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Pai woke with a startled gasp of surprise to the gentle touch of someone wiping away something warm, and wet, leaking from her ears. When her eyes flashed open, panic brimming, it was to see Shin leaning over her, peering down at her with concern such an open look in his eyes that it was almost jarring to see the emotion completely unfiltered, with no walls to parse it through.

"Easy there," he murmured soothingly as she jerked awake, a steadying hand on her shoulder. "It's just me. Just me."

She squinted through bleary eyes, the haze of slumber clouding her, deluding her into thinking she was still asleep. It was either that or Shin, for some reason, looked exceptionally sharp-cut and more handsome that he already usually was. Or maybe it was the light from the bulb fixed to the ceiling that was outlining his body so pleasantly.

Be still, my useless heart. She commanded, to no avail.

Groggily, she mumbled, "Shin-san?"

He hummed in affirmation, a low sound that did surprising wonders to calm her frazzled nerves. Her senses were slow to return to her.

At first, all she was aware of was the twittering of birds flying around outside the window. Then she felt the cold of the mountain air stinging her skin, and the warmth of the blanket covering her from neck to toe, her hair lying open under her, tickling the skin exposed at the back of her neck over her pyjamas. The bed she lay on was hard, the mattress thick, entirely unlike her own more springy mattress.

Her throat was horribly dry, her nose stung with cold, and her eyes were puffy. Her ears hurt like she'd stuck in needles and punctured the eardrum, and her loose hair brushing over her ears pained her almost just as much as a sharp arrow of wind would. The only reprieve she had was that her nose was clear, for now.

For a long moment, she had no idea where she was. She didn't recognize her surroundings. She didn't know what room this was, why there were several identical beds like the one she was on stretching out on either side of her. She didn't know why she felt so awful.

Then she remembered. She was in the convalescence room, sick with a flu she'd caught from a man on the flight back to Sapporo. She'd been here for the last two days, recuperating until she could go back to school with Shiori. By this point, she was beginning to wonder if she'd have to repeat a year, what with how many absences from school she'd had.

"Steady," Shin said as she started to push herself up to sit. He kept a hand close to her shoulder in case she lost balance. She didn't, managing to right herself as she fought off a yawn. She wasn't about to advertise the inside of her mouth to him.

"Sorry," she mumbled, hooking her hair over her ears and resting back on the headboard of the bed. She almost instantly regretted speaking. Her voice was nasally, and her head rang. She felt awful – she could only imagine what she looked like. "I was sleeping..."

"Mhm."

"This is Kanou-san's offi...room?" she continued, squinting as she looked about her at the empty room.

"Mhm."

"I have a flu?" she asked, scrunching her stuffy nose.

"You do," he nodded sagely, wearing a perfectly straight face devoid of the teasing lilt in his voice.

She thought about throwing a pillow at him, but her bones weighed heavy like metal coated them. She grumbled, "Stop teasing me."

Shin chuckled at her pout as she crossly folded her arms over her chest and glared at him, even though all she really wanted to do was smile because of the sound of genuine laughter she almost began considering Shin incapable of nowadays.

In spite of that, she disconcertingly noticed that the shadows under his eyes had darkened since the last time she'd seen him. Seeing them was so at odds with the smile on his face that she almost pointed it out, before wisely changing her mind.

Shaking his head wryly, he nodded at her. "Do you want some water?"

"Yes, please."

Shin stood and briskly made his way over to the water dispenser at the far end of the room. He picked up one of the several empty, overturned glasses on the table by the dispenser and proceeded to fill it up with water. As he did, she couldn't keep herself from studying him carefully.

He was dressed casually, in jeans a little ripped around the knees, and a blue long-sleeved shirt that accentuated his svelte and muscled form. He didn't drag his feet the way she was prone to when a headache pounded away at her skull. His eyes were clear and sharp, unclouded the way they were when she spied the flare of pain in him that he couldn't completely hide.

Still. The shadows under his eyes were proof enough that, despite his outwardly improved condition, not all was sunshine and daisies.

Unexpectedly, a blush stained her cheeks ruddy when she recalled walking in on Shin half-dressed, the tattoos that covered his back, the defined lean muscle, the broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. Quickly she turned her face to the wall, tucking her hair behind her ears with nervous hands. Shiori had helped her scrub the black dye off the white strands, and now her hair felt like a cloud every time she touched it.

Shin returned with a full glass of water in hand. "Thank you," she took the glass gratefully, raising it to take a much-needed drink. The water would've been too cold if Shin hadn't already mixed it with some hot water to temper it. She couldn't help smiling faintly at his forethought as she glanced up at him. "What are you doing here?"

His eyes flickered, glancing at something next to her head before returning to her. "I came to check on you, see if you needed anything." He replied, somewhat taciturn, before turning away again and walking to the other side of the room.

She watched in silence as he went over to the medicine cabinet. It was where Kanou kept all his healing potions and other assorted medicine, with the key still in and turned locked. Kanou would have liked to keep the cabinet unlocked, making it easier to get to things in a rush, but the Tsukumogami made such ease impossible. The Tsukumogami that patrolled Ayashi House had an undesirable habit of taking the things in the cabinet out and trying to clean them. They didn't always manage to return those things whole and unbroken.

One time, a Tsukumogami accidentally shattered a glass vial of dubious content. Kanou ran about the house when he found out, screaming for everyone to get out and not come back until he deemed it safe to. While everyone waited outside the boundary, Yukiji still inside to help Kanou, they'd heard lots of swearing (from Kanou), crashing (from the Tsukumogami, probably), yelping (Yukiji at one point), and Kanou banging doors as he yelled incomprehensibly in foreign languages that even Pai hadn't been able to identify.

At one point, Haru had gone in to help, but flew out not one minute later with some of his feathers singed. He never spoke of what it was that burned his wing. He looked comically traumatized by whatever it was that happened.

No matter how many times Kanou tried, getting the Tsukumogami to stop messing with his things had proved futile.

She had just taken another sip when she felt the glass tremble light against her lip. Swallowing, she lowered the glass and held it in her other hand as she lifted her left, staring at her fingers shaking with minor trembles. Her gaze hardened with irritation when a familiar buzzing started up in her wrists a second later, following up on the shaking.

Then it stopped.

The tremors racking her hand abruptly ceased where they normally would have strengthened until she was incapable of holding anything at all. She was frowning, wondering why the shaking hadn't even started up properly as usual, when Shin returned to her.

"Here," he said quietly, nudging a wad of paper towels at her.

Uncertainly, she took them from him and put the glass of water on the bedside table. "This is to...?"

"Your ears," he replied, voice too tight and controlled. Whatever mirth was in his eyes just seconds ago fled, leaving the blue dark and brooding. "You're bleeding."

She lifted a hand to her ear and gingerly touched it. Her fingers came away slick with traces of blood, warm against the cold of her skin. Her stomach lurched when her mind flashed back to the pictures, pictures she sees of her hands coated in blood covered in it dripping in it and none of it is hers none of it belongs to her.

Staunching herself and forcing her mind away from the images in her head, she lowered her hand to stare at it again as she laid it over the blanket covering her legs. She knew what this meant. She knew why the blood was there.

Slowly, ever so slowly, titbits of her latest nightmare – memory – returned to her. Through a murky cloud she could just make out flashing images that had her stomach coiling painfully tight as she watches the Tanuki start laughing, laughing, laughing like a madman laughing like a crazy man laughing like insanity has ripped him to shreds and nothing matters anymore because now he's free, the chains are broken, she let him out and now, now, she will finally

"Pai?"

"Huh?" she blinked groggily as she shook her head, trying to force her attention back to the present. That was then. This was now. Then did not dictate who she was now. Quickly, she lifted the paper towels and pressed them to her ears, wiping away the blood that had dribbled and dried down the sides of her face. She tried not to wince at the sharp sting in her ears. "Sorry."

"Does it happen every time?" he asked, taking a seat on the edge of the bed by her knees, careful not to jostle her.

Her heart stuttered at how close he was, within touching distance. She made no move to shift away as she winced when she scrubbed a little too hard to get the dried blood completely off her skin. She kept going until all the blood was wiped off.

A little thrown, she repeated blankly, "Every time?"

"When you remember something. You were bleeding from your nose on the roof last time."

"Oh," she mumbled half-heartedly. "Yes...most of the time it is from my nose. Sometimes my ears."

It hurts a little more every time. She wasn't going to add that. She was not looking for his pity, or sympathy.

"Have you told Kanou-san?"

Her head inched to the right, and then she firmly shook her head. "No."

He frowned. "Why not?" he tilted his head to the side in that way of his as he regarded her intently. "Is it because you don't want anyone to know what you're remembering?"

Kuniumi's laughter snapped out of nowhere, and it was a struggle for Pai not to flinch at the suddenness of it. He's a sharp one, isn't he, Bibari? You could run to the ends of the world to hide from him and still, he will always find you.

She looked away from his piercing gaze, knowing that if she let him, he could peer right into her soul and see all her secrets without her saying a word. Kuniumi was right. Shin was perceptive in ways she couldn't even guess at. She was never sure of how she could hide herself from him the way she did from everyone else. She didn't know if it was possible to hide from him.

She dropped her gaze down to the now bloodied paper towels she scrunched together as she clenched her hands to fists. "It would not make a difference even if I told him."

After a brief second, she balled the paper towels up tighter together and dropped them on the table-top before picking up the glass and lifting it to take another long drag of water to quench her parched throat. And to avoid saying anything more. But mostly because she was thirsty.

"You don't know that." A pause. "He might know of a way to make the bleeding stop."

He doesn't. The bleeding is testament to the barriers around your memories breaking down. When the blood stops flowing, the memories stop coming.

She had already guessed as much. But how to say that to Shin without revealing that some crazy woman who only spoke to her in her mind, who appeared only in reflective surfaces, had told her as much? How to say that to Shin, that she trusted the words of this crazy woman in her head, when she wasn't entire surely of why she trusted Kuniumi so much?

"I – I read on the internet that sometimes people with amnesia get nosebleeds when they start to remember things they have forgotten." She glanced up and saw the sceptical look on his face. "What? Do you want a reference?" she asked defensively. In all honesty, she had read that somewhere on the internet.

Only after Kuniumi told her why she bled in the first place, though.

He chuckled lowly, shaking his head at her affronted expression. It was a surprising sound she hadn't expected. She felt her lips tug up in a pleased smile that broke away when she saw Shin wince, closing his eyes for a brief moment before opening them. For a split second, right before he forced it away, she caught sight of the pain behind his eyes.

And the red slivers twining around the blue.

She pursed her lips. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

She frowned. He was – "You are lying."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "How would you know?"

Without thinking about what she was doing, she reached over and lightly pushed against the crinkle between his furrowed brows. Shin watched her warily, as if expecting her to pull out a knife and plunge through his chest. He didn't move away.

"Because," she told him in a quiet voice. "You frown like this when you are lying."

Shin kept his eyes fixed on hers as she withdrew her hand. Only then did she realize what she'd done. Her cheeks reddened as she tucked her hair behind her ear again before she clasped her fingers tight around the curve of the glass in her hand. For a second she was worried that she held on to the glass too tight, and that it might break. She decided that even if such an improbable thing happened, she'd rather have her hands all cut-up than Shin seeing her blushing.

"How are the headaches?" she asked in an attempt to distract him. "How long do you have until...until you need to let him out?"

Shin watched at her silently for moments longer. When he didn't say anything, she glanced up at him. She did not look away this time, holding his gaze firmly to show him she meant what she was asking, to show him that she wanted to know.

He sighed heavily a second later, giving up on holding out against her. "I'm leaving the day after tomorrow. For a week."

That was all he needed to say. That's bad.

That is bad. A pause. Kagetora can help him.

She bit the inside of her cheek as she stared into the clear water in the glass. She rolled the glass around in small circles, watching the water move this way and that. Kuniumi was right, again. Kagetora might not be the only one who knew how to help Shin, but he was the only one they could find in time to do it. Besides, all he asked for in return for his help was a promise from her. Considering the other alternatives, that wasn't bad at all.

The problem was that she made a promise to Shin, to not go near Kagetora ever again. She broke it.

On the flight back to Sapporo, she had racked her brains for any plausible excuse she could use in delaying talking to Shin about what she'd done behind his back. She hadn't expected that excuse coming in the form of a nasty cold that left her essentially bed-ridden for two days, effectively delaying her impending confrontation with him.

But now he was right here. Sitting on the same bed, watching the same birds that wheeled in a mad dance of darting circles outside the window. It was like fate, or whatever governed the tangling strings of what came to be, was laughing at her, taunting her.

Here's your chance, it seemed to be saying. Will you take it? No? Yes? Here it is either way to torment you.

She had been sitting on Kagetora's card, with the phone number to reach him, for a week now. She knew that he was serious when he said that the card was made of seedling paper, and that she had only a month to talk to Shin. Worry that she might lose the card had prompted her to try writing down his phone number, but for some reason, it didn't work.

Every time she penned down the phone number on the back of the card and checked to see if she'd gotten it right, she saw that one digit was always different to what was on the card. It took her several tries before she realized something was preventing her from properly copying the number down. Memorizing the phone number worked to no avail, either. She remembered the individual digits but she always got the order they came in just slightly wrong. These last few days of being ill, she'd taken to staring at the card as she fell asleep and waking up to glare at it, blaming it for her indecision.

At first, she was still hesitant to believe Kagetora when he said he could train Shin to live without his Mask. She couldn't imagine such a thing was possible. She went down to the shrine and prayed to Konohana on the off-chance that the Kamigami would deign to answer her, but no such luck. Then she went to Daichi, and carefully – without letting on anything about Shin's conundrum – asked if it was possible for Hengen to survive and live their lives without their Masks.

Theoretically, it was possible.

There wasn't much of any information regarding the subject, though Daichi believed it was possible, from vague things he recalled his grandfather saying. Learning to be dependant of the Mask would be painful and immensely difficult, but under the right kind of training it could happen.

When she asked if ninetailed Kitsune could do it, he said it would, perhaps, be easier for them. They were old enough to withstand the pain, and strong enough to endure the effects of their dual personalities struggling for dominance. Some even trained themselves to do it, though not many attempted such insanity.

It was only when she was leaving Daichi to his work when he casually noted that certain rumours flew around in the Ayakashi world that spoke of a certain King who lived without the aid of his Mask. She knew in that moment that it was more than likely he knew she'd met Kagetora, and talked with him. She realized it wouldn't be that hard to find out – it wasn't like she and Kagetora were hiding when they walked through around that day.

She wondered if Daichi knew why she'd gone to him. If he knew about Shin and what was happening to him. Maybe that was why he didn't reprimand her for what she'd done.

But Shin was not Daichi. She had to be careful about how she told him of Kagetora's offer. Kagetora warned her that she would only have a month to convince Shin to take Kagetora's help, to use it to learn how to control Shinigami. After that, all bets were off. If she didn't make it in time...

She shook her head resolutely. No, she wasn't going to think like that. She would make it. She would do anything, anything at all, if it meant saving Shin.

"Why do you hate Kagetora-san so much?" she asked him, out of the blue.

She instantly regretted it when a shadow darkened his face. It wasn't subtle at all – tactless is what it was – but she didn't think she would have thought of any other way to steer the conversation the way she needed to. Really, however she looked at it, this conversation was going to be unpleasant – for both of them.

Shin frowned, a shade of rare uncertainty clouding his sharp eyes. "Where did that come from?"

"I am just curious."

First lie of the day.

I'm not lying. I do want to know.

Technically it wasn't a lie. She was curious, desperately so, to know why Shin hated Kagetora. She asked the question only with the intention of bringing what she'd done to light, but she didn't think it would be bad to know the reason behind Shin's loathsome sentiments of Kagetora. Maybe then she could use his answer as some sort of leeway to tell him what happened.

"Besides," she hastened to add. "I have never seen you so angry the way you were at the festival. He was just talking, but you looked like you thought he had tried to murder me."

"He's dangerous." Shin muttered under his breath, impatience flickering at the edges of his words.

So are you.

"So was every other Ayakashi there." She answered, recalling the sharpened canines of Takashi and Arakida battling it out in a fight for sport. "You did not go growling at everyone else the way you did at him." She tilted her head to the side when Shin's gaze slid away, trying to bring his attention back to her. "Your hatred for him is about more than him killing the Ueno's without a thought."

"Does there need to be any other reason?" he asked harshly.

She frowned as she looked at him, watching the wall Shin had so expertly built blocking her from seeing past it. With a twitch of her lips, her eyes sidled away as she looked back at the water in the glass. "I guess not."

'Perfect moments' don't exist. You don't wait for them to come to you – you make them. Kuniumi laughed snidely. You either make one or you can sit out the rest of the month, twiddling your thumbs while the seedlings take root in that card.

I have three weeks.

A week ago you had four. Now it is three. Then it will be two. Then one. Then none.

She closed her eyes in defeat as she sighed heavily. She was delaying the inevitable and that could cost Shin his life. She had no right, no matter how much she didn't want to tell Shin what she'd done, no matter how much she didn't want him to look at her the way he had at Kagetora.

"I..." she paused, hesitating around a thick cotton ball lodged in her throat, before stoically forging on. "I, um. Shin-san, I have something I need to tell you."

Shin lifted a darkly expectant brow. "Does it have to do with him?"

She pursed her lips in hesitation. "Yes." When he didn't say anything, she looked at him. From the irritant scowl adorning his face she knew that there was no way to go back from this. "I talked to him."

"You mean before or after you promised you wouldn't." His voice was hard and unyielding.

She almost visibly quailed at his tone as she quickly looked away, unwilling to look into his eyes and see the betrayal there. Guilt churned in her stomach as she stammered, "A – after."

"Why?" he asked, still so deadly quiet. He was seething. "What could you possibly have to talk to him about?"

For some unknown reason, a little niggling flare of anger lit up in her. She wished – wanted – him to shout at her, even throw things around, but the silent anger exuding from him unsettled her. It threw her off because it wasn't what she was expecting from him even though she knew it was entirely him to be quiet even in his anger, and her already poorly prepared answers to that version of how she thought this would play out were no longer valid.

She didn't like it, her own lack of control, and she lashed out because of that instead of withdrawing into herself the way she usually would. Even though she was the one in the wrong she, incensed, lifted her head from staring vacuously at her fingers to glare at him. "He could sense that your Mask is not working anymore."

"So what?" he snapped. With an angry sigh, Shin leaned back on the bed and ran his hand roughly through his hair. "He's a King. He's strong."

It said a lot that Shin could admit that fact aloud.

"Yes, he is," she replied bluntly. "Strong enough to teach you how to live normally without the Mask."

Shin had been about to speak, maybe cut her off to lecture her for going to Kagetora when she promised she wouldn't, but he paused. He froze at her words and gaped at her soundlessly as she pressed her lips tight and looked back at the glass still clenched tight in her hands. She kept her eyes resolutely stuck to the water, watching it rolling around in the glass as she tipped it this way and that.

"Have you been talking to Kouta?" he finally asked, quietly, watching her closely.

Kouta? She blinked in confusion. "No. What does he have to do with this?"

Shin clenched his jaw briefly. "Nothing." He tilted his head to the side, his jaw a stern line. "How do you know he wasn't lying to you?"

"Kagetora-san?" he nodded. "He was not."

"How do you know?"

Call me what you like, believe what Shin tells you of me, listen to the stories you hear of me, but know this – I do not lie.

It is true, Kuniumi murmured soothingly. Kagetora winds his words around to manipulate people, but he doesn't lie. In all his long life, he has never lied. He likes to dress his truths in twisting ribbons because life is boring when you're given the answers just like that, a snap of invisible fingers that clicked loud in her head. But he does not lie.

"I just do."

Shin made an impatient sound at the back of his throat. "He's a damn ninetails, and you're human. Don't be so foolish to believe that someone like that couldn't lie to you."

"That's exactly it!" she exclaimed, a burst of unexpected energy – and not a little fury – rising in her and making her forget her stubborn use of formal speech. "He's a ninetails, and he's strong, and he can help you. He can teach you how to live without the Mask!"

Shin glared. "I would rather die than let that man teach me anything. You don't know him like I do."

She snapped.

At his words, something inside her broke. When she spoke after gaping at him stupidly for five seconds that stretched like a cavern of emptiness between them, boiling anger and an unnameable grief simmered under her words.

"Maybe you have no problem dying because you're too stubborn to ask for help when you need it, but what about us?" she snapped, a fearsome glare in her eyes. "What about everyone you're going to leave behind if you die? How are we – how am I supposed to live knowing that I had a chance to help you and I didn't take it?"

"Pai – "

Her heart stuttered in her chest, beating, hurting, pulsing, aching, as one second later, the woman holding the little girl in her arms jerks back. Squeezing her eyes shut and trying to breathe around the ball of pain in her throat, her hands jerked as she gestured wildly outside the window. Water splashed on the blanket covering her legs, but she didn't care.

"How can you be so willing to die when everyone here risked their life to save yours, and you're just going to throw it all away? How can you be so willing to let yourself die when you are going to leave behind so many people who care about you? You should appreciate being alive at all. That is more than many get to have."

Overcome with emotion that was balled up and threatening to strangle her, she shut her mouth and reached out to put the glass down on the table before she hurled it at the wall her in anger. She killed people, and she knew that if they had the chance to they would have fought to their last breath to keep living. They had people living for them; they had people to live for.

Little Theia had to live with knowing what happened to her parents before she died. Before she was killed.

And now here Shin was, practically allowing himself to die, willing to let the people he loved watch that happen. Maybe he wouldn't physically actually die, but the Shin everyone knew and cared for would be gone. He might as well die for what it meant. Shinigami would never give the reigns of control back to Shin.

She closed her eyes and leaned forward, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes to keep the furious tears from spilling over. Everything inside her hurt so much. Her bones were brittle, and her blood was so hot in her veins, she thought she was going to burn from it. It was all coming at her from too many directions, hitting her too hard and too fast. She didn't know what to do with the wreckage it all left behind inside her.

Her brain was on fire as she forced – tore – her mind away from the pictures that blurred past her sight. The human woman and the Tanuki with a devilish smirk on his face as he kissed her before taking a bite into his own cinnamon bun.

Teke Teke running its hands so lovingly down the cheek of a girl it was possessing to die.

Shiharu's body slamming into the hurtling train and blood spurting everywhere.

The man chained to a chair, violently shaking as she presses her finger on the button and the electricity rips through him.

Silence, unlike the comfortable, companionable quietude that they shared with each other, stretched like an endless gulf between them. Shin was watching her but she didn't look at him. She didn't think she even had the strength to make a single move. Sick with the flu and hopelessness because of the very real possibility that Shin would refuse Kagetora's help had drained her of all her energy. She was tired, tired of the uncertainty and confusion that hounded her every step.

What do I do? She asked, turning to the one solid in her turbulent life. What do I do if he still refuses? What do I do if he...if he...?

She trailed off, unable to continue, unable to finish that question with the possibility that dangled at its end.

When Shinigami took over during those awful weeks after she woke from the Onihitokuchi's poison, she couldn't imagine anything worse than the emptiness of Ayashi House without Shin in it. He was so quiet, sometimes she didn't even realize he was in the room unless he made himself known, but he was still there, still part of the family. Then suddenly he wasn't, leaving behind only his presence in his belongings as lingering testament that he had ever lived there at all. He was everywhere without being anywhere.

It was so lonely, and trying to picture a life without Shin in it was like picturing a life where a hole was carved out of her heart, leaving her only as a shell of herself.

She already had a hole in her heart. She didn't want it to get any bigger when she was struggling to contain it at its dragging weight already.

A hesitant pause. We...we do not know. We did not think this far. We did not consider it.

What? That he might?

We never thought he could. He's supposed to protect Shin the way we do you...what...what if he does? What if he dies? What do we do then?

She could feel Kuniumi's frown, her confusion, her fear and doubt. It was new, for Kuniumi. Neither of them liked it.

She rubbed her hands over her eyes when she felt tears wetting her eyelashes. She looked up when she felt the bed dip. Shin was moving, standing up, running his hands through his hair in frustration. He turned away from her, and she felt a flash of fear that he would just walk away as she stared at the broad shoulders going down to a trim waist, stared as he pressed his forefinger and thumb to his temples, trying to ease the headache away. The headache that was Shinigami breaking through the thinning barrier that kept them separated from each other.

She tried to imagine him not there anymore, not in Ayashi House, not him anymore. Her heart clenched tight in her chest with loneliness just at the painful thought.

She thought he was going to leave. He surprised her by slowly walking over and sitting on the edge of the bed next to her, elbows braced on his knees. She tried to control and regulate her breathing so that she wouldn't set off the waterfall churning inside her as Shin dropped his head in his hands, looking down at his booted feet and pushing his fingers through the long hair falling over his forehead.

She didn't know what to say to him. She'd let her anger get the better of her and exploded, and now she didn't know what would happen. The shaky tandem between them was so unsteady and rocky. She couldn't guess at what he would say. As it was, she knew that his final decision could go either way. His intense hatred for Kagetora was strong enough that he could choose to let himself fade away rather than accept help from the Kitsune King. The only thing she could do now was wait and see if her words had, in some way, even just a little bit, gotten through to Shin.

Shin finally sat up again, sighing heavily and shook his head. He swung his legs over the bed and settled on it with his back braced against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. It was like all the energy he'd had was suddenly drained, and she could see he was tired beyond words.

"When I was with the Yakuza Ayakashi," he finally spoke, tipping his head back on the wall to look up at the ceiling. After a second he closed his eyes and continued in a low voice. He sounded like he was too tired to speak any louder. "A few years ago, there was a fire. It was in a building where humans employed by the Yakuza Ayakashi worked."

"They employ humans?" she asked before she could stop herself.

He nodded. "Same as we do. When it comes to work and making money, it doesn't matter what race you are. That day, someone forgot to turn the gas off. It stayed on throughout the night, and before anything could be done, it exploded. Those of us in the city were called, and we all rushed to go put the fire out. It was bad, the fire. It raged and burned everything, the foundations of the building, all the steel and wood within reach. There were three small kitchens in the building. Three gas balloons. The fire ignited the other two and made everything worse."

"When did this happen?"

"Eleven years ago. Do you remember anything about a fire in the building a few streets down from JR Tower?"

Her stomach curled tight at the mention of JR Tower, as he glares at her, and his eyes are no longer the light brown that so match hers – they are a glowing amber that burns with so much fury, it is like she is being scalded by it.

Swallowing, yanking her mind from the memory, she nodded hesitantly. A puzzled frown pulled her brows low when she cast her mind back to the vague memory of hearing about the fire. At eight years old she was too young to really care much about it, only hearing about it from her classmates in school a day or two after the fire.

"I heard about it, I think," she murmured.

He licked his lips as he stared fixedly at the ceiling. He chuckled mirthlessly to himself, an empty, hollow sound that was foreign and wrong coming from him. Five feet separated them from each other but he might as well have been sitting right next to her for the complete silence that he spoke in.

"Ayakashi heal quickly, but fires like that burn to the bone faster than we can heal the wounds. All Hengen in the area, Yakuza Ayakashi and all the others went in and out of the building to get people out because the firemen were taking too long to get there. I got as many people as I could out, but my wing was damaged from the falling debris. I could barely walk after that. Do you know how many people died in that fire?"

She shook her head, preparing for the worst. "No."

"One. Two, technically."

She was surprised. She thought there would have been more fatalities.

"A woman. Mid-thirties, human, a haafu. Her name was Sanghamitra Akahito. She was pregnant. Nobody else had seen the woman there, heard her screaming for help. I was supposed to go get her, but my wing stopped me. That was when Kagetora came."

He speaks of that...? Kuniumi stirred, a spark of recognition lighting up in her that had Pai responding with a puzzled frown.

She just stopped herself from shaking her head. Keep quiet.

"He was there?" she asked him.

He nodded. "All entries to the building were blocked. I begged him to get her out before the fire got to her. I thought that a ninetails would be strong enough, I thought that he could have used his kitsunebi to deflect the fire from him. Do you know what he did instead?"

She was afraid to say anything as her mind painted a perfect picture of the sly smirk playing on Kagetora's curving lips, the way he teased her by saying just the right thing, or not saying anything at all. Her stomach was queasy, and she looked down to stare almost unseeingly at her fingers, at the bitten cuticles.

"What did he do?"

For one impossibly long second, Shin didn't say anything. There was total silence from his end. She lifted her head to look at him. He was staring fixedly at the ceiling overhead, unblinking and utterly still. He could have turned into a statue, if not for the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

"Instead," he finally spoke, so quiet and low that she wouldn't have heard if not for the silence they were encased in. He closed his eyes. "Of saving that woman with his kitsunebi, I watched him send two of them into the building. One struck the steel framework holding up the wall next to her. It was barely hanging on, but the kitsunebi burned through the poles holding it and melted the steel. The wall was seconds from collapsing when the second kitsunebi blocked her from running through the doorway to get away."

She couldn't believe what she was hearing, yet she knew he wasn't lying to her or making this up. No one could fake the barely repressed pain in his face, pain she wasn't sure he knew he was showing.

Shin opened his eyes and looked at her, and they were so carefully devoid of emotion that she knew he donned the ice mask to suppress his true feelings, hiding them from his face. "I watched him choose to let that woman die, choose to kill her, for no reason."

She didn't know what to say. She had never even taken into consideration that his reason for hating Kagetora could be something as bad as that – though she should have known. Shin didn't hate anyone for no reason. Shin didn't do things for no reason. Behind every word, every look, every action, there was a purpose. She should have realized there was a reason why Shin hated this one particular Kitsune so completely.

Her mind whirled in confusion, hesitation, lost as she stammered, "I'm sorry, I didn't – I didn't know."

"That is why I hate him." He told her in that cold, detached tone. She winced. "That is the kind of man who could kill you just because he feels like it. That's why I didn't want you going anywhere near him. You're asking me to put my life in his hands."

This time it was she who shut her eyes and turned away from him, shame burning her red, budding grief nipping at her with sharp little teeth. She wished she'd known. She should have known that whatever it was that made Shin hate Kagetora so much would be bad.

But how? How was she to know something like that? How could she have guessed that Kagetora could be like that?

Poor Kage, Kuniumi's laugh echoed like a soft ball bouncing off the walls of her mind. Shin does not hate for no reason, but Kagetora doesn't do anything for no reason, either.

Pressing her lips tight together to stop them from wavering, she opened her eyes and saw Shin sitting with his head tilted back again. She asked, What?

Kagetora is King. But before that, before anything, he maintains the balance. It is why he is allowed – forced, he would say – to continue existing.

What do you mean? She asked, frowning in confusion. I don't understand. Are you saying there's a reason he let that woman die?

He prevented one future by killing that woman. A future where the world would burn in ash, the streets wet with blood and the splayed limbs of the dead, humans plunged to the darkest depths of despair.

What does that have to do with her?

That woman was good, and kind, but her husband was not. She was pregnant with a child who would be influenced by his father than his mother, and grow to be a tyrant worse than the likes of the man who ignited the humans' world war. She could feel Kuniumi's maddening smirk grow in her mind, the breaking edge of insanity licking at the heels of her words. Kagetora forked that future. He turned it down another path, one more peaceful to the humans by preventing the child's birth, and the possibility of the woman birthing another of the same kind. He forked the future to another that keeps the balance this world is in dire need of.

Stunned, she could only whisper, How could he even know something like that?

We told you. Kuniumi repeated simply. He maintains the balance. He always will. This is the tragedy for one such as him. Those who cannot understand him and his actions hate him, and those who do can only pity him. Touka was different – she didn't judge him for what he's condemned to do. She accepted him as he was and didn't ask him to be more than he can be.

How do you know? She asked dubiously, a little of the constant frustration that hounded her whenever this Touka was brought up rising to bite her. How do I know you're not making that up to justify him?

Why would we?

Kuniumi had a point there. Why would Kuniumi lie about something like that? So far, she hadn't lied about anything else. She wiggled her way out of revealing the truth, she threw confusing riddles around, she evaded questions she didn't want to answer, especially about Touka. But she didn't blatantly lie to her, either.

She looked back at Shin, who remained seated in much the same way through everything Kuniumi had just revealed. She wanted to tell him what she'd just learned, the words were on the tip of her tongue, but she stopped. She couldn't say it without revealing how she knew, and she couldn't tell him that Kuniumi told him. Pai wasn't ready to tell anyone about her yet.

Do you want our help? She chirped.

She frowned, instantly recognizing that tone as she dropped her eyes to the end of the bed.

Like you did in Aihara's office?

We will be careful, Kuniumi murmured soothingly, easily sensing Pai's hesitation. He will not know which of us he speaks to. We can be like twins. She ended in a hysterical giggle.

She had no idea who Kuniumi meant by 'us', but she wasn't going to let Kuniumi speak through her again. She had enough holes in her memory without adding on another. She was delaying in finding a way to get rid of Kuniumi, and she knew that was dangerous. If this kept on for any longer, things might turn that there was no way to force Kuniumi to leave.

She couldn't run the risk of letting Kuniumi use her voice, her mouth, her body, the way she wanted, because the line that kept the two separated might wear thin. What would happen if it kept getting more tenuous, blurred so much that it ceased to exist? That wasn't something she was willing to let happen.

Unintentionally, her voice cracked when she spoke. "You'll die."

Shin lowered his eyes from the ceiling and turned to her, still keeping the back of his head resting on the wall. "I know."

"If you don't let him help you, you'll die." She repeated, her voice trembling as she remembered the pang of loneliness that punched her in the gut every time she woke up in the morning, in those weeks when Shin was Shinigami. "You won't be here anymore. It will be him."

And he doesn't care whether he lives or dies because he thinks no one cares.

"I know." A lengthy pause. "What does he want? In return for teaching me, what does he want?"

Hope ignited. Steeling her wavering nerves, she said quietly, "A promise."

"From who?"

"Me."

"You?" he echoed, brow furrowing in confusion.

She nodded hesitantly, hoping, praying, that him asking this was a sign that he was at least considering Kagetora's offer. "He wanted me to promise that I would truthfully answer a question he'll ask."

"One question." She nodded again. "That is a big risk."

She glanced at him, surprised. "How?"

"He thinks you're Shiori-hime's handmaiden. What if he asks you about something only an actual Tengu close to Kouta's family would be privy to? And what if he gets angry when you can't answer because you don't know? He is still a King, and we don't have good history with Kitsune."

She'd never considered that angle before. Maybe she was too hasty to agree because of how seemingly innocent the request was. But she was desperate, and even now, knowing the risk such an innocuous bargain posed, she would strike the same deal again if it meant saving Shin.

He will not hurt you. Kuniumi said, knowing where Shin was going. He does not care about being King. He never wanted to be King in the first place. Politics bores him.

Why?

Paperwork. Kuniumi laughed, so whole-hearted and genuine was it that she blinked in shock. She'd never heard Kuniumi sound like that, laugh like she meant no malice with it. He hates reading. Touka could never get him to make it through a single scroll. What he asks you will not put you in danger, dear Bibari. He would never let any danger come to you, not after you proved yourself by surviving So Fu.

Her stomach curdled at the mention of the shadow organization. How do you know?

Kuniumi's voice turned sad, and morose. It was burdened with the same grief Pai sometimes caught from her, that sometimes leaked into her and crippled her with its strength.

Because we were there, she whispered. We were there twelve hundred moons ago.

Two hundred years.

Again, Kuniumi was talking about something that happened two hundred years ago, and this time it wasn't about something to do with Shiori incarnating that time, but about Kagetora. Though, if Kagetora only came into power after the attack nine years ago, that meant that Kagetora wasn't King yet back then. He'd been someone else entirely.

What happened? She asked, her inner voice quiet as she could think to make it go. What happened two hundred years ago, Kuniumi?

That is not in your memory, Kuniumi reprimanded sharply, catching her by surprise. You do not need to know.

Why do you keep talking about it as if I should know?

Because you should.

You don't make any sense, you know that? You never do! She snapped, exasperated, and not a little hurt at how quickly Kuniumi shut her down. She didn't know why she felt that way. It wasn't like she had any right to, or like it hadn't happened a million times before already.

Kuniumi laughed. That is not something we want you to know about when your mind is so fragile. Maybe one day you will. But today is not one day, is it?

"How long?" Shin asked, breaking her attention away from roundabout riddles. When he saw the confusion etched on her face, he clarified. "Did he tell you how long he'll wait for an answer?"

"A month. Three weeks now," she corrected. "After that, everything is off." After that, there would be no more chances.

"How are you supposed to contact him?"

She reached up to the front pocket in her pyjamas and pulled the plain white card printed with gold-embossed digits on one side, empty on the other. She stretched out and handed it to him, quickly pulling her hand back when the tips of her fingers brushed his.

"He said the card is made of seedling paper, and that when a month is up and I still haven't called him, it will be too late."

Shin carefully ran his fingers over the phone number, drumming them twice on the card. He grunted as he shook his head wryly. "Of course."

She frowned, wondering at the dry laugh. "What?"

He lifted the card with two fingers. "He spelled this so that you can't copy the number anywhere else."

Sly fox, Kuniumi giggled, the childish part of her returning as if the grief and sadness had never been.

"Oh. That explains it." She muttered, consternated that she'd bothered trying so many times to do just that yet finding herself unable to at every single turn. She tried to keep the hope from colouring her voice, but it was hard. "Are you going to call him?"

"I need to think about this," he said quietly. He swung his legs over and stood, walking over to stand at the end of her bed by her feet. He leaned down, bracing his hands on the bed frame as he regarded her with a dark look. "I know you did this because you were trying to help me, but you shouldn't have gone to him. Not alone. You realize that, don't you?"

"I know." She mumbled sullenly.

"He's dangerous, and unpredictable. He might have been willing to offer his help for only a promise, but you shouldn't trust Kitsune's words so easily. Even if they don't tell outright lies, they're good at twisting what they say around so that you think one thing, so sure about it, when he means something completely different."

"Trust me, I know." She said firmly, lifting her head up to look him right in the eye. "But I did go to him anyway, and I am fine."

"He didn't do anything now," he warned. "But next time he could change his mind simply because he feels like it."

"I will be careful. And I am sorry for making you worry," she added. Only now did she come to realize that perhaps Shin wasn't so worried and angry because she'd risked exposing Shiori to unnecessary danger, but maybe it was because he was worried about what Kagetora could do to her.

That thought did funny things to her swimming stomach.

He regarded her silently for a moment longer, watching her with the intensity of those eyes that could peer right into the depths of her slowly darkening soul and pry out all her secrets with the sound of his voice. Despite that she kept her eyes on him, in her own way trying to see what he would choose through the fear clouding her head, fear that he would reject Kagetora's offer.

"I'll keep this with me," he said, tucking the card into the back pocket of his jeans.

"Okay." She responded quietly, her shoulders sagging as she leaned back on the headboard. All she'd done was talk but she was already so exhausted. Her eyelids drooped as she thought about the blissful oblivion of sleep that so eluded her these days.

Even though, now, there was a tiny flicker of hope that Shin could still be saved from his True Ayakashi, she still felt like she'd lost something. What exactly it was, she didn't know. Maybe it was the chance of Shin ever trusting her again. But she'd been willing to risk that before, hadn't she? She was willing to let him hate her for the rest of her life if it meant that at least he would be alive to do it.

Right?

It still hurt.

Her heart weighed heavy in her chest, a stone with a hole right in the middle of it, as she recalled the dark, almost hurt, look in his eyes when she told him she'd talked to Kagetora, after she'd promised him that she wouldn't. She was willing to let him hate her, but she hadn't realized just how painful it would be. What if they went back to being the way they were before, simply nodding to each other when they passed in the halls of the house, avoiding each other, not talking so easily the way they had only just started to?

Don't fret, Kuniumi crooned in a sickly sweet voice. He couldn't hate you even if he tried.

You said that before. You don't need to repeat yourself.

Then why aren't you listening?

Because you might know Kagetora, she admitted in a deadened tone. And you might know me, but you don't know Shin. You don't know what he thinks like you know what I think. You don't know how he feels the way you know how I feel.

She laughed, buzzing with amusement. Maybe that is because you are the only blind one here. Even the young Heir has seen it, behind the façade of the fool he plays.

A flicker of a frown brought her brows down slightly. Kouta? He's seen what?

But, as usual when she wanted to be enigmatic – and annoying – Kuniumi was gone. Again.

Her attention was brought back to outside of her mind when Shin took a step forward. Without warning and taking her by surprise he ruffled the top of her head gently, messing up her hair. She was so shocked at the gentle move that she didn't even make a move to smooth her hair down the way she did when Haru did the same. Shin doing it was so different to Haru, and she couldn't even properly put into words why that was so.

"You should get some more sleep," he remarked as he started turning to go. He glanced back at her over his shoulder with a faint smile touching his lips. "Humans need sleep when they're ill, right?"

"Uh," she said dumbly, blinking rapidly. "Y – yeah. Sleep. Good idea."

With a wave over his shoulder, Shin left the convalescence room, leaving her to think that maybe, just maybe, all was not lost as she thought.