
Hiyori felt her heart sink further and she took a deep breath. Looking ahead, she could see Yato coming towards them from the end of the sidewalk. She stopped in her tracks, searching his face for any signs of hope but she found none. Hiyori sniffed back tears but they were already falling.
As Yato got closer he saw Hiyori crying. Without saying a word he walked up with his arms wide open and drew her in. No words were spoken. Yato let Hiyori sob in his chest as the sun fell into shadow behind them.