(Your brother is made of tight smiles like cobwebs. You keep his in the corners of your mind, haunting. Undusted. Just to complain about it.)

•

•

•

You think it ought to be kind of silly. Today could have been kind of fun (Rin and Yukio got a new cat named Kuro, which you would very much like to pet if it would stop hissing at you). Except you're stuck on a mission looking for a barrion at the beach. You're stuck with Rin and Shima grilling squid because Izumo ditched. She's currently flailing in the ocean. Sucks to be her.

You man the grill while everyone runs wild, you hum, very peacefully.

Summer is eating at the brink of everything. When night comes you head to bed while everyone heads out. It's dark and cold and you don't actually give a shit about the actual mission. To collect barrion. And the 'deep sea monster'. Whatever. There's squid for dinner (you're starting to get real sick of it) and ignore the teachers history of Norway interlude to head to bed.

"We killed the deep sea demon." Rin tells you, the next day. His voice is high with excitement.

"I," you say emphatically, "don't give a shit."

_

Why?

And you dream and dream and dream.

Why?

And the world falls and falls and falls. Into oblivion. Into nothing. Into the lack of―  you become a worn memory. A book left unloved. A child, forgotten. You become what you always were.

_

You're getting major bad vibes from today, you almost call in sick but considering the fact you didn't actually do anything on your last mission, you feel you at least owe them this. A trip to exorcise a ghost in Mephiland. Shit, Jamie could do this without Trevors help, how hapless. You digress. You need to find your missing soul and let it fly free. Things get a little messy when ghosts linger in Assiah.

You tend to let them sort out their unfinished business because that makes the transition to your domain infinitely easier than if you leave them grieving or whatever it is humans do. Mourning. Sitting shiva.

Anyway—you're spacing out and blocking out Rin and Suguru's conversation when Shiemi finally shows up, dolled up in her uniform that finally showed up. You yawn, stretch, and prepare to get this show on the road while Rin whispers something at Yukio. Probably about Shiemi.

Again, you do not give a shit.

You're paired up with Shima, obnoxiously, and you take to walking a little too fast for him to be comfortable. If one of your spirits is here, you oughta find it before it becomes something worse; untended ghosts that stay too long leave traces of your domain and nobody really wants that kind of shiver crawling up their skin. If this is the consequence of leaving— and you're sure it is— you have to slip into your home sooner or later, a shame.

Really, you'll have missed this place.

"Gah! Tsubaki!" Shima bemoans behind you. "Slow down, how're you even getting anything that quick?"

"Ghosts have a different kind of trail than demons. Don't you know that?" You ask, in all seriousness despite the fact only ghosts and, well, you, know this, because you are the lost between— but you don't really like to be reminded of the fact you're technically dead. That fall split your chest into a chasm that left maggots full for eons. You only came back to reap them—how tragic. "The residue is like a complete lack. Like the ground has never been touched. Demons leave rot or whatever their kin is in their wake—like plants or cold or whatever, holy things leave you relaxed—" you say, "—ghosts leave nothing. The lack of. The feeling of someone stepping over your grave."

"How would you know?" He says, haughty. There's something hungry behind his eyes. Something wanting, wanting, wanting. You think you could crack him open and there'd only be a shell. There wouldn't even be blood, just a husk.

You want to say, takes one to know one, but that'd be too much, so you smile instead. Something aching and carved out, you hand-crafted that with the gashes of wings long burnt.

Something in the shape of a question you were too young to know not to ask. Why?― rings so bright in your head it blares.

"Been dealing with ghosts for a long time." You say instead. It feels more appropriate.  It's not like it isn't true, technically all your friends are dead. You'd call it tragic but really you couldn't really care, everything dies, in the end. "Haven't you?"

The world will be yours, one day. Nothing can live forever. Not even you, slow and steady as you are.

Shima flinches like you stabbed him in the back, dug his body out from an urn and scattered the ashes into gasoline. Gasoline to a match, match to the wall, fire.

"What are you even talking about?" He hisses, and you wonder why his eyes got so serious all the sudden. "Tsubaki―"

You take off again. There's a twitch in your whole self, for a fraction of a second. Tastes of lemongrass and cherries. It smells like the tail end of spring. You hear the bugs and roots digging deeper and deeper into the earth. Happy for the space. Nature is desperate and brutal. Upturned stones with trees strangling through them. It's reaching for a god you cradle it.

"Hey!" You shout. But there's nobody there, even when you taste the sugar in your teeth. "Hey, where are you?"

But there's nobody there―

Except.

The smell of kindling in winter. Charbroiled skin leaking something so toxic it would kill you like hydrogen peroxide to bacterial infections. You fester, though. You always do, seeping into flesh so tender a touch could tear right open.

"Kē―" you grin, eyes so side they're one-two-three seconds from slipping out. "it's you again, huh?"

There's a lollipop on the ground. Top cut off by a bite strong enough to cut through bone. You grin, so sharp your teeth change to make up for the act; you wonder about the scraping on your mouth. What kind of nothing is carving it's way in.

You pick up the lollipop stick. It turns to nothing in your hands. Nothing at all. Then, you look up st the sky and―

There's nobody there.

Nobody ever is but there's nobody there, like there always is and you are left alone.

Anger is an old friend you invite to tea every fresh millenium. You whisper to each other, old secrets that should stay behind lock and key. You burst at the end, always falling into it, wading through the scorching heat like a monster. Hungry. You're born for wanting―

You laugh. So sharp that the ghost bumps into you. Shiemi is chasing it, skirt so short it's illegal in a dozen countries. You look her straight in the face and smile. The ghost wraps around your leg, scared, worshipping, you are it's savior it's god, it's everything. Shiemi looks at you with a pleading look, please don't scare it, she says without opening her mouth.

"Nē, what are you doing, your mama's been looking everywhere for you." You say, voice holy, "You made us all very worried, you know?"

The ghost, the boy, child, corpse, looks at you with wide wide wide eyes. "M sorry, sir."

"Do you wanna be with your mama? Do you miss her?" You ask, voice so calming it's like you've known him his whole life. Like you raised him yourself. Watched him say his first word, scratch his first knee, lose his first tooth. "Do you?"

"Yessir." Says the boy. "I miss my mama a whole lot." And then he's gone. Far away into the place he was laid to rest.

"Wh-what―" Shiemi chokes, voice strained, "what―what was that?"

You smile, teeth shiny, "I know how to exorcise a ghost, it's different from a demon, you know?"

(There's nobody there, where the ghost was, a cold spot. Like the absence is permanent. A plot of garden where the flowers don't grow. Theres nothing there, like there always is.)

Her eyes are wide like the boys and you wink and― she glazes over. Like she's dreaming, she is you make it hazy, like she's imagining it. Phasing past her, she's no better than sleepwalking right now. You hum, her knees buckle in and she falls toward you―

You catch her. She droopy, head to your chest. You feel her consciousness fade in the blink of her eye. You haul her over your back, holding her up by her thighs, you head to the front and you're just in time to see Rin get dragged by the air by the kid with a hoodie― hoodieless. You adjust the weight to wave at him as he passes.

He stares, wide eyed, like a child, you think sweetly, then, suddenly, like a corpse.

The world you live in is stained by your family's hands, grabbing everything because you are made from greed, envy is no niece of yours, she is you, the world is want, your family is borne of not enough's and what if's and what could be's―

Greed is you.

Sticky, sweet, dying always. You are not the only one in your family that smells like ethylene glycol and the decay that is summer; fruits gone long bad, something sweet and something wrong. Like you're burning with mold, sugary and poisoning.

Yukio looks at you, "Kiku.. "

"Hey, ototo-chan, look who I found all passed out! Oh, and I exorcised the ghost. Kids gone, now. Off to his mom."

He looks at you, for a second, his heart looks like it might beat out of his chest, you wonder how fast can the human heart go? "How did you know his mother died?"

A smile smears on your face like butter on bread, you wink, teeth glinting shiny in the light.

His face spasms, you grin wider, eyes pin dropped in the light. He must recognize the look but there's nothing he can do. You know it better than he does; you wonder how much of you he can see in his reflection. Does he see his end? Jamie said that looking you in the eye was like watching  themself die from a distance. Or maybe with too much time in between. Like there was a plane of glass between it, and you wonder because you must― because it is you, because that's what made you―

"Why is it in god we trust?"

And, almost anticlimactically, your world does not fall to the wayside.

_

.. Yukio's life up to this point is.. strange.

He is the human son of the devil, cursed, or blessed depending on when you ask, powerless despite his blood. His twin brother weilds blue fire haphazardly, uncontrollable, a tsunami amongs calm waters. And you are―Yukio met you when he was.. he doesn't know, it feels like he's known him his whole life. Like there's as much blood between him and you as there is him and Rin.

Something is.. wrong, with you. You're the end of a dream. Hazy. Unnoticeable. Blurry and homey like a well loved room. You're is off, though. Like there should be bright yellow on you. Like you should wear a warning, danger signs. Watch out is scrambled into your face, but it's like the tail end of a thought. You can't really keep it. Because you look like you belong. Dark hair, bright eyes, smile so welcoming that Yukio could curl into it and die.

It's cold in there. Sometimes, Yukio will look into your eyes and there is a wasteland―

Nothing. No mans land on a bleak battlefield. It's like looking into a war zone. Nothing. Aimless. Burnt clothes and soldiers wearing their comrades' corpses uniforms. Nothing. Desecrated land and bodies scattered so vehemently that they shudder, still, in the wind. Nothing―

Nothing. Aimless. Hopeless.

Yukio cannot breathe when he sees that look, it's like he's staring death in the face. Like watching his reflection shattet over and over and over again; it's like watching the heat death of the universe in slow motion, Yukio feels his body collapse. Two, three, four, years ago he couldn't sleep at night if he knew that you were awake and then something changed, like his brain was sedated. He tried throwing up medication he wasn't taking.

You can make him feel ten feet tall or like an insignificant speck of dust. Nothing. It's like watching nothing happen. Paint drying forever would be a more sane activity than looking you in the eye on a bad day. Sometimes, Yukio pities Rin, because you like him more, Yukio can tell.

Theres a kind of obsessed look in your eyes, pin-drop, sharp that goes cough-drop sweet or lemon-drop sour at the drop of a hat. It scares him, a lot not a little. Makes him want to rinse his eyes out with bleach. Wash away the sight.

Rin can't see it.

Sometimes Yukio wonders if you caused the plane crash you were in. Father Fujimoto says that he found you parentless. Orphaned (quietly, Yukio thinks bastardized) in open sight. Eyes glued to the bright red clashing against the sky like fireworks on the summer festival. Yukio thinks that it might might might, possibly, feasibly, might have been you, because Father Fujimoto found you on the anniversary of their mother's birthday. Not that Rin knows. Not that Yukio knew.

Time is silly, sometimes, when he tries to think about it. It slips, broken hourglass on the floor, sand between his hands like.. like.. falling. It's a dream that Yukio used to have in the earliest days on your stay. There's an hourglass with water drip-drip-dripping rhythmically. It sound like morse code if he thinks about it.

Yukio learn morse code in his first months of training. Just him and Father Fujimoto, together. Tap-tap-tapping against desks and walls. Yukio was good at it, Rin tried to learn how, but gave up after he realized it wasn't a day-to-day learning thing and―

In those dreams he could hear it so clear he thought it was raining. That Rin decided to learn it behind his back. That there was the ghost of his mother haunting him from hell.

When he thinks about it, it rings so clearly―

My little brother is in your house.
My little brother is in your house.
My little brother is in your house.
   My little brother is in your house.
    My little brother is in your house.
     My little brother is in your house.
      My little brother is in your house.
My little brother is in your house.

And Yukio doesn't have any little brothers. Yukio was the youngest person in the monastery. He has nightmares. Glass tapping. It goes on and on and on. Over and over. He used to think his mind was playing tricks on him. Flashing, flashing, blinding lights but they were black, like ink, so dark he couldn't see. It was the only thing. My little brother is in your house. He carved it into the wall once, tapping it so much that his fingers dented the wood. He ask Rin if he knew what it meant and he'd get that aimless stupid look he always got.

So it was; carved into his wooden desk under the wavy moonlight, written out into his notebook:

『-- -.-- / .-.. .. - - .-.. . / -... .-. --- - .... . .-. / .. ... / .. -. / -.-- --- ..- .-. / .... --- ..- ... .』

It only started then. When you moved in. When you didn't know he wasn't sleeping and then you found out and― you smiled, so serenely. So softly, flowers. Chrysanthemums draped over rotting fruit.

Sick.

He wanted to throw up. There's something about you that's sickening. Like watching a dead bird crawl. Maggots resting under flesh. Something so wrong with you it gets infected right down to him. Sticks under his fingernails, behind his eyes, under his tongue. Something so you it drives him to crack his head on the wall until blood comes out. You, he thinks, should come bearing bright colors. A warning. Dangerous dangerous dangerous dangerous. Curve the letters in neon orange to your skin like a tattoo. Bleed the in like a prayer.

My little brother is in your house. My little brother is in your head. Yukio is falling apart into the deep end of insanity. It's a pretty color, too.

It's best if he leaves it a memory. It's best if he doesn't go to sleep.

Yukio thinks that, maybe, you're all his regrets come back to haunt him. That would be too sweet though. You were worse. Much worse. A cosmic horror made human, made man. Or maybe it was man-made; you look like you were carved from someone else's ambition, the poison seeps so deep into your skin you become something else entirely.

You are a worn polaroid of a missing child sometimes. There's a hollow sort of look in your eyes, like a hazy photograph, a picture made in watercolor washes. Dull. You should be bright, blaring warning signs, you should have eyes so bright that it splits him right open just looking at them. There's something lurking, ugly, in your mouth and he wants to gut you like a fish, hooked knife to throat, to see what it is. It is human desire to want but you want far more than what he's ever seen. You look like you'd raise hell just to see what would inevitably happen. The altercations in you wake are bloody and brutal. Green, green, green dying the floors. He could lose himself in it.Fabric of reality unwearable, fraying against his jackrabbit heart. He could split it open, swallow the remains. Yukio is borne of wanting. You look at him though, eyes so sharp and cutthroat that he has to strop himself from touching you, like a poison dart frog, lest he shrivel in on himself, organ failure seeping.

Lest he fall asleep and never, ever wake up.