12. ORPHAN

-

I WAKE TO a blinding headache.

The world swims slowly into existence. A bitter herbal smell tickles my nose. Freshly washed linens. Lanterns buzz overhead. A warm haze of gold rests over the air, and something soft is wrapped over my clothes, like a cloud. In fact...

I push myself up. The instant I do, a sharp needle of pain lances from my ribs up my spine.

"Ouch," I mutter under my breath. A fluffy blanket slips off my body. I'm wearing a black robe, and a thick weight wraps around my entire torso. Bandages.

The blur around me finds shape. I'm wrapped in a thick bedroll in an unfamiliar room. Tatami doors float into existence, and outside, I hear the pattern of rain. There's a low table not far away. Steam wafts from a quiet pot.

A sleepy hum sounds behind me. I'm so startled I jump, then release a regretful hiss of pain.

In a somewhat boyish fashion, Ren rolls sleepily onto his side in a separate bedroll a few feet away, his body facing me. I blink with surprise and confusion, too lost to believe he could be here next to me.

How...

I can't help but savor the vulnerability of this moment. He's so close I can make out the details of his scar—the ragged edges working their way across the narrow bridge of his nose, no longer sneering but rather a simple line in sleep. His brows are relaxed, his skin clear of creases, his lashes lowered. Despite the sharp angles of his face, I catch a youthful curve to his cheeks.

An early morning blue glows richly outside the screen doors. The calm air of the room sinks into my skin.

I haven't waken up like this in years. To open my eyes and smell something hot and steaming, waiting for me. To feel someone's presence nearby.

It feels like home.

With effort, I sit up fully. Ren stirs with another hum.

His eyes meet mine, bright against shadow. I go still, so caught off guard I forget to breathe.

No words leave his mouth. Instead, surprise and relief overwhelms his face so completely I read it as easily as if he'd spoken.

He pushes himself up as if I'm the only thing he can see. "Hina."

I don't know what to say, stunned by the expression on his face, so similar to the way he looked at Bohai the night Bohai was sick on his couch. As if Bohai was all that mattered.

And then, just like that, everything rushes back. Daizo, the auction, the white mist, the screaming crowds.

Bohai, gone.

Panic rises into my throat. Bohai. I don't even realize I've shifted until pain flares from my side. "Where's—"

A hand touches my arm. "He's not here. I searched everywhere."

"I—"

"Daizo took him," says Ren for me. His voice lowers. "I know."

I look away. Unwarranted, tears well up, and I lie back down, closing my eyes. "I lost him."

"We both did." He shifts, voice heavy. "It's not your fault."

I blink my eyes open, surprise settling in my chest. I remember so clearly the way he looked at me the first time Bohai lost connection, when I felt his cold blame for taking Bohai's medicine. He's gone.

I can't take my gaze off his. Where I expect to find anger, I find only quiet concern, feel the calm weight of his eyes studying the contours of my face. Is this what Bohai sees? The worry on Ren's face rolls off him in thick waves.

My heart stutters strangely at the feeling. "We have to look for him," my mouth says, the barest croak.

Ren turns away. "I have a few ideas."

I find myself burrowing deeper into my bedroll and look up at him. "How long has it been?"

"Two days. It's almost dawn." He studies me. "How do you feel?"

I pick at the robe, distracted suddenly by the fact that all my old clothes are gone. "Did you undress me?"

He shoots me a half-amused, half-offended look. "I called obaa-san," he answers. "She rented out this place in Kita District from a friend and stitched you up. Then she made that medicine free of charge and told me to feed it to you every few hours." I follow his gaze to the steaming pot. He winces at me and nods his chin at the neckline of my robe. "Do you know how much medicine spilled over that? You know how stubborn you are when you're asleep?"

"No," I protest. "I'm asleep."

He ignores me and presses on. "Do you feel okay?"

I nod and straighten with a wince. "Just sore and in pain. Nothing too bad," I answer, wrinkling my nose as I feel out a bandage on my cheek. Curiosity gets the better of me. "What happened to Daizo? He said he set up something for you. And at the auction, did—"

"Everyone made it out in time," he reassures me. "There was only one death."

"One death?"

"Mhm. It was Yun."

I stare back at him, unable to believe it. "Yun?"

"Police were going to take him into questioning, but apparently he ran the opposite direction into the fog. Killed himself before he would talk."

The news sucks the air from my lungs. "What about—"

"—Kotomi?" Ren shakes his head. "Lost all contact." Something about the silence that follows tells me that he was right not to trust her.

A chill works its way down my spine. "So we're on our own?"

His gaze rests on mine in wordless answer. All it takes is that moment for me to feel the undercurrent of fear in the air, this constant anxiety rumbling beneath years of haunted memories. I tilt my head with a deep frown, unable to stop myself.

"Ren, what happened at the Castle? How does Daizo know you?"

He turns away and runs a hand over his face with a reluctant groan, ruffling sleep-tousled hair. I catch a blur of that haphazard burn mark on his inner wrist. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Do you not want to talk about it," I ask quietly, "or are you too scared to?"

He releases a shallow breath. "You know this is the first night I've slept since Shiroi?"

I furrow my brows and let the subject fall away. "Get more sleep then," I urge.

"You're still sick."

"I can get medicine for myself, you know." I stifle a wince as I scoot toward the low table. "I think I got lucky with Daizo. I thought he would take me with him. Or shoot me. Or maybe—"

"You think you got lucky with him?" Frustration glimmers in his eyes. "You should've seen yourself bleeding out onto the floor. You should see yourself now, Hina. Lucky? I barely carried you out before the police started storming my place."

My heart stops. "How did they—"

"Kotomi." There's an edge of hurt in his voice. "She's doing a pretty good job of lining her pockets with cash. Looks like Daizo and Okazaki are paying her to get information about me through the police."

I stare at him. "Ren."

"You scared me to death," he breathes, eyes wide. "The entire time I was waiting for obaa-san to show up, you were covered in blood, and with Bohai gone and the police everywhere and obaa-san's izakaya busy as hell, I thought..." As if breathless himself from the memory, he stops. Shakes his head and steps out of his bedroll, a lingering tremble to his hands. His voice lowers. "At least you're here now."

I stare after him as he retreats toward the doors. "Where are you going?"

"To get some fresh air." He pauses at the screens, then turns. Bluish light melts along the line of his scar. "About Daizo," he adds quietly, "I'll tell you everything when I come back. At least as much as I can of him."

Then wood slides against wood, and he's gone.

+

HE MOVES THE table closer to my bedroll, fills a bowl with herbal soup, and waits beside me in silence as I drink.

Obaa-san's medicine steams in front of me with an unappetizing smell. It's a brownish-green liquid that's thin as water, bitter as black coffee, and stings as sharp as ginger water. The burn aches my throat so harshly I feel as if someone's running a spicy blade along the roof of my mouth.

The air between us is stretched with worry. As the glow of sunrise thickens through the screens, I see only the emptiness of our tiny room, hovering on a high floor of an apartment building so that the clamor of Osaka unfurls far away. There's no Bohai to tease Ren or complain about painkillers or report updates or mediate. I can't bear to think where he might be now.

Ren watches me as I drink, but I know he's miles away, thinking of the same thing.

"Hina," he says slowly.

I set down the bowl, grateful for a distraction from the medicine. "Hm?"

"Can I ask you something?"

Something about his tone makes me stop. "Okay."

His eyes don't leave my face, as if he's afraid I'll run. It startles me how vulnerable he is. Whatever happened at the Castle has stripped away his guard.

"Have you killed someone before?" he asks.

I forget how to breathe. Flashes of fights come back to me. The scream of a bullet. The song of a knife. Footsteps. Heavy breathing, grappling limbs. The crackle of electricity. I remember wrestling Ren to the platform floor at Osaka Station, pinning him to the floor, cocking my gun and pressing the barrel to his head. The way my finger froze on the trigger, as if remembering my objective all on its own.

I shake my head with a wavering laugh. "I don't think I could. Why?"

He stays silent. Shame pulls taut in the air.

Oh.

My voice falls quiet. "Who was it?"

He pauses. His brows pull tight, and I can sense the conflict in him, as if there's a physical block cutting off the path between his memory and his words. "I'm not sure I remember."

I can hear the sudden hesitation in each word, as if they're still finding shape on his tongue. He's never talked about this before. For the first time, the vulnerability in his voice is a conscious effort, not just a state of being. His heart has guarded itself for so long it's forgotten how to let its walls down.

He gets nightmares. It's been happening his entire life.

"Does it have to do with the scar?" I ask quietly.

Ren blinks, a deep frown pulling at his face. "I think so." He shakes his head. "It's all a blur. I think I remember some things, but there are holes. And people keep...They fill in the details differently, so I don't know what's real."

"What do you remember?"

"Daizo." The answer is immediate. He turns away, his eyes unfocused. "For the longest time, I would see his face every time I closed my eyes. He always has this look in his eyes. Like he's about to outsmart you. Like he can't wait to prove something to you."

I hesitate. "You said he gave you the scar, right? But it was an accident?"

"That's the thing. I don't know." He pulls in a breath through his teeth, a hand rising to his hair. "I don't know. I can't remember. That's the problem. I see the smug look on Daizo's face, and I think I know him. He's a cold-blooded mass-murderer, and the picture fits perfectly—it should make sense that he's always been that clever. But then..."

"But then?"

"But then it's like my memories shift, and I see Daizo's brother in his place, not Daizo."

I pause. "Daizo has a brother?"

"But Bunta wasn't like that all," he goes on. "Bunta was good. But I can't even be sure of that. It's all mixed up, and I don't know why."

My mind spins, trying to piece this together. Bunta. An old friend.

Bunta dragged Kotomi into a club some orphanage kids were running at the orphanage.

Ren's brows have pulled tight. I tilt my head to catch his eyes. "Tell me what you're sure of," I begin firmly.

He looks warily at me. "What?"

"Your memories." I feel his gaze anchor onto mine as I continue. "Tell me what you're absolutely sure is real. Whether it's about Bunta or Daizo or Tenshi. Start with the obvious and work your way in."

He pauses as if tracking his journey through time. "I moved to the floor above obaa-san's pharmacy nine years ago. When I was...twelve. That's when I heard about the mass-murder of the Tenshi faculty. It was almost three years after I left."

"So you left Tenshi when you were nine."

He nods. "I met Bunta the year I left. He was a year older than me." He's on a roll now, letting the memories flow like water. "He was popular. He was well-known for standing up to everyone in the faculty. The nurses, the schooling teachers, the headmasters. He wasn't afraid to stand up for us, so people liked him. I liked him. I felt safe with him. But then one time after he'd received a lot of strikes, he vandalized orphanage property and got beaten up badly. It made all of us so angry. That's when it started."

"What started?"

"They called it Red Wing. It was this club they had. They would run off and do a lot of violent things to feel like they belonged to something meaningful. Something powerful. They had this symbol. It was a pair of wings for freedom, but they'd brand the members with a single wing to enforce this idea that they couldn't do anything without each other. Bunta wanted everyone to join."

I glimpse the scarred skin of his inner wrist, half-lit by a shaft of cold daylight.

I bumped into a member this one time. He tried to make me get one.

"Kotomi was in it, right?" I study him curiously. "What about Daizo?"

"Daizo was there, too. I remember the first time I met him. He was really shy."

I startle at the reply. Daizo, shy?

"He didn't talk at all." Ren nods, as if this is solid knowledge, affirmed by clear memory. "He's a year younger than me, so I thought maybe he was really timid, not yet comfortable with the social scene. But Bunta told me he was nervous because he had some bad experiences with people. Faculty and strangers. Looking back, I think he was traumatized."

I think of the sneer on Daizo's face, the pain and the hurt fused into bitterness in his eyes. "Why?"

"Congenital toxoplasmosis." He says it with ease, as if he's spent his entire life carving the name into his memory. "People put down what they don't understand, and when we were growing up, there weren't many kids that were partially blind. Most people were just Red Lung infectees with no affected children. At least not yet."

This makes sense. I remember how long my appointments were as the doctors struggled to make sense of the growing half-sighted population. As they tried to understand why the Red Lung infection was causing hereditary consequences. I remember my otou-san and his fear of accommodations. No canes. No contacts. For years he could never bring himself to look my blindness in the eye, so much he didn't even allow himself to imagine a solution. She doesn't need AI.

"But Daizo wasn't always timid. There would be flashes of who he was beneath." He narrows his eyes as if he's still confused by it now. "It threw me off guard. One minute he was quiet and polite. Then the next minute you would see this strength in him. Almost like he was hiding what he could be, like he was just waiting to surprise you. That's why when he told me to go with him, I didn't want to argue."

"Go with him where?"

"To Red Wing." Ren lifts his wrist quizzically. Daylight consumes it. "The night everything happened, Bunta told Daizo to bring me over. I realized too late that he wanted me to join. To burn this mark into me."

"But you didn't let them finish," I clarify.

"I ran away. They followed me."

He gets chased. It used to cause a big loud fuss when he woke up.

Ren pulls in a wavering breath and shakes his head. "That's when it gets blurry."

"Was anyone else there?" I ask. "Was it just Bunta and Daizo following you?"

He closes his eyes. Suddenly, as if the effort of remembering this much has drained him, he slumps forward and turns away. "I don't remember. I just don't understand how Daizo is alive, because I remember distinctly how yellowed and pale he was that night. Bunta's eyes were all bloodshot because he knew his brother was going to die."

"Maybe it wasn't Red Lung," I suggest. "Maybe—"

Ren shakes his head. "Doctors came over the week before and diagnosed him with Red Lung. Daizo was stuck in a quarantined room."

The world sways. "So he survived."

"But no one survives." Ren's eyes meet mine, and in that moment I see my grief mirrored in his. Years of funeral progressions glimmering in my memory. Hours of listening to someone whimper and cough, stripped slowly of their strength. The days I saw my mother's life wane to a husk in her bedroll. Felt her grip on mine relax, slowly, until she was no longer holding onto me at all. "If someone survived, wouldn't we have heard about it by now, Hina? Every medicine tower in Japan would be running experiments on them already."

Medicine tower.

Something about that phrase tugs at my memory.

Turns out Shibuya Medicine Tower made the sample cure out of some anti-white-wing compound they pulled from someone's blood.

I tilt my head. "Not every medicine tower." My gaze rises, stunned to Ren's face. "Just the one in Tokyo. In Shibuya District."

He pauses. "What do you mean?"

"Bohai and I ran a search on the medicine shipment before the auction. It came from Shibuya Medicine Tower in Tokyo. They got the antibiotic compound for the cure off the blood on the body of Nozomi Abe. She was an old brawlery bet-collector from Osaka who committed suicide in Shibuya District. Except...maybe she didn't commit suicide."

Ren studies me. "Hina, what are you getting at?"

My mind is on a roll. "If Nozomi was an old brawlery bet-collector who ran to Tokyo, there's a good chance she was from Minami Brawlery," I say, a cloud pulling away. "She must've escaped before the hallucinogen hit. Daizo could have found her and killed her, then framed it as suicide. Which means the blood they took off Nozomi's body wasn't just Nozomi's."

He stares at me. "So—"

"It was Daizo's blood. The Medicine Tower took an accidental sample of Daizo's blood." My eyes meet his, realizing. "Daizo's blood is the cure."