許し

She didn't know how she knew it was Shin up there, only that she did, and that she needed to go to him. She needed to see him.

It was a powerful pull, a tug deep in her stomach when she saw the lonely dark spot of him sitting up there. Even from all this distance away, she recognized that particular slouch, the way the legs seemed to be swinging aimlessly, from when she had seen Shin sitting on a branch in one of the trees just outside the gates of Ayashi House.

She had been taking a walk just outside the grounds of the house, using the brief respite of having finished her chores while the kids were napping to take a moment for herself. It was spring, the trees vibrant with green leaves and birds wheeling overhead as they twittered at each other in their sing-song voices. It had rained the night before, and though the afternoon sun dried the mud on the ground to hard-caked soil, it still felt fresh and lively after the rain. Pai remembered that as clearly as if it had been just yesterday.

Pai was walking back to Ayashi House when she spied a glimpse of Shin's boot, and when she looked up she saw him lying back on a sturdy branch of one of the larger trees close to the wall, with his hands behind his head, one leg bent while the other dangled over the side of the branch. She didn't say anything to him because she thought that he might have been sleeping, since he hadn't reacted to her when she walked under the tree branch he lay on.

It had to be Shin up there now.

Or maybe she was trying to justify that weird sense of knowing that it was Shin up there by picking at what small things she could see from that distance.

Her chair clattered as it dragged on the floor when she pushed it back, standing up. Everyone sitting around her glanced up at her in confusion at her abrupt move, and she saw some of the other students look at her as well, but she ignored them.

"I, um..." her mind went totally blank for three agonizing seconds before an excuse presented itself to her. "I am going to tell Kurebayashi-sensei that I am joining the astronomy club. I do not want to get in trouble for delaying with it since I never did before the break."

"You don't need to do it now," Shuusei said dismissively. "You can do that after school."

"Or tomorrow morning in homeroom." Natsume added.

Pai shook her head as her hands moved aimlessly in front of her, pointing in the general direction of the canteen. She grabbed her jacket and dark blue scarf and began winding it around her neck, loose so that she wouldn't be bothered too much by it but enough that chill winds wouldn't freeze her half to death.

"I also want to go get some tea." She thought of the excuse hurriedly. "I will be right back."

It wasn't entirely a lie. She was thirsty, and she had finished her bottle of water over hours ago. Her throat was parched, but not bad enough that she hadn't been able to ignore it, which she'd done all this time so much so that she had even forgotten that she was thirsty.

Now that she remembered and focused on it, she swallowed some saliva as she turned and walked around them, her throat dry like a desert. She crossed the classroom with hurried steps, ignoring the stares she got from the other students with only a brief thought as to when they would get used to it and stop ogling at her every time she moved passed her mind. Pai glanced back quickly, but it was enough to see Shiori watching her with a frown.

Thirsty, she mouthed to her.

You okay? Shiori mouthed back.

Pai nodded, giving her two thumbs up. She turned and left, leaving the classroom and trying to figure out a way to get to the roof of the multi-purpose hall. It was only when she was already out of the classroom did she consider that perhaps Shin had just flown there, and there was no way to the roof from inside the building.

She shook her doubts away. Since she was already going, she might as well try.

There were no students inside the school buildings during the lunch hour. Everyone wanted to go outside to enjoy the fresh, cool air, while Pai was reluctant to leave the building because of the cold of the Yori Chiisai that waited on the outside. Some students still remained in the classrooms, with the doors wide open to welcome any others wanting to come in. The noise from inside each room was loud enough that it would have scared her off, if she ever had the thought to enter. She didn't like loud places.

The multi-purpose hall was completely empty when she closed the door behind her. It was weird to walk in and not see either the boys' or the girls' basketball teams practising, balls dribbling and swishing through the nets. The bleachers for the audience were clean, with hardly a mark to show any dirt. The wooden floors, with the white lines of the basketball game layout painted on, were scrubbed clean, shining as the sun's light reflected off the window lining the top of hall close to the roof.

She looked up, and realized for the first time that the multi-purpose hall was a really, really tall building, with a roof so high she had to tilt her head all the way back to look at it.

A wave of dizziness rolled through her, and she stumbled back against the door when her legs buckled. She swallowed thickly as bile rose up at the back of her throat and as she uses his momentum against him and rolls them backwards. When they stop it is with her arm around his neck in a chokehold, her right foot pressing in his stomach, hard, and keeping him on the ground half-on half-off of her with his arms pinned under his back as she lay under him, staring up at the harsh white lights of the training room. The adrenaline of the fight had begun to build up in her, but it isn't enough. She still feels dead on the inside as the nausea, and the image of white walls, a white floor with dark blue mats over it, and a white ceiling with swinging fluorescent lights faded away.

She blinked and lifted a hand to her face, covering her eyes for a moment, her breath trapped somewhere in her chest. It felt like a memory, but more like a dream than something she was remembering. The images that flashed through her mind's eye came so quick and vanished an instant later, she couldn't even be sure of what it was she'd just seen.

She stopped thinking about that as soon as her hand touched something wet on her face. She brought it back down to stare at the blood painted across her hand. It looked like she had slashed open her palm. She reached up with both hands and wiped at the blood dripping down her nose, leaning forward so that it didn't fall on her shirt, but on the floor.

She was bleeding again.

She pulled out a white handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt, dabbing at her nose and lips. She was about to tilt her head back to slow the blood, but stopped herself when she realized the blood would only go back up her nose. She didn't want to gag on her own blood.

The thought alone made her nauseas.

She wanted to know why she bled every time she started to remember something. The day that everything happened with the Torimaku, she bled so much that her pillow was covered in it. This morning she'd woken up with a small trickle leaking from her nose onto her hair, despite not remembering anything besides the vague sense of an unfeeling numbness, then a blinding panic, a paralysing fear, and sudden fury aimed at something – no, someone. She was pretty sure that towards the end of the dream she was angry at someone for promising to do something, and not keeping that promise.

That didn't help her figure out anything more specific; it was one of her pet peeves, when someone said something they didn't really mean.

Beyond that, she couldn't really remember anything.

She shook her head as she wiped off the last bit of blood on the handkerchief, folded it so that the red splattering on the white surface was hidden on the inside, and stuffed it back in her pocket. She looked around herself at the hall, wondering how to go about getting to the roof.

Over on the other side, where the podium stood for when the school principal and student council president made their speeches at the beginning and end of the school year, was a staircase. She set off for the podium, and took to climbing the creaking stairs two at a time. She rounded the corner that led to the backstage, where she saw a ladder extending up to a part of the multi-purpose hall she had never seen before.

The bars were rusted, and when she wrapped her hands around them, old pieces of browning metal come away in her hands. She ignored it and climbed up all the way to the top, coming up to a level that was behind the wall on which the podium was supported. The wooden floorboards under her feet were dusty, as if no one had been up to clean the place in a very long time.

As soon as she clapped off the pieces of broken rust that had fallen away from the ladder, she spotted the staircase that led to a door opposite her. She walked quickly up the stairs, holding on to the rickety railing as the thought that the staircase might be rotten through reminded her only half-way up to perhaps not move quite so fast.

Pai pulled open the door and stepped out onto the roof, shutting her eyes almost immediately as the light burned them and sent a sharp pain spiking through her head. She peeked through the slits her hands made, and all she saw was white light. Her eyes gradually adjusted to the brightness, and she saw the fence in front of her. The white paint was peeling off the sides.

She stepped forward and stumbled as her foot came up on empty air where she thought she would be stepping on the ground. Her stomach plummeted when she thought she was about to fall, but her foot met the ground half a second later, crunching on the snow underfoot. After steadying herself with a hand on the wall, she glanced left and right, wondering which way to go.

She didn't think anybody ever came to the roof. The grounds of the school were swept clean of any snow, even the sports field, but up here the floor was carpeted in a thick blanket of fluffy white snow that piled almost as high as her shoulders in big lumps of white snow. A breeze wafted stray strands of her hair over her eyes, and she thoughtlessly reached up to tuck them behind her ear again.

For a moment she worried that her hair was probably messy, since she hadn't thought to take a look at herself in the mirror whenever she was in the bathroom to make sure she didn't look like a wind-blown wreck from how much of her hair slid out from her braid. Every time she told herself to open and braid it up tight again, it slipped her mind until she would remember about it too late. It would be a nice if her hair could behave every once in a while.

She pulled the braid of her hair over her shoulder, lifting the end and holding it up in front of her face, to see that it was nearly the same colour as the snow, if only a little bit darker.

I miss my hair, she thought forlornly, remembering how dark her hair once was, so black that in certain lights she could see the faint traces of other colours, like a raven's wing. She used to spend thirty minutes every night brushing it to get the tangles out, taking care of it the way Midori taught her to. She used to be so proud of how well kept her hair was, how deep the blackness was.

She still took care of it now. But she found no pride in looking at herself in the mirror and seeing her head full of white where it was once night.

Pai looked down at the ground when her feet scrunched on the snow blanketing the ground. There, a pair of footprints walked in a straight line past her, heading to the left. They stopped for a moment, she could tell from the way one single set of the footprints seemed to have scuffed as the boots of the person who'd been up here dug into the snow. Then they continued on, heading towards the end of the roof. She followed the path the footprints, her breath clouding in front of her.

She found him easily like that.

He was just behind the small outhouse that sat in the middle of the roof. He was sitting right where she had seen from the classroom, on the ledge of the wall. He wore a simple black sweater snug over his fit form, and a pair of dark blue jeans. The sweater was loose, but not so much so that she couldn't see the firm definition of the muscles of his back.

Surprisingly, he had his katanas strapped in sheathes belted around his trim waist. Something about their positioning made her brain twinge with something, almost like a forgotten memory, before it drifted away in a wispy trail under the surprise that he would walk around in public with his katanas out in the open like that. wasn't he worried the police would stop him, or someone would call them on him?

Her heart twanged when her eye ran over the firm lines of his back, the way he hunched his shoulders forward with his elbows braced on his knees. Whenever she saw Shin, when she was the one standing behind him, she would marvel at how strong his back looked, with his broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. Strong, yet solitary.

Now, he looked lonely.

He wore nothing as protection from the blistering cold, despite it being day with the sun climbing high up in the sky, right over their heads. She felt chilly just looking at him, and she rolled her shoulders under her jacket as she readjusted the scarf around her neck – though, that was more to hide the fading bruises on her neck.

No one told her so, certainly not Shin, since she hadn't had a chance to speak to him until this very moment, but she knew that the marks around her neck were from Shinigami. He had strangled her. That was why her throat felt rough, her voice hoarse, the first few times she spoke immediately after she regained consciousness. Pai fitted her scarf to cover the marks because she didn't want Shin to see them, and be reminded of how it was her fault he'd lost control over Shinigami.

"Are you well?"

His voice was quiet and contemplative as he continued to look down at the school buildings and the students wandering around, little specks from this height, but still she startled when he spoke. He didn't turn around to look at her, and that somehow made her feel settled and nervous at the same time.

You could fall. That was the first thing she wanted to say. The wind, this high up, was strong. He was sitting right on the edge of the wall. Then she looked at the twin katanas, lengths resting on either side of him on the ledge, and was reminded of what he was, and that he wasn't as helpless as she.

But then, she thought, You can fly too.

She pressed her lips into a flat line as she walked towards him, wondering how she was supposed to answer. She saw a flash of metal glint in the sunlight as she approached. When she reached him, she saw that he was swinging his tanto blade up and down, catching the tip of the blade between his thumb and forefinger before throwing it up so that it twisted in mid-air until he caught the blade again. Not once did the edge of the tanto cut him.

She caught sight of faded marks on his palm, a shade lighter than his skin, but his hand moved too quickly for her to tell what the marks were. She didn't think they were an injury. The lines and curves of it, as much as she had seen, were too deliberate for it to have been an accident of some sort.

She reached out to grip the edge of the wall he sat atop, leaning forward to peer down over the side. A gust of wind blew her hair back from her face, refreshing her flushed cheeks. The people who walked around down below looked like ants as they wandered around, either alone or in small groups.

She leaned back and turned to look at Shin, though he kept on watching the nothing that was happening below, as if he was waiting for something. Now that she was closer, she saw that he wore a V-neck sweater, and she could just manage to spy a hint of tattoos on his chest. He had his Mask tied around his face, covering his mouth up to his nose, leaving only the sharp light of his deep blue eyes exposed. The Mask was clean, and white, just as she remembered.

But, for some reason, it no longer looked to her the way it used to, like it belonged to Shin, like it was an irreplaceable part of him. Now, it looked different, somehow. She couldn't quite put her finger on how.

She could only see the side of his face, but it left her stunned. He looked haggard, worn down, as if he hadn't slept in all the time he had been gone from Ayashi House. There were deep circles under his eyes that were more like bruises, strangely accentuating the sharp blue of his eyes as they flicked to the side to look at the students playing football on one half of the field, and the others playing baseball on the other half. He was pale, and didn't look like he had eaten in a while.

A cheer rose up from the side playing football. She looked in that direction and saw a big group of the dots that were the students converging, running around in victory. Shin's eyes continued to follow the running students, watching them.

Why do you look so tired? She thought, wanting desperately to voice the question, but unable to. She wasn't sure if it was her place to ask anything of him.

She gulped as she continued to look down at the students walking around far below. They really were very high up. Pai wasn't afraid of heights the way Shiori was, but it was difficult not to imagine all the different ways she could fall and end up as a splattered pancake of blood and squashed muscle and torn skin on the pavement.

She winced at that thought.

"I am," she finally managed.

"That's good." He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "The uniform suits you."

"Oh," she glanced down at her clothes. Now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure Shin had ever seen her in her school uniform before. "Thank you. Wh – what are you doing here?"

Shin glanced at her, but when he did she looked away, back down to the school grounds below, avoiding making eye contact with him. After a long moment he said, "Kouta asked me to come."

He what?

She glanced at him, startled, confused. She almost hoped that he was joking, but when she saw the staid look on his face, she knew he was being serious. "But Haru-san and Shouta-san are here."

Pai saw the tip of his ear, just visible through the short curtain of his dark hair, move up a bit. She thought he might have smiled. She wished he wasn't wearing the Mask on his face so she could have seen it.

"I know. They're teachers, aren't they?" he asked.

She nodded. "Shouta-san is the new baseball coach, and he teaches P.E. as well. Haru-san is the new FT teacher."

"FT?" he questioned.

"Food."

"Food?"

"He thinks teaching high school students how to cook is an easier way to get food than to try bypass Mizutani-san, and Obaasan, and Yukiji-san, too. Or cook for himself." She shot him a narrow-eyed look. "Did you know Haru-san can cook?"

He glanced at her with an odd look. "We can all cook. It's part of our training. He's just lazy."

She squinted to look up at three birds wheeling up above them, twittering like mad. "He will probably regret that. Shii-chan knows now."

She wondered if the prank Shiori and Ryu would play on Haru would be enough to change his errant ways. There was a very good chance that it would be, considering it would be done by the Matsumoto siblings. On their own, the two could be incredibly annoying and frustrating when they played their pranks, though it was usually only on each other. But the two made a formidable – and genuinely dangerous – team when they joined forces, for the sole purpose of making someone else's life miserable as a 'joke'.

The last unfortunate soul to be pranked was Ryosuke. They knew his Ability was to control water. Somehow, they came to the conclusion that the best thing to do to him as payback for cheating in a video game they all played together was to wait for him to fall asleep, sneak into his room, hold a lighter in front of his face and use the spray of a bottle of perfume to send a blast of fire right to his face.

Pai didn't know what on Earth could have possessed them to think such a thing would be fun.

Pai had no idea how he hadn't gotten burnt, or otherwise seriously injured. He'd turned up for breakfast the next morning with only a few singed hairs along the crown of his head...and a missing eyebrow.

Obaasan scolded all three fiercely – Ryosuke for cheating in the game they'd played (though he adamantly denied the fact, to which Shin had flicked his little brother's forehead hard enough to leave a welt there that lasted days, as Shin had had to take responsibility in front of Obaasan for Ryosuke's foolishness), and Shiori and Ryu for doing something so dangerous, though they assured her nothing would have happened to Ryosuke on account of his Ability.

Obaasan was not amused by their excuses. Neither of the siblings were sorry for it.

Shin smiled. Though she couldn't see it, that quirk of the lips that she had only ever seen on Shin's face a handful of times in the year they'd known each, she could tell. It was from the way his eyes lost that hardness to them, the corners crinkling ever so slightly. She reflexively felt a smile of her own pull her lips up.

After a moment, he said, "Kouta likes the number three. A little too much for Shiori-hime's liking, I think."

"Oh," she replied, realizing what he meant. "He thinks if you are here as well, Shii-chan will be safer?"

He glanced at her with an inscrutable look in his eye. "You too."

She blinked. "I think...Kouta-sama is being very daring and tempting fate," she murmured, a tad bit uncomfortable by his words, like he'd been reminding her that she needed protecting as well. She looked away from him and crossed her arms over the ledge he sat on, leaning forward and trying not to look down too much.

"How so?"

"Shii-chan will throw a chair at him if she knew you are here too, because he told you to come watch us when he already made Haru-san and Shouta-san come."

Shin tilted his head to the side in a curious angle. The action caught her attention, and had her staring. The way he did it was normal, a completely ordinary thing for him to do. But she felt as if there was something different about it. As if she'd seen him do that in another way, and though she couldn't remember, it had stuck with her.

Pai blinked as she realized that it was rude to stare like that. Still, even if she felt like it was a bit different, it had been so long since she saw anyone do that. It was like a signature of Shin that she had come to associate with him, and only him. She looked away again as Shin spoke.

"Asked me, not told me."

It took a moment for her to understand what he was saying.

"You wanted to come?"she asked.

He nodded.

"Why? You must have other things to do, other Daitengu...stuff...to do..." she trailed off as she realized that she was using the exact same words, and excuse, that Shiori used when trying to come up with reasons why the Daitengu needn't come with them to school.

Something in her chest warmed when he chuckled. It was a low sound, barely audible as a strong gust of wind swept over them both, whipping her hair into a white gale around her head. She reached up and caught the hair flying about, capturing it in on hand and tucking it under the scarf. Truth be told, though, she would have ignored her hair if not for the sudden skipping of her breath in her chest when she heard him.

She frowned at her own reaction to hearing the low laugh. She used the adjustment – yet again – of her scarf as an excuse to press her hand against her chest to see if her heart was really beating as hard as she thought it was. It was, and it wasn't.

"I wanted to apologize," he finally said. "To you."

...you wanted to what?

His words had her snapping out of her own crowded thoughts. She turned to him and openly stared this time, her mind whirling in disarray as he continued on, talking quickly as if he was worried that she might try to interrupt him.

"I wanted to apologize for hurting you." He reached up to adjust the Mask covering half of his face. "In the Torimaku."

"You didn't hurt me." She said instantly. The surprise of listening to him apologize to her had her slipping into informal speech, but she hardly noticed it.

Pai had no idea why Shin was apologizing to her, as if he had been the one in the wrong. As if any of it were his fault. If anything, Pai getting hurt, at any point in time since the Oni had taken her, was her own fault.

Shin did notice her slip, glancing at her with something like a bemused look in his eye, but said nothing of it.

"Those bruises you're covering up with your scarf," he gestured around her neck, and her hand instinctively went up to touch the ends of the dark blue scarf. She had hoped he wouldn't notice. "Who do you think is responsible for them?"

"Your Makashi." She replied without hesitation. "It was not you in the Torimaku, it was him."

"Makashi." He repeated. Shin leaned back slightly as he regarded her curiously. "That's an interesting word."

She quickly went on, not immediately grasping the reason as to why he commented on her choice of words. She saw this moment as her chance to apologize to him. She seized it with both hands in an iron grip, choosing to use it now rather than wait, as she had already been wondering the whole time he had been gone from the house how she was supposed to go about it.

She took a step back from the wall, and he turned back as she bowed before him, lowering her head as she stared fixedly at her tightly clasped hands pressed to her knees. The air was cold against her lips when she drew in a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut and praying for the best.

"I am sorry, Shin-san." She said, attempting to put as much sincerity into every word to show him she meant it.

She'd spent so much time thinking of this apology that she had even prepared a whole speech around it, but now that she was actually doing it, she found that all the words she had thought to say had condensed themselves so that her true meaning came out in just a few spoken words rather than many.

And still she felt like it wasn't enough.

"What happened is my fault," she continued. "And I am so sorry for forcing you to go through all that you did."

"Stand up." He said, his voice dark.

She did as he said, more from surprise at how ominous he sounded than anything else. She was stunned to see his eyes blazing with anger. From the way he looked at her, though, she couldn't tell if the anger was directed at her or elsewhere. It unnerved her.

"You have nothing to apologize for," he continued, eyes darkening. "Nothing. There was no way you could have prevented the Oni from taking you. You didn't know the Amanojaku was there."

"I should have." She mumbled under her breath. And it was true, so painfully true that it sometimes kept her up at night as she railed at herself for being so stupid and slow.

She should have known that both Oni were in the warehouse. She was the more sensitive of her and Shiori when it came to their ability to sense the supernatural. She was always more likely to be the one who sensed a dangerous Yori Chiisai first and avoid it. To wrap herself up warm against the freezing cold when there were too many of them around her. To see Yori Chiisai that were difficult to make out because they were closer to their spirit than corporeal form.

It was one of the reasons why Kouta, at first, agreed to only her accompanying Shiori to school. If there was something dangerous about, she would be able to sense it and warn Shiori, and to call for help. Pai hated that she hadn't so much as sensed a hint of the Onihitokuchi until it was way too late to stop it.

She should have known.

Shin heard her, heard every unspoken word – she knew he did from the way he stared at her with that black look in his eyes – and what he heard only served to irritate him more.

"No, you shouldn't have." He said, voice still carrying that grim undertone that sent a shiver of unease down her spine. "You are human. What you should be able to do is live a normal life like any other. You shouldn't have to be able to sense when Hengen are near and worry over whether they mean you harm or will ignore you. You shouldn't have to bear any guilt for any of what happened with the Oni. There was nothing you could have done, and beating yourself up over all your what-ifs will eventually end you."

As he spoke, with more emotion in his words than she had ever heard from him, especially directed to her, she could only stare at him with her eyes wide and mouth agape. In a flash of clarity, the hypocrisy of her apology hit her. His were, more or less, the same words she said to Shiori, when she'd revealed that she was carrying her own share of guilt over what had happened to Shin, right before Pai's memories of that day dwindled to nothing.

The parallels of their feelings stunned her, and she almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. The three of them – Pai, Shin, and Shiori – all felt guilty over what happened, and it didn't seem like any of them would be letting go of that guilt. It was as if it had become a part of them, a part of the strange tenure of the relationship they all shared, and something that, even if relieved, would continue to shape who they were.

I'm a hypocrite, she thought as she opened her mouth to speak. I don't want it to happen to them – I can't, especially not Shin – but I'm willing to let my guilt tell me who I am, what I'm allowed to do. Do I even have a right to tell them that it is not theirs to bear, but mine?

"Same goes to you, then," she finally said, looking up at him as he sat there, with the baby blue of the sky overhead highlighting the sharper, deeper blue of his incredible eyes. "You would not have lost your Mask."

"And you would have lost your life." Shin returned, with a look on his face that said he was genuinely surprised she hadn't realized that yet. "Shimo Oni don't keep their prey, store them like meat in a freezer. They eat them as soon as given the chance. You were going to die. I regret nothing of what I did, because if I didn't come, you would be dead. The Amanojaku taking my Mask was unforeseen. I would do it all again, if need be."

Pai tried very hard to ignore the abnormally hard thump of her heart at those words, uttered a little more quietly than everything else he'd said.

"Then if I have nothing to feel guilt for," she continued, unable to keep down the triumphant smile from lifting her lips up just a bit at having led Shin exactly where she wanted. "Neither do you. If I am not guilty for what happened with the Amanojaku stealing it, then you are not guilty for this," she gestured vaguely at her neck. "Because, just like you say it is not my fault that I was kidnapped, it is not your fault that your Mask was taken."

His jaw ticked as he kept from narrowing his eyes at her. She knew that she won, though what, she wasn't sure. She didn't think it would be a simple thing to let go of the guilt she lugged around with her. Neither did she think it would be easy for Shin as well. Words could only do so much. The only thing she could do was hope for the best.

"Are you sure you're not Kitsune?" Shin finally asked.

Pai blanked. After a moment, she realized that he was – was he teasing her?

"I am just good with words." She smiled at him. "Shii-chan says the same thing about it."

"Maybe she's right."

From his last words, this time she could interpret nothing, no thought, no feeling, from his eyes as he turned back to watching the field. She thought he was still joking, because what else could he mean by that?

He reached up and with the same hand holding the tanto, pulled down his Mask so that the lower half of his face could be seen. Pai, as she was finding to be a regular case now, caught herself staring at the sharp angles of his cheeks, the strong line of his jaw dotted with some stubble. It made him look more rugged. She didn't mind it so much.

A white cloud of his breath puffed out as he sighed. "Don't tell them I'm here," he said, measuring his tone so it came out as a request rather than a demand. "They don't know."

She frowned, wondering who she meant, before realizing. "Haru-san and Shouta-san?" he nodded. Though she wanted to, she didn't ask why he didn't want the other two Daitengu to know he was also in the school. "You just got back?"

He nodded again and turned his head to look down at her. He was much taller than her, sitting up on the ledge, so she had to tip her head back to look him in the eye.

"This morning." He hesitated, continued. "He told you what happened."

She frowned, angling her head up to look at him in confusion. "Who told me what?"

"Nine years ago."

That wasn't a question. It was a statement, a fact.

Pai didn't need him to clarify his words to know what he was talking about. Her muscles locked with tension before she forced herself to relax. She had a feeling that she was likely to start reacting that way whenever anyone so much as breathed the words 'nine years', even if they were totally unrelated to what had befallen the Tengu nine years ago.

"How do you know?" she asked quietly.

"I heard, on my way back to Ayashi House."

On your way back? But they hadn't come across each other when they'd been walking to school. Surely she would have seen him, what with how she was so overly aware of her surroundings lately, especially after she'd been blindsided by the Onihitokuchi.

Oh. Wait.

I really need to start remembering that they can fly.

She nodded as she fidgeted with the ends of her scarf. "He told me what they did, what you had to do before Kagetora-san got there. Is that why you made the face?" she asked quickly, not wanting to talk about Shin being forced to willingly release Shinigami to try and save his people, his friends and family.

Shin raised an eyebrow in a perfect arch that she was a bit envious of. No matter how she tried, when she attempted to raise only one eyebrow, the other automatically went up as well. Winking was an issue as well.

"I made a face?"

She nodded. "When I asked you who Kagetora-san is, after the thing with Yamajijii happened." She was already regretting asking the question as she watched a wall fall over Shin's eyes. It was like looking at a door that had been slowly opening, and then watch it suddenly slam shut and know that it was her fault. She wanted to tape her mouth shut when she almost unconsciously continued talking. "Is it because he...did not stop the previous Kings before it happened?"

Shin's upper lip curled at the mention of Kagetora. She should have just kept quiet about it. Now all she'd done was remind Shin about it, and if Shouta was right about him running from his past, he wouldn't want to be reminded of it. If Shinigami's reaction and lashing out at Yuu for showing it to him was any indication of it, at any rate.

"Kagetora." Shin dropped any use of honorifics. His voice was laced with venom when he said the name.

She dreaded the day Shin might speak her name in that tone of voice, if it ever came. She prayed it wouldn't ever happen.

"I wouldn't hate him if that was all there was to it." Shin answered slowly. "He had the power to, but that doesn't mean that you should overthrow your King simply because you are capable of it. If the tables were turned and it was Sojobo Kurama attacking the Kitsune for nothing more than their land, none of us would willingly want to kill him either. Even if we knew he was insane. He is our King, the one who leads us all. No matter what, we must always have faith in our Kings. Otherwise, it could only start a civil war. The territory wars were bad enough."

She frowned, focusing on one thing that contradicted what he said on having faith in Kings. Shouta claimed that Kagetora refused to accept the Ueno's as his Kings. He couldn't have faith in them if he did that. So why would he hesitate to stop them if that was true?

"He has done something else to you..." she said, her words more a question than affirmation. That hatred in his eyes – there was no way he could loathe Kagetora so much as she could see he did if it was as he said, and he didn't blame Kagetora for not stepping in earlier to save his people.

Shin nodded. "He is guilty of more than not stopping the slaughter of my people."

When he didn't say any more, she realized that though he'd already told her this much, he wasn't going to tell her the reason why he hated Kagetora. She wasn't surprised. This was his past he was talking about, and a painful one at that. He wouldn't want to share it with someone like her, someone he didn't even really know all that well to begin with. It wasn't like they'd really spent much time together in the year she'd been living at Ayashi House.

She herself didn't even know what she would do, was going to do, with the memories that were ever so slowly resurfacing, memories that painted her as a person she didn't want anyone else knowing about. If they knew that she might be a killer, a cold-hearted murderer who didn't feel any remorse for all the deaths she caused, was responsible for, what would they think of her? How would they look at her? Would they deem it safe to let her continue stay in Ayashi House, when they went to such far lengths to protect Shiori?

She would be like a snake in bed, an unknown danger to Shiori. The worst part of it was, was she even herself, or just a figment of who she could have been if she hadn't disappeared for three years?

Who – what – was she without the memories, and what was she with them?

"I am sorry," she mumbled, eyes on her interwoven fingers as she twisted the ring on her finger. She wondered if she would even need it anymore, now that possibly three Daitengu would be around at all times. Yori Chiisai wouldn't come within a hundred meters of sensing the Hengen. "If you did not want me to know of it."

"Why? It's our history."

He didn't explicitly say anything, but she got the feeling that it wasn't far enough in their history for it to hurt any less.

"Shouta-san thinks that you are trying to run from it." The words were out of her before she realized it, and she bit her lip, silently cursing herself. It was like the filter in her brain, sorting out what to say and what not to say, broke every time she was around Shin. It was beyond frustrating.

Shin smiled. It was an empty smile. His eyes didn't crinkle, his cheeks didn't lift up. His lips barely even moved. "Maybe we're all running from our pasts." He glanced to the side, down at the courtyard below. "Maybe you're the only one running to your past, trying to remember what you can't."

No, she thought . I want to run from it, but I have to run to it, too. Otherwise, how do I know what I'm running from? How do I know who I am now without the missing pieces?

She suppressed a wince of pain when the back of her neck throbbed as she twisted her head around, looking from the far right to the far left of the grounds of the school as an excuse not to look at him. She didn't particularly understand it, but her cheeks always got too hot and her mind went blank when she looked at him, and those eyes of his that missed nothing.

"You just got back." She said gently. "You should rest, at least for today. Besides, Haru-san and Shouta-san are here, and Yori Chiisai can't enter the buildings. Nothing can happen."

Shin reached over and tapped the top of her head with the plain wooden hilt of his tanto, watching her intently as he did. "That is exactly the sort of mind-set you need to get rid of. The Yamajijii got in long enough to speak to you. The Oni managed to take you even with your aura protecting you. There's also the Hengen in your class." He drew back his arm, but she was rooted to the spot by how unexpected it had been for him to do that. "Have you figured out who it is?"

After a moment she shook her head. "No. Maybe Haru-san or Shouta-san will have better luck than us. We only know that they are in class 2-5."

Shin leaned back, arms braced behind him on either side, and tipped his head back as he closed his eyes. The light of the sun was hitting him full in the face. Instead of muting the dark shadows under his eyes, they only seemed to get darker, brought out in sharp relief by the light. He looked so tired, she was half-afraid that he would just fall asleep right where he was and drop off from sitting on the ledge.

"Shin-san, are you all right?" she asked, unable to keep the worry under lock and key any longer. "You do not look well."

His lips twitched in another empty smile. She wished he would stop doing that. "I'm fine."

"You look like you are going to fall asleep where you are. What if you fall?"

"I fly, remember?"

Okay, yes, but – "Still, you should go back home and rest," she pressed. She decided to use duty to get him to listen to her, if nothing else would. "You are not going to be very much help if something like Hanako-san comes out of nowhere."

Shin opened a single eye to look at her. "Hanako-san?"

"Haru-san was watching a drama with her in it. It is the first thing that came to mind." She said defensively.

The only reason she knew that was because she'd heard Mizutani muttering angrily to herself, 'Should never have watched that. How am I supposed to sleep now?' When she asked her what was wrong, Mizutani told her that she'd made the mistake of watching a slasher horror drama with Haru where Hanako-san, the spirit of a young World War II-era girl who haunted school restrooms, attacked students in a school.

Mizutani was angry at herself for watching it because she couldn't handle horror. She got scared too easily, and would torment herself at night by imagining those nightmarish creatures appearing at the foot of her bed.

The problem about it was that Hanako-san actually was real, but she was only Yori Chiisai – and it was more a case of 'it' and 'they' than 'she'. There were many Yori Chiisai whose spirits took on the form of Hanako-san rather than a single one. Logically, Mizutani knew that there was no way Hanako-san could get into the house. That didn't change her fears, though.

"If Hanako-san shows up," Shin said, leaning forward again and bracing his elbows along his thighs. "I think I can handle her."

"But – "

"I can take care of myself," he said gently. "You don't need to worry about me."

She knew that. She knew he was a grown man who didn't need supervision from anyone.

I still worry.

"Shiori-hime's friends look quite amusing. Are you having fun with them?"

Despite still wanting to push him to go back to the house and rest, she allowed the change in conversation. Pai squinted against the light as she tried to find the building where her classroom was, wondering exactly what Shin had seen when he'd been watching her.

Her cheeks heated at the thought of him looking at her while she'd been unaware, and she found herself desperately wishing that she hadn't kept forgetting to fix her hair before the lunch break. What did it look like from the back, especially when it wasn't in check? An albino crow's nest?

Please no.

After a moment, she was just able to see the red of Shiori's hair as she threw back her head and laughed with unsuppressed joy. Pai felt a smile tug at her own lips when she saw how happy she looked. Shiori only objected to the Daitengu coming to school because she wanted to have as normal a high school experience as possible – as well as for Pai. She was happy to see that though Shiori wasn't happy about the Daitengu posing as teachers in the school, she wasn't too put down by it.

"Yeah." She mumbled. "They are. I am glad that Shii-chan had them when I was not there for her. She does not like being alone. She never has."

Shin was silent after she spoke, and she wondered if she had said something wrong, though she couldn't guess at what. When she looked at him, she saw his dark brows crinkled in a frown. He looked like he was thinking about something that confused him, as if irritated that he couldn't understand it. She quickly looked away when he glanced at her, eyes a burning blue.

"How much do you remember of what happened in the Torimaku?" he asked suddenly.

She blinked rapidly in surprise. That came out of nowhere.

"Nothing. I do not remember anything." Some of the pent-up frustration from her problematic memory leaked into her voice. "I remember nothing after I found your na – your true name."

He shifted, turning so that he straddled the ledge with one leg on the side she stood on and the other remained dangling over the side of the wall. His eyes were not glowing as she was used to seeing. She looked at them, noticed a ring of black lining the blue irises. Limbal rings. His gaze was so intent on her that she had to look away from him.

"How did you find it?" he asked.

"I saw it," she said. "The characters of your name. I saw it, and I thought of...of that, and when I did it just seemed to fit."

"That is a stretch."

Her response was mindless as it was automatic. "I was desperate. Why did you –"

Her eyes widened as she stared at Shin. In her mind's eye, she wasn't seeing blue, but red. A blazing, angry red with dark pupils slit like a cat's and traced with a thin line of yellow. She blinked, and the image was gone as fast as it had come.

Shinigami.