AN: Accidentally re-published Chapter 18 here like a dingus. Thanks to to very kind Mymoneydontjiggle over on Ao3 for pointing that out so I could update it over here, because I would have never noticed! 💖 This chapter is dedicated lovingly to you!

021: only fair.

March; 12 years.

At twelve years old – thirteen, really, in only three weeks – Jun thinks this might very well be the absolute worst thing that's ever happened to him. Maybe that makes him lucky, he thinks; there's a lot of terrible things out there in the world. He knows. He's seen those kinds of things on TV. His parents could be dead. Or they could be really poor. They could be mean. even. They are none of those things, though, so this really is his first and only experience with what he thinks must be heartbreak.

Heartbreak, Jun decides, sucks a lot. And yet, somehow, he likes it so much, too.

Heartbreak to Jun is not some amorphous thing, though. Heartbreak has a name, and heartbreak's name in Jun's small and mostly unexciting world is Suzume Meihane.

Suzume Meihane does not belong in Chichibu, of that much Jun is certain. She has a look about her, a way about her. Something about her, anyway. Jun isn't really sure what. Whatever that something is, though, he's sure it's what makes her different. He's known that much since her very first day in class. Even then, as a total stranger, she'd seemed so exciting. Maybe it was because she was a big city girl in their small town, and Jun had never been out of Chichibu or really known anyone who had. Maybe it was because her eyes were a pretty shade of purple, like some kind of fancy flower. Maybe it was because her hair reminded him of peaches, and peaches had always been his favorite fruit. Her skin, too, had looked so soft – real nice, at least as far as Jun thought skin looked.

Weren't those important qualities for a girl to have?

In that exact moment, seeing her at the front of his homeroom where the teacher had introduced her to the class, he had learned what heartache was. It was a bittersweet kind of feeling, to like someone so much so immediately… and yet be so afraid of them. It's not like she was even remotely scary – not in any real way. By far the shortest person in their class, Suzume Meihane seemed very nearly as shy as he was.

But something about liking her makes her terrifying, Jun had discovered. He has always been shy, and somehow, around her, that shyness only gets worse. What could he do? Nothing. Nothing! And oh, how he'd despaired looking up at her there on that first day. How he'd wished, both in that moment and forever after, to be someone he wasn't:

Someone brave! Someone cool! Someone handsome! Someone she would look at the way he looked at her and feel struck in exactly the same way!

It had taken Jun however long it had been since she'd arrived at school to work up the courage to do what he'd done on Monday. Years! It was one of dozens and dozens of plans. Those plans ranged from the absolutely insane to the moderately more reasonable. He'd considered walking up to her desk after school to ask if she'd let him walk her home. He'd even hatched some elaborate plot to stumble into her in the hallway, all in the hopes that he'd have an excuse to pick up her books for when she'd inevitably drop them. (That plan has always been one of his favorites; he's imagined how nice it might be to touch her hand when he hands her the books, over and over and over again.)

As a coward, though, Jun had inevitably decided that the best course of action was a rambling confession smuggled into her bag – anonymously, of course. Maybe mystery would make him seem fascinating or dramatic, he'd reasoned. Secrets were fun. Girls liked that sort of thing, right? She'd be drawn in by her curiosity, and come to see him in the park, and maybe then he'd manage to pretend to be interesting enough that his chronic shyness and complete lack of friends would be something she could overlook.

Maybe they'd even bond over it.

(He's pretty sure she doesn't have any friends, either, after all.)

But Monday after school had come and gone with nothing. Tuesday, too. Wednesday, Thursday – all of them. The park had been quiet, like always. Sure, there had been the young mothers with their younger children. There was some guy in a hoodie who'd come sit on the bench near the swings and read his phone every day, arm thrown out along the backrest. There were even a couple pick up games of football. But no Suzume Meihane.

Sitting under the tree with his manga, Jun had worked his way through volume after volume, all while anxiously searching the park every three or four minutes until well after it got dark.

Nothing. Nothing. Always: nothing.

It's Friday now, and Jun drags himself to the park again like a condemned man willing his broken body up to the gallows, shoes dragging across the pavement. In his chest, his heart feels heavy, like a fist, or a stone. He'd been hopeful at the beginning of the week, but today is overcast, and Suzume hadn't even looked at him once in class. Had she not gotten the letter? Was she ignoring him on purpose?

What was the point in even trying?

The park is, as usual, almost empty. A lone boy Jun's age is perched on top of the jungle gym, head bent over a portable gaming system. There is a woman leading her daughter out of the park by her hand – a girl too young to have even started school yet. On the bench near the swings, he recognizes the man who sits and reads his phone, hoodie drawn up against the chilly wind.

Cloudy as it is, the park is drawn up in a gloomy kind of greyscale. There is no flash of orange-gold hair. There is no blushing girl come to meet him with an envelope clutched in her hand.

There is no one waiting for him under the tree.

Jun wants to go home. He wants to go home and lay down in his cold bed in his dark room, and he wants to cry because Suzume probably isn't interested in someone too cowardly to sign his own name to a confession letter. Maybe she came and saw him from the outskirts of the park and, realizing who he was, decided she wanted nothing to do with him. Maybe her obliviousness at school had been a careful act of pretend. Maybe she was trying to spare his feelings.

Maybe she's even laughing at him.

Still, though, somewhere in that hard, cracking stone of his heart, there's a spark. It's a flicker, a glow – a little remnant of that hope from earlier on in the week. Maybe today, whispers a voice in his head. Maybe today.

So he goes and sits beneath the tree. From his backpack, Jun pulls out one of his favorite manga, the spine of it worn, its pages dog-eared. At this point, he has the entirety of it memorized. He begins to read it, anyway.

At maybe fifteen pages in, a foot nudges against his own.

Startled, Jun looks up, hopeful anticipation pumping adrenaline all through his veins – but his head cranes back and back and back, looking up not into the face of heartache, but rather someone much taller.

Jun recognizes the man from the bench by his hoodie. It's too light for the weather, and so dark a shade of blue that it's almost black. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his dark jeans, and he's wearing sunglasses despite all the cloud cover. Jun's reflection in them is murky, a dark blob in the rough shape of a scrawny, awkward boy.

With a dim sense of alarm, Jun realizes there is metal in the man's face. He hadn't noticed it when the man was on the bench because he'd been far away and he hadn't really been interested enough to look. Up close, though, there's the metal, and there's also his jaw and throat. The skin is wrong, an ugly purple, mangled and rough. He doesn't say anything. From the angle of his head, it's apparent he's staring right at Jun.

"Uhm, hi?"

Jun hates how timid his voice sounds, how it cracks, how it's less a real greeting than a flustered question. He's awkward around normal looking people enough as it is. This man is not normal.

"Jun Tamashiro," says the man, and suddenly Jun's mouth feels very, very dry. How does he know his name?

A quick glance around the park reveals that it's still almost entirely empty. The boy on the jungle gym is wholly distracted. There's no one else around. Even the streets are empty.

"Uh – how did – " Slowly, Jun turns his head to look back at the man. Maybe it's better to not reveal everything, he thinks. Maybe he should pretend to be someone else. "I mean – who is – that's not – "

The man clicks his tongue against his teeth. "Ah-ah. C'mon, don't try that. Lying not a good strategy when the person you're trying to lie to knows what's up," he interjects in a strangely conspiratorial way, as if the two of them are friends and he is letting Jun in on some kind of secret. "And I know what's up. I also know you know my little sister, which, I'll be level with you: she's really what this's about."

Very confused, Jun blinks up at him. He doesn't know anyone, let alone this man's sister. "Your, ah, sister?"

The man has one lip that is normal and one lip that is messed up, scarred and freaky like the skin of his jaw and neck. He wets the normal one with a pale tongue and then his mouth pulls back into a wide smile. Set against the deep violet of his mottled skin, his teeth seem very white by contrast. "Suzu," he says, and then he huffs a bit in a noiseless half-laugh that shakes his shoulders vaguely. "Well, you wouldn't call her that, would you." It's not a question. It sounds like a declaration – almost like a warning, even. His smile lingers on after his laugh, and when he speaks again, that maybe-warning is gone. "Not Suzu. Suzume. But you don't call her that, either, huh."

The blood rushes into Jun's face at this revelation, lungs shrinking within him. Oh. Oh. It is suddenly very difficult to breathe. "Meihane-san," he mumbles. He's not sure if he means to reference Suzume or address the man in front of him. Maybe both. He'd be Meihane-san too, wouldn't he? But Jun's thoughts are a jumble, and he struggles to piece them back together.

Suzume Meihane has a brother?

The man in front of Jun has hair like a dead crow, and his monsterous face is nothing at all like Suzume's gentle one. Rangy-limbed and hungry looking, he's tall in spite of the way he slouches. Suzume, by contrast, stands up straight. She's tiny. Shy.

There is nothing at all shy about this man.

"That's right. Meihane-san. That's what you called her in your letter, didn't you."

Again, this is not a question. Jun's face deepens by several shades. "O-oh," he says. It comes out squeaky. He sounds dumb. "You read my letter?"

Suzume's brother's smile widens marginally, a bow string pulled very, very tight. "I sure did."

At this, Jun looks away from him and down at his own hands. There's a tremor to them that he hates just as much as his squeaky voice, but there's no helping it. Imagining this leering man reading his clumsy confession is a literal nightmare, and Jun has never felt more mortified in his entire life. "Well, um. Okay." He swallows back the taste of bile that creeps up his throat, trying to think of what to say. "I – what did – what did she think about it?"

God – why would he ask that? It seems so stupid to ask. Is he really so desperate? So pathetic? If Suzume had thought anything about it at all, wouldn't she be here instead of her brother? Has she sent her brother to bully Jun into leaving her alone? Has she –

"Well," says Suzume Meihane's older brother. "Let's talk about that."

Jun decides very abruptly that he doesn't like this man, though he can't really be sure why. The way he talks, maybe. The way he talks is strange. There's no formality to him, despite the fact that he and Jun are strangers. He's so casual in the way he speaks that he's borderline rude. Still, there's a weird excitement to his tone – a subtle undercurrent of it, like heat-lightning hidden behind a blanket of clouds in the summer. His smile is wide and easy. Is this how people talk when they're being friendly? Having never had a friend, Jun doesn't know.

"Okay," Jun says, very unsure.

WIth his hands still in his pockets, her brother jerks his head back over his shoulder. "Let's not do it here," he says. "Talking and walking's a hell of a lot more efficient."

Even more unsure, Jun closes his manga and shoves it into his backpack. "Uhhh, walk… where?"

"Don't you wanna see her?" There's something about this question, too. He acts so benign, and asks it with that smile, even – but there's something in it that reminds Jun of the much meaner boys he's dealt with at school, something barely perceptible and almost scornful. It's like the implication that he's stupid is hidden in the question, somewhere. It's strange, because there's no real venom in her brother's voice. That note of excitement lingers, almost like they're a pair of old acquaintances meeting after a long time.

But even so –

"I do," Jun admits, the heat burning in his ears and all down his neck, now. Her brother just looks weird, Jun tells himself; he's anxious because he's not used to things going his way. He's used to people being cruel, being unfair, so of course he'd be on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her brother must be here for a reason. If he'd meant to scare Jun off, wouldn't he have done so immediately? If he was actually mean, wouldn't he have led with that? "Where… where is she?"

"Home." Without really waiting for an answer, Suzume's brother turns on his heel and begins to walk away. Despite the apparent weight of his scuffed, heavy boots, his stride is long, purposeful and quick. Scrambling to his feet, Jun shoulders his backpack and scampers after him, heart pounding in his chest as he readjusts his glasses with sweaty fingers.

Maybe all that heartache is about to pay off, after all.

Head tucked down against the cold, Suzume's brother leads Jun down some streets he recognizes and some streets he doesn't. When they draw nearer to the southern edge of town, the man turns down an unpaved and overgrown path that winds its way between two abandoned buildings, heading for the forest that surrounds Chichibu. Looking out into the foggy woods, Jun feels his stomach twist. Despite living here his whole life, he's never been in the forest before.

As if tapped into his unease, Suzume's brother turns and looks at Jun over his shoulder. Suddenly, Jun realizes he's stopped moving entirely, his worn sneakers fixed as if rooted to the spot.

"You coming or not?" Despite mentioning something about talking on the way, her brother has, up until this point, said nothing. He hasn't even looked back once.

"I – " Staring up at the man, Jun sees himself in his shades again. The boy reflected back at him this time looks anxious and scared. Jun wonders what Suzume's brother thinks of him, and feels sick knowing it can't be anything good. "I didn't think – I thought she – well, I thought you lived on the south side of town. Can't we follow the main road instead?"

There's a heartbeat or three of silence, and then, wholly unperturbed, her brother asks, "You know where we live?"

Sweat erupts very suddenly on Jun's brow. It is a waterfall beneath his arms. "Well – I um. Once, I – I…"

That smile is back on her brother's face, all his neat and white teeth set in a row, orderly as gravestones. Jun thinks they look a little sharp. "Did you follow my little sister home from school, Jun?"

Jun, the man calls him. Casual. Familiar. Her brother sounds affable. With his head inclined back and his hands tucked into his pockets, there's a chummy kind of energy to him and in the lazy way he stands. When Jun doesn't answer immediately, her brother's shoulders give another little shake with laughter Jun can't hear.

"I mean, hey; I get it. Suzu's real cute. I know you agree; you said as much yourself, didn't you?" Shaking his head, her brother's tongue works its way across his teeth, still smiling. He's always smiling. Jun has never met anyone who smiles so much, and it's another way this man seems to differ from his sister. He's pretty sure he can count the amount of times he's seen Suzume smile on one hand.

"You like a girl, you follow her around. Curiosity sure is a bitch. Eats at you, doesn't it? You gotta sate it somehow." Her brother shrugs, easy. Everything about him is easy. When Jun can't make himself say anything, the man adds: "Hey, now. It's cool. I'm not judging."

Jun wishes he could see the man's eyes. Everything about him is so relaxed, but his smile – god, his smile is all teeth.

"I didn't – well, not all the way. Just… just once," Jun whispers. It really had only been the one time. Just as her brother suggested, he'd been overwhelmed by his curiosity a month before. What was Suzume like? Where did she live? Couldn't he learn both at once? It was surprisingly easy to follow her after school. Suzume had been on her phone, as she often was these days. Like her brother, she'd never looked back – never noticed Jun trailing her, half a block behind.

"Just once," her brother repeats. He wets his grinning mouth again, both lips this time. The top one looks shiny. The bottom one looks haggard and dry, like how Jun imagines a corpse's might if left to dry in the sun. Why is his face like that? "How far?"

"Just to the edge of town," Jun says, vaguely. That's the truth, too. At the time, he'd told himself it wasn't that bad. It had felt terrible then, though, and it feels terrible now. Saliva floods his mouth, thick and sticky on the insides of his cheeks.

At that, her brother tugs a hand from his pocket to scrub his scarred jaw as he stares Jun down. He doesn't say anything. There's more metal set in the back of his hand near his wrist, and still more of that awful skin that stings Jun's eyes to look at. Strangely, his nails are well manicured, but painted a glossy black.

It's very, very difficult to imagine Suzume being related to this man.

"I'm sorry," Jun says meekly, meaning it. "I just – like you said, I was curious – "

"C'mon, then." Turning, her brother continues his trek towards the forest. "Suzu's scared of the woods, so she takes the long way home. This way's a short cut."

Is that forgiveness, then? Absolution? Does her brother really not care? The man's pace is slower than before, but again, he doesn't turn back to check if Jun's following. For a few long seconds, Jun watches his retreating figure and considers turning and running back the way he came. All of this feels wrong and bad.

And yet – and yet…

That's just the fear, isn't it? Everything for Jun has always felt wrong and bad, because he's always been a coward. He's always been so afraid. And this – this is all so much. He's not used to talking to people, to being with other people. Maybe this is normal. Maybe this is fine.

It's fine, he tells himself. It is. It's all right. It's okay.

Well past the treeline, Jun is huffing for air by the time he catches up with her brother. His shoulders ache where his backpack tugs against them, and he wrestles a bit with the straps as he falls into step a meter or so behind the much taller man. Behind them, the town falls steadily away between the silhouettes of gangly trees, some full, some winter-stripped. It's not long before Jun can't see the town at all.

The path itself is overgrown and barely visible. Her brother moves through it effortlessly, as if he could navigate it blind, but Jun isn't so blessed; it seems like every minute he's tripping over some root or pothole in the dirt. His feet hurt. Each near fall has his heart beating faster and faster. It's more frigid beneath the tree cover than it was back in town, and Jun presses his hands to his mouth to try and breathe warmth back into them.

He just feels so cold, suddenly – cold on the inside, somehow. Cold in his bones, and getting colder. Jun isn't sure what to say, but he knows he needs to say something. The silence is unbearable, and it gets inside of him, too, too still, too smothered. The forest is so quiet his ears are ringing.

"I didn't know, um, that – that Su – I mean, that Meihane-san had a brother."

"Oh, yeah?" There's a sharp crack as her brother's boot crushes a particularly large stick. The noise sounds much louder than it otherwise would for how still the forest is. "I mean, really, Jun. You know anything at all about my little sister?"

Her brother's voice is drawling and conversational. The question sounds innocuous, almost jokey, an elbow nudged in the ribs: ha-ha, got you good.

Jun thinks it might not actually be.

"Well, umm – " Maybe the silence was better.

"Actually, hey; that's a good line of conversation. Let's run with that." Her brother's gait seems to slow some, and Jun has to readjust his own to avoid running headlong into him. The thought of touching this man, even by accident, fills him with a frantic kind of dread.

"Um, yeah? Run with – "

"What d'you like about my sister?"

It's such a direct, sudden question. At first Jun can only blink dumbly at her brother's back, paralyzed by its simplicity. It had been hard enough to confess on paper. Saying it out loud is –

"It – well, you said you saw my letter – "

Fully, now, the man stops. "I did."

So Jun does, too. " – and I kinda tried to explain it in – in that…"

"You said my little sister was cute," the man says, not turning around. "Is that all you like about her? That all you know about her, Jun?"

All about them, the forest is dark in the low light and so very, very still. Jun tries to parse Suzume's brother's tone, but he can't. The halfway-friendly nature of it from earlier is gone, but there's nothing in its place – nothing at all. His voice is a total absence of emotion.

"I mean, I was hoping that… we could get to know each other and I could learn more," Jun says, softly. "She seems – umm, I can tell she's nice, and I thought – "

"'Nice.'" Her brother quotes the word, and it sounds sharp in his mouth, barbed at every edge. Slowly, he turns around to face Jun. The first thing Jun notices is the sunglasses in his hands as he folds them up and puts them in his pocket.

The second thing he notices is the man's eyes. The blue-green color of them is unreal, so brilliant it's as if they're lit from within. Jun is reminded of neon signs above seedy bars filled with seedier people, or of dripping, toxic sludge – the over-exaggerated kind, the sort you'd see in a cartoon. Boring into Jun now, they shine like the blade of a sickle brandished in the dark, cold woods. "You think my little sister is nice."

Her brother sounds offended.

The offense doesn't connect with the expression on his face, though. That wide, terrible grin is back, and the metal that joins the ruined flesh to his cheeks seems to be doing a poor job holding his patchwork face together. One of them looks about ready to pop under the assault of that smile.

"It's – it's more than that, promise – "

"But how do you know that? You don't fucking know her at all."

The man takes a step forward. Instinctively, Jun takes two steps back. This seems to further amuse the man, and his eyes narrow, crinkling around the edges with a morbid sort of humor that has Jun gripping the straps of his backpack as if they might somehow pull him to safety.

They don't, of course.

"Look," says Jun, shaking his head, his heel sliding backwards through dead leaves, "I – if she doesn't wanna talk to me, I... I get it. I don't think I'd wanna – wanna talk to me, either. She didn't have to – um, she didn't have to send you. Please just tell her I'll leave her alone."

That gets a laugh out of the man. It's a short, scoffing sound, and one as familiar to Jun as breathing. He's heard that kind of laughter plenty at school. It's the way a bully laughs, slick and mean, as if he wasn't worth anything more full-bodied – wasn't worth anything more than a breathy, scathing snort.

"You think Suzu sent me after you? God – you sure as shit don't know a thing about her."

"Why else would you – would you even be here?" It comes out a flustered cry, and Jun's hands abandon his backpack, balling into ineffectual fists. "How else would you know my name if she hadn't? I didn't leave my name, I didn't – "

"Suzu never told me your name."

Jun freezes in the middle of his sentence. The wind moves through his hair, dragging claws down the length of his spine even through his thick, puffy jacket. "What?"

"Suzu never told me your name," the man repeats, more slowly this time, enunciating every word as if to an idiot. "She's told me shit-all about you. She doesn't know about your little soft-dick letter, even. I found it first."

The man standing in front of Jun is not dressed the way he thinks a predator should be dressed. A hoodie and pair of jeans does not a villain make, even if every piece of his clothing is dark and worn to fraying threads in places. Jun has seen villains on TV, laughing or scowling, manic or furious, covered in blood and glass. Still-shots and video clips, printed in black and white newspapers or full color on the silken pages of magazines, he's seen them. They're everywhere, really. For every good hero, there are ten or twenty more villains, big names and small fry alike. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands.

None of them have scared Jun even a fraction as much as this man scares him, now.

"How…" His words are failing him. It's as if the connection between his tongue and his brain has been severed by fear. "But I didn't – how did you – "

"Curiosity's a bitch, right?" Says the man with the same easy shrug as before. "It was eating at me, goddamn gnawing at me, you get me?" When Jun shakes his head in muted horror, all the breath squeezed from his lungs, the man fills his own with another bark of laughter. "Oh, come on. I know you do. You did the same thing I did. You wanted to know more about Suzu, and I wanted to know what sort of fuck was trying to romance my little sister. I followed you home, same as you did with her, but I didn't pussy out at the end. Nah, I followed you all the way home. Amazing the sorts of things you can find out with an address, Jun. It'd blow your mind."

The blood in Jun's veins is a cold, thick paste and his whole body aches with the effort it takes to pump it through his numb body. The voice in his head is much louder now than it was earlier: Turn, urges the voice. Go. Run! The voice isn't one he recognizes; it's a scream, more feeling and instinct than real words. It had been quiet, before. A whisper before. He hadn't listened to it then, hadn't heeded it when it was soft and faint, but he does now:

Turning. Going. Running.

It's immediately evident that whatever path Jun had thought he'd seen on the way into the forest was some sort of illusion his brain had concocted to soothe himself. There is no path. There is only the jumble of leaves and roots, of spaces between skeletal finger branches reaching out to claw at his face or grab at his clothes. Shrugging out of his backpack, Jun's feet carry him back towards what he hopes is the town on blind faith alone, willing that thick blood to his cold limbs as he pushes forward with a roiling, animal kind of panic.

It's hard to hear anything over his own ragged breathing and the crash of his body tearing through the woods. His ears are choked with the snapping of branches and the wet, slopping sound of decaying leaves underfoot. It's hard to pick out anything else. Is he being followed? Is he? Jun strains his terror-tense senses, biting his cheek so hard he tastes blood. He can't hear anything else. He can't make himself turn his head to see. He can't. He can't –

A root catches his ankle and Jun goes down, badly. The cry that wrenches itself from his throat tastes like vomit and metal, cut short when his chest meets the ground. It had already been so hard to breathe, but now there's no air in him at all. His hands claw through rotting plant matter, nails cleaving the dirt, trying to drag himself forward, trying to push himself up, but the pain in his leg is excruciating, and there's no air, there's no air at all, not in his lungs and not anywhere around him and he just can't breathe –

Suddenly, there's a weight on his back, pushing him back down. It's dull, and heavy, biting down deep between his shoulder blades. His face meets the ground this time, soil smearing his glasses and filling his bloodied mouth.

There's a ringing in his ears, different from the way the silence had sounded earlier. It's loud, high pitched. Jun can hear the man's voice through it only barely.

"You don't know fucking anything about her, Jun!" He's laughing now, really laughing, unhinged and wild. The sound bubbles up out of him, a little syrupy and a lot sick. "Don't you wanna? C'mon, don't you wanna?"

The intense pressure between Jun's shoulders abates, but it's no kind of relief. Replaced by a hand that rips into his shoulder, Suzume's brother hauls him over onto his back, and Jun finds himself staring up into his terrifying eyes and that impossible, all-teeth grin.

Please, Jun tries to say, but his mouth is full of dirt and blood and vomit. There's mud on his cheeks and in his eyelashes, his face a mess of even more blood – blood, and tears, and so much snot. Jun gags on the words, grit in his teeth and on his tongue. Shaking his head, he mouths them with split lips: please, please, please –

No, no, no.

"She's so cute, isn't she?" The man's eyes are wide, his pupils blown out like black, bottomless pits. The thin line of blue that rings them blazes too-bright, vibrant and dangerous. He has the eyes of a mad dog, of a rabid dog, frothing, feral, but he speaks so slow, drawing out every word as if to savor each and every one of them. "Oh, fuck, Jun, you're so right, you're right, you really are. Suzu is nice. She's so fucking nice. Too nice for her own good. I tell her that all the time. I get onto her, Jun, you know, I fucking get onto her. I tell her, I say, 'Suzu, fuck, you're such a goddamn baby.' And she gets so huffy with me. She blows her cheeks out at me. When she's real worked up, she's got this way her nose crinkles, and god, it's so cute, Jun, it is, she's just too fucking cute it makes me wanna break her. But she's soft, too. She's too soft. All the shit she's already gone through, and all the shit I put her through myself, Jun, and still – oh, god, still she still comes out of it the same way. Nice. Soft. Fuck.

"And how's that work? How's it even make fucking sense? How can anyone function like that, Jun? Chewed up and spit out, again and again and again. I pick at her, claw at her, needle at her. I fucking put her through it, you know? I make her cry, day in and day out, oh, god, and still, and still she always comes back to me. So sweet. Always so sweet. Sweet as fucking cream. God, Jun." The man presses his hands to the sides of his leering face, eyes a black-blue fire in his skull. His nostrils flare, breathing hard, taking in all the air that Jun can't. "She's so fucking sweet."

Tears streaming down his face in earnest now, Jun just keeps shaking his head. This man is wrong. This man is bad. This man is –

"You get it, don't you? You fucking get it, right?" The man's chest is heaving, and Jun can hear the way the air whistles between his bared, grinning teeth. Cruel laughter seeps like poison between all of his words. "People are selfish, Jun. Cruel. Jealous. The world's a steaming, rotten shithive, and we only really get what we're willing to take – what we're willing to steal for ourselves. What we keep. What we lock away."

Unraveling. The man is clearly unraveling, and very ltierally. There seems to be smoke coming off his arms, leaking from his mouth, smoke, smoke, not steam, not fog. Despite the way his body seems to sag under the weight of his insane monologue, though, his voice drops down to barely a whisper. "What we're willing to kill for, you know? Oh, Jun. You think my little sister is cute, and hey, you nailed it. She is. Ha! She fucking is. I agree. I know. Jun, Jun, fuck, god, I missed it, I missed it, and yet I've known that for a long time."

Jun's own body lurches with each failed attempt at breath. He thinks if he could catch it – if he could just catch it, god, he'd be –

He wants to tell himself he'd get up. Stand up. Turn. Go. Run.

But Jun knows better. Jun does. Jun knows he'd be screaming.

"Fuck. Fuck! The audacity! You think I'd let some little brat come in and stick his dick where it doesn't belong? You think I'd share? Think I'd pass her off to you, generous, understanding – with my fucking blessing? Your future-fucking-brother-in-law?" Her brother lifts a muddy boot and slams it down hard into Jun's shoulder. Jun finds he barely feels it. Everything already hurts. Everything hurts so much.

"Did you?" The man's voice is insistent now, no longer a whisper, not measured, not even – not anymore. He bites the words off. He spits them out. "Did you? Do you?"

Jun just keeps shaking his head, mouth open and desperate for air. The oxygen trickles back into him slow, so slow, too slow, his lungs burning and starved for it. "Please," he tries to whisper. It comes out wheezy, spluttering, thick with blood and spit. There's not enough air. It feels like there will never be enough air again. "Please, I don't – I won't – please, never again, please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry – "

"'Never again, never again, please, please, please,'" mocks the man, his shoulders set, long-fingered hands lifted. He looks like he's shaking. All those gravestone teeth clatter together in his mouth, chattering into some horrifying imitation of laughter, into some emotion Jun can't begin to name. His cheeks are red-streaked. Jun realizes that the man is bleeding somehow, but in his panicked mind he can't remember when that started.

"You're right about that, too, Jun. Never again – never-fucking-again."

Suddenly, there's the flash of something blue and eye-pricklingly bright. Awash in a blazing heat, Jun squeezes his eyes closed and covers his glasses with trembling, grimy palms. Everything burns. The air is going away again, stolen by the flames. "What – what's wrong with you?"

More laughter fills the now very hot space between them.

"Oh, Jun. Jun," croons the man, and his voice is clear and cold with hate despite all that mounting, hellfire heat. "You're about to find out."

March; 20 years.

Like an errant piece of garbage, the cold, almost-Spring wind carries him everywhere and nowhere. He walks without thinking about where he's walking, the wind at his back, and then at his face. It whips through his hair; it gets under his hoodie. As strong as it is, it won't carry away the smell of fire and ash seared into his skin; there is always that burning smell, no matter where he goes. He should be used to it by now.

He is, isn't he?

In some clearing, hours later, he stares down at his hands with a wide grin that aches in his jaw, imagining he still sees the smoke coiling around them like gloves. The ends of his sleeves are blackened and tattered. They're hardly sleeves at all anymore.

He takes off the hoodie and finishes the job, and there are more ashes in his hands, now. Closing his fists, he watches them slip between his fingers like blue and gray confetti, shimmering in the half and fading light.

It's late, now. The sky is a dark, steel gray, as if smeared with soot. Ashes above, and ashes below.

So Dabi goes home.

At the bottom of the hill where it sits, old and apart from the rest of Chichibu, the house is blazing with warm, yellow light. It pours out through every dusty window pane and bathes the courtyard around it, like a beacon set out in all the bitter gloom. When he gets close enough, Dabi can make out the familiar things inside of it, even from far away: the squat table that Suzume likes to do her homework at; the television, on but forgotten, its screen awash in quick changing colors; the decades old rug, still a vibrant, royal blue despite how it frays at the edges.

He can tell, though, that the common room is empty. So, too, is the hallway, and the kitchen, though lights shine like stubborn fire in all the rooms.

Coming out from the woods, Dabi enters the house through the kitchen as he always does, shedding his boots and socks on the porch. Mindful of each weak floorboard he moves through the house like a wraith, silent as death, and steals the light as he goes. He is a familiar cancer to this house, now; and much like a cancer, he takes the body apart and rearranges it to suit himself. Darkness overtakes the kitchen, and then the common room, and then the hall. It pools behind him thickly, lapping like dark water at his heels. The ghosts on the television whisper mutedly to no one in their glass prison, spilling shadows that roil, forgotten, in the murk.

Bathroom, then. Attic landing. The soon-to-be-dead woman's room. Suzume's grandmother has taken a turn for the worse, he knows. Suzume had told him so a week ago; they both know it's only a matter of time. Time – time. Forward, onward, Dabi thinks; never going back. Stepping into her room, Dabi looks around at everything shrouded in dust. When his fingers find the switch on the wall, darkness settles over everything there, too, an almost tangible blackness as heavy as a funeral shroud.

As acrid and clinging as smoke.

Another stranger. More strangers, he tells himself. No one worth mourning. He imagines their skulls ahead of him in a line: fire-blackened, flesh-stripped and featureless, lost in some mire, somewhere. Imagines them as stepping stones across all that wet muck and seething grime, imagines the way they splinter beneath his feet as he steps across them, one by one. The only way to go is forward. There's only ever been the one way. Beneath his weight, the skulls sink into the mud, lost forever. Behind him, the darkness comes, and when he looks back, there is only that bleak and ever-reaching emptiness. It's as if there was never anything there at all.

Forward, he thinks, grinning, aching, grinning. Too far away from the common room to hear the sound of the clock on the mantle, it keeps pace in his mind all the same. Tick, tick, tick. The hand marking the seconds is so steady, a circle, a loop, round and round. Unyielding. He feels it in his blood, in the rhythm of his heart. It echoes in his own skull, perpetually grinning behind the monstrous visage of his face.

Through the filth of his thoughts, Dabi takes another step. The skull beneath his foot now is black-charred, like the others. Unlike the others, it's much smaller. He's never thought about how bones grow until that moment, hours ago in the woods. Never really considered it. Giran keeps him busy, keeps him in practice, and by now he's seen a lot of bones. Blood, yes, flesh, too, but Dabi thinks that not many people get the chance to see bones as much as he does. Off-white and long, he's seen so many of them, peeking out from gummy, bubbling flesh like gnarled sticks – and then grey, and then black.

And then little more than crumbling, oily ash.

The kid's skull had been small. It makes sense, he thinks, mouth full of saliva that he swallows back, once, twice, a third time more. White, and then grey, and then black. Then ash – just less of it than normal. In his mind again, it crumbles beneath his feet, returned to the sordid earth, and he takes another step forward. There's only the way forward.

Tick, tick, tick.

The house behind him now is so dark, night seeping in through all the windows where the light can no longer keep it at bay. Only the bedroom he shares with Suzume is left, and when he slides open the door, a single lamp in the corner of the room stands as an ineffective sentry. It's no threat to him. He doesn't move to it immediately.

Instead, his eyes land on the futon in the middle of the room, and the lump beneath the heavy comforter that he knows to be his little sister. There's only the slightest movement there – the barest rise and fall of the bedding. Breathing. In and out, in and out, steady and even. He really can't see her; she's drawn the comforter over her head. Across her empty pillow, there's the spill of errant red-gold hair, and nothing else.

"Suzu," he says.

She doesn't answer.

That, too, makes sense. She's been sullen the last few days, and restless at night. Sleepless, even, tossing and turning, stealing rest by minutes at a time. Exhausted by now, for sure. He's been gone a lot this week. Busy, he'd told her. It was the truth, but she hadn't wanted to hear it, not if he wasn't willing to tell her more, if he wasn't able to explain himself.

Which, of course he had hadn't. What was there to say?

The first day and second day, she'd cried uncontrollably, and for hours. She'd sought him out when he'd come home, and he'd held her, trying very hard not to marvel at how neatly she fit against him – and trying harder still not to look into her face for too long. Yesterday, he'd come home to find her eyes red-ringed, but she'd been stubborn and evasive with him, stiff as driftwood in his arms when he'd tugged her into them. There had been no more tears – none that she was willing to show him, anyway. Very still and unresponsive, she'd made dinner with a mechanical disinterest and spent the evening rearranging her own food on her plate. Dabi was certain she hadn't eaten anything.

She'd behaved much the same at breakfast this morning, too. With him having been gone longer tonight than any night before, Dabi doubts she's eaten anything at all today.

"Suzu," he says again. Silence, still.

And then, without really thinking about it, he's taking off his clothes. Shirt, first, and then his belt. Unbuckled with a steady hand, it comes off quietly, and Dabi is mindful, too, about the way he sets it down on the floor. Then his pants. Leaving everything in a pool by the doorway, he crosses the room to kill the last light. Without waiting for his eyes to adjust to the new dark, he goes and stands in front of the futon, toes just brushing the mattress, watching quietly. Outside, the night is starless, the sky obscured behind thick cloud cover that lingers on from earlier in the day, but Dabi can still see well enough. There's no movement besides her even breathing beneath him.

Dabi drops down with careful slowness. In much the same way as he'd stolen wallets when he was younger, he gathers the heavy blanket back and peels it off of her. There's little resistance, even when he realizes she's twisted her hand in the fabric. A slight tug pulls it free. Slipping up the length of her legs, then, centimeter by centimeter, he straddles her sleeping body, knees alongside her hips.

With the covers now left in a tangle about her feet, Suzume sleeps on, dead to the world in this death-filled house.

Out in minutes most nights, Suzume has always been a deep sleeper. Normally her face is a placid mask, expressionless but peaceful, no tension in her brow or mouth. Now, there's a uneasy, exhausted look to her, brows knit, and mouth troubled. The shadows beneath her eyes remind him of how she'd looked in her father's house.

Despite that – despite everything – she's still pretty. Still so pretty. And god, he thinks, stomach twisting. Fuck. How that thought – how that new, damning knowledge – vexes him.

And yet, despite his anger, too – he touches her. It's been the first time he's really allowed himself to touch her at all this week. Oh, he's held her, yes – all week, he's held her, arms caught up around her even when she squirms, even when she whines, even when she tries to pull herself free, so very hurt at being left in the dark again and again and again. But he hasn't let himself touch her like he normally might. Now, with one hand, he touches her. He smooths his fingers over her furrowed eyebrows. He traces the slope of her nose. He cups her jaw and lets his thumb graze the sweet swell of her lips. He trails his fingers across the curve of her cheekbone, and wonders, furious, at the way it's changed. The bones are somehow more pronounced. Even so, they're just as delicate as he remembers them being.

Old memories in the face of someone new.

Suzume and her fragile, little bird bones. Her fragile, little bird skull. The vision of that rancid morass comes back to him unbidden, and he imagines Suzume's skull pulled free of that decay, all her soft and perfect flesh peeled back like so many blankets. It would be just as tiny as the one from hours ago, white and pristine until it wasn't – until the fire blackened it. Changed it. Turned it to ash.

A child's skull, until it wasn't, anymore.

Dabi swallows and nearly chokes on the sensation of what feels like razor wire tangled up in his throat. That ache in his jaw and in his teeth is back, throbbing with each percussive beat of his heart: tick, tick, tick. He lowers his head down beside her own and takes in breath after awful breath from between his clenched teeth. It feels like smoke filling his lungs.

So, he makes himself breathe through his nose instead. And that's better. That's easier. There's the smell of her, then, still alive, still breathing, grounding him in her familiar floral sweetness. Pressing his nose to her temple, he breathes again, and again, nostrils flaring, fiending, desperate – and there's the faintest smell of salt, too, of restless tears and sweat from being buried beneath the blankets for far too long.

It smells so good. She smells so good. Like home.

A home he sure as hell doesn't deserve. A home that, until this week, he has realized he has expected to always be here, at the bottom of the hill, its yellow light a beacon in the dark.

There's no room in him for fucking guilt, he tells himself. Not for anything. Not anymore. There's only the way forward. He's known that for years, hasn't he? When he'd stumbled out of his family home for the last time, unseen and unmissed and thoroughly replaced, he'd known it. Maybe he'd learned it even earlier. Maybe he's always known.

"Suzu." It comes out a whisper now. His breath stirs in her hair, but she doesn't move. She doesn't. And then his mouth is on her jaw. And then her throat. Her pulse beneath her skin, right up against his starving mouth – against the slick, greedy sweep of his tongue – is so slow compared to his own, made sluggish with sleep. Still, it gets into him. God, it fucking gets into him, and his own spikes even more.

He feels... dizzy. Messy. God, he feels like a fucking mess. It's not supposed to be like this, he tells himself, seething even as he sucks her skin between his teeth. When his hand brushes down against the slight curve of her waist, he loathes how it trembles. It's not meant to. It's not meant to be him that fucking trembles. No, no, no, his mind howls at him. Not him. This isn't him.

He's supposed to be patient. He's supposed to be in control. He's supposed to be –

To be what?

What?

What?

He's touched Suzume like this before. Boldy, free of regret, without a shred of guilt or any real thought. It had been a hungry curiosity, then. It had been fuel for the fire of her adoration for him. Even if it was a lot – hell, even if it was often too much for her – she was always so pliable after. So clingy. Eager-to-please, so touchy and desperately needy. Young as she was, it was evident that even when the way he touched her frightened her, some part of her liked it. Craved it. Over the years, she'd clearly come to accept that part of herself more and more.

Now, though – now, it's different. Now, it's strange. Now, he wants to touch her. Wants it in some strange and awful new way – wants it for himself.

"Nii-chan..."

The hand he's slipped under her shirt pauses in its meandering creep upward, stilling over her ribs. Ribs, ribs – more and more bones. The cage that hides her heart away. He lets his fingers slip between them instead, feeling for flesh. It draws a half-asleep shiver out of her and very nearly one from himself.

With his face still buried against her now saliva-slick throat, his voice is low and husky when he asks: "What?"

At first, she says nothing. He hears her take a breath in, soft and a little tremulous. Then, there's the sensation of hesitant fingers working their way into his hair. When her nails scrape gently at his scalp, it takes an act of willpower he's surprised to find he still has to not groan against her throat.

"Are you not... not mad at me anymore?"

Her voice is so quiet and so unsure in the dark. Drowsy, still, and so small, like everything else about her.

So sad, and so hopeful, too.

"God," he hisses, "just – fuck, Suzu." It's all he can say before he presses his mouth to her throat again, to that pulse point just below her jaw. It's not slow anymore; no, no, it's picking up, now. He can feel the way her heartbeat quickens against the seal of his lips, and then against his tongue when he just can't help himself. Imagining it matching his own, his teeth sink reflexively into her skin. The groggy, confused moan that elicits from her in response means there's no helping the noise he makes then, either.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Please," she whispers, and her hands slip from his hair to scrabble over his shoulders, half gripping at them, half pushing him away. She's clumsy; sleep-drunk.. "Nii-chan, please – please don't be angry with me anymore…"

But he is angry with her, he realizes. Angry with her for growing up. Angry at her for changing. Angry at the way that makes him feel – at how much it fucking unnerves him, unmans him.

Pretty, he thinks, bitterly. Lovely. Pretty and lovely already. Already. God, she's going to keep growing up. She's going to keep changing. She's going to be even prettier. More lovely, somehow.

Are you not mad at me anymore?

So eager to please. So needy. Blaming herself even when it's him, when it's fucking him. What if that changes, too? What if she becomes more eager – even more needy?

The thought makes his whole body shudder.

"Nii-chan – "

"Suzu – fuck. Just fucking shut up." Tugging his hand free of her shirt, he clamps it down over her mouth. Nii-chan, Nii-chan – and even with her gagged, he can still hear it in his head. It sounds so good when she says it, too good, better than it has any right to, and he can't bear to hear it anymore, just – can't fucking take it. Even in only his memory, it needles its way under his skin, peeling back his already crumbling resolve in huge, raw swathes.

Squirming beneath him, he feels her try to shake her head – feels wet tears track their way over his fingers as digs them roughly into the plush flesh of her cheeks. He hears her trying to speak – not his name, not anymore, but an apology, choked against his palm.

Sorry. Sorry. He feels it in the way she moves her mouth. Hears it, no matter how roughly he grips her mouth. Sorry, she tries to say.

I'm sorry.

Of course she'd pull something like this. Of course. Lifting his head from her throat, he presses his lips to her ear, teeth bared in a snarl. "Fuck – god, fuck, you're so pathetic." She is. She is. She always has been. And he says it mean, says it cruel, because he's angry – he's so goddamn angry about how much he loves that about her.

But… hasn't he always loved it?

Hasn't he?

When he thinks she's trying to apologize again, Dabi changes the angle of his hand and forces two fingers past her lips, past her teeth. She doesn't fight him. Rather, she opens her mouth and lets him inside, tongue rising like a red, wet cushion to meet him. He's put her through this before. She knows how this goes.

Dabi tells himself it's to shut her up. He tells himself it's an act of control. He's angry; she deserves it. But when he starts to feel her suckling on his fingers without being told, even while she cries, and cries, and cries, he knows he's lying. He wants it. God, he fucking wants it – wants it just for the sake of wanting it.

Wants it because it's her.

Just a bit, whispers a voice in his head, as if this is something rational. Just a bit. Just a taste. A little bit of desert before a meal.

Oh, but he knows better. He is ravenous, a thing made of only hunger and craving and need. An empty pit, a mire that swallows up everything. It's never enough. It will never be enough. He has always been this thing, hasn't he? Empty, empty, always so empty. Unfillable. Implacable.

Never enough.

How could he be anything else? Everyone else has long given up on him.

And yet for years, she has filled him. A light at the bottom of a hill, at the bottom of the pit, shining, shining, and so bright. She's always been there, since he'd met her years ago, matched him step by step through all of the rot and all of the filth, holding on to her lantern of warm, yellow light – not the cold gleam of his own inhospitable blue flame, no, but something sweet, and soft, and comforting. A light that she keeps re-lighting despite all the ways he keeps trying to blow it out –

Despite all the ways he devours it whole, night after night after night.

Somehow, though, it's as if realizing it has spoiled the spell. It's as if looking at her and realizing what she is to him has reminded him that she is only one person – one very small girl. He had mistaken her for a sun in her consistency, because she has always been consistent.

Because it's always been what he needs.

But she's only a girl with a lantern, standing beside him in a dark and terrible place of his own making. And what if she trips? What if she falls? What if her light goes out? What if something takes her away?

He can't think about that. He can't. He can't. His fingers in her mouth are shaking. Every part of him shakes. Dabi presses his teeth together and buries his face against hers, into her hair. With the way they rattle together, his teeth feel as if they might splinter in his mouth.

He only gets what he's willing to take, he tells himself. What he's willing to steal for himself.

What he's willing to kill for.

Very suddenly, Suzume's hand is over his, tugging his fingers free of her mouth – and then her arms are around his neck, and her fingers in his hair. "Nii-chan," she says, and she sounds very frightened, and very sad. "Nii-chan, please don't be… please don't be upset – I'm sorry. Please. I'm sorry. I love you. I love you."

A light in the dark. How easily he is undone by it, for it, in pursuit of it. How easily he kills for it. Selfish, selfish, selfish. He can't share. He won't share. It's all he has. It's all he's ever really had. His only real joy. His only vice. Isn't it fair? Isn't it?

Isn't it?

The boy in the woods is another skull in the muck, blackened. Ash now. He can offer no absolution – wouldn't, probably, even if he could. Dabi knows he doesn't deserve it, anyway. He knows it now, pressed against Suzume, her hand stroking gracelessly at his hair, and he knew it then in the woods, too.

Whatever monster he has to become to keep this – to keep her – well; so be it. It's only fair. It is. It is.

It has to be.

(And hasn't he always been a monster, anyway?)

Very carefully, Dabi kisses Suzume's cheek. There are tears on her skin, and they mix with the blood on his lips. Salt and copper. The blood isn't hers, but it stains her, anyway, smeared dark and red against her perfect skin.

Oh, Dabi thinks, looking at it, half in dread, and half in anticipation; he's going to ruin her.

And it's fair, he tells himself. It is. It has to be.

Because that's the way of it, right? Isn't it?

Isn't it?

(He only gets what he's willing to take.)