Tonight, heads explode.

She doesn't remember the faces. Or where they died, as the notion drags on, strangely limp bodies, bloodless white lips. Then, something pushes on top of them, disheveling strands of hair, and wrinkling brows, before the pressure increases. As she watches the slow motion of the skin pushing together, then the nose cracking, the lips contorting, almost forming a kiss, the whole skull almost flattens in her vision before it fractures.

The sounds are the worst things. The noise bone makes when it breaks.

The ripping and tearing, mixed mercilessly with the low sound of breathing, living flesh being ripped apart. Being eaten alive. The sound used to simply enrage her, but now it leaves her almost deadly calm, just a faded moth-eaten replay of too many deaths.

That is until the crying joins in. Just the faintest, most distant noise. A soft, huffing cry. That's the second everything spirals. The second is that she wants to scream.

The swords of images pierce right through the thin veil of the dream world right into her dreams regularly, so consequently it is neither a shock nor a surprise to wake up drenched in sweat and shakes.

If there were a mythical figure warding off dreams, it has abandoned this house, leaving it to blood and gore, states of decay that rot minds until they show signs of mildew and numb surrender to the night.

Just in a similar vein, it is perfectly common that at least one person always wanders around at night. It's a bit of a coin flip as to who finds whom. However, the difference lies in the fact that even though she knows better, she still attempts to sleep, only to find the swords always reaching her. Yuta tends to wear it out, another lesson she learned quickly, and the bags under his eyes never vanish as he haunts the night, staying awake until the sun rises again in the morning.

The occurrence is so regular it becomes a habit to track the other down in the middle of a pitch-black house and creaking floorboards because the chances of disturbing any pleasant rest are too small.

As it stands, it induces anxiety to wake up from the nightmares, but it induces more anxiety to have built this weird momentum of support- and then finding no one in the whole house.

The harsh night air washes over her, cooling the saltwater drips that crust her skin. The night air flows cooly in a swift breeze.

With a crumpled shirt and bare arms, he's barely visible somewhere beyond the porch, staring into the silent darkness that consumes everything like an event horizon.

Really could just be some sort of curse himself, she thinks, but the idea dies as fast as it comes to mind in that amusement, and it doesn't manifest in anything but regret. It also instills a drip of fear, a primordial thing that builds all night, and never fully shuts itself off with the looming silhouette of Rika pirouetting in a cluster of muscle and smooth strings of grey and black toward the sky.

There's nothing vicious in the way she floats, hunched forward, almost lurking. Maybe listening. A skittering sound greets Mizumi as she steps off the stairs into the engulfing darkness, the absence of any artificial light erasing shadows.

"Go back inside." It's not yet a shout. It merely flattens like the skulls in her eardrums.

The primal fear overcomes the chance to fully grasp the tempered steel and restraint. "Did something happen? What is it?"

"Nothing. I was just taking a walk."

Darkness can't hide lies when both figures are engulfed in it. It's the slight off-quilter of his voice, like his vocal cords are strings that are not tuned correctly, or one word is a bow straying off the planned melody.

Mizumi sits down right in the doorway, as if it bans her inside, an invisible salt line, a barrier- This one holds no curses. It simply punishes minds.

Every step Yuta takes crunches softly. It's withering grass blades and sand, but it might as well be bones.

Beside her, looming over the porch and hiding the moon like a cloud of miasma, Rika skitters low, but nothing else happens when Yuta simply sits down next to her. It's nonsensical when they could just take a few more steps inside. The space in the doorway is cramped, and they scoot to each side away from each other and still touch sides.

His skin is cold like the stars. No shivers. A sheen of the same nighttime panic, mixed with a paranoia of sleeplessness that pulls all his muscles taut.

Sometimes, in moments like this, it helps to not talk. Sometimes they sit and stare, and what a sight that must be. Two dead-eyed figures who stare at anything but each other, breathing in rhythm.

Sometimes, Mizumi rattles off cooking recipes, or local gossip in a voice that longs desperate to paint over the midnight hour, and Yuta answers mostly courtly, but with the edge of a broken plate glued back together.

Then there are the nights that talking only truth takes place. And that is a discomforting comfort in its own, a tautology of serene grace and depression.

Rika might not scare Mizumi, but whenever Yuta opens his mouth and speaks about his past, perhaps just the past scares her, in an appalling way of someone who dearly wants to know, but did not consider that the consolation comes too late.

The stories come out in bits and pieces that are as delicate as a parent cutting a piece of meat for a child.

He has gotten better with telling them in these last weeks, but that never changes the sheer absence of any emotion but dread lined with an incredible sheer golden string of survival that Mizumi respects. Deciding to be alive is hard. She knows from life experience.

He lets out a long breath.

"The world for your thoughts," she says, because of that. His eyes snap back out of the unfocused glare of an insomniac. Rika snaps at the same time to stare at her.

"It's fine," Yuta says, and if that is meant for her or for Rika, who knows. "I promise. Sometimes- I had to move a little. Did the dreams wake you?" he asks now as if she was not trying to make it about him.

"Dreams can't hurt us when we are awake," she whispers. "They're not real."

It's a lie.

Nighttime seems to be reserved for liars' tongues tonight.

For a while, they watch the clouds drift by the moon together, and without notice, when Mizumi looks over, Rika's gone and vanished. She blinks in surprise at the silent control Yuta always exhibits, even during night terror times, before everything turns foggy and she decides to get back to her room.

When she wakes up in the tickles of a sun too high in the sky, the house almost lies softly in some distant bird song. Dust dances in the air.

Days lost structure a long time ago. They're only slowly regaining some of it.

A bustle reaches down from the kitchen, then some smell that might be from heaven itself for an empty stomach. Since there are very few culprits, Mizumi only sloppily moved down the barren hallway into the earthen-toned room.

For a moment, she is content to just watch him. It's not an intense project, but somehow she was convinced she would always have to either ask someone from the neighborhood or make meals herself. It isn't a surprise. He's been outside and cross country before they came over. Someone probably taught him, or he learned for himself when he was younger. Since he picks up things so fast.

"Good morning." He looks at her from over his shoulder, spiky hair flat from a shower, and black engraved circles under his eyes sticking out. But he looks more awake than she feels.

"Good morning, Yuta," she slowly answers but doesn't sidle away from the door, sniffing. Nothing burned. With painful slow steps, the coffee beans drip into the mill. The idea to brew it might not come to pass at this pace. Yuta can probably eat and cook a ten-course meal in the span of it. "If I knew my prodigious trainee could cook, I'd have let him do it every day."

"Only if my teacher decides to sleep in." It's not the first time they try to be more light-hearted, but the banter is new. It's as airy as the bread and the sounds of the stove and the birds. She cannot say she minds. The stove flickers in a blue flame, a sizzle.

"Usually that name is reserved for others in your praise," she taps the table in a wrap of knuckles before she continues to grind beans. Together with the other food flavors, it's almost homely. What a weird idea. "But I will gladly let it be bestowed. If it means I get some of that egg."

The morning routine commences almost like every day does. Until this intermittent is over. And the house is empty again. Something in her cramps together at that.

An empty house is not a home, and an empty being is not alive.

Some would argue with that sentiment. A younger self would detest her for putting any value in all the life around her. In the neighborhood of humans, the tiny network of sorcerers around her in the countryside. Specifically handpicked connections to the outer world even if phones and internet work, and paperwork hits her whenever she drops the act to run.

Did you think we wouldn't remember, Isarashi? The documents whisper in official seals all day long.

Hello Mizumi, it is time to pay your tolls again so you can keep your pretense up.

He doesn't cut her hair off again, but she might as well lie down in the dust and simmers of heat and surrender immediately.

Old Mizumi was supposed to be a teacher. Old Mizumi died multiple times.

New Mizumi will die soon enough, given the fact that she has made the decision to not face a sword today but a giant grey spiral of cursed energy with a voice that rings in her ears and makes her heart implode.

It's not a hard fight. A peaceful emissary can only evade the maws of death so long.

It could be another win if it wasn't time for another lesson today.

Temperance wanes, for only a moment, as it holds tightly onto both of them. He doesn't get to push her out now, and she doesn't use it to paralyze him. It simply envelops him, sinks into his skin -my flesh to yours- and dangerously lingers over the invisible threat of yarn that tethers this version of Rika towering over them still.

The knife appears without warning in the notion of a stab drawn from her belt.

A claw wraps around her before she can do any harm. It squeezes her rips together, one breaking crack away from crushing her, as nothing but cursed energy steels her bones enough to not die. Water gathers around her vision. The tips of Rika's giant flesh carving tools puncture holes into her wrapped body and loose shirt, dripping with scarlet pain. With a hiss, the claw retreats as fast as it gripped her, but so has Yuta.

I should have not tried to do this. But there is a lesson behind it.

The knife stays in her grip pointed toward him. "Do you trust me?"

What a loaded question. So to her surprise, when the answer comes equally loaded and fast, she shrugs away from Rika's vice-hard grip, but the cold pain lingers.

"No," Rika whispers in a visceral spit of spite.

"Yes," Yuta says at the same time.

"I won't hurt you," she promises. Promises. So many promises in so few days between them. She lifts the knife again. This time, no stabbing. Rika is a blur of grey watching. Maybe almost hopeful.

Now she drags it. It flies right over his arm as she grips it again and he doesn't struggle. He just watches them. The pain becomes dull. Then explodes in an echo.

More blood draws eclectic circles into the sand and hot drips on even hotter stones. It drips down her already bleeding arm. The motion has the excess of dramatic harm, as the red leaves her body while nothing but a tiny, red scratch stays on his skin. It's her hand with the knife and her own blood.

He watches the wound with the same interest as any other lesson, but there lingers something in the corner of his eyes.

"It only works one way." It's not meant to harm, is what she means to alleviate the pressure. It was meant to guide, guard, and be safe. It is the embrace of a mother, a blanket of a bond to keep one safe with the cost of shielding them with their own life.

But it never played any role in the death and havoc. She refused and ran away, severing any possible tie. Telling him that is null. It would simply make him realize what sort of emotion she is basing her care on.

So class, old Mizumi would have joked. What did we learn today?

"It's not reverse energy," he says, as he watches the mess. The only student in this class and her only success. Perhaps the only one even left alive who remembers she likes teaching. Or that she used to be a guardian before the heads exploded and all the children died. But perhaps we let the dead rest, shall we? "It doesn't heal you."

"No. It's just a bond." She looks at her cut hand, cut arm, and cut ribcage, avoiding his eyes entirely. "I will not further teach you how to do it. I was meaning to show you the extent of control."

Rika and Yuta both watch her with more caution after that. For himself or for her, who can say. Even the jokes afterward feel ashen on their skins.


Dreams cannot hurt awakened beings. She should be grateful when the phone rings shrill into the quiet night air.

"Good morning," A voice greets her in a too jovial and amicable tone, a sing-song in the static that makes her stomach curl, imagining the face to it, the smile, and the masked eyes. "Or good night, in your case? Although they do say no rest for the wicked, so you probably were wide awake, Mizumi."

She doesn't answer directly as she subtracts herself from the precarious bundle of sleep and muscles close by and steps away. The cuts and bruises burn with the intensity of the sun, all the recess energy of the bond snapping around her popped blood vessels, even just for the demonstration. But it doesn't burn as bad as the claw mark.

"How did you get this number?"

"Surprised for the call?"

"More surprised you even remember I exist." She looks at the screen as if he'll simply manifest on this side of the globe. Although she is very sure even a Satoru Gojo is not in the position to do that. Or maybe she just hoped if he could, he would not deem her important enough to do that. " Again. How did you get this number? Only four people in the world have it. It's emergencies only."

"What? I am interested in Yuta and his progress. Waiting for a report on our beloved pupil has not the same meaning as asking you directly."

Mizumi flinches. Nothing was ever an "our", even in the most communal sense. The last time that word fell, it encompassed a familiar name tipped in wrath and bitterness and it ended in a mutual agreement for the weaker party not to be smited by the wrath of god.

"The reports are not meant for you either way. I am forced to write things, so I can stay away."

You know that. "Ask your questions, Satoru. But don't expect me to tell you anything you do not know."

Even as her voice tries to be, she still is not sure he buys her indifference. A light hum, and a crunch of shoes from the other end of the world, but then, complete silence again, just as the crickets on the cold dark night chirped right around her, and the bark of something much bigger than a cricket wide awake and far off hunting.

"So it goes well?"

"He is formidable as always. There is nothing that would not go well regarding their abilities for those with natural-born talent. He just needs a little guidance, and it will be fine."

"Are you?" He asks. "Guiding?"

"I will," she swears. The guilt is an old dying animal that sleeps under her porch and rots for itself just like the decay in the nights. "I'll guide and watch. You have my word. For what it is worth to you."

For a moment she fears a shattering cataclysm. But it's nothing like that.

"You should. And it means substantially little. But I take it. For now."

For now, she mouths.

And that ends the call. And it cements her with shackles unable to run away anymore.