"Heh... fancy seeing you back here after so long. Never thought I'd be seeing you here again."
Ace opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by darkness. And there was someone crouching in front of him, clad in a brightly coloured yukata. He recognized the person in front of him right away, though this time the 'person' was not wearing his usual kitsune mask to cover his face... and Ace found himself facing a mirror of himself, staring back at him wearing an evil sneer. If not because of that red mark beneath the person's right eye, Ace would've thought that this was just another rotten dream.
"What happened to that 'grand vision' of yours about destroying everything and remaking anew the world into the shape of your ideal vision?" his mirror asked in a mocking tone.
Ace didn't answer the mirror's question. The latter just laughed at him as their voice echoed all around the darkness...
xxx
Michinaga just shook his head as he continued sipping on his hot tea.
"Dammit, that fox idiot! Of all the times to get sick, just as we finally figured out the most important piece of the puzzle!" he groaned aloud. "Where was that mischievous fighting spirit he used to have to always obsess so hard about wanting to sink his teeth onto my ankle?"
Neon ended up laughing involuntarily despite the sombre mood around them. "You're still keeping a big grudge over fox!Ace's antics... aren't you, Miichi?"
Michinaga rolled his eyes at the smiling faces of Neon and Win, before looking up to thank Sara who had just risen to refill his tea.
"You're laughing right now because you weren't the one getting harassed by that fox. You wouldn't have been able to forget the memories of it had you been at the receiving end of it. How surprised you'd be if some wild fox suddenly bit your leg and wouldn't let go. And when you're able to make them let you go, the damn fox proceeds drag you along towards the place it wanted you to go... and then started ordering you around as if you're the one who was sitting four-leg on the floor like a half-wit and he's the superior two-legged creature!"
Win continued to laugh at him. "Hey, Miichi, did you used to get traumatized by random dogs or something—?"
"Shut up... you fellow forest animals!"
Neon immediately spoke out... amidst the laughter. "Hey! Cats aren't part of forest creatures! We're domesticated animals!"
"Makes no difference to me! You two still sided with that idiot fox—heck, even the big sister here was part of the forest wildlife! I'm grouping you all in the same team!"
"Yeah, yeah... says the sole herbivore in this group," teased Win again as laughter broke out again amongst the two-thirds of them...
.
Sara walked into Keiwa's room again as Tsumuri continued applying wet cloths over Ace's face, neck and arms, trying to bring down the high fever the latter was currently having. She pulled out the chair from Keiwa's work desk to sit down before leaning over to check on her.
"How's Ace? Has he even woke up in the past few hours since the doctor checked on him?"
Tsumuri just shook her head at her. "No. A few times earlier, it seemed as if Ace would finally wake up from his delirium. But then shortly after, he'll end up becoming still again after a while."
She sighed. "At times, he'll start muttering some incoherent words... sometimes I'd catch some of the words he's saying, he'd call out Keiwa-sama's name... and muttering apologies. Sometimes, Ace-sama would start crying again..."
Sara just let out a long sigh as she leaned on her chair. "This reminds me a lot of when Keiwa used to be very small—"
Tsumuri glanced up towards her as Sara started to smile weakly.
"Back then when our parents died, Keiwa always tried to act strong for the two of us. Because he ended up becoming the only main boy in the family remaining. Our extended families only did the barest minimum for the two of us, just enough for us to make do until I graduated school and started taking part-time jobs. So I guess you can say... as the only man in the family, Keiwa thought he needed to take care of our family by himself."
She shrugged. "Until one day, Keiwa suddenly fell sick with a high fever. The doctor said that perhaps Keiwa had been bottling his feelings about our parents' deaths so much that it started to take a toll on him."
"Since then I always made sure that I'd be there whenever Keiwa needed me—so that he didn't really have to take the full burden of taking care of our family—though I didn't expect there will come a day when I wouldn't be able to be around for him."
Tsumuri smiled gratefully at her. She glanced back towards Ace.
"I really hope that Ace-sama would quickly recover from this..."
Sara placed her hands on Tsumuri's shoulders before giving it a gentle squeeze.
"Don't worry about it. Both of us have really strong little brothers..."
xxx
His darker twin continued laughing at him, mockingly.
"How the mighty have fallen! It's great to be able to see you falling off from your high throne! At times you're really too idealistic to a fault! Never thinking that all the luck you might still have had might be taken from other people's pool instead of your own almost dried-up supply!" The man laughed again. "You really did end up repeating the sins committed by the Goddess, and committing that sin towards someone who didn't deserve to have even more things taken away from him anymore—"
Ace gritted his teeth as he couldn't form any valid counter-argument towards all of the accusations. He really felt as if he deserved to receive all of the insults and taunting...
.
Someone else had let out a soft sigh.
"...aah! And now you're being too harsh on that guy, that even I start to feel sorry for him. Move over a bit—"
And then Yukata boy started rolling towards the other side and walking away, grumbling to himself while sitting near a single Tori gate nearby. And another person walked up towards him, wearing a sleek dark suit with a pair of shiny black shoes. Ace almost felt like his heart was about to pop out of his chest as he recognised the face of the newcomer right away!
"K-Keiwa—?" he gasped aloud. "W-why... How could you even be here?"
'Keiwa' leaned down and crouched on his knees in front of him. The man snorted. "You're almost correct, but not quite. I am a part of Keiwa whom you know very well and I supposed also cherished, dearly. But I'm not quite the same 'Keiwa' that you know."
He shrugged, before pointing his thumb towards the direction of Ace's darker twin. "Same as how that Kitsune was a part of you and not really you at the same time." The man grinned. "You can just call me Tycoon as you used to call the two of us in the past. Or, you could call me Bujin. Since then, you can just easily tell us apart from each other..."
Ace frowned at him.
"Bujin? As in Keiwa's black buckle Bujin Sword?", he asked.
Bujin just grinned back at him. "Yeah. Clever boy..."
"But how?" Ace asked, not quite understanding why Bujin would be present inside his inner mind. "How could you be—!?"
Bujin just gave Ace a hard poke on the forehead before sighing dramatically. "Perhaps I've been complimenting you a bit too soon... you're still a bit too dense on some parts."
The dark man in front of him just shrugged. "If you can just dig deep inside your memories back to that moment when you stabbed our poor old Keiwa-chan—" Ace tensed immediately as soon as Bujin pointed it out, "—you'll be able to figure out what happened," he said as he finished talking.
"Honestly speaking, I didn't have a lot of reason to complain about the new accommodation... since I had a pretty charming roommate to keep me company. Though it still gets pretty annoying watching over you sometimes... especially recently. It had been fun before since I was able to see Keiwa smiling again after so long. But nowadays you've been acting pretty dramatically... even to my own standards. Though Kitsune there was still having the time of his life."
"Anyway..." Bujin held out a hand towards Ace. "Since we do need to maintain a level of pleasantries here..."
"Nice to meet you properly again this time—"
"Ukiyo Ace-sama."
A/N: Fufufu... I received some unexpected backup help 😀