(EDITED)
(Note to readers: All chapters are now up to date with the new edits!)

H2O

Water.

Inorganic compound. Transparent, tasteless, odorless, colorless. Created via burning highly reactive gases or a hydrogen combustion reaction. Vital to the creation and survival of all forms of life.

___________________

Here's the secret of life: Or die trying.

If you want a translation, that means: Win.

Bullshit. It's really not that clear, if you think about it. Win. Or die trying. Too quick. Too broad. You might use it in the wrong situation. Give me a chance.

Let me explain.

Nami came to see me three days after the match.

The hospital had cleared me to return home under Ramos's watch, leaving me with half a dozen types of ice packs in the freezer to rotate between and a bottle of painkillers to top it off. It took an additional hour and a half for her to patch up the other wounds that had torn into my body from the two matches, and by the time she was finished, I was already promising her a box of cupcakes at some point to make up for the efforts.

She held up a hand and held out her pinkie. "Just keep yourself out of this kind of trouble for the rest of your very long life, Echo. Promise?"

I hooked her pinkie with mine. "Yeah. Promise."

Half of Corvus was asleep by the time I returned. Wynter, Zoe, and Diego had taken it upon themselves to sleep in the living room with extra blankets to keep warm, Rosalie on dish duty alongside Zahir, and Kenzo aimless on his phone at the table. At my entry, Meredith came bounding over to me from Kane's room.

"You're back," she said, sounding relieved. "Hungry?"

"You waited?"

"Hey, don't sound surprised," Rosalie snapped. "It makes me depressed."

Zahir smiled at me from over his shoulder. "I'll heat it up for you. It's a veggie stir fry."

Kane and I didn't talk for nearly two days. Fact, he didn't talk to anyone, content to stay inside his room and only leave at times no one could really catch him. No one blamed him, however. It just meant our dinners were far more quiet, and when the end of the semester struck, the unit far more mournful.

"Have you seen him at all?" Rosalie asked me.

"No," I admitted. "I think that's a good thing, though. I don't think he's in a position to talk with anyone."

Rosalie drummed fingers on the back of her arm, then said, "What are you going to say to him?"

I could almost laugh. I closed my eyes instead. "I have no idea," I sighed, and that was just the truth.

December was beginning to feel more like January, with all the melancholiness that had soaked through Corvus, all the anticipation that felt more like dread seeping into the Talon's bones. Nami's arrival was a half-hearted attempt at hope, then.

"Hey." Diego cracked my door open and gestured behind. "Some angry bloodsucker is here to see you. Nani?"

I got to my feet. "Where is she?"

We sat across from each other at the dining table, Diego and Zahir heading out on last-minute Christmas shopping, Kenzo out on a more cryptic reason, and Kane holed up in his room. It left me no one as defense, just Nami and me and an intimidatingly high stack of papers at her right.

"Mister Yun," she grumbled, flicking a single, stray hair strand from her face.

I tugged at the collar of my blue cardigan. "Nami," I said. "Happy holidays?"

"Don't amuse me," she said, and pushed the papers to me. "Let's discuss this whole 'real person' thing of yours, yes?"

I said, "Yes."

Nami laid it out for me over the course of the hours. I'd have to turn in every single belonging of mine that had either been given to me by the Bengals or bought with money acquired from the Bengals, including weapons, fake IDs, clothing, passports, and technology. From there, I'd have to be put into the system with a new registration, a new social security number, and a real passport. It also meant getting an actual driver's license.

"You never actually took the test?" she said.

I just looked at her. She sighed. "That is your own problem to solve then." She pushed the last paper to me. "Print the name you'd like to be registered under, and the pack. You are technically Drachmann-born, but if you do you want to stay as a Stirling—for whatever reason—that is your prerogative. Fill in the rest of the information—honestly, please."

I glanced at date of birth. I said, "Do I have to put my real one?"

She raised a brow. "You can't be more than twelve months off."

Good enough for me.

I scribbled down November 24th and ignored the look she gave me for it. 

"Mister Wang's estimated income for the year is here," she pointed at the paper's upper corner, where eight digits glared back at me. "Your Red Diamond earnings along with the money your old...boss allotted will cover at least a third of it. The rest will have be taken out of your earnings from each match. If there is anything still remaining, you will have to find your own way to pay it. Got it?" 

I nodded. Nami pushed a pen to me to sign.

"All right. Final issue." She folded her hands. "The public currently believes you are a Beta. Biologically, this is something we cannot change to fit that. We can either assist you in releasing the truth, or we can comply to a full non-disclosure of your true subspecies. It is your choice."

I drummed my fingers on the table. "Disclose it," I said. "People will find out sooner or later as it is. It'll be more distraction anyway."

Nami shook her head. "Lycans," she muttered. "So drama." She stuffed all the papers into her briefcase. "We'll be in touch about sending you your necessary files and and identifications. Tang will be back in one week to collect all your things." She pointed a finger. "And I mean all of it." 

I got to my feet. "What about Kane?"

Nami paused. "Your nurse has been in contact with Miss Wang," she said. "Short notice makes any surgery extremely difficult to secure."

"But it's secured, isn't it?"

"Mister Wang is an adult," she said. "He will have to consent to it."

"He has."

"You have." Nami headed for the door. "Thank you for your compliance, Mister Yun, we will be in touch."

"Nami." She stopped. I said, "Thank you."

Nami turned around. "We'll be in touch." She shut the door behind her.

I blew out a sharp breath that came out in a puff of cold, December freezing it on the spot. My fingers itched for a cigarette, and I sat back at the table, alone.

"I gotta get my permit," I muttered.

The day Kane spoke to me was a day before Christmas Eve. We were the only ones left in the unit, Rosalie in San Marino, Kenzo in New York, Diego and Zahir with Zahir's parents in Menlo Park, and my fellow sophomores fleeing for home in the south.

"We can stay," Wynter argued. "I can go see them on Christmas day."

"I don't want you to spend Christmas alone," Zoe added.

I shook my head. "Go, really. I'll be fine."

"King's here," Meredith pointed out. 

"We missed your birthday, we miss Christmas, ay," Diego muttered as he slung his bag over his shoulder. "Tell us we're terrible, cobayo."

"Was that even your real birthday?" Zahir asked.

I smiled. "Yes." I waved them off. "Go home, see your families. Trust me. I'll be fine."

A rainstorm struck like a flash fire, the clouds barely perturbed in the evening, but sobbing out their bleeding hearts by morning. The air was thick with ice and wind, bits of December lost in a snowstorm that had swallowed our rooms overnight. 

I pulled my cardigan over my shoulders and shivered in its bite. I stared out at the gray fog sleeping outside my window, the shadow of it bleaching the scene of color. I sat against the windows in the living room, a cigarette between my still-bandaged fingers. The student body had fled Avaldi, leaving the campus barren and free to soak in the rainfall like a sponge. The Talon's windows were streaked in droplets, colored gray, frosted in a blue grade. To join it, I blew a storm cloudo out, and watched it bounce back onto my skin.

"Cheosnun," I murmured.

"Cheosbi."

I turned my head.

Kane stood a few feet from me. His eyes were the same color as the city and magnified behind his thick glasses. He had absorbed the shadows into his dark sweater, his darker pants, the shadows over his face. His hair had missed the memo, full of snowy streaks starting right at the root. 

"First rain," he corrected, then said, "You know cheosnun?"

I let the cigarette rest between my lips. "Mom," I explained succinctly.

Footsteps came behind me. Kane sat down. He held out his hand. I said, "You shouldn't smoke."

"If we did everything we should," he muttered, "we'd be in very different places right now."

I dropped a cigarette into his palm at that. He plucked my cigarette from my mouth and lit the end of his with its wheezing embers. Curls of acrid silver escaped through his teeth.

He said, "Have you really never celebrated Christmas before?"

I blinked. I said, "If I did, I don't remember." Which was honest. "What do you do?"

Kane shrugged. "Corvus always goes away. I usually tag along with one of them."

"You didn't this year?"

Kane considered that. He blew a storm my way. "A bit cruel," he murmured. "Leaving you alone on Christmas." 

"I would've survived," I said.

He shook his head. "Not what I meant." 

I pursed my lips. I turned my eyes out towards the city. Christmas tree farms were rained out, their bright red tarps drab and their trees' branches heavy with water. Shops were decorated with half-hearted blinking lights and blurry shop windows displaying antique Santa Clauses, glassy reindeer figurines, fresh cherry pies, warm squash soups, holiday sales, holiday deals, holiday wishes. I watched it from beyond, like looking through a peep hole at a different world entirely.

"What do you do?" I asked. "On Christmas."

Kane considered that. "We used to park at the nearest convenience store because nothing else was open and eat cheap junk food while talking," he said.

"Strange tradition."

His lip twitched. "It was my favorite."

"What happened to it?"

He shrugged. "Time. Distance. People grow out of traditions."

I stared out at the rain. I dropped my cigarette into the plastic cup by my feet.

"Wanna try again?" I asked him.

Kane said, "We don't have a car."

"You do."

The smoke shrouded the confusion on his face. Then, he said, "Ah."

"You never cleaned it out."

Kane closed the passenger door. "No," he admitted. "Stupidly."

"Why not?"

He pulled his sweatshirt over his head, CORVUS RACING imprinted on the breast in blazing white and purple. "Don't know," he murmured. "Hope, maybe."

The rain sang. I inserted the key. I turned on the engine. Kane said, "You don't have a license, or insurance."

"I think of all the crimes I've committed, that is the least of my worries," I promised. 

Kane raised a brow but didn't ask. "Where are we going?"

I shrugged. "Wherever we want."

I stepped on the gas, and we rolled out into the blurry city. I drove as if I could dive right into the melancholy Christmas, leave the 607 and my agreement with the Wangs behind, as if Kane's hair was dyed and his skin was tattooed and nothing was amiss. Just for a little while. Just for a moment.

I sat cross-legged in the driver's seat, Kane mirrored in the passenger's, a hot pretzel, two slushies, a pack of rainbow gummy bears, and an unspoken question shared between us. The radio was turned up to sticky honey jazz, slow as Sunday, sweet like pears. It was surprisingly warm for the cold world that surrounded us, the traffic lights providing most of the color, their reds, greens, and yellows dissipating like snakes into the slippery concrete below them. The road was a mirror for the city's shadowed face. The man on the radio said so; blue and sentimental, my dreams are blue dreams.

He said, "Do you want anything for Christmas?"

If you don't want me, why do you haunt me, and keep me feeling blue and sentimental?

I offered him the last gummy bear.

"This," I said. "This is pretty nice."

"Being cold in a car with candy for a meal?" he drawled.

"Being cold in a car with candy for a meal with you," I said. "Too big of a wish, maybe."

Kane sat up. His hand reached for the gummy bear, then past it towards me, but he dropped it a breath from my wrist. He pushed the candy back to me.

"Never," he murmured.

We got halfway through the gummy bears before Kane said, "January 18th."

I looked up. Kane popped a green one into his mouth. He said, "The 607."

My heart stuttered over itself. I pushed myself forward. "You got approved?"

Just won't come true, dreams I find.

He nodded slowly. "They said since it's happening so late, it'll be long. Doctor didn't give me a recovery estimate. He said I barely got approved, my body's so all over the place. Ramos said she thinks it'll be okay. I don't know. It's the same week Kenzo is leaving. I can't even help him move. I don't know." Kane tilted his head back, the crown of it resting on the window. "I think I'm supposed to be excited."

I leaned back. I thought so, too. I waited for the excitement to hit me, the that's great, the thank God. I waited for the song to end. It rains all the time, since you said goodbye.

When it never came, I debated on thumping my fist against my chest to restart my sensibility. My eyes found Kane. His eyes were dry, and his face was blank, but his figure seemed to shrink, to collapse, under the weight of waiting for supposed to.

"Why worry about what's supposed to be?" I gestured around us. "People always want what they think you should be. You do everything you think you should, you do everything they ever want from you. But where are they, and where are we?" I said with a sigh. "Things change how they want to, people make wishes, and you're going to do what you like."

"What's that mean?"

My heart won't let you out of my mind. "Even windows have reflections," I said. "Nobody knows what's supposed to be. You might as well start living for what it is."

Kane remained quiet. My hand threatened to lift, to catch the back of his head and bring him to me, for me to hold onto his hand just to prove I was there at all. But my heart was two-dimensional and useless. 

I left the gummy bear between us, content to freeze in the pouring rain, and began to hum along to the fading radio as we waited for Christmas to come for us.

Blue and sentimental.

And keep me feeling blue and sentimental.

I showed up to Ramos's with a box of Christmas Eve donuts and a hell of an audacity.

She opened after the first knock. She wore a garish Christmas knit that bordered between clever and offensive, two little white dogs with Santa hats sewn into the chest with the words MERRY WOOFMAS below it. She lit up.

"Echo," she said, smiling. "Is something wrong?"

I shook my head. "Not this time," I promised. I offered the box. "I brought donuts."

She laughed. "How thoughtful, thank you. Do you want to come in? Where's King?"

"Resting," I said. "I actually need to ask something of you."

Ramos cocked her head. "Oh?"

I tugged at my collar. "Do you still have everything from that night after The Eclipse?"

Per Ramos-like behavior, she forced me to take off my jacket and shoes and sit in the living room for a cup of coffee before she went off down the hall for my stashed weapons. The donuts felt like a pathetic attempt at ratifying such a weighty responsibility I'd pawned off to her, but I figured maybe, at some point, I could afford a better apology.

"And here I sat thinking you just wanted some holiday company," she said with a small smile.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Ramos waved me off. She had something wrapped in a quilt in her arms. She set it down on the coffee table. "Emeline and I are having dinner tonight. Chinese takeout. Tradition, if you will," she said. "You and King are welcome to join."

I hesitated. "I don't want to intrude—"

"Join us," she rephrased. "Please."

I looked down at the quilt. I didn't know if the want or the guilt was heavier.

Ramos handed it to me and said, "It's your first Corvus Christmas." She held my hand in hers, and gently squeezed my bruised fingers. "Isn't dinner one of your guys' rules anyway?"

My gut squeezed. I held onto her hand through the pain.

"We'll be there," I said.

I pushed my laptop, my burner phone, the gun, the knives, my Brooks Brothers, my hand-me-down Ferragamos, and every fake ID Mercy had ever given me into the paper bag. Christmas Eve was quiet, rained in, full of Christmas-red headlights and Christmas-green traffic signals. 

Kane was in the kitchen, his glasses sliding off his nose and his rings tapping against a pan of still-steaming sugar cookies, their shapes reminiscent of reindeer heads and gingerbread men. He was mid-way through reading directions on the cookie kit when he looked up to spot me.

"Where are you going?" he asked, frowning.

I hesitated. I almost said nowhere, before catching myself. I said, "I have to return some stuff."

Kane looked from the paper bag to me, then hummed. "Tell Tang I said hi."

"You could come out and see him." 

He grimaced. "Just tell him I said hi."

Tang was waiting in a pitch black Kia, its body parked outside the gate and its face bright with white LEDs glaring out into the drizzling air. He rolled down the window at my approach.

I handed the paper bag to him. "Kane says hi."

Tang blinked. He took the bag. He looked me up and down, then said, "Merry Christmas, Mister Echo."

I let the handles slip from my grasp, and felt the weight of the world lift just a little bit more off my shoulders.

"Merry Christmas, Tang," I said with a bow of my head.

He rolled up his window, and drove away without another word. In the soundless city, I watched him go, and bid the Bengals goodbye.

When I returned, Kane was cutting off the tip of a plastic bag filled messily with red icing. I faced him, the tips of my hair damp.

I said, "Tang says merry Christmas."

Kane cocked his head at me. He said, "Ramos told me we should bring dessert. I'm kind of shit at baking." He gestured at the cookies like that was his solution. "Do you want to help?"

I stalked towards him. "Holiday cookies on Christmas Eve," I said. "Bit cliché, no? Are you going to leave them out for Santa?"

"I thought Christmas would make you less of a smartass," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "Would you like me to?"

"Don't mock me."

"Don't make me. Decorate these."

"You gonna tell me a Christmas story while we're at it?"

Kane flicked a lick of icing onto my nose and I yelped. He said, "Not with that attitude." He took another plastic bag of icing and pulled a gingerbread man to him. "Decorate it and I'll tell you a good one."

I smiled, and relished the feeling that made my cheeks hurt. I knew he and I would have to talk more at some point, but I figured for other time being, it could wait. For once, I just wanted to enjoy the night.

"Deal," I said, and poised the piping bag over the reindeer.

Kane let the rain slide over his voice, fade into the blues. I watched the light wash him soft, and wondered, for a brief second, if there was a way to stay in a single frame of time forever.

"There was a writer and three soldiers staying outside of Gyeongju at Christmas Eve, where the writer lost his pipe. The three soldiers were sad for him, but the writer said it was only a pipe, and that they shouldn't worry so much on a holiday. Later, they visited a tea room..."

"Why does the reindeer have a green nose?" Ramos asked, peering at the plate of, frankly, zombie-like sugar cookies. "I don't think that's the story."

I frowned. "What story?"

Kane said, "Never again."

I turned to him. "What story?"

Kane scoffed. "The one with the top hat. It's supposed to be orange."

"You didn't even have orange."

Ramos frowned. "Oh, no, that's not—"

Edwards set out the plates of sliced-up turkey with a thump. "You're both hopeless," she said with a click of her tongue. "Let's eat, we'll grill your cookie skills after."

We ate to the sound of Ramos's holiday radio and Edwards's school staff gossip, discussions of holiday plans and lack thereof filling in the rest of the gaps. I ate until my stomach hurt, the evening outside setting in until the sky was black, the blinking golden lights lining Ramos's window providing some light over the now-empty dinner table. Even in the onset of a winter storm, the room had never felt warmer.

Ramos took the green-nosed reindeer and bit it right off. She hummed. "Impressive."

I shrugged. "What can I say?"

"They're box mix," Kane said.

"Don't ruin my holiday," I snapped.

Coach returned to our table a few minutes later, the plate of cookies halfway gone, with her arms full of perfectly-wrapped present boxes. She said, "Don't tell your teammates. They'll have to deal with New Year's gifts instead."

Kane and I looked to each other. Kane said, "Coach, you don't have to—"

She shook her head, sliding a box at him. She tossed me another one. "Go on, open it, say thank you."

"Thank you," we chorused.

Ramos laughed with delight as she lifted up a bright lavender soup mug, complete with a lid and a hefty gift card inside. Kane pulled open a box of dark blue Air Force 1s, the leather shiny under the light. I pulled open the lid of mine, to find a simple white phone case resting on top of a brand new windbreaker coat.

"You look terrible, running around in the rain with that," she said, gesturing at my very much non-rainproof jacket. "And who doesn't put a case on their phone?"

I brushed my fingers over the plastic. I said, "Thank you, Coach."

She waved that away. "I know."

We smiled.

We headed out once the clock struck nine. Ramos hugged us goodbye, Coach bidding us a good holiday and a safe drive back. As we went, Kane slipped something into their hands, little bows sitting atop them. Edwards said something to Kane that made him smile, half-dimpled and amused. 

We headed for the car, waving the two goodbye. The wind was icy, biting into my skin and leaving red marks there for proof of its viciousness. I blew out a breath of white that broke the faintly lit night. I cursed at the chill in my fingers, and fished about in my pockets for the car keys. 

Something soft wrapped itself around my neck. I jumped, and turned around.

Kane tied the scarf gently and let the tails rest on my chest. He fixed the collar of it under my chin, and the silver in his eyes looked molten in the light. 

I touched the sky blue wool, where his hands still were, let my fingers graze his. I said, "You should take it."

Kane shook his head. "It's yours." 

"I told you not to get me anything."

"It's yours."

"Kane."

"Chuul geoye," he said, and gestured at the damp tips of my hair. "Wet hair and you'll catch a fever." Kane let his hands linger for a moment more, then dropped them to his side. He said, "Merry Christmas, Echo."

December melted between my fingers, fleeing like a first snow.

"Merry Christmas, hyung," I whispered.

I watched it disappear into the clouds. 

I waited for the day I'd come face to face with it on my own terms.

___________________

Kenzo Watanabe graduated at the end of the first semester with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Avaldi University with two offers from IPRA's very own New York Yankees and Massachusetts Robins. Without much hesitation, he chose the Yankees, and would be the newest recruit of their twenty-one-racer lineup when the next season rolled around, based in his father's forty-fifth floor Manhattan apartment, equipped with brand new colors to show off, and given a signing bonus with enough digits to make a man drool. He'd be in training for the first season, and come next, be the newest center tail sub on the Yankee Complex track. It meant leaving the moment the clock struck January. 

"You can let go," he deadpanned.

"I hate you," Rosalie said, and didn't let go.

"You can also let go," he told Meredith.

"I miss you," she sobbed, and didn't let go.

"The guy is still here," Zahir said.

"Not in thirty minutes, he won't be," Diego cried, throwing himself onto Kenzo. "Say you love us. Say you'll miss us with your whole being."

Kenzo closed his eyes like he couldn't hear them that way. Zahir pulled everyone off him, although Meredith took some struggling. She wiped her blue eyes of the tears.

"You'll call," she ordered. "Send us a photo when you land."

"You'll send us selfies of your new teammates to prove we're better-looking," Rosalie added. "And you'll call."

"You'll reply to my good morning texts every day," Diego ordered. 

"You'll tell us all everything about New York when you land," Zoe said. 

"You'll tell us it sucks in comparison to LA," Wynter added.

Kane turned to him. "You'll call."

Kenzo eyed him, then the rest of us, and almost softened. He said, "I'll call."

Kane handed him his bag, a bit mournfully. Kenzo rolled his suitcase out, then paused to turn to him. "Have someone message me when your surgery is done," he said. "Eat something early, not too close to the time. Tell Ramos to be there to check their procedure. The anesthesia. And all."

Kane patted his shoulder. "It'll be all right."

Kenzo turned his eyes to me, as if to ask if I got that. I nodded. He paused, then squeezed Kane's arm, his expression tight. Then, he headed for the door, Zahir with his keys, and held up a hand in a single goodbye.

"Call," Rosalie ordered.

Kenzo looked at me, then her, then said, "I'll call."

It took everyone a few minutes of standing silently at the door, as if waiting for it to reopen. Inevitably, when it didn't, everyone made the slow march back to their rooms, content to re-continue their day with one more body missing from it. The air was vacant. The city's people were sucked out of the streets by New Year's and winter break. The sky was stuck in a glacier of gray. The world was fixing its collar, gearing up and getting ready for change.

Kane and I were the only ones who braved the common area, him in the kitchen, me mid-smoke by the open window. I watched him as he walked about, his movements calm, but his face tight and his grip hesitant. At some point while hastily turning a corner, his hip hit the counter, and he startled. 

"Are you okay?" I hurried.

"Fine," he muttered, holding up a hand. He rubbed at his eyes. "I didn't see it."

I dropped the cigarette into the cup. "Kane."

"I've got a meeting," he sighed, grabbing a mug for coffee. "The board needs to talk to Coach and I."

"Kane," I tried again.

"Let me know if Kenzo calls."

Kane grabbed his mug and made a beeline for his room. His rings clacked against the doorframe, once, twice on the doorknob, before he disappeared from my sight for good. Nothing but the smell of smoke and coffee grounds was left.

I let my temple rest on the wall. Four days separated Kane and the 607. The details of it had been readily neglected from our knowledge, and for the most part, remained between Kane, Ramos, and the Wang family. I wasn't brave enough to ask outright, either. It meant being relegated to the uneasy gray area of assumption, and hope.

It was as familiar as it was frustrating.

I hopped off the counter and headed for the drawer. A half-empty box of Lucky Strikes had been shoved towards the back, right beside a black lighter with a few teardrops of butane left. I unsheathed one, and let the ember crawl up the white tail.

The front door cracked open just as a puff escaped my lips. Meredith pulled off her scarf, the copper red matching her hair perfectly, and turned her head to face me.

I said, "Wrong unit?"

Her smile was grim. "Kenzo said he forgot to clean out his top shelf. Asked me to help. I figured at least one of you would be brave enough to be out here instead of holed up in your room." She pointed at me, then held up a paper bag with Nancy's little angel printed on the front. "Are you that one?"

I raised a brow. I shrugged. "Guess so," I said. "What's on his shelf?"

Meredith kicked off her boots. "We'll find out."

Kenzo had always kept his room undecorated, so the difference between what it used to be and what it was now didn't prove to be very stark. That being said, the chill might have been less in how empty it looked and more so the understanding it would be empty for a long while.

Meredith slid open his closet door and clambered onto the chair she'd dragged in from the dining table. Sure enough, with one snag, she brought down a tall plastic bin and a stack of papers clipped together with a clothespin. She passed both down to me.

I set them on the wood. At the top of the bin was a photo album, a young boy's photo acting as its cover. I snorted.

"I didn't take him for the sentimental type," I murmured.

Meredith sat down across from me. "You'd be surprised," she said with a laugh. "He told me to get rid of everything but the photo albums and the papers, but I thought it'd be fun to look through it, for nostalgia's sake."

We set the photo albums aside. Meredith unearthed piles on piles of photos, paper clippings, birthday letters, postcards, and medallions onto the hardwood, chattering on and on about each as she went.

"Baby Kenzo," she commented, holding up a photo taken in poor lighting, Kenzo a decade younger dressed in denim, Japan at his back. She gasped and grabbed another photo. "Fetus Kenzo." Kenzo, a little hat on his toddler head, smiling in the glaring sun by the sea.

I snorted. I plucked the photos from her hands and read the dates on the back. "Does he go back to Japan a lot?"

Meredith hummed. "Not often, because of the season. During the break, he goes with his dad sometimes. But, I think Japan has more bad memories for him than New York."

Meredith rifled through more and took out a bigger one, still in its wooden frame, two young children beneath a smiling man's grasp grinning at the camera's flash. I thought back to our brief exchange, where Kenzo had let slip about his sister. I set the photos aside.

"Is that why Kane and Kenzo are close?" I asked. "They understand that about each other?"

She nodded. She tossed a keychain between her hands, CORVUS RACING printed on its tag. "I think Kenzo understood Kane faster than anyone," she said. "When he first came here, Kenzo took an interest to him more than any of us."

I plucked a thin photo-book from the pile. I showed her a photo of Kenzo and her, dressed for an occasion, a real grin on his face. She laughed. "First banquet," she explained. "Vann paid him ten dollars just to smile for the photo."

"You two are close," I said. Meredith hummed. I raised a brow. "Why?"

"Why?"

"You two don't really seem like the types to get along."

"No?" she said, sounding amused. Meredith flipped to another photo, a younger Kane hooked under a younger Kenzo's arm, two unfamiliar faces behind him mid-laugh at the sight. "I think we understand each other well."

"You both watch people?"

Meredith laughed. "Sure," she said. "We both understand certain things about each other. I think neither one of us likes taking things at face value." She smiled at me. "He doesn't have bad reason, you know. The watching. It's more out of curiosity. Seeing what you're like, how you behave, things like that." 

"I'm guessing he didn't like anything he found in me?" I said.

Meredith cocked her head from side to side. "I think...he didn't blame you for what you were going through, but he didn't trust you with it. You were a bit of a conundrum for all of us when you first came here. A lot of things didn't add up. I suppose it makes sense now."

I said, "How did you know?"

She looked up from a photo. "What?"

"How did you know?" I repeated. "That I wasn't telling the truth?"

Meredith opened her mouth, closed it, then shrugged. "Kenzo told me first," she said. "That he thought you weren't Stirling. When we talked, we both realized you might have a lot in common with King, in that you were trying to get away from some things and some people that weren't very easy to leave." She pushed the photo to me. It was the same one from Kane's room, the whole of Corvus from another time on a beach in the evening, the writing at the bottom still crisp. "You knowing all those languages, your lack of a file, the fake ID you had, it made me figure."

I said, "My ID?"

"At Fang Flower," she said. "I happened to see it."

"The languages."

"Korean, Japanese, French."

"You knew about the French?"

"Kenzo overheard you and King talking. It's a nice unit, but it's not that nice," she said, giving me a look. "The walls are thinner than you think."

I tried not to think too hard about that. "So you and Kenzo knew I was lying the whole time, and you never said anything?"

Meredith stared at the beach photo. I spotted Poppy, the distinctly wine-colored flower blooming over her throat. "I remember, when we first came into Corvus, and King was a bit of a different person," she started, "Poppy was the only person who defended him. Even I was in favor of having him removed from the team. When I asked why, she said it was counterintuitive. People fight the hardest when they have the most to lose. I think she recognized King a lot faster than the rest of us did." Meredith pushed the photo my way. "You reminded me of that moment. I thought, you probably weren't lying to lie, but to survive."

I stared at Corvus. "Were you angry?"

"Frustrated, maybe," she admitted. "King slowly opened up, but you seemed to be a constant lockbox. Everything from you didn't always have much of a reason. I think it made Kenzo very wary."

"And you?"

"Curious?" She shrugged. "Everyone has a past. I didn't think I was one to judge, or ask. I figured, in time, you'd tell us when you were ready."

I blinked. I picked up another photo, Kenzo and Poppy years younger. I pushed my palm into my chest.

"Kenzo must miss her," I murmured.

Meredith stared at the photo. She took it gently from my hands, brushed her thumb over it, and placed it inside the photo album alongside the beach photograph. She closed the cover.

"I hate all of this..." She gestured weakly around us. Meredith sighed, her blue eyes soft like rain. "This uncertainty, you know? It feels like you're standing on an island, watching a hurricane form, and you can't do anything but wait for it to hit and hope you prepared well enough for the fallout. You feel so powerless. Things are changing so fast, so much, and you can't do anything." 

I considered her. I tried to trade places with the rest of Corvus, be where they were now. For me, it felt as though the inevitable ending I'd been anticipating for years on end had suddenly turned into a new beginning. But for them, their new beginning had suddenly been turned into an unsure ending. Twelve percent and twelve months was all that separated the two.

But, frankly, I'd worked against worse odds.

"Nothing's ever not changing," I said. "Some shit just changes in a different direction than you wanted. You just pivot, you know? You just have to try." I handed her the keychain. "Sometimes, all you can do is hope."

The words slept between us, in the dusty room, nothing but the blue clouds and the mess of memories around us to catch them. Meredith reached for me, and grasped my hand tight. She gave me a small grin.

"I'm glad you're here, Echo," she told me. "I'm glad you stayed."

We put away the last of the photos, and left their ghosts to fill the empty space Kenzo left behind.

"There's no insurance on this car and I don't have a legal license and I'm one and a half years younger than you and I'm also in the middle of an all-nighter," I said. "And you want me to drive you to your life-threatening, life-altering, life-concerning-in-general surgery at five AM halfway across the city?"

Kane dropped his duffel bag at my feet, and held out the Corolla key. "Yes," he said.

I gaped. I shook my head. I sighed. I took the key. "All right," I muttered. "Let me find some pants."

It took me another five minutes to find said pants and haul on my blue cardigan before I was shuffling out of my room, grabbing the Lucky Strikes from the drawer, and facing Kane with the key. I raked fingers through my hair. 

"What about Corvus?" I asked.

Kane hiked his bag over his good shoulder. "They'll meet us there later," he said. Which sounded like don't tell them you're coming early.

I swallowed. I said, "Ready?"

Kane's jaw tightened. But he said, "Ready."

We headed out.

Drachmann Medical Center of Greater Los Angeles—the LA DMC—was a multi-level, six-building big complex with everything from a level 1 emergency room, to a nationwide-acclaimed surgery ward, to your friendly local pediatrics, to the best cherry Jell-O the west coast medical industry can provide.

It looked more like a hotel upon entering, its body made of thick sandstone and ecru brick, its rooftops jade green and blocked off by copper pillars and awnings. Its innards were pale as cream, the tiles arranged in perfect, lifeless harmony, nothing but warning signs or infographics providing any bright colors for the eyes to work on. The desks were minimal texture, minimal color, lit from under by LED white. The waiting rooms faced windows looking out into a wide-open courtyard, great palm trees reaching up into the skylights up above, a water fountain singing in a centermost pool. Large gardens circled around the elderly and maternity wards, giving the place some illusion of life. Ironic, considering its entire identity was shaped by death.

I drove past the outpatient ward and felt my stomach churn. I parked in the empty level. It was almost insulting how soundly the world was sleeping when I had never been more fucking awake.

Kane pushed his glasses up his nose. They were steel-colored, geometric in their frames, the ones he'd bought in Pasadena. The planets I'd kill to go back there.

"Ramos is already here," he said. "Said she's in the waiting area."

I hummed. I said, "Did you eat?"

Kane tilted his head back until it hit the headrest. "Too late anyway."

"Why'd you do that?"

"It's all right."

"Why do you do that?"

"Surgeon is supposed to be top of the line," he said. "Said she's done this eight times. Said they've all made full or near-full recoveries. Never said anything about them being racers. I got too scared to ask. I keep thinking, I'm number nine, like I'm the twelfth percent. I keep thinking that."

"It's not over. It hasn't even happened."

"It feels like it happened a while ago."

"Well, it hasn't."

"No. Does that make it worse?" He sighed shakily. "Feeling like it's over?"

I pursed my lips into a thin line, until my teeth dug into the flesh. "Doesn't matter," I told him. "Because it's not over. It's not over until you want it to be." I glanced at him. "You want it to be over?"

Kane held my eye in the periwinkle dawn. It was 6:05. It was Sunday. It was a half-empty parking lot in the LA DMC. It was a black Corolla running on a quarter tank and a half-fluent battery. It was January. It was. It was. It was.

Kane said, "No."

I nodded and made a move to open my door.

"Let's check in," I told him.

Scapula. Sternoclavicular joint. Acromioclavicular joint. Coracoid process. Glenoid cavity. 

"Glenohumeral joint," Ramos said.

"I remember the cavity and never the joint," I muttered. "Humerus?"

"Already said that one."

"Acromion."

"There you go." Ramos placed the little block into its respective place on the body outline. Antiseptic and recycled air soaked my nostrils, pungent and suffocating in the closed walls of the waiting room. Ramos must've found it equally irritating, if her sniffling said anything. "Just the hands now."

"How is this supposed to be for kids anyway?" I muttered, grabbing the scaphoid block. "Give me one."

"Trapezium?"

I plopped it in. I leaned my head against the chair. "How long does a goddamn check-in take? Isn't it just vitals and run-downs?"

"More invasive surgeries require more checks," Ramos reminded kindly. "Lunate."

I put it down. "Do I want to know the strings you all pulled to even get him here so soon?"

"Probably not," she murmured. "I suppose having the biggest Drachmann conglomerate on your side gets you places. Let's just be grateful he's here." I closed my eyes. Ramos cleared her throat. "Capitate." I put it down. "I don't think I've ever met a student, biochem or not, who knows anatomy as well as you do. How's that?"

I tugged at my collar. "I'm a fast learner."

The door swung open from the room. We both shot to our feet. A fae, her blue hair cropped to her ears and her black eyes holding green irises to bear down into us, smiled. Her nail tapped the clipboard. 

"You're here for....Kane King?" she read. We nodded. "Which one of you is Jasmin Ramos?" Ramos raised her hand and the fae hummed, her smile disappearing. "You're his only registered healthcare professional on record, there are some things that we need to talk to you about regarding his current medication. Specifically traces of Valatro in his system."

Ramos and I glanced at each other. Ramos said, "I understand."

She looked at me. "Are you...Echo Yun?" I nodded. "You've been put down as his advance directive, in event of an emergency. You'll need to sign off."

I said, "Advance directive?"

"In a case he can't make a medical decision not already outlined," she explained. "He's put you down as the proxy to ask."

I stared, stupefied. I opened my mouth, closed it, then said, "Okay."

She handed me a respective stack of papers and turned back to Ramos to begin discussing something or other I didn't have the mind to think about. I sat down with the papers in my lap. I read through the words bit by bit. 

I closed my eyes. Please. Please.

I signed my name at the bottom.

When Ramos was finished with the nurse and I was finished with the papers, she returned to take them from us and bid us a goodbye. "He'll be moved in roughly forty minutes," she said. "You're free to stay with him in the room if you'd like."

"Corvus should be here in ten," Ramos told me. 

I watched the nurse walk away with her papers. I said, "Is he okay?"

She sighed. "They were worried the Valatro might interfere with his anesthesia. They just had to verify when the last injection of it was." Ramos pursed her lips tight. "They're worried, that the surgery will be difficult on his body."

"He's an Alpha," I argued.

"His physical state is particularly fragile," she said. "The silver's spread so far, he's sustained many injuries as of recently, his vitals are lower than usual and he's lost too much weight." She rubbed at her temples. "They're worried to work on him for so long."

"They have to," I said. "They have to try."

She stared after the hall where the nurse had disappeared down. "We'll have to see what the doctor determines."

The elevator dinged. Someone said, "Echo fucking Yun."

I didn't even turn around. "It's not like that."

Rosalie clambered past the chairs and grabbed my shoulder to whirl me around. She tore her scarf down from her face to jab a finger at my face. "Just what the hell are you doing here before we're here? With King's car in the parking lot?"

"I thought you were driving him," Zahir said from behind, frowning at Ramos.

"He told me he had a different plan," she said, hands up. 

"Oh, you two are just—whatever," Rosalie snapped, pushing me aside. "Doesn't matter. Where is he? Is he cleared for good? He's not in operation yet, is he?"

"I'll break through those doors myself," Diego hissed.

"I'm with you on that," Wynter agreed.

"Blood makes me faint," Zoe said, shivering.

Meredith glanced to Ramos. "Where is he?"

Ramos stepped aside, and gestured at the room we stood diagonal from. "Right here." She glanced at the clock above our heads. "You have thirty minutes."

Corvus practically ran each other over trying to get to the door. Diego got it first and went bounding in. 

I waited outside. Ramos frowned. "You should go see him."

I sat back down, facing the half-finished skeleton. "I'll wait," I murmured. "Let them see him first."

I tried to focus on the bones, on the blocks, on everything but that advance directive. The words blacker than black, staring up at me with a potent vengeance. A joke. A cruel slap to the face.

"You can reject it, you know," she said quietly. "You can have him choose someone else."

Trapezoid. Proximal phalanx. Radius.

I placed the blocks in without thinking twice.

"No," I murmured. "I want to."

I counted down the seconds.

"You've got five minutes."

I looked up. Corvus had settled into their chairs. Rosalie stood above me, her face unreadable. She gestured towards Kane's room. 

"You should see him," she said. "So, five minutes."

Spinal cord. I dropped the final block into place.

I got to my feet. "Thank you," I told her.

Rosalie shook her head. "Don't." She sat down.

I headed for the room.

For having such a severe connotation, the room was rather quiet. Its walls were a soft blue, its floors a non-intrusive white, the window wide but not by too much with curtains clear enough to see through but not so clear the light was burdensome. The bed itself had plain sheets and plain pillows, equipped with quiet yellow lights and a set of notes with even quieter handwriting. The machines surrounding it were the most jarring thing in sight. Aside from Kane himself.

The hospital gown was meant to be more a drape than anything, its fabric thin and paper-like, exposing the whole of his back and shoulders to the cool air. Markings covered him in red, distinct in the mess of black silver and pale skin, marking off areas that spanned from his lumbar spine to his metacarpals. A paper bracelet was clasped about his wrist, where his tendons ran down to greet ring-less fingers. He had no glasses, no earring, nothing. His skin and hair were the only silver left.

He looked up, squinted at me. I said, "Hi."

Kane hesitated. He said, "Hey."

I swallowed. The ground beneath me felt fragile, the air in my throat thick as bricks. I buried my nails into my palms. My voice fought for a whisper.

"Good to go?" I asked.

Kane shrugged weakly. "Going."

"You seem excited."

"Elated."

"It'll be fine."

"Maybe." His sigh shook. "Did the nurse talk to you?"

I sat down on the edge of the bed. "Yeah," I murmured and let out a half-hearted scoff. "I can't tell if it's an honor or if you're trying to die."

Kane didn't reply. His fingers rubbed at his knuckles, in the vacant spaces where his rings once were. He looked small, years younger, a child afraid in the dark. Every fiber of my body hurt like being stretched too thin, too fast. I didn't know if I wanted to cry or run or both. The tsunami wasn't incoming. The tsunami was here. Waves. Force. Foam. Crash! 

I drowned, drowned, drowned.

My fingers reached for his hand. When he didn't pull back, I grasped it mine. My grip was tight with desperation and I could only hope that he would take it as fervor. I could only ever hope.

Something wet hit my knuckle. I looked up, and saw tears trailing out of the corner of Kane's stormy eyes. Raindrops, right before a hurricane.

"I'm scared," he whispered to me. 

I saw my heart somewhere in his hand, beating wildly and bleeding bad. I saw thunder strike it, kill the pulmonary artery, let a blackness leak into its fading body. 

I pressed my palm into his. When his pulse beat, I swore it was just the echo of my own. 

"Why?" I murmured back. "I'm right here."

A knock came at the door. I reached up with the sleeve of my cardigan and wiped the tears from his cheeks and chin. The dawn writhed awake, the blue melting, the sun opening its eyes for the world to witness. Time. Time. Time.

"We'll be here when you wake up," I said. "I promise."

I got to my feet, still holding his hand. Kane held fast just as the nurse came into the room. Behind her, several others trailed, a bed already prepped. The clock struck the last minute of mine away.

"Echo," he said.

I looked from him, to the nurse, to the window, to Corvus. I squeezed his hand one last time.

"First rule," I told him. 

He let me go. 

The wait began.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Ramos said, "The Jell-O is good. You should try some."

I said, "Not hungry."

She said, "It's been hours, Echo. Let's go home."

I said, "No."

She sat down. She set the Jell-O cup between us. "All right," she sighed.

"Visiting hours are over in ten minutes," the nurse said. "Please go home, sir."

I said, "Can I stay?"

Meredith grasped my arm. "Let's go, Echo. We'll come back tomorrow."

"Let me stay," I pleaded with the nurse. "Please."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "We will contact you about anything at all the moment it happens, we promise."

"Sitting here won't make it go any faster," Zahir pointed out. "Let's go."

"Wait," I said.

Zahir held my shoulders. Shadows hung under his eyes, no mirth in his face, a heaviness in his stance and the hands that came onto me.

"Let's go home, Echo," he whispered. "He'd want us home."

They dragged me out of the waiting room. The scent of antiseptic was enough to make me sick. 

I got into the Corolla, locked the doors, and crumbled.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

I sat in Kane's room, my head against his bed, the scent of cotton and soap and lavender sticky in my lungs. I turned my nose into the sheets. I felt sick.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I lifted it to my face.

3:03 AM - Unknown Number

Hi Echo, I know this is out of the blue, I know you must be very stressed right now. This is Sunhee. I wanted to know how the surgery went, how it's going? Kane never responded to me from yesterday. I'm just worried I guess. I'm sorry, it's late. How is he?

I sighed. I clenched my fingers around the phone.

3:04 AM - Me

he's been in since eight AM today
i'm sorry i don't know more
what i do find out, i'll tell you first

I shut my phone off and slumped into the sheets, not even caring to have some shame for it. I curled my legs into my chest, grasped a pillow to hold against my skin. I was so tired.

I slept with cotton clogging my nose.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

[6:44 AM - INCOMING CALL - Drachmann Medical Center]

[6:46 AM - 1 VOICEMAIL - Drachmann Medical Center]
Transcription:
"Hello, Mister Yun, this is ___I'm calling to let you know that Cane's surgery has been completed and his vitals are holding steady as well. We've contacted Miss Ramos as well and___come in right away to discuss treatment. This is___and I'll speak with you soon. Thank you."

Kane's 607 had been performed by statewide-renowned surgeon, Dr. Christine K. Woo, who stands as one of the very, very few surgeons even capable of performing the surgery in the first place. The procedure had taken roughly twenty hours to complete, with nothing going notably awry, but some things not going precisely right either. Ramos had returned with the news from Dr. Woo, delivering shots right for our jaws.

"The silver had been in his system for so long that they needed to cut deep," she said. "They said that he'll experience temporary numbness and difficulty using his legs. He'll need crutches for a bit.

"His vision will remain stagnant. He won't lose any more but there's no way to fix what he's lost, the nerves are too damaged," she said. "She says he still has about seventy percent of his vision, but that will be all he has.

"His body was weak for the surgery, he'll have to stay in the hospital for longer than they planned," she added. "She says it'll take about two weeks to get him to a state where he can be released. He'll be getting a blood transfusion soon, and he'll need to be hooked up to a few things for a few days.

"There was a lot of work with his shoulder, it just sustained too much injury," she went on. "He'll have a lot of pain, in his back as well. She said it should deplete with time. She says it's all time at this rate." Ramos sighed. "It's just time."

I said, "When can we see him?"

She shook her head. "Not until tomorrow." A sucker punch. "I'll discuss further treatment with the doctor soon." 

I pushed my palms to my temples. I took in a deep breath.

"Tomorrow then," Rosalie promised. "No use in waiting here. Come on."

"Rosalie—"

"Tomorrow," she pressed. "I can't stay here any longer."

Corvus saw themselves out. 

"You don't have your license?" 

"Working on it." I showed Diego the freshly-printed permit. "Obviously."

"Wow," he said. "You drove King to a life-threatening, life-altering, life-concerning-in-general surgery at five AM halfway across the city, without a license?"

"At least you get it." I tossed the paper onto the counter. "I've got the test this Saturday. I've just gotta remember the pointless things like shoulder-checking or stopping."

Diego raised a brow. "One Kenzo leaves, another takes over," he muttered. "Remind me not to drive with you, cobayo. Amazing that King made it there in one piece." He set the clove of garlic down onto the cutting board. "Any updates on that, by the way? He's still stable?"

"As ever," I said. "But I don't know any more than you all. You'll see tonight."

"When is he supposed to wake up?"

"Some time in the next seven days." I rubbed my eyes. 

"You say it like you're not coming with."

"I'm not."

"What? Why not?" 

I'd seen so many bodies in my life that saw Death in one way or another, some close to, some well past, some evading it by the skin of their teeth.  I'd seen my own mother, blue in the face, red in the throat. I'd seen it often enough to know it on command. 

It didn't matter what the nurses said, what the doctor said, what the machines read, what Corvus told me. I didn't trust myself to see Kane. Not yet, at least.

"I'll see him," I said. "Just...not now."

Diego stared at me for a long, long moment. Then, he nodded. "Okay," he said softly. "That's okay."

I closed my eyes, my cheek on my sweater sleeve. 

Diego said, "Good luck with your test."

I swallowed. "I'll need it."

"Elias Yun abruptly pulls out of both his spot on South Korea's Olympic team as well as his university team, the Bloodhounds, sending both fans and critics into a field day of skepticism as to what happened. Yun has yet to make a statement or a public appearance, and fellow classmates say he hasn't shown in school for weeks now. People are calling it the downfall of the Yun family, as Janchi Group buys out RIYU altogether, something that was released..."

"...without a trace, a Drachmann that disappears without a trace doesn't take much figuring out, he's been cut off from the family, he's a ghost. Nothing more to it, that's my theory anyway. In the thick of this, Janchi overtakes RIYU in an unexpected buyout that leaves many questioning what has been going on between the families..."

"...of the NCAA square racing season, with several D1 schools promising lineups that involve Class II and III racers, likely taking notes from Corvus and their risky lineup from last year. UCI's Anteaters even revealed they planned to bring on a new Class II Stirling for their lineup, sparking some new discussions about the class..."

"...revealed by their captain that Luan Zhang of Pepperdine University's Waves will take a step away from the team due to 'personal complications' which have fans speculating it has to do with his involvement in The Eclipse incident from last year, earning claims against him of 'unnecessary and unusually cruel' violence..."

"People are excited for Echo Yun, they're excited to see what he does next, and frankly, so am I. I think the kid's got questionable methods, sure, but people forget that before square racing became an industry, it was all in the streets. You really see those old, nitty gritty styles with this kid, I think he's bringing back old, real racing, even Corvus has gotten more head-on throughout the season..."

"...as they celebrate yet another Corvus victory, they take the cake on Red Diamond once more with a victory earning that hasn't been that high in years, I'm sure they're just eating it up right now, celebrating left and right..."

"Make a left."

Mirror. Mirror. Shoulder. I turned into the lane. I made the left.

"Drive straight, then turn right into the parking lot."

I drove straight. Slowed. Mirror. Mirror. Shoulder. I turned right.

"Pull into the parking spot at the far left."

I pulled in. Albeit a bit crooked. I held my breath.

The woman hummed and made another tick on her paper, then drew a smiley face at the very top. She tore off the paper and tossed it at me, not even bothering to wait for me to catch it as she shuffled out of the car.

"Drive safe, go slow, don't die," she deadpanned. She peered down at me through the window, and pushed her glasses up her nose. "You're a racer, huh?"

I gaped. I sputtered, "Y—yes?"

She hummed. "Figured." She tapped the hood. "Seriously. Don't die."

I lifted the paper to my face. Eleven marks. But, passing.

I slumped against the car seat. "Thank fuck," I muttered. 

"Thank who?" Diego ducked his head in with a wide grin. "So? You pass?"

It was January 18th. It was my brother's birthday. It was supposed to be mine, too. Supposed to. Always "supposed to".

I handed him the paper. "With a smile."

His laugh lit up the sky, and I dared to breathe easy. Saturday waned, January fleeing like a criminal not yet caught. On the pink horizon, sat February, just waiting for its moment.

When the receptionist handed me my papers, I wrote down November 24th in the birthdate blank, and didn't think twice for it thereafter.

Time.

Time.

Time.

"Hold your fucking canines," Rosalie said, and shot to her feet to point an accusing finger at my face. "Are you washing out your hair?"

"Hallelujah!" Diego cried, throwing up the dish towel in his hands. "Oh, I knew God was real."

"You're kidding," Wynter said. I shrugged. She cursed. "I just lost fifty bucks."

Zoe craned her neck back and smiled. "Guess who just got fifty bucks?"

"You bet on me washing my hair?" I drawled.

"We've bet on which spoon Zahir's gonna use for his cereal," Wynter replied, waving me off. "Can you even wash it all out? Are you sure you haven't permanently dyed the hair follicles in your head by now?"

"I don't eat cereal," Zahir said, his bowl of oatmeal halfway finished in front of him.

"Easiest bet I'll ever win," Rosalie replied.

Meredith frowned at me. "Why?"

I hesitated, then shrugged. "I always dyed it because I didn't want anyone to recognize the similarity I had to my brother," I explained. "But, I'm sort of out of dye, and I kind of don't..."

"Care anymore?" she finished, amused. I didn't argue. Meredith got to her feet. "Let us help you."

"No, it's okay, you don't—"

"Hair washing party," Diego announced. "Less chores for me."

Zahir pushed his oatmeal away. "Frankly, we've all been waiting for you to wash it out since the moment we met you."

"Was it that bad?"

"No," he assured. "But—"

"But you looked like a long-lost princess from My Little Pony," Rosalie scoffed. She ruffled my hair. "So, yes. That bad."

I shook my head and sighed. I handed her my armful of products, and gestured for the bathroom.

"Save me?" I asked.

Their laughs were enough to give me life for a hundred years.

"Damn, cobayo," Diego cackled. "You've been playing yourself all these years with that pixie vomit on your head. Who knew you looked kinda cute under all of that paint?"

Zahir eyed him then me. "Black does suit you worlds better."

"Worlds?" Wynter asked, setting the hairdryer down. She raked fingers through my bangs to yank them away from my face. "Try galaxies. Universes, if you cut away some of the mop."

Zoe rushed for scissors but I blocked her with my leg. "Don't even," I muttered. "Those scissors will end up somewhere other than my hair."

She held up her hands. "When you sleep, then."

"What?"

"I think he looks very handsome." Meredith said, smiling at my reflection. "A lot more...Echo, in a way." 

Rosalie hummed. She rested her chin on my head and said, "A lot less of an eyesore, for sure." She patted my shoulder. "What do you think?"

I stared at my reflection. I hadn't had my natural color since I was thirteen, majority of it drenched in garish colors twenty-four-seven for years on. For a brief moment, my heart startled as if my brother stood before me instead.

I reached up to push my hair back. I sucked in a heavy breath. Then, to even my surprise, I smiled.

"I think," I murmured, "I look damn good."

They laughed. Meredith squeezed my arm and giggled.

"Yes," she told me. "You definitely do."

January disappeared into nothingness, melting away in the sun, and the day came for us with light.

_____________________

Kane woke up on the first day of February.

Ramos had texted the news to us at the ungodly hour of five AM, leaving us pacing outside the DMC for an entire half hour and nearly tripping over our own feet to get inside the moment the clock struck six. 

"Remember, he only woke up an hour ago," Ramos said, standing in front of the door to block us with her hands. "So, be calm and be gentle. He probably won't want to talk too much. Don't crowd him."

We let her have a few minutes inside to talk to the nurse and Kane. I fiddled with the ring on my finger like I could twist it right off, joint and all. 

Ramos pulled the door wide. "You can come in."

We shuffled in. I looked at the bed, the sheets, the clipboard at the foot and the machines surrounding it. Corvus began to talk, gasp, say something or other that came through too muffled for me to hear. My head spun. My mother was under my hands, blood soaking through to stain my skin, the knife sticky and red, the heart and lung heavy in my palms, her lifeless skin, her lifeless face. I took a step back.

"Echo."

I looked up. 

If I was a better man, I'd tell you it in better detail. But it was all blurry, even staring right at him. Great white bandages covered his neck, his shoulder, disappeared into his gown. A needle fed medicine into his still-black-veined wrist. A finger clip measured his heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature. The yellow light made the white streaks of his hair gold, the silver in his eyes amber. But it made the shadows cling faster to him, and his skin look sickly. Sick. He just looked...

Kane raised a brow at me. "What's with the look?" he murmured, and his voice was full of salt, raspy and out of order with disuse. "Like you saw a ghost."

I clenched my fists. I breathed.

"Hi, Kane," I managed.

Kane cocked his head at me. He said, "Hi, Echo."

I clung to that fiercely.

Rosalie said, "How do you feel? The doctor said you'll be good to be released day after tomorrow."

Kane hummed. "Like I took a bad nap," he admitted. 

"Does it hurt?" Zahir asked.

Kane gave him a grim smile that supplied us all with a sufficient answer for that. "Frankly," he sighed, "I'm just waiting to go home."

"And you will." We all turned around. A woman walked inside, her white coat embroidered with the title of DR. CHRISTINE K. WOO in blue. She smiled at us as she walked inside, clasping her hands in front of her. She was a surgeon, and a good one at that, if the shadows under her eyes and the ego to her walk said anything. "I take it you're his...?"

"Family," Meredith said quickly. 

"Nice to meet you all." She glanced to Kane. "How are you feeling?"

He shrugged one shoulder. She hummed. "Well, try to get some rest. If there's any new pain, let someone know, yes?" He hummed back. Dr. Woo turned to the rest of us. "I'm guessing you all want to chat."

We nodded fervently. She laughed. "Let's talk outside."

We let her shut the door to his room, then pounced.

"You said he'll be going home soon?" Meredith said.

Dr. Woo folded her hands. "He's recovering well so far, yes. That being said, we do have a good amount of instructions to send him home with. The procedure was very difficult. We can give whoever will be taking care of him the rundown when the time comes."

"What's the recovery trajectory?" Rosalie asked. "In that, when will he fully recover?"

It was the question no one dared to ask. Dr. Woo bit her lip at that, then sighed. "I can't tell you that yet, unfortunately. We don't know how the patient's body will truly react with the surgery's treatment until about five months in, at least. Biology is on his side, of course, but every 607 patient's recovery differs, sometimes drastically."

"So, there's no telling?"

She shook her head. "Not as of right now." She crossed her arms. "Now, who will be taking care of him primarily upon returning home?"

"Me," we all chorused.

Zahir cleared his throat. "We'll all be helping out."

Dr. Woo raised a brow, but nodded without questioning. "I've got some papers for you all to look over. When you come to pick him up in the morning on Thursday, we can discuss in more detail."

We all slumped at that dismissal, but didn't push. Rosalie gestured for Zahir and Diego to wait inside with Kane while the rest of them got some food to hold them over for the day. I watched them retreat.

"Doctor," I said, and Dr. Woo paused, turning around. I cleared my throat. "About Kane."

"I'm sorry, sir, that really is the best answer I have in terms of timing—"

"He's a racer." She stopped. "I know you can't give me the timing, but could you tell me if...ever?" I tried. "Do you think he can make a full recovery, at some point?"

Dr. Woo stared at me for a long moment. I felt my heartbeat in my throat. February was so suddenly cold.

She let out a heavy sigh. "To be frank," she said, "I've never seen a patient who has endured silver poisoning so well for so long, until I met your friend. When I was told the timing of the situation, I thought it was a miracle he was even still standing. Most people lose out to silver completely within a year. Most people who haven't are still far too weak to survive the 607 and give out halfway through. When your friend came to me, I figured, he would be another number in those piles. I thought, it was too late. A year ago would've been too late." 

I winced at the sharpness of those statements. Dr. Woo's brow furrowed. 

"But he did well, and he's recovering like any other patient," she said. "Strangest thing, really. All the injuries he's sustained, all the turmoil his body went through, the trauma of the attack itself, really should have been more than enough to stop all of that. And yet?" She gestured at his door. Dr. Woo's smile was small, but genuine, her eyes holding mine with something like understanding. "There's nothing surefire in this world, not even medicine. I can't promise anything. But, he's come this far, yes?" She patted my arm. "For now, we can only hope."

With that, she walked away, leaving me outside the door with just that:

Hope.

I visited The Audrey that Thursday at dawn. 

The Splinter was almost unfamiliar to me, it'd been so long since I'd seen it. It looked more recognizable in the indigo shadows, no light to make it shinier than it was, no sun to lie for its sorry state. The apartments piled high atop one another, arms of power lines and clothing lines slicing up the sky above. The rain had brought in some fauna to grow up the walls in wild vines and phthalo green leaves, which gave an illusion that the place had much life to give other than strangers and nameless creatures.

I pushed open the door. 

"Hey, hey!" Jeremy snapped from the counter. "We're closed, whoever you be, better find a different—Echo?"

"Ah, what're you going on about that's more important than re-stocking those cigarettes?" Li hollered from the snack aisle. "Shut up and keep moving or I'll—Echo?"

Tri appeared from behind the beads with her hair still in curlers and the leaves on her skin buzzing awake. "Did someone say Echo?"

I raised my hand. "Hi, everyone."

The witches screamed.

I had a bowl of ramyun and a bottle of orange juice in front of me within minutes. Jeremy shoved me into a seat at the register counter, before sliding around and sidling up next to the other two. He pointed a finger at my face, and glowered into my soul.

"You," he hissed. "You have got some serious, serious explaining. First off, who ruined your hair?"

"I can please nobody ever," I muttered, tearing open my ramyun.

"You won Red," Tri said. "You really won."

"Where's your husband-to-be?" Jeremy gasped, craning his neck to look behind me. "Is he going to burst in again? Oh, I'd love that."

"No," I said. "He won't be, for a while."

Tri frowned at her sister. Li raised a brow. "You look guilty," she said. "You're damn guilty, aren't you?"

I sighed. "It's a long story."

The three looked amongst each other. Li cracked open my juice.

"Better start now, then," she said.

It took me thirty minutes to relay the entire, extremely-condensed version of the story that led me to where I was, excluding certain factors that were likely to get me into more trouble. They gaped at me, but seemed more surprised by the fact I didn't tell them than the actual story itself. Witches. I supposed they'd seen worse in their time.

"Two Echo's," Li muttered. "I'd only want one alive, too. Poor world can only handle one."

"Wow," I said. "That's wow."

"What are you going to do now?" Tri asked me. "He was your captain, wasn't he?"

"I'm guessing that's being figured out by our coach right now," I said. "I don't think anyone can handle more stress. We just need until March."

"Will he even recover?" Jeremy asked bluntly. "Will he even be able to race?"

I sighed. "We're betting on it."

"You are," Li corrected. "Why? You do that, why? You set yourself up. Anyone who has fully recovered from 607? Soureso gimsobang chatkkii." A needle in a haystack. She shook her head. "A losing bet, Echo."

"It was the only way to give him the time to recover."

"And if he doesn't? You just got your life. Your name. Place away from all of this." She gestured around. "Why bet on him?"

I shrugged. "Because he bet on me."

They glanced about each other at that. Tri reached over and took my hands in hers, squeezed them tight.

"It will be okay, Echo," she whispered. "He'll be okay."

I chewed my lip. "I'm sorry I haven't visited," I said. "I mean to."

"Ah, why visit?" Li said, waving me off. "You leave this place, why come back? Far better now. New life. So young. You should live it. Ya, Echo." She jabbed a finger at my face. "Past is past you. Live in what is. Nothing more to do but that."

She smiled at me, a real smile, thin but there. I pushed a palm into my heart. 

"Okay," I said. "Yeah. Okay."

Jeremy ruffled my hair. He pushed two heaping bags of candy into my hands. "Gummy bears for the road."

"I'll pay you back."

He shook his head. He pushed my bangs back.

"Live what is," he told me. "Don't pay me back."

The dawn began to creep in for me.

Bringing Kane home was, needless to say, an endeavor.

Edwards had brought the van as it had a ramp built into it in order to make it easier for Kane to get inside, the other half of Corvus relegated to Zahir's car. Kane was wheeled out after undergoing several more rounds of check-ups and final instructions along with our proof of crutches waiting for him at home. Dr. Woo had, as promised, given each of us a set of papers detailing the basics of helping Kane out, along with her own instructions.

"It's best he sleeps upright or mostly so, and he wears the sling for at least five more weeks until his next check-in," she said. "There's a list of exercises for him to start doing after the next week passes. He should try to walk around for thirty minutes a day, maybe not more than as to avoid strain. We'll increase it as it goes. Avoid bending, squatting, and twisting as much as possible, his back and shoulder is where the bulk of the vulnerable area is. His diet should be healthy as possible, sufficient calories and nutrients for a male his age, and absolutely no smoking." She pointed at all of us at that last one. "No matter what."

"Good luck with that," I muttered. Wynter elbowed me.

"Someone should be around as often as possible with him, at least for the first few months," she went on. "Driving, bathing, dressing, even cooking and cleaning can cause stress. If he resists, ignore it, help him anyway. The first several months are the most imperative to his recovery. Bottom line: the more he rests, the better." 

We all nodded, and that was that.

Kane was quiet for most of the ride home, although it was uncertain whether that was because he was exhausted, in pain, or just didn't want to talk. A combination, likely. We were all wiser than to try and talk to him first.

Ramos, Zahir, Meredith, and I had spent the bulk of the morning and the previous night rearranging Kane's room to be easier to move about in, clearing out anything on the floors, setting up things to be easier to grab than rifle through drawers for, adding an ungodly amount of pillows to his bed. Diego had cleared out porridge, veggie, and soup aisles. Rosalie, Wynter, and Zoe had rearranged the common room and kitchen. The only toss-up was how Kane would take it.

It took roughly ten minutes of helping Kane with the crutches once we were in the parking lot. Ramos did the best she could to help.

"Here," she said, holding him up. "Hold onto it here."

"Just go slow," Edwards told him. "Don't rush. You'll hurt yourself."

Kane grunted with the effort the walk took him. We walked beside him, waiting when he had to pause to take a breath, matching the slow pace of his limping walk. His face was tight, unreadable, eyes hard as ice. But, he kept going. 

Uma greeted us with a grin, and a bright one at seeing Kane. "Kane," she said. "You're back. How are you?"

Kane didn't even smile. "I'm all right," he told her. "Thanks, Uma."

She glanced at us, then shrugged. We headed for the elevator.

"Avaldi's given you the go-ahead to take this semester off, and if need be, the coming fall semester, too," Edwards said as we headed for the unit. "Your cousin called us to talk about it with your advisor, and you're not enrolled in any credits for this semester, all right? That being said, we had to keep you on the roster to keep your housing, so you'll still get calls every now and then, but I want you to ignore them, no matter what, okay?" 

Kane nodded soundlessly. 

Edwards pushed the door open.

Kane took one look at the room and stopped. Meredith cleared her throat.

"We thought we'd try to make it easier to get around," she explained. "We just moved a few things, is all."

Kane stared. He clenched his jaw. He dropped his eyes. "Thanks," he murmured, but it sounded empty.

Diego said, "C'mon. We'll help with your shoes."

Even though Kane never resisted anything we said or ordered, it still felt like a war, what with the consistently-cold look over his face and his curt replies. The only reactions he ever gave were pained ones when he had to move or shift in a way that pulled at his body.

"Go rest," Edwards ordered. "We'll bring in some food for you, you can take some medicine, then try to sleep. Sleep'll be your friend for most of this, yeah?" 

Kane didn't answer. He turned for his room.

Ramos and I helped him sit on the bed, albeit slowly. I could feel the bandages on his back. The scent of silver filled my nose.

"They've got classes, I imagine, so if you need anything at all, call me, okay?" Ramos told him. "I'll come by during the day to check in on you, and if I'm not in here, I'm just downstairs. You've got a fever, you feel any sharp pains, you feel short of breath, let me know. You need medicine, food, some company, a pair of socks, a dust mite, what have you, you just let me know, okay? Say 'okay'."

Kane said, "Okay."

Ramos hummed. She closed the door behind her.

I sat down next to Kane. I said, "Sunhee called. She told me to tell you she's glad you're okay. She said something about sending you some hodugwaja? Said she can't send you any juk for obvious reasons."

Kane didn't answer. 

"Don't hate me, but I cleared out your smoke collection," I said. "Contraband, you know? I have your lighters. And your rings, too."

Nothing.

"I'm only taking two classes this semester, one of them's even online," I said. "One last gift from my old boss, I guess. So, I'll be around a lot. If you need anything. I got my license. Still no insurance on your car, but Zahir said I can drive his if I really need to. If you need something from somewhere."

Still, nothing.

I took that with a nod. I got to my feet. "Let me know," I told him. 

I shut the door behind me.

Edwards had another meeting with the board, likely over Kane's state, and Corvus had classes to attend, leaving no one but Ramos and I left in the unit. I opened the freezer to grab a bag of frozen dakjuk.

Ramos said, "What's that?"

I shrugged, snagging the scissors. "A Hail Mary," I quipped bitterly, and poured it into the pot.

Kane had figured out how to lie down, and was resting sideways on his good shoulder, a pillow between his legs, a pillow under his head, his brow furrowed and his eyes closed. He stirred at the sound of the door.

I set the tray of food down beside his bed. Kane glanced blearily at it. 

"You should eat," I told him. "Take your meds."

Kane closed his eyes again. "Not hungry."

"Kane."

"I said I'm not hungry."

"You need to eat."

"No."

"You're not a kid, come on." I pushed the tray to him. "At least eat a little. You have to."

"No, okay? I don't want it."

I pursed my lips. "Please, Kane."

Kane dropped his head into his pillow. "Just leave, Echo," he whispered, voice shaking. "Just leave me alone."

The day roiled and roared. I let it eat at my chest.

I left, shutting the door behind me.

Ramos was either psychic or a damn good listener, because she quickly told me, "He's in a fragile state right now. I think it's setting in, that things are going to be very difficult for a while. He's been entirely independent since he was in middle school. This is an adjustment. Let's be patient."

I nodded. "Time?" I asked.

Ramos's eyes were forlorn. She nodded. "Time."

Coach restarted practices out of necessity, seeing as we only had a few more weeks until the season began. It also meant a few more weeks until we had to drop the news on the public: me being an Omega, Kane taking a leave of absence, the plan for the new lineup, and inevitably, our new captain.

With both Kenzo and Kane gone, the new lineup pushed Zoe to starting centerback, Rosalie to starting center tail, and me as starting front port. The title of starter was enough to give me an aneurysm. Not that I had the time to have one.

"Yun, watch your left! You've got a brand new spanking helmet and bike, you've got no excuse!" Coach snapped. "You all are racing like a couple of rookies!"

"Tough crowd," I murmured.

"Cruz, speed it up, let's go! Russo, you're lagging so clear even I can see it, come on!"

"Wynter, tag team with Yun, we'll take out Zoe," Zahir said.

"Wait, what about Mer?" Wynter asked.

"Mer?"

"Stop circling, start attacking," Rosalie snapped. "What are we doing here?"

"Oy vey," Diego sighed.

And so on.

"We're acting like we've never been without him before," Rosalie scoffed. "We're a mess on that track."

"We haven't been," Meredith sighed. "I guess I never realized how much corralling he did."

"It's been a week of practice," Zahir sighed as he sat on the bench. "One week and I miss him. What the hell?"

"Forget missing him," Diego called. "We need him."

I slumped against my locker. I stared down at the jacket in my hands.

"Tell me about it," I muttered.

"Up, up, up!" Coach commanded. "You're too slow!"

"I'm always too slow!" Wynter argued.

"Speed up further before the ramp," Rosalie said. "You're dragging too much. Turn down!"

Wynter said, "Oy vey."

And so on.

Zoe threw her helmet onto the bench and slumped against the wall. "I'm gonna say it," she told me.

I shook my head, and tossed an orange slice into my mouth. "Don't," I told her.

February faded.

"We're too hesitant," Rosalie said. "We need to go back to attacking. We're acting like we're helpless."

"Aren't we?" Wynter muttered.

"Don't say that," Meredith said.

"It's true," she snapped. "We don't even have a captain. What do we do with that?"

"Kane isn't coming back." Everyone looked to Rosalie.  "Not for this season, at least," Rosalie said. "It fucking sucks without him, but we have to pivot. If we screw up without Kane, Corvus will never hear the end of it, and it'll be worse for everyone. He's not here, he won't be here, so we have to figure it out, okay?" She sighed. "Trust me, it sucks. But the last thing he'd want is us using him as an excuse for acting like amateurs."

"She's right." Coach climbed up to the canopy. "There are no excuses here." 

She scanned us. I tried not to feel the weight of that stare, the quiet insistence and the underlying desperation. We had to pivot, not because we wanted, but because it was failure if we didn't. 

It wasn't over yet.

"I understand you're all upset about the situation we're in," she said. "But we do each other and King no good by letting it affect our racing. King is a good racer, but he's not all of Corvus. Gossard's right. It's time to pivot."

"The season starts in two weeks," Diego said. "The public is going to rip us apart."

"What else is new?" she replied. "You're Corvus. Act like it. This is not the first time you've had to undergo a drastic change. This won't be the last. You know how to race, don't you?" She gestured at the track. "Go show me."

We grabbed our helmets, and headed into the Corvidae.

Ramos pushed the tray to me, complete with a water glass and a tray of pills. "He's more awake today. Maybe try talking to him?"

I hesitated. "I'll try."

Kane was upright, his glasses on his nose, earphones playing faint music of an unknown artist. I set the tray down. 

I said, "Ramos told me you looked better today." Kane blinked. He took out an earphone. "She said the wounds are healing well, and fast. Perks of an Alpha. How's that? Rosalie tossed me a textbook too hard and my hand still hurts. That was three days ago. Jesus Christ." Kane offered me the earphone. "You gonna eat? You should. Ramos said you only ate a little bit of your lunch." Kane held the earphone aloft. I sighed. "You're like a little kid. Who's younger here?" He waited. I rolled my eyes. "If I take this, will you eat your dinner?" Kane blinked. I figured I had no choice. 

I put the earphone in. 

When I'm looking at you, you seem like a faraway dream.

My heart stuttered. Kane's face was calm. I thought of him singing it, humming it in my ear, months ago. It felt like years. It felt like eons.

A starlight that has flown to me for several light-years is you right now.

Because you stayed there. Because it's you.

I let the song play once. Twice. Neither of us spoke. I held the earphone in place, like if I let go, all the music would leave with it. 

It wasn't until a thumb was against my cheek that I realized I was crying. I blinked dazedly.

Kane's face was concerned, but understanding. He left his thumb against my cheekbone. But it just seemed to hurt worse.

Sometimes, I gaze at you, because for me, looking at you is love.

I shook my head. I wanted to tell him to come back to practice, to go rolling out of bed, to come with me downtown or to the Birdhouse or to the Corvidae or just next door. I wanted to tell him to hurry up, to slow down. I wanted to lie down beside him until the night came, and then some.

Every moment of you, I hope it'll be me.

Kane brushed the bangs from my face, strand by strand, and hummed softly along.

After a while, I recognized you. Everything was clearly changing.

My world separates to before and after knowing you.

Edwards said, "There are three headlines hitting the news tomorrow."

We said, "Oh, no."

She read them off from her notes. "Yun's true subspecies, Kane's season-long absence, and our new captain for said season." She dropped her clipboard, and turned her head. "Rosalie Gossard."

We all gaped. Rosalie included.

Diego opened his mouth, closed it, considered something, then let out a bright laugh. "Actually," he said, "that's probably our one good headline, huh?"

"Best headline," Zoe said and squeezed Rosalie tight. "I don't really know a better person to fill the shoes."

"Agreed," Zahir said, smiling. He patted Rosalie's back. "Thanks, our one good headline."

Rosalie shook her head. "Coach, I can't...captain is so—"

She held up her hand. "I think you're our best option by far. And before you argue, it's already on my official roster, so, no changes." She smiled. "Congrats."

Rosalie shook her head. "You're kidding," she wheezed. "You're really kidding."

"Better not be," Meredith said with a laugh. She hugged Rosalie. "Rosie the captain. I like the sound of that."

Rosalie glanced around at us, then beamed back. "You think so?"

"Know so!" Diego insisted. "Best headline! Best headline! Best headline!"

Corvus chanted it all the way through the locker rooms and right into the Corvidae. I smiled after them, watching them hold their fists high as they entered the track.

"Excited for the season?" I asked Coach.

She snorted. "That," she muttered, "is one way to put it."

[Transaction Completed : Transfer Complete to Account ending in 2326. View it here.]
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[Message : the last of it(!)]

La Grande Couronne was a high-brow, higher-collared fine French dining establishment that occupied an ungodly amount of square footage of a corner in the upturned nose of Pasadena, its body pale like the cream of its desserts and its roofing blue like the cyanosis that overtook the guests' bodies after squeezing cheese souffles and coq au vin into golden tea dresses or black silk evening suits. It charged nothing for its fresh bread but double the standard for sparkling water, served the best ratatouille in the upper west, delivered the best steak tartare in the entire west, and required all its waiters to be young for appeal, agile for efficiency, and desperate for some decent fucking work in this god-awful American economy.

Which leads me to the front doors, of course.

"All right, kid, listen up because I'll say it once and once is all. You listening? Of course you are. Where were we? All right." Miss May slapped the front of the espresso machine. "We serve hot coffee, cold coffee, barley tea, three types of Dr. Pepper, and water. Lukewarm. Someone wants something else, you say 'go to Mr. Boba Boba Man next door and don't ask again'!"

I blinked. "Er, verbatim, or are there creative lib—"

"This!" She slapped the metal counter separating the kitchen and the rest of the restaurant. "Bell goes ding, you come running. See plate? Check number receipt under it. Don't know? Too bad, take best guess, check around."

"Aren't there at least forty two tables in this—"

"This!" She pointed at the little counter to the side. "Cups, dishes, utensils, dirty napkins, all of it, toss in, one two three four. Someone want new? Here." She slapped the other side. "Take from here. Hey. These? Never move. Not be seen by naked eye."

"Wait, what—"

"This!" She slapped the door to the back, a great, wide, steel thing not even equipped with glass to see in or out of. "You go in, you change in room on left, you say hello to make it seem like you want to be here, you come out, you ask Fruitcake what to do, he tells you, you do it. Tips are counted and split at end of night. Oui?"

"Fruitcake?"

"Vous comprenez. Make La Grande Couronne proud."

"Wait." I hurried in front of her. "When do I start?"

Miss May raised a brow, looking me up and down. She jutted her thumb at the back door. "Right now, coccinelle."

I blinked. The sound of the front doors opening caught my ear, the grand glass reflecting rainbows and white light onto the velvet booth seats and ivory tablecloths. I said, "Coccinelle?"

"Ladybug," she said with a snicker. She waggled a finger at my face, the nail red as wine. "Let's hope that pretty face gets you through to the end of night, yes?"

She disappeared without another word. I gaped after her. 

"Hey, hey! Petit écureuil, yeah, you, que fais-tu? Is this carnival? Theater? Fucking hell." 

I turned around. A man, who was about twice my height and three of me in weight, with a body like a well-eroded boulder and a face that looked like a suspect you'd find in a case file, approached me with a heavy sigh and a scent reminiscent of cigarettes and middle-aged misery. I swallowed.

"Er, nice to meet you," I tried. "I'm—"

"New kid, yeah, yeah, put your hand down, you look ridiculous." I put my hand down. "Get changed, you work whole day? Of course you do, you look like pre-pubescent girl ready to cry over tearing her kitten-printed stockings. Look like a man! Are you a man?"

"That is an incredible amount of personal insults for such a short conversation," I said.

He pointed to the door. "Go change, what is that? Quacking goose? You offend all of goose population with that! My ancestors. Go, go. We open in one hour." He straightened. "La Grande Couronne waits for no one."

"I won't even ask," I sighed, and ran for the back. 

"Second écureuil enters!" he hollered. "Go quick, go fast! You train the new dog."

A girl pushed open the door and went bounding inside, her short black hair wild around her round face. She skidded to a halt upon spotting me, and frowned. She pointed an accusing finger at my outfit and snapped in a voice laced in French, "You did your vest wrong."

"I've never worn a vest before," I said.

"Clearly. Yeesh." She undid the buttons, then redid them in the right arrangement. She fixed the badge on my breast. "Welcome to the team...Echo?"

"It's a real name," I hurried.

She snorted. She held out her hand. "Lapine," she said. At my surprised face, she smiled. "It's a real name."

"Bunny," I said.

"And a strong one at that!" She turned on her heel. "Weird names make a good story, yes? Make people believe that, you get better tips." She winked. "Now, let's begin."

I held my breath.

___________________

March came like a reinstated heartbeat.

Kane had absolved most of the numbness in his legs, and was even able to forego the crutch every now and then, which had earned quite the wave of excitement. His shoulder was, however, stubborn in its state and seemed to only inch away from the pain bit by agonizing bit. But, his silver levels hadn't spiked, and he was more awake more often than before, and that was plenty. 

"Rosalie is this season's captain," I told him one night. 

"I know," he told me, his fingers fiddling with his rings.

"How do you know?"

"Coach asked me about it," he said. "I told her Rosalie should do it."

I cocked my head. "You vouched for her?"

"Don't tell her anything," he snapped pointedly. 

My lip twitched. I said, "She still calls you the captain, you know. Still talks to Coach and says it every now and then."

Kane paused. He said, "Start correcting her, then."

"Is she wrong?"

"It's a new season. It's a new lineup," Kane reminded, his eyes dragging over his walls, with so little photos left to be remembered. His silver eyes were a dusk-dusted blue. "It's a new captain. People should know so."

I didn't argue. "I'll let her know."

Working at La Grande Couronne, managing Corvus practices, my two major classes, and helping Ramos and Corvus out with Kane kept my mind terribly busy, my head dodging between numbers and names and would you like more béchamel? and amide resonance is not enamine resonance and point combos between ramps not pillars and two pills in the morning with food then two at lunch then these four after dinner with plenty of rest. It all left me, although grateful for the distractions, uncomfortable with any stillness that did find me.

"I forgot saving my life meant Newman Projections," I sighed, and dropped the stack of notes onto the countertop. "You think it's too late to switch my major?"

Ramos frowned at me. "To what?"

"Mechanics of Dumbassery," I muttered and hopped down from the counter. "I can take it to him."

Ramos ladled in the last of the squash soup and placed the slices of bread onto the tray. She pushed it to me. "He's doing better," she said with a secretive grin. "He's been walking for almost an hour every day now. Dr. Woo said the worst of the chemicals are closing in on zero in terms of concentration. She said he should start looking into physical therapy."

"Seriously?" I said, my heart jumping. "That's great. Christ alive, that's...that's faster than she expected, right?"

Ramos held up a hand. "It is, but she said not to get too excited, because we still can't predict if the trend will continue. He's still been very tired, and his shoulder still has a lot of pain, so we should be cautious."

"But he's getting better?"

"Yes," Ramos said. "He is." She beckoned for me to go. "Keep him company, yeah?"

It was all I needed to hear.

I pushed open the door to find Kane standing, his back to me, leaning against his crutch. He was watching his shelf, a few photos rescinded and likely shoved somewhere into his closet, but still decked out as ever with achievements and accolades galore. 

I set the tray on his nightstand. "What're you doing?"

He craned his neck at the pictures, gaze distant. "Some old classmate hit me up," he murmured. "We were in the same anthro course in sophomore year. We're the same major. She asked if I was in some European war history class this semester, something about a study group. It was weird because I almost said yes. I was gonna be, at least—that was the plan. It was weird. I just got really annoyed." Kane sighed like he needed a break from the weight of the sky on his back. He stared at his feet. "I didn't even reply. I didn't know what to say. But that just made me more annoyed, but they don't know so why wouldn't they ask? I don't even know what to tell them. Jjanjeungna."

I blinked. I said, "Oh."

Kane turned around to head for the bed. "Sorry," he said. "Thanks for the food."

I watched him go and slowly sit back on the edge of the bed with a wince. He stirred the food but didn't eat it, content to stare at it instead. I blew now-black bangs from my face.

I said, "Ramos said you're not eating enough."

Kane sighed. "Ramos worries easily."

"Dr. Woo said if you don't eat enough, your recovery will start slowing."

"I'm all right, Echo," he said.

"You look thin."

"The sling is slimming."

"Kane."

"It's all right. I'm all right."

"Stop it. Stop all of this," I said, waving around us. "Your whole life is turned on its head and you're depressed about it, that's okay. Your whole life is different, everything's changing, you're out-of-your-mind depressed, man, and it's okay, it's just that. No one's blaming you for it. Why're you blaming yourself?"

Kane stayed quiet. I sat beside him. "Just eat. Please."

Kane stared at the food. He said, "You should go. Don't you have work?"

"You have to eat. You need to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Stop lying."

"I'm not."

"You have to eat with your medicine. You can't take it without food. Kane," I urged. "Just try."

A  tear slid over his cheek and dropped onto his hand. "Go, Echo," he whispered. 

I wanted to scream, either out of frustration or desperation. Maybe just for time to rewind, to go forward, to change altogether. Where would I go? There was nowhere else I needed to be more.

I got up and left the Talon in a silent massacre.

It was expected the news would not be taken well by, really, anyone who didn't already know. But that wasn't the surprise of the day.

"Echo!" A reporter shoved her way past the crowd and towards me, her mic so frantic it nearly took out my nose. "Please, can you tell me how this makes you feel?"

She gestured at the Corvidae's entrance walls, where black and red paint had plastered itself across the steel walls, severe and gargantuan for all the world to read its crude LYING LYCAN SCUM spelled out without a letter out of place.

They claimed they called in workers to start cleaning it off, but there were no one but reporters there for us to greet, along with a semi-concerned email from the dean addressing the vandalism issue. But we'd long prepared for the backlash. We'd even come to the Corvidae pre-equipped with cleaning gear and expendable clothing. 

Rosalie had taken one look at the entrance and thrown her head back with a sigh. 

"Diego," she snapped. "Get me the acetone and a goddamn sedative." You can imagine. 

"Echo! Echo!" A reporter shoved her mic into my face, nearly taking out my nose. "How do you feel about this statement? What does it make you feel?"

"Echo! Can you tell us why you hid being an Omega?" another reporter yelled as he beckoned his cameraman to get closer.

"Rosalie! Does this make you fearful of being the new Corvus captain? Does it feel targeted?"

"Rosalie, can you tell me why you were the new captain choice and not anyone else?"

"Diego, Diego, can you tell me the real reason why Kane King disappeared?"

"Meredith, did you or anyone else know the truth about Echo?"

"Zahir, how do you feel about this change in lineup and captain? Are you confident in Corvus without Kenzo Watanabe now?"

"Wynter, did you know about Echo? Why did you help him hide it? Are you ashamed?"

"Zoe, are you nervous to take on such a big role when you're still so inexperienced? Do you feel prepared to be a starting centerback so early on?"

"Your first match of the season is this week, are you worried without King there to help you? Do you think you rely on him for the matches?"

"How does it feel with the pressure of the media now on you all for these shocking revelations?"

"You're the only Omega in all of NCAA D1, and the first Class III Stirling Omega to ever be part of a winning Red Diamond team, how does that feel?"

"Do you think more Omegas should be allowed onto square racing teams?"

"Do you plan to finally change your Class in the upcoming Eval?"

"How does your Coach feel about this revelation? Does she know?"

"Are any of you scared about these threats coming onto you tenfold?"

"Your fellow peers at this school have voiced their distaste for the news that's been revealed, what do you say to them?"

"Are you scared?"

"Are you worried?"

"Are you angry?"

"Are you nervous?"

"One more question!"

"One more question!"

"One more question!"

If you can even imagine.

It took ten security guards, a hefty threat from the admin, and a heftier threat from Edwards to eventually clear out all of the press, although it didn't get rid of any peeping eyes or fellow students who were happy to mock us from afar. I briefly considered becoming a mole rat for the rest of my life and resigning from Corvus early. I was already halfway to the size of one.

Dusk crept for us as we clambered up ladders to scrub away each letter one by one. I rolled up my sleeves, my towel against the S and scrubbing away at the red paint that dripped down onto my fingers and wrist. Coach was busy removing the Y and barking at the police officers as they took a report. The rest of Corvus was going between climbing up to clean and climbing down to shout at nosy reporters. 

I sighed, slumping against the stone wall, my towel soaked in red and black paint. I let my forehead rest on my knees.

"Fucking lycans," I muttered.

"So drama, huh?"

I shot up.

Ian Gray stood above me, backlit by the setting sun, equipped with cornflower blue eyes and the friendliest smile far south of the west coast. He raised a brow down at me.

"How come when I find you," he said, "it's always when you're shit out of luck?"

In another moment, in another world, I'd tell him to fuck off and then laugh after another two minutes of back-and-forth. But with the weight of 9AM French assholes, a school and nation that were hardwired to hate me, an ex-captain gambling for his life, a current-captain fighting tooth and nail against the press, twenty four pages of carbon compounds waiting on my desk to dissect, a brand new identity pasted like a die-cut sticker over the corpse of my old one, a ghost brother, a dead father, a deader mother, and not one good fucking clue in my head, I figured I needed any good moment I could get.

I got to my feet. "Probably because I'm never not shit out of luck?" I said, and held out my hand. "What the hell are you doing here, man? Say 'saving you' because I need that."

He threw his head back in a laugh and clasped my hand to draw me into bone-crushing hug. "Saving your track, more like. I was getting off work when I saw the news."

"Work? I thought you were a bodyguard."

"Summer gig, besides, after Aster's cousin found out I went inside the party, she sort of blacklisted me. Both their losses, may I add, because that wasn't a real job anyway," he said, making a face. "Anyway, I thought you guys might need some help. That and—" He tapped my shoulder. "—I figured you might wanna talk."

I stared at him. I said, "Ian."

He said, "Yeah?"

I said, "I think I believe in guardian angels."

Ian bellowed out a laugh at that, and slung an arm over my shoulders to steer us both out and back towards the entrance.

"I knew you were a smart one," he told me.

Ian took a towel and the two of us clambered up the ladders to continue scrubbing away the paint. We discussed the logistics, the headlines, Rosalie's new position, my not-so-simple reveal, Ian's new place of work post-graduation, the Anteaters' future.

"What about IPRA?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "I love racing, don't get me wrong," he said, "but I couldn't do it for the rest of my life. Not the kind of profession I could see myself enjoying, you know?"

I didn't, but I could understand. "Then, what do you wanna do?"

He smiled. "I'm at a gym right now, sort of a rehabilitation place. Physical therapy, personal training, adapted recreational sports, the works. It's more my kind of place, helping people out and such. Not so cutthroat all the time," he explained. "Everyone only ever wants everyone to succeed."

I stopped mid-scrub. My head swiveled to him.

"Did you say physical therapy?" I asked.

Ian frowned at me. "Yeah," he replied. "Why?"

"Corvus begins this season relatively...well, despite all the previous concerns held, they versed UCI's Anteaters this past Friday and it was a smash with 199 to 165, Corvus win. I have to say, I was thoroughly impressed with how well they worked together despite King's absence..."

"...will not be going pro, once a Stirling, always a Stirling, they're lazy, they can't handle the pressure, I'd be surprised if Yun goes pro, to be frank, we've seen a dozen Fahrhaus go pro, two dozen Padmore, than even a handful of Stirlings. It's just how it is..."

"...Howards states in her blog that, quote, 'The world has grown outlooks for a reason, and although I appreciate Corvus's attempt at wokeness and trying to play for publicity or charity with this lineup, a Class III Stirling Omega on a track that has never even gone near such standings is a recipe for disaster'."

"Many Stirlings are defending Yun, however, saying that he's long proved himself with his performance in Red Diamond, a complete 180 compared to how afraid they were of him last year..."

"...vandalism continues in the east coast, New York and Massachusetts, as protests continue to abolish subspecies and Class rank on job and university applications, many stating it is 'rigged' from the start if such information is put down..."

"There is a lot of attention on the Janchi family, especially with Kane King taking an entire year off, including from his academics, Coach Emeline Edwards says it's due to 'urgent personal matters' that 'are not to be disclosed'. Some speculate an injury or a familial interference, but there's been no evidence..."

__________________

April was well underway from the second it began.

Kane said, "Are you sure about this?"

I clasped my hands together. "About ninety eight percent sure."

"What's the other two percent?"

"Margin of error."

"Echo," Ramos snapped.

"Slim margin," I reminded. I gestured up ahead from our position in the parking lot. "Forget it, we're here, we'll find out. You excited?"

Kane's stare was utterly blank. 

I glanced at Ramos. "We've lost him."

Ramos held up her hand at me and turned around in her car seat to face Kane. "Remember. This is just an introduction, a tour of the place, a chance to ask questions. Ask questions. Ask lots. Ask so many they may look at you funny." Kane looked a bit mortified at that. Ramos pursed her lips. "That's exaggeration. I'm kidding. Have I mentioned I'm kidding? Where were we?"

"Margin of error," I muttered.

Ramos pushed my face away with her finger on my cheek. She cleared her throat. "It's all an introduction. And—" She softened as she stared at Kane. "—you can tell us if you want to leave at any time."

Kane looked from her, to the gym, to me, to the gym, then back again. He said, "I'd like to le—"

"Any time after ten minutes of crossing the threshold," Ramos hurried, and Kane slumped in his seat.

I tugged at my sweater's collar, my goose mid-quack and full shock. "Let's focus on crossing the threshold at all, first."

SPERO Physical Center was a two-story, mile-long Los Angeles gym that sat between the biggest Cinnabon known to man and a standard-sized Nordstrom Rack that was midway through a springtime sale, all within a lesser-known plaza just a few blocks from Moon King Plaza, making its accessibility prime meat and its size a well-marbled cut. SPERO offered its patrons everything from one-on-one physical therapy or personal training, free range of the spa and sauna, on-site childcare services, several locker rooms, classes that shifted between Zumba or kickboxing, a swimming pool, a lineup of dietitians alongside certified psychotherapists, and a dozen different outdoor or indoor specialized sport areas for all to use. Topped off with a snack bar that got away with selling peanut butter protein shakes at fourteen dollars a pop, I'd say SPERO was doing damn well for itself, all things considered.

Its target audience was where it differed, though.

I pushed open the double glass doors, and was met immediately with Ian, who was in the midst of a conversation with one of the two desk reps. He wore a tank top and gym shorts, both reading SPERO UNITED in bold blue at the corner. He beamed.

"Hey, hey, team of the hour!" he said, hurrying over to us. He clapped me on the back. "Glad you made it, man, but why do you smell like burnt cheese?"

"Lucas fucked up all kinds of brie, we caused a national shortage," I said succinctly, and shook my head when he gave me a puzzled look. "Doesn't matter. This is Jasmin Ramos, she's Corvus's nurse and a long-lost American sweetheart, or something."

"I like that introduction," she told me, and held out her hand to Ian. "Thank you for letting us come in on such short notice. Echo's told me a lot about you."

"Thanks for coming in," he replied. He turned to Kane and grinned even wider. "The king in real time! You probably don't remember, but we met? At the—"

"Eval," Kane finished, his face still blank. "I remember you."

Ian postured at that. "You do? Hell, I'm honored, let me tell you. Good to meet you again. You're a big inspiration." He held out his hand. Kane readjusted on his crutch to take it. "We'll give you the whole tour, front to back! You excited?"

Kane gave a one-shouldered shrug that was most definitely not excited. Ian faltered. I made a motion to keep walking. 

He cleared his throat. He turned on his heel. "Let's get started."

Ramos leaned towards Kane. "Remember," she said, "Nothing wrong with trying."

Kane followed Ian. "Eight minutes," he told her. 

We sighed.

"This is our main gym, we've got several sessions going on in here, a lot of solo work, too." Ian gestured out at the wide open floor, full of machines, barres, mats, and people. Wide windows let sunlight drape itself over the patrons. "Those are some of our trainers, in the black shirts with SPERO on it, like mine."

Creatures and humans alike stood with the trainers. Some couldn't move their legs, others their arms, some flexed prosthetic hands, others wound prosthetic legs up for pull-ups or lunges or stretching. A few were on crutches, others in slings, some on canes, some in wheelchairs. 

Ian smiled at us. "Cool, right?" He turned to head down the hall. "This side is more private. More for newer clients or PT that takes more attention."

We peered through the glass window of a door, where a much smaller gym resided inside. One man looked particularly disheveled, a bandage on his cheek, a bruise on his chest, his hands holding his body up as his legs dragged beneath him with each slow, slow step. The trainer clapped her hands, smiling without missing a beat.

Kane stepped back. His face was rather unreadable.

"The sauna, spa, and lockers are down here, too. Locker rooms have shower stalls, if you need them. Hot water always works," he said. 

Sure enough, passing by it sent the faintest whiff of soap and oils our way. Ian pointed all the way down. "Pool is down here, and we've got private rooms all along this hallway you can use to cool down, or just talk to your PT one on one." He stopped in the intersection of the hallways and pointed at the white stairs that spiraled upwards to the second floor. "Up there are therapy rooms, the snack bar, and the outdoor area. Don't buy shit at the snack bar. Fourteen dollars for a peanut butter protein shake? God help us all.

"If you sign up," he said, "you'll get paired with a PT right away, just so you guys can have a gameplan on what to do for the next few months. We've got a lot for you, all your choosing. Gender, species, subspecies. Don't pick them too pretty though. No distractions! Don't pick me then, you know what I mean? Heh?"

Kane just stared at him. I motioned for Ian to wrap it up.

He cleared his throat. "Er, but yeah, PT of your choice. And a therapist, if you need one. We usually recommend them for new clients. Physical therapy can be pretty daunting for people at first, you know?" He clapped his hands together. "So, what do you think?"

Kane took another glance around, but his face was unforgiving. He chewed his lip. "I don't think—"

"Gray! You're on ice refill, man, what're you doing over here?"

We all turned around. 

A man approached us, halfway through taking off his hand wraps, sweat beaded on his forehead. He was a trainer, if his outfit said anything to it, and when he looked down at us upon approaching, his eyes were crisp and blue against thin black veins crawling up through his scleras. When I glanced at his now-uncovered hands, there were black threads devouring his tendons right down to the fingertips. 

"I refilled it, those bulgae are monsters, I'm telling you," Ian defended. He gestured at the man. "Jamie Towns, he's another PT. Former Anteater! Anteaters unite." He held out his fist.

Jamie said, "I told you I'm not doing that." He glanced at the rest of us, and grinned wide. "Nice to meet you all. Who's the one this kid's trying to goad this time?"

We pointed at Kane. Kane gaped at Jamie. Jamie beamed, and held out his hand. "Nice to see you here, man. Hey, I like your shoes." He pointed at Kane's bright green and black Adidas. "Nice colors."

Kane gaped more. Ramos looked ready to cry or laugh or both. I said, "You're a trainer."

Jamie seemed amused. "I am. I just came from the track. Some of them wanted to do a little racing before their sessions."

We all said, "Racing?"

Ian frowned. "Thought I mentioned racing."

"You did not," I said. "You really did not. Never go into sales, man."

Jamie grinned. "You kids racers?" I nodded, albeit Kane was hesitant. Jamie pointed down the corridor. "Wanna see the track?"

We went.

It wasn't the Corvidae, by any means, and was more of a little league track than a real one, its sides half the curve it usually is and its length miniature. But, with obstacles arranged, stone well-paved, and a buzzer to top it all off, it was still a track.

Kane's eyes swallowed the scene. Jamie said, "Every Christmas, we do a big drag race, lycans and all, and whoever wins gets unlimited snack bar shakes for six months. It's probably our biggest event of the year." Ian nodded at that and Jamie laughed. "It's good people, SPERO. Everyone really roots for each other. I think that's something a lot of other physical therapies don't give you, you know? People to root for you."

Kane righted himself. He said, "Thanks for showing us."

Jamie and Ian nodded. Jamie said, "We'll see you soon?"

Kane pressed his lips thin. He said, "Thanks."

We turned towards the door.

Ramos sat in the car, a stress-induced Cinnabon cinnamon roll halfway finished in her hand. She wiped the icing off onto her sleeve and whirled on Kane.

"So?" she tried. "So...what do you think of it?"

We held our breath. April whispered in a sea of winter-tinged spring. Kane stared out to where SPERO sat. He stared like it was talking to him or he was getting ready to talk to it or neither at all. Whatever it was, he didn't look away.

He said, "Sign me up for a session."

Ramos slumped against her seat with the sheer relief. She stuffed the last of the cinnamon roll into her face with a mumbled, "Hallelujah."

I smiled, and pushed a hand into my heart.

April began to bud. Began to bloom.

"If I hear 'more béchamel' from another rich, white, power-tripping aunt out for a brunch she shouldn't be affording with this struggling economy, I'm gonna kill myself with nothing but a fancy French knife from Walmart and the power chord for that damn, disgusting coffee," I said. I fell against Kane's bed, my arms over the covers, my knees on the ground. "I need a cigarette like I need water."

Kane's pained face said he understood that want. He took the lollipop from his mouth and said, "How do you get to work?"

I frowned at him. April was cool on my back, a soft hand that was warm only in spirit and cold to the touch. "Bus," I told him. "Easiest way."

"Don't you have to leave an hour early if you take the bus?"

"There's places to stay at nearby, I'll be fine."

Kane stared at me for several moments. I pulled off my tie and tossed it somewhere onto the footboard. I lied beside Kane's feet, counting the marks on the ceiling like stars.

Kane said, "You have classes."

"They're not that close together."

"You have homework."

"Not that much homework."

"You have Corvus."

"I'm never free of Corvus no matter what I do. Especially not now," I replied. "Don't worry. Just worry about your PT and meds." I pointed a finger at his face. "Don't. Worry."

It was true, after all. Kane had had his first PT session the day before, and when he had come home, Ramos and I were ready to let him rip it a new one, but to our surprise, he had almost no reaction at all. Save for a single grin, right at his dimple.

"I take it, you like Jamie?" Ramos tried.

Kane had said, "He's nice."

She pushed a tray to him and said, "Dinner. Eat up?"

When I'd gone to retrieve the tray, more than half the plate had been gone. My heart skipped, skidded, and trotted upwards. I took the plate, smiling.

It was, in some ways, all I really needed to justify everything else I had to do.

Kane said, "You should just drive there."

I snorted. "Drive myself?" I pushed myself upright with a scoff. "Me and what car?"

"Mine." Kane tore a piece of the roll off to toss into his mouth. "Take my car."

I blinked. "What?"

Kane's eyes urged me with those words. A world could be crushed, obliterated, into pieces, by those eyes alone. Black or silver, brown or green, pink or red, they were world-killers to me.

Kane leaned his head back to stare up at the ceiling. "I'll never drive again," he told me plainly. "I know it. I've known it for a while, I just...never really wanted to admit it. Either way, doesn't change it. I can't drive, not with my eyes. The car is just sitting there anyway." He pointed to me. "So, it's yours."

"Your car? You're giving me your car?"

"It's old," he assured me. "And it's not the prettiest. And you'll have to clean it out. Probably twice." He sighed. "But, it's a car. Someone should use it."

I gawked. It took five tries for me to figure out the words.

"It's...it's your car," I argued.

Kane shook his head. "It's just a car." 

He reached over with his good arm and pulled open his top drawer. He withdrew a key, one that looked near identical to the one that hung in the glass case, in the corner of the garage, abandoned by time and dashed hopes. He pushed it right into my palm, deep enough to let the shape of it imprint into my skin.

"Take it," he told me. "Please."

The ridges, the grooves, the teeth, the faint sound of an engine in my ear just by looking at it. My heart twisted, yanked this way and that. They'll be your team if you let them be.

The key singed a burn into my palm. A brand. I closed my fingers tight over it. 

"Thank you," I told him. "Thank you, really."

Kane stared for a few beats. Then, reached up, and ruffled my black waves over my face. His thumb lingered in the space between my bangs.

"Don't thank me," he said.

"Did you just pull up in a car?" Lapine gasped, nearly dropping her stack of pristine, white plates. "Did you steal it?"

"Not in so many words," I said, pulling my vest on over my button-down. "Don't tell Fruitcake, he'll designate coffee runs to me."

"Écureuil!" Fruitcake bellowed, and came rolling in, his belly pushing chefs and waiters aside left and right. He pointed a finger at me and glared. "You have car? Real car? Did you steal?"

"I've gotta clean the coffee filters," I told him, rushing for the door.

He plucked me up by the back of my shirt like a kitten. "You are on coffee runs!"

"We have a coffee machine."

"The French do not do lattes. That machine serves espresso, c'est tout. Latte is disgrace."

"Your cousin owns the latte art shop down the block," I snapped. "Ce n'est pas tout."

"No talk backs! Coffee run. Tell Gabriel he make mine with almond milk." He patted his stomach. "Watching my figure."

Lapine glanced to me. "Told you."

"You've gotta be kidding."

"I pay you twenty bucks per run," Fruitcake said.

I spun on my heel and grabbed the key. "Done."

"Thirty if you get him to make a lapine on mine!" Lapine yelled.

I raised a hand in understanding. I pulled the car door shut, and sat in the Corolla, the faintest scent of cotton and lavender and Kane lingering inside. I squeezed my fingers tight on the steering wheel, and tapped the little crow dangling from the mirror.

"Thirty down," I muttered, starting the engine, "Millions to go."

Jamie said, "I'll tell it to you straight: the kid's depressed."

I glanced at Ramos, who glanced at Jamie. She said, "We know."

Jamie nodded. "Well, you probably wanna do something about it." He pushed a handful of papers to us, complete with Kane's medical records, his most recent blood work, and a mental state evaluation. "Physical therapy is mostly body, sure, but it's also your head. I can tell the kid has some fight in him, sure, but he just seems to have already given up."

Ramos flipped through the papers, her brow furrowing. "The medicine should be ratifying these irregularities. What's wrong?"

I turned to Jamie. "What's wrong?"

Jamie cocked his head from side to side, black curls bouncing. "All right, I'll be frank," he said. "He needs to move on. Silver poisoning is a fucking terrible experience, and his whole life has been turned on its head, I get that, believe me. But shit happens, and he can't just give up because there's no guarantee he'll make a full recovery."

I stared at the black threads in his hands. "Then, what should we do?"

"He needs to learn to be okay with losing some things," Jamie said. "Force him to be more self-sufficient. He can't stay holed up in his room forever. Make him do some chores, cook some meals, fold a towel or two, whatever gets him up and moving. It'll make him see that even if he isn't how he used to be, he can still be happy with how he is now. It'll force him to reconcile with the loss better, even if subconsciously." 

I stared at the papers. Ramos clutched them tight, but gave a calm nod to Jamie.

"We'll try our best," she said. "Thank you so much."

"Could he?" I asked. Jamie frowned at me. "Make a full recovery, I mean."

Jamie grimaced. His eyes were sad when he looked at me and he seemed to be debating on how to deliver his words. "Even a full recovery from silver isn't full, you know. You're still gonna wake up in the middle of night with pain, you're still gonna have to take medication for the rest of your life, you're still gonna have to forego your smokes or your drinks, you're still gonna have to miss out on some things because of appointments or flare-ups or just plain exhaustion. Either way, your life's never gonna be the same, no matter how much you recover. That's just it." Jamie softened, his look empathetic. "But your world changing doesn't mean your world is ending. You just have to change with it."

I pressed my nails into my palms. It was a bitter truth, but an honest one. That didn't make it go down easier.

"We'll help him," I told Jamie. "We'll try."

Jamie's smile was understanding. "That's the best you can do."

"A lycan that doesn't eat meat." Lapine snagged my sandwich for herself. "What are you?"

"A lycan that doesn't eat meat," I replied, and took the mozzarella sandwich instead to eat for later. I withdrew a cigarette and offered the box to her. "It's not the weirdest thing you'll hear about me."

She snagged my lighter to lick the end of her cigarette awake. "Sounds promising," she snickered.

The April air was still cold, still full of bite when the winds blew too harshly. I blew warm smoke and let it graze my freezing hands.I was about to bite it when my phone buzzed awake, a text from Kane appearing on it.

kane - 10:10 PM

ramos said i need to do a weekly outing or smth for morale
jamie put her up to it
did u wanna go somewhere trmw

Lapine snagged my phone and read it off before I even got the chance to reply. She gasped, turning a look on me with a raised brow. "Qui est-ce?"

"It's not like that," I said.

"Is that your boyfriend?"

"No."

"You have a boyfriend? Someone scooped up this skinny little corbeau?"

I snatched my phone back so fast I nearly fell off my chair. "I said it's not like that." I sighed. "He's a friend of mine."

"A good friend?"

"A regular friend."

"A very good friend."

I shook my head. "Trust me." It sounded more bitter than I intended.

She hummed. "Would you like it to be? Like that?"

"I never said that."

"I say it for you."

I stared at the screen, Kane's message there to scar my skin. The air sank teeth into the back of my head like an insistent pressure in my skull that never really dulled but never hurt enough to bother with.

"Not right now," I confessed. "Not for him."

Lapine cocked her head. Her face was sympathetic. She nudged me with a sad grin.

"Love is time," she told me. "Let it find you when it's ready."

I tapped the ashes onto the concrete. "What do I know about it?" I murmured.

"What? You think you don't?" Lapine said. 

"I'm sure I don't."

"Ah, so you say!" She waved me off, blowing a cloud up above our heads. "Not true, though. Everyone has loved someone or something. Doesn't have to be big or marvelous. Most times, just something you can trust will be there when you look away." She eyed me. "Best loves don't take up the whole eye." She gestured at her face, then pointed to her side. "All they need is the peripheral."

I stared at her, the cigarette smoke warm in my mouth, the ashes giving out under my shoes. April made LA taste cool and thin, a menthol and a mint. 

Me - 10:13 PM

where to?

Spring break fractured the winter ice, and with it, let in a bit of sun.

Corvus had several outings of theirs they wanted to do for spring break, most of them consisting of day trips and outlet outings, but with work clogging most of my schedule, I was left with little time to spare for them. So as for Kane's outing, it forced me into a corner of the afternoon, still in my work outfit, smelling of orange sauce and fine cheese, the afternoon blue with spotty clouds, on the way to a cemetery.

True Souls Cemetery was about as beautiful, and as haunting, as you can imagine a cemetery to be. The grass was green, and the flowers were plentiful, and the hillsides were congruent with hundreds of bronze plaques alongside white stone angels. A few visitors crouched down beside their fallen family or friends, picnic blankets laid out, one-sided conversations echoing through the air. Pretty as a ghost.

Kane said, "Stop up there, at the corner."

I pulled the Corolla up. I got out to help Kane, the wind cool on my still-warm skin. Kane planted his crutch against the dirt, and faced up ahead. I grabbed the bouquet of California poppies from the back.

Kane took a few moments of scanning the plaques up and down the rows until he found it. He halted at a dark brown one, the edges golden, the writing plain and bold. A great big poppy bloomed in engraved gold at the corner. I glanced down at the OPAL POPPY WILDER emblazoned above a single line that read "Never doubt the underdog".

We stared at the plaque for a long moment. I knelt down, and set the flowers over her name.

Kane said, "It's her birthday tomorrow."

The wind whispered, sang softly, sang sadly.

"I remember waiting every day," Kane murmured. "Waiting for someone to walk in and tell me they found her. That it was a close call and she was lucky to be alive, and I'd have a chance to tell her the truth, to explain everything and tell her I was sorry." 

The flowers ruffled and fell apart in the wind. He didn't finish the story. He didn't have to. 

"I keep thinking about every single stupid decision that led me to that parking lot," he whispered. "If I'd gone any other way, she'd be alive. I'd be a ghost in Korea without her, Corvus would be a disjointed status club without her, but she's the one who died." Kane sighed, the weight of sandstone and guilt in that breath. "I keep waiting to get over it, you know? Like one day it'll stop feeling like dying over and over again, but I'm still waiting," he muttered. "I'm just...always waiting."

I got to my feet. I stared down at the empty grave, the outline of a champion there under the grass. Everyone was a corpse, at the end of the day. Everyone was dirt and dust and memories. Everyone was a heart or a lung to sell, blood to pour out, skin to peel back. Everyone was everyone was no one.

"No one made you Kane King." I watched the petals, golden and sunlit, as they disappeared into the grass blades. "No one made you who you are except you. And you made some shitty decisions, but you made some damn good ones, too. You win, you lose. You walk away, you stay. You are, you aren't." I shrugged. "Stop waiting for things to be over, for things to start. They're already over. They've already started." I turned to him. "All you have to do is choose your timing."

Kane blinked. He stared at Poppy's grave, at the flowers, at the miles of endings buried six feet under our soles. His white-streaked hair was swept back from his eyes, the wind freeing his face to the world.

We stood in the April day, as the poppies flew into the wind to leave us both behind.

_______________

Kane turned twenty two to the sound of my second Yellow Diamond and his first footsteps in five months without a crutch.

Ramos was halfway through a pot full of spaghetti and another pot of red sauce when his door opened. We both turned to look at him.

He looked back at us. For a moment, I didn't understand what he was trying to do, just standing there, until I realized he had no crutch in his right arm.

I got to my feet so fast, the chair under me fell over with a crash. Kane said, "Don't ruin the floor."

I said, "What are you doing?"

Ramos gasped. "Kane," she breathed. 

He held up a hand. "I'm slow," he placated. "Don't get excited."

We held our breaths. Kane pursed his lips tight and let go of the doorframe. He took a step. He planted his bare foot on the hardwood. One. Then the other. Then the other. Bit, by bit, by bit, until he grabbed onto the dining table edge, and smiled at us.

Ramos ran for him. She enveloped him in a hug, avoiding his shoulder, her shoulders shaking. Kane grinned. I watched that grin, re-remembering the shape of it against his face, the one dimple, the crooked line, the squeeze of his eyes. May pulsed like a steady heartbeat.

"Birthday miracle," Ramos laughed, wiping her eyes. She squeezed his wrist. "Kane, that's wonderful."

Kane shrugged. "Just walking."

"Shut up, man," I told him. "You're unreal."

When Kane turned his grin on me, I swore I felt like the sun was staring at me instead.

The door opened, Rosalie waltzing in as she stretched her arms over her head, the rest of Corvus trailing in behind her. "All right, I heard something about spaghetti, so you two better serve some up because we're—holy fuck."

Everyone halted to look at Kane. Ramos quickly stepped aside, beckoning for him to go. Kane let go of the table edge, and walked forward.

Rosalie screamed and bolted for him along with the rest of Corvus, shouting and enveloping him like they hadn't seen him in a hundred years. I saw Kane throw his head back, and laugh a real, bright, raspy laugh into the afternoon air.

"When we finish off Yellow Diamond," Zahir said, "we'll be bringing you the cake of a lifetime for it."

Kane didn't bother to argue, too busy laughing.

The world was infinitely light.

"Corvus clears Yellow Diamond once more, this is definitely impressive considering the fact their lineup is so different this year, and with a different captain leading them, at that! I'm curious to see where they go next..."

"No news has come out about King and his absence yet, people stating they don't know much about his whereabouts. His family has declined to answer any questions about it as well, which seems to further suspicions about..."

"...Stirlings, it's changing perspectives, it's re-shaping our way of thinking about racing and who exactly can race, and race well. I appreciate it, really, I think it's brave, I think it's bold, but it's risky. Nothing new is ever not a risk, people have to see..."

"Rosalie Gossard states in an interview that she's 'honored to be able to lead such a capable team' and although the new responsibility is 'sudden and weighty' she is 'incredibly happy to have the chance to step up' for her team and 'do them right' as many captains before her..."

"...a new addition to the 607 procedure for lycans that could possibly get rid of it faster, more effectively, and early on. That being said, it has yet to be cleared, and many don't want more additions to an already-risky procedure..."

I sat down on Kane's bed with a box and a cupcake.

Kane scooted forward towards me. He said, "We already had cake."

"Okay, so?" I waved him away, fishing around in my pocket. "When I worked at the Audrey, I once ate five chocolate cake pies as my dinner solely because they were the most readily available thing, and it was probably the best damn dinner I've ever had, so."

Kane snorted at that. He gestured at the box. "Then, what's that?"

"Cocaine. Shut up, let me light the candle." I flicked on the lighter and let the purple candle flare up atop the vanilla cupcake. I held it out to him. "You know, this time last year, I thought you were still a little fucking crazy."

Kane said, "And now?"

"Out of your fucking mind," I said, then smiled. "I like you better now."

Kane paused, then gave a slow, soft grin. He was all gold in its light. May was soft at our ears, a sweet kiss on our cheeks. May was a star in my peripheral, a flame under my hand.

"Thank you," he said to me. "For staying."

I tried to imprint the image of him, blue in the shadows, amber in the candlelight, soft bones and hooded eyes. If nothing else worked this year, if nothing else fared well for me, I had that image, just for myself.

"Where else would I be?" I replied.

When Kane blew out the candle's flame, I swore he took me right with it.

[Alert - Upcoming Event in 1 DAY :
STIRLING CLASS EVAL on May 31]

"Phone. Wallet. Keys."

I deposited each respectively. The guard ushered me forward. The woman at the desk beckoned for my name and number. 

"Echo Yun," I said. "715."

She hummed, ticking it off. "Concentration?"

My heart twisted, jumped up, rushed down. I swallowed hard.

"Racing," I said.

She checked it off, and pointed behind her. "You're good to go."

Ian turned around, spotting me as I walked for him, and lit up with a grin. He said, "Don't tell me you're going with physical strength again."

I straightened, and shook my head. "Racing," I said. "Maybe I'll have a chance this time."

Ian cocked his head, and laughed. "Thought you were a nervous test-taker."

I shrugged. "I think I've gained some new experience."

"All lycans report to the entry doors. Eval will begin in five minutes exactly," the announcer ordered.

Ian patted my back with a laugh. "Maybe you'll win the whole damn thing."

I turned towards the entrance. We headed for the Thunderdome. My cheeks ached, and I had to reach up to feel them to realize I was smiling.

It's not always what you're willing to risk losing. It's what you're willing to fight for.

I thought of my brother, and shook my head.

"Don't need to," I told him.

I held up my brand new ID to the light, watching it reflect under the shining sun, the heat of summer creeping for us with merciless clutches. Echo Yun. Twenty years old. Four feet, eleven inches. Class I Stirling Omega. In permanent ink.

"If I didn't know better," a voice said, "I'd think you were sleeping during that Eval."

I turned around.

Rosalie pushed herself off of the entryway wall. She waltzed towards me, clad in a silver jacket, silver boots, and a pair of sunglasses that pushed her cornsilk blonde hair back. Her blue eyes were rather amused for the smirk on her face.

I sputtered, gaped, before I managed a, "What are you doing here?"

She shrugged. "Someone told me you're a nervous test taker and you might do something stupid at your Eval," she said. "Thought I'd drop by to grill you about it."

I pushed my new ID into my wallet. I splayed my arms. "Grill away."

Rosalie snorted. She stared at me for a few moments, then yanked her arm around my neck and hauled me into a fierce hug, the kind the crushed my bones together and pulled my head into her neck. The real kind.

"You piece of shit," she said. "You're a damn prodigy."

I soaked that in for a few moments, savoring the sound of it in my head. Then, I wrapped my arms around her, and hugged her back.

"Thanks," I told her. "For coming to see me."

Rosalie ruffled my hair and pulled away. She shrugged. "First rule," she said. The beam she gave me could have lit up all of LA. She slung an arm over my shoulders. "C'mon, Class I. Make way for the winners."

"Don't say it too loud."

"Why not? I'm gonna."

"Be a kind captain, I beg of you."

"Pseudo-captain."

"Stop that."

"You know how it is."

"Captain's a captain. Kane calls you that."

"Kane's got too many meds in him to know what the fuck he's saying. You know I caught him talking to a pigeon? I'm waiting to use that one against him at some point."

"Ay, ay, captain."

"Hey, Echo?"

"Yes?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Ah, Rosie," I said, waving her away. "One impossible feat a day, please."

She burst into a laugh, and I joined in with her as we walked down the road, my shoulders lighter than the clouds above.

___________________

Wynter kicked my binder aside and said, "Get up. We're going to the beach."

I looked up at her. "I'm good."

"Not a question," Rosalie called from the doorway, already clad in jean shorts and a swimsuit. 

The June heat brought out candy-colored clothes and candy-colored tints, the whole world forced into lighter shades by the unmoving heat, the indomitable LA sun. Bodies, bugs, time moved through the world in the fresh, summer molasses. 

Rosalie pushed her black sunglasses up from her face and said, "It's a non-negotiable. Get up, go change."

"I don't have a swimsuit."

"And? Wear something light you don't care getting wet. Come on, we leave in ten."

Diego whooped, tossing a towel over his shoulder. "Beach baby. It's me. I'm the beach baby." He gestured at his blue board shorts and winked at Rosalie. "Or am I, a beach babe?"

"Don't make me vomit, I just bought these sandals," she snapped, and beckoned for me to hurry up. "Come on. You're the second car."

I held up a hand. "Since when did I agree to drive you anywhere?"

"Since you mafia-bombed us for a year," Wynter said, and Zahir grimaced.

"You did mafia-bomb us," he admitted.

Rosalie gave me a look from over her glasses. "Oh. You did."

I sighed, shutting my binder with a thud. "I'll get my keys."

And so on.

"You're worse than Kenzo," Diego breathed, clinging onto the grab bar as I cleared four lanes in one sweep and yanked the nose of the Corolla into the exit lane. "How is anyone worse than Kenzo?"

I frowned. "What're you talking about?"

"The fact you're going ninety in a sixty five zone, you fucking crackhead, slow the fuck down," Wynter snapped, yanking herself forward to whack my arm.

"Don't hit the driver," I snapped back.

"The driver's trying to kill us!"

"You're both overreacting. Zoe seems fine."

Zoe wrapped her cover-up over her body as she shivered. "It's going dark," she whispered.

I sighed. "Drama." I pushed the gas. "Floor it."

"Echo!"

And so on.

Tarray Cove was nothing to be noted and nowhere to be remembered. I suppose, in that way, we could agree to get along.

I sat in the sands, the towel kicking up in the low-effort breeze, the waves like collisions of rocks, one against another, the water frothy and blue as the sky could manage. Corvus ran up and down along the shore, splashing each other until their skin glistened with the droplets. I felt my own skin burn under the sun, go red with the unfamiliar onslaught of ultraviolet, no memory for its immunity but Busan.

Just the thought of it made me lose some breath. I pushed my knuckles into my sternum.

Meredith said, "Can't you swim?"

I looked up at her. She hadn't worn a bathing suit, content to stay in a bright yellow sundress and a purple cardigan with more gaps than its thin threads could cover. She tilted her sunhat back, and the wild flames of her red curls framed her knowing smile.

I shook my head. "Can't you?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Sure. Terribly, though." She sat on the towel beside me. "SoCal goers who don't know how to swim. Ironic?"

My lip quirked. I shrugged. She frowned.

"You've been pretty quiet since we got here," she told me.

I stared at the waters ahead. "Guess it just reminds me of something."

"Oh?" Her grin was serene. "Me, too. My family likes to visit the Amalfi Coast every now and then, and I've got a little cousin that lives there who used to jump off any and every cliff just to prove she could do it without being afraid." She laughed to herself. 

"Is there anywhere you haven't been?"

Meredith hummed. "Korea," she said, eyeing me. "You never talked much about Busan. Kane, I suppose I could understand because of Poppy, but you..." Meredith turned a curious look on me. "Tell me about it?"

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I shrugged. "Busan just felt like it was between Kane and I," I tried. "I think, having not seen Korea for a while, things felt precious because I didn't think I'd get a second chance to."

Meredith nodded. "That's all right, you know," she told me. "Holding onto things. Maybe not too tightly, but there's nothing wrong with wanting. Everyone always says not to hold too tightly or you'll miss out. But truthfully, every now and then, you'll come across someone that's just too important, changes you too much, to let them go so quickly, you know?" She nudged me. "It's all right. If you want to hold on."

I stared at her for a few moments. I didn't really know how to tell her how much I missed it, how much I longed for the coast and the feeling of the salt and the ease of the sun, how much it ricocheted in my head over and over again. How I would give anything, anything at all, to be back on the carpet floor, the sun warm on my skin, the windows open to let the ocean wind catch at my ears and nose and eyes, Kane at my side humming in my ear.

I said, "How'd you know?"

Meredith smiled. "A few things." She hesitated, then ratified, "Well, a lot of things. You two are not as difficult to understand as you think you are."

I gaped. She shrugged, and patted my hand.

"Come on," she told me. "We can at least walk the shore. Find some crabs for crab soup."

"You're kidding."

"We'll see."

And I laughed, the sound so sudden it almost hurt. Meredith and I got to our feet, brushing the sand from our sea-sticky bodies. We headed for the shores.

"Crab soup," I repeated. "Where's that from?"

"We used to joke about it when we went island-hopping in Greece," she explained.

I shook my head at the notion of that. But I picked up my sandals, let the wind slip hands under my blue shirt, and walked into the waves with her at my side.

"Tell me about it," I said.

"...Yun now a Class I Omega, the first to ever be recorded as part of NCAA's Division I square racing, I call that history, although people are speculative on its credibility and whether such news can be trusted. Some are demanding photographic evidence..."

"He's Class I, what more do people want from him beyond that? He can't very well change his subspecies. People need to shut up and face the music here, the kid's done everything he can, so what more do they want..."

"Fellow Corvus post their congratulations, along with hundreds of thousands of other Stirling lycans, sending the headline trending nationwide. News reporter and Stirling Beta, Jenny Teller, says in a Facebook post that she is 'infinitely happy' to see more of her people proving their capability in all fields of work..."

"...Green Diamond approaches, Corvus is going strong and has not yet lost a match. However, there is still no talk around King and his whereabouts, but Corvus has remained certain in their victories and has 'no doubt whatsoever' they will triumph in Green as well..."

"The Class thing is over, it's old, it's ignorant, and it completely undermines the mental capacity and willingness to adapt of other pack and subspecies combination. This is racing. The only thing I care about is that you win. Isn't that the point of loving sports in the first place, you just want to be part of a team?" 

I set the plate in front of Kane, and paused. I stared at the breakfast plate. Cleared.

Kane lied on his stomach, his left arm hanging off his bed as he flexed his fingers, open and close. I said, "Lunch is sandwiches."

Kane said, "I have SPERO in thirty."

I said, "I know." I took the empty plate.

He hummed. He said, "Come with."

June was a terrible beast that walked into the room as if it was just another aspect of its domain, a place for its sunlight and unbearable heat to rule or roam without reason or consequence. It turned the air stagnant, stale, saturated. The second semester of sophomore year concluded, my GPA nearing the gutter line but alive enough to keep Edwards from being too angry with me. It also meant I had far more time for Couronne shifts, and far more time for Corvus, and far more time with Kane.

I blinked. "Come with?" I repeated. "I can drop you off."

Kane looked frustrated at that. He shook his head. "Come to the session."

"Like, stay?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Jamie said I should bring someone in for today. Progress check, or something about having someone there. Or something."

"Or something," I agreed. "Okay."

"Okay?"

I nodded. "Okay."

And, okay.

Ian eyed me and said, "Where's your nurse girl?"

I blinked. "Don't know," I admitted. "He asked me to come."

Ian cocked his head at that but didn't comment. He leaned against the wall next to me, and we watched Jamie with Kane, his left shoulder slowly rotating up and to the right, albeit with some difficulty. I hadn't even noticed the nail marks in my palms until I looked down.

"All right, hold it up." Jamie pushed Kane's arm towards the sky. "Hold it there, go on."

Kane held it for only a few moments before he flinched and dropped it back down. He grimaced. "It keeps pulling."

"It hurts at first, I told you you gotta keep with it and it'll fade into a burn." Jamie gestured for him to go again. "Try again."

"He's been doing really well," Ian told me. "His walking is getting more and more normal, too."

"His shoulder," I started, and Ian paused.

"It's stubborn," he assured. "It's been bothering him for years now, it won't go back to normal as fast, you know? More intricate healing there. With time."

Time, time, time.

Kane glanced at me as Jamie dropped his shoulder once more. I traced the line of black running down his bicep, seeping into his forearm. I mouthed, "You good?" Kane shrugged back and said, "Not dead."

Jamie snapped his fingers. "Hey. No distractions. Echo."

"It's always me," I muttered.

"Let's try the bars." He gestured towards a long set of parallel bars, padding between them, and what seemed like a mile from the start to the end. Kane limped his way there and Jamie went on the other side.

I turned my head to Ian. "Can he walk that whole thing?"

Ian held up a hand to placate me. "Just watch," he said, then snickered. "You know, now that I think about it, I think I know why he wanted you to come instead."

Kane set his crutch aside and steadied himself on the bars. Jamie said, "All right. Go slow, don't rush. Keep your posture, it's your back you gotta watch." He beckoned for Kane to go, and when Kane hesitated, he laughed. "You did fine last time, man. Don't sweat it."

Kane looked past Jamie, past Ian, and to me. Then, he nodded. He took a step.

I saw it in slow motion, in fast pace.

"No bars," Jamie said.

Kane let go, and walked.

Don't fear something more than you want it, Echo.

He walked.

When he made it all the way to the end, he only tripped a little and caught himself on the bars just as Jamie let out a ricocheting laugh. Kane flexed his left fingers, and hoisted himself upright. His grin was one for the ages.

Ian whooped. Kane brushed himself off, and walked towards me. No crutch, and no tripping.

"What'd you think?" he said.

"You're like a kid with his favorite drawing," I told him.

He shrugged. "Pretty good drawing?"

Ah. Fuck it.

I pulled him into a hug, burying my face into his chest, the scent of silver so thin I could barely smell it over the soap and cotton infesting my lungs. I closed my eyes tighter when Kane's arms hugged me back. His hand came to rest on my head, fingers in my hair. I thought someone had stolen a black hole and stored it in my chest.

Jamie beamed at us when we pulled apart. He patted my shoulder. "You should bring your whole team in next time. By then, this kid might be deadlifting." Kane laughed. I swore it added years to my lifespan. "We'll be done in another half hour." 

"You can go home," Kane told me. "It's boring after this."

"Hey. Stretching is imperative—"

"To the healing of the mind and body as a whole," Kane finished, nodding him away. Jamie pushed his hair over his face. "Hey. I'm half-blind."

"Partially. I read your file," he corrected. 

"I'll stay," I said. "Unless you want me to leave."

Kane pushed his hair from his eyes. "Stay," he said, then hurried, "If you want."

And what else was I gonna do?

I said, "I'll stay."

Jamie glanced between us, smiled, and turned around. "Then, back to work. Come on." 

Kane and him headed back towards the benches. I watched him go, and watched him for nearly ten more minutes, before I felt Ian's gaze on me.

I said, "What?"

Ian raised a brow, then shook his head. "Nothing," he said, and smiled. "Something's just funny."

"What is?"

"Nothing."

"Ian. For fuck's sake."

"Don't worry so much, Echo," he laughed. "What're you worried about?"

I watched Jamie helped Kane as he lifted a small weight, his arm shaking with the effort. I thought of my mother, watching the river in Incheon, like Kane had watched the Busan shores.

"Nothing," I said, and surprised myself.

__________________

"Red, white, and fuck-you blue." Wynter displayed her cupcake, blue icing piping out FU over her white and red cupcake. "What's more white trash American than that?"

"You're Vietnamese," I said. "You're here on Visa."

"Freedom of identity, Echo, and you were a smuggled alien for eighteen years."

"Best illegal cargo you'll find in the west coast," I told her.

"I hear talking," Kane said, shaking peppered, gold stars onto his pink and purple cupcake. "Why do I hear talking?"

"Hey, hey, hey." Rosalie clambered past us to snag his cupcake from his clutches. "This is not on theme. There is no pink or purple in this pastry patriarchy."

"Just green cards," I told Zahir, and he choked on stolen frosting.

July had come in a wink, the heat turning from heavy to grossly burdensome, its weight damp like the atmosphere had forgotten to open its windows. The entirety of the day from morning to evening felt like a languid summer afternoon, still as a portrait, thick as hot stew. It was by God's grace the AC still worked in the Talon, or my skin would have melted right off my bones by the second day of the month.

Zoe had insisted on doing an (indoor) Fourth of July potluck and watch the firework show the school put on from the football field while we ate to our hearts' content inside. Green Diamond was fully underway now, the matches not any less brutal than before, but in some ways, far more tolerable. Considering the hell of a season I'd had prior, I figured I'd come to a point where nothing could shock me anymore. Coach said so.

"You're starting to race like there's nothing that can shock you anymore," she said with a laugh.

I'd replied, "You wouldn't believe."

Kane had gathered energy bit by bit over the weeks. His frame was a little fuller, the shadows thinner, his eyes more open than not now. Jamie had encouraged him to walk as much as he could as long as he didn't feel any pain, placing him out of his room more and more frequently. Corvus had been like kids spotting a candy store upon finding out, insisting on coming over as often as they could just to catch him. Even in the chaos of the Diamond Prix, even in Kane's slow recovery, I could catch the gaps of time where things were so easily, suddenly, normal.

I didn't dwell on it.

Ramos and Coach had opted to bring the entrees, leaving dessert in our hands.  Although by the looks of where our cupcakes were going, there would be very few presentable desserts to offer.

"I like pink and purple," Kane said. "What's wrong with pink and purple?"

"There's nothing patriotic about pink and purple. That's a child's birthday party balloon."

"You're a balloon. Give me my cupcake."

"Because she's an airhead," I supplied to Diego and Zahir, who snickered.

Rosalie said, "You call me an airhead again and I'll make you into a cupcake, Yun."

I turned on Kane. "There's nothing patriotic about pink and purple."

"Something's talking to me," he said, holding up a hand. "Something small and inherently irritating."

"Oh, like a guinea pig," Diego said.

Zoe said, "Like a squirrel!"

"I gotta lie down," I muttered.

We finished off our cupcakes within the next half hour, just as Ramos and Edwards rang the doorbell. Everyone rushed this way and that to help set up, filling the unit with noise and movement, the place alive like an artery. Kane offered his hand for the plate of cupcakes.

"Grab the cider," he told me.

I handed him the plate. "You think you'll forego the sling soon?"

Kane glanced down at his arm, then said, "I'll hope."

I grabbed the cider, and we sat at the table as a team.

"Purple and pink," Edwards observed, and cocked a brow. "How patriotic."

"Oh, no," we muttered.

Rosalie bolted to her feet. "And what did I tell you?"

"Sit down," Kane drawled.

"Say I'm right."

"Something's talking," he grumbled. "Something blonde and freaking cranky."

"Why you little—"

And, okay.

Corvus opted to watch the fireworks lined up behind the windows. I took my smoke to the balcony like a firework of my own between my teeth. But between the trees and the buildings and the business of it all, only the ghosts of the fireworks met the balcony. The only other company were the shifting blue shadows from a lightless world, a peaceful nowhere.

Kane found me not much later. He had a knack for it by now. I told him so.

"You've got a knack for this shit," I muttered.

Kane scoffed. He made the slow and steady effort to sit down, legs out like a child's. "Tracker rules," he told me.

"Isn't that over by now?"

Kane shrugged. He eyed my cigarette, then stared at the fireworks up ahead instead. A hurricane of color, a rainfall of fire. His eyes swallowed it up like twin mirrors. "Do you want it to be?" he asked me.

I drummed my fingers on the stone. I didn't know if he meant the tracking, or the fireworks, or the "us-not-us" thing-not-thing, or something else entirely. I didn't know which I wanted to hear.

Still, it was all Kane nonetheless.

"No," I told him.

He considered that. "Then, no," he said.

My lungs were gold-knuckled fists, beating out my ribs one by one. I sighed out the debris.

Kane said, "This is your second Fourth of July, you know."

I said, "It is."

"How's that?"

"It's...nice."

"Nice?"

"It's great." His gaze lingered. A part of me wanted to push it away. Another part of me wanted to hold on. "It's...they're great," I managed. "Jamie said you can start some light exercise, right? The heat isn't so tough on you anymore. Maybe you can walk around town more. It's summer."

Kane just hummed. I pushed his face away with my finger. "Stop looking at me like that."

"I'm not."

"You are."

"Like what?"

"Don't know," I muttered. "Like you're trying to find something."

Kane shrugged, batting me off. "It's dark," he admitted. "Just trying to make things out."

I frowned. "What?" I joked. "Don't remember me?"

"Who forgets you? One of those faces," he scoffed. "It's just harder to see, sometimes."

I was fine to be forgotten. I was fine to not be any bronze statue, any copper plaque, any marble pillar or granite bust. The fireworks burned out and the cigarette broke on the concrete. I was all right to be forgotten by the world.

There were only a few people I wanted to be remembered by.

I leaned against Kane. The cigarette died on the stone under our legs. I traced my fingers over his hand. Pulled it to me. When he didn't protest, I let my cheekbone rest against his fingertips. His rings were cool on my warm skin. The fireworks were exploding stars, born and living and dying all in the space of a second. Soar. Pop! Fizzle. Shhh.

"You can see me," I murmured. "I'm right here, anyway."

Where else would I go? Where else would I be? I didn't and wouldn't want anything else. Time, time, time.

Kane's fingers traced my cheekbone, ghosted over my chin. His thumb found the corner of my eyes and traced invisible tears down to the corners of my mouth. He outlined my jaw, the shape of my ears, the line from my temples to my brows. I could feel his breath. I could hear his heart/my heart. His hand cupped my face and held me like I'd disappear if he held too hard. He leaned down towards me, and for just an effervescent moment, let his lips graze mine.

But, time.

I took his wrist and turned away. 

Kane said, "Echo."

I got to my feet. "Let's go see the others."

He held my hand. He said, "Echo." It sounded like eko.

Love is time.

I didn't know love. Not well enough to say it aloud like I'd greeted it face to face before. Maybe I never would. It'd be a firework from behind buildings and trees. It'd be a rainy day meteor shower. It'd be Pluto and hydrogen, light years away, tangible as air. Nothing I'd ever come to hold.

But, I figured, this was pretty damn close.

"Let's go," I told him. "We can see the fireworks better there anyway."

___________________

I had two breakfast bars in my hand, one for me and one for Kane, the Splinter still damp on my linen clothes, when Luan came to visit.

August had melted most of the chocolate chips inside the bars if the squish had anything to say about it, but I figured Kane would appreciate it being pre-heated. August had well-mastered the art of laziness for itself, draped over Los Angeles without a care in the world as to how the sweat poured down our foreheads or stuck to our skin or washed out our throats. But, it meant it was still summer. Which was enough.

I took a step when someone called, "Echo."

I halted. I turned on my heel.

Luan stood beside a cherry red Lexus, his stance casual, his face unbothered. He tossed his keys around before pocketing them altogether. The smile he flashed at me was genial, and the first part of him I wanted to punch.

I said, "Leave."

He held up a hand. "I just need to talk to Kane."

"No, you don't," I said. "Leave."

"Quick to judge," he said.

"Quicker to bite," I snapped. "Now get the hell out of here."

"You ever think a change in attitude would make you more likable?" Luan drawled as he waltzed towards me. "It'd make you more popular with the press."

"Fuck the press and fuck you," I replied. "You ever think being something other than a stalking psycho would make you more likable?"

He faltered. "That's sort of harsh, don't you think?" he hissed.

"For you?" I said. "Nothing's harsh enough."

Luan crested the steps, and snagged me by my collar in less than a breath. My body crammed against the gate wires, his fingers digging into my collarbone. I dropped the bars.

"Broad fucking daylight," I snapped. "You're so concerned with the press, are you?"

"Who gives a shit about the press?" he snarled, his friendly demeanor dissolved in the face of his shaking rage. "You've already cost me everything they care to talk about anyway. Because of you and your little stunt at The Eclipse, I'm out of a scholarship and off the goddamn team. You got any idea what kind of hellhole you just dug me?"

"Sounds like you dug it yourself," I said. "Kane never did anything to you that you didn't provoke him into. The only reason he's ever put up with you is to keep himself safe from the shitstorms you create." I snagged his hand. "I'm not part of whatever sick game you've got going."

He scoffed at me. "You think being Kane's new toy makes you untouchable?" He grasped my throat and squeezed my windpipe. "You think a Stirling Omega is worth anything to him? You're a nobody. You're a goddamn thorn in his side."

"I guess you'd be the first to know," I snapped. 

Luan broiled at that, eyes going violet. He raised his fist.

"Hey."

We both froze. 

Luan dropped me. I sputtered, scratching at my throat and gasping for air. I slid away from Luan to haul myself to my feet.

I turned around. 

Kane stood at the entrance. No crutch, no sling, hair streaked with white and his pajamas still on. August burned him in amber, a great blaze that engulfed the world below.

Luan softened. "Kane," he said. "Kitae."

Kane stared at him. His face was steel, jaw set, eyes on Luan's. When he walked towards him, he did it slow, but didn't tripped.

"Kane," I warned.

Luan smiled in a blink. He said, "I called you. When I saw the headline, I thought something happened to you, so I wanted to try and reach you, ask if you were okay—"

"Just stop." Kane shook his head. "Just stop talking."

Luan gaped. Kane's fist was tight at his side, his knuckles white. 

"Kane," Luan tried.

"Leave, Luan," he said. "Leave now."

Luan pursed his lips. "I just wanted to make it okay," he pleaded. "All I've ever done for you is to try and help you, you know that. Look where you're standing—"

"I know where I'm standing," he said. "And it's not because of you." Kane tilted his head at Luan's car. "Now get out."

"After everything I've done for you," Luan snarled. "After everything we've been through, the shit I've done to help you, to get you this. You're just going to walk away? Why am I always the one trying for you?"

"Just stop talking," Kane snapped. "Stop talking, and stop calling, and stop finding me and talking to me and talking about me and talking to my team and talking." He rubbed his temples. "All you ever do is fucking talk."

Luan was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "What do you want from me?"

Kane considered him. He pursed his lips, then, smiled. Then, he threw his head back, and laughed. A great, big, real laugh. The world was infinitely amber, an inferno with flowers.

Kane shook his head, as if surprised. He looked Luan straight in the eye.

"Nothing," he breathed, then louder, "Not a fucking thing."

Luan stood oblong, out of place. He shook his head. "Kitae," he said, reaching for him. 

Kane stepped away. His smile was icy, all steel, a real thing that stitched his face up and never left. 

"It's King," he told him. "Now, leave."

Kane turned around to head back to the Talon. Luan shook his head. He called in Mandarin, "You can't just walk away like that's it. You can't really tell me that's it. You would have never even gotten here if it wasn't for me, if it wasn't for all of us." His laugh was desperate, frantic, a disbelieving lie. "You can't just leave."

I thought of the bruises around Kane's throat. The knife in his hand. Poppy's plaque in the grass. The world was a whisper was a scream was a breath.

"I've been leaving for years, Luan. I've been leaving since I came here. Everyone is gone. Everything is over, and everyone has left, except you. You are the only one who still hasn't fucking left," Kane snarled. He shook his head and turned around. "Grow the fuck up, Luan, and move on."

With that, he walked back into the Talon, and left Luan there in the dust.

I grabbed my breakfast bars from off the floor and went after him. Luan said, "You did this."

I stopped. I weighed my options, and turned around with a grin.

"No," I argued, and gave him a shrug. "Maybe he can just recognize a loser when he sees one."

I shut the door. I let August burn Luan Zhang into nothing more than an amber shadow on the fading pavement floor.

Sunhee called me first.

The contact nearly made me drop a plate of fresh bread, earning me a hefty scolding from Lapine that went in one ear and out the other. I gaped at the ringing phone.

"Give me that, inutile. Go on, take it." She swept past me.

I pushed open the back door into the fresh August heat, pungent and thick. I raised the phone to my ear.

"Hello?" I said.

"Echo," Sunhee said. "What is the restaurant you work at again?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, then said, "Er?"

"Oh, weird name," She said. "It's that French one, right? The Big Crown?"

It took me a moment. "Yes," I finally squeaked. "Noona, why are you—"

"All right. Can I get some coffee? A little cream, no sugar."

"Noona—"

The call clicked to an end. I gaped at the screen.

Lapine opened the door and looked me up and down. "A little woman out there is asking for you," she said. "Something about some café?"

I shoved the phone into my pocket. "Yeah," I breathed. "I've got it."

Sunhee sat in the back corner table, where the widest window let in the most light, the heat daisy yellow and unyielding over the wooden tables and the plush blue seats, relegating the patrons to find a different place to enjoy their afternoon luncheons. It left Sunhee Wang as the only one to bask in it. White dress, pink shoes, pink sunhat, and a smile just for me.

I set the coffee down beside her. Black, with sugar. She looked up. Her eyes were a light roast in the sun. She said, "Thank you."

I said, "Do you want to order?"

"Oh, I'm not staying very long," she said, waving that away. Her Korean was lilted like a song. "Although, maybe we could talk? Just for a little while. Before your dinner rush starts to fall in." She gestured at the currently vacant restaurant, the hour too early for evening and too late for noon.

I tugged at my collar. I said, "A little while."

Sunhee grinned. She tapped her fingers against the cup and lifted it to her lips. She made a face. "I guess I prefer lattes," she murmured. "I heard you don't do those."

"I could make you one."

"Breaking the rules?"

"I'll make you one. It just won't be very good."

"It's all right. The coffee here isn't very good anyway."

"No?"

"No," she sighed, then gave me a secretive look. "It's better in Korea."

August had come. I pursed my lips. "Ah."

Sunhee pushed the cup away and removed her purse. She patted the cushion. I figured I had no way out, and sat down beside her.

"I wanted to call you," she said. "But, I figured you already had so much on your mind. That and my mother said it would be good not to contact you for a little while, until things started to calm. I wanted to, though. I don't want you to think otherwise."

"You don't have to do anything for me," I told Sunhee. "Trust me, you don't owe me anything."

Sunhee looked a bit taken aback. She peered at me the way a child would a wildflower; something was wrong and it wasn't its fault.

She drummed her fingers against the table. "Your team nurse said King wasn't cleared for such an arduous travel like Korea. She said it'd be best if I didn't ask him outright, maybe to prevent having to make him say it. I knew he wouldn't be, a part of me, at least. But I guess I just hoped for a miracle. Too many miracles for one year. So greedy of me." She laughed to herself. "Then I figured, I'm a grown woman! Who says I can't go see him?"

My brows shot up. "You're staying here for August?"

She nodded. "Just for the week. Don't tell, though." She put a finger to her lips.

I said, "Why come see me first?"

Sunhee thought about that for a moment. Her eyes were filled with a still-life, an oil painting, dripping like fresh wax. 

Sunhee reached over and took my hands with hers. "I've been in many places, you know. I'm not as young as I look," she said with a laugh. "Seeing my brothers grow up, all so differently, it made me wonder why people said it's easier to be loved than to be hated. Why? Both are difficult. Hate, you become so bitter. You get scared it will be all you are. Love, you feel fragile. You get scared you will be nothing without it."

I blinked. I said, "Why are you telling me this?"

Sunhee's smile was thin. "Kane changed so much of himself and his life because he was scared. So many of his choices, he made out of fear. It's only now, I see him choose things because he wants them," she said. "You both had every reason to become someone else. You could have been your brother. Kane could have been his parents."

You have always found a way to win, even in a world that does not want you to.

"But, you aren't. And, you don't owe that to anyone but yourself." She squeezed my hands. "Don't be so scared of having things to care for, Echo. Don't be scared of having something to lose. Hate only makes you wary. Love makes you brave." 

"Echo!" Lapine called. "Break is over, dépêche-toi!"

Sunhee stood to gather her things and rifle through her wallet. I took the mug and shook my head. "Don't worry about it," I told her. "I never even made your latte."

She laughed at that. "There is always a latte somewhere," she told me. She pulled her hand to me. "Not always good company."

She pushed several bills into my hand and gave me a tight hug. Without even letting me say goodbye, Sunhee disappeared out the back door with barely more than a whisper, leaving me alone.

I looked down at the bills. Whatever the amount she'd given me, it was far too much for just a cup of coffee.

Wrapping the stack together in a neat, crisp package, was a baby blue handkerchief, the corner stained with an indelible spot of blood.

"Ya," Li pushed the bowl of steaming ramyun my way. "You smell like duck à l'orange and juvenile existentialism." She raised a brow, and cracked open a can of beer. "Want to talk about it?"

I blinked. I tossed a gummy bear into my mouth. "Not entirely."

"Well. I tried. Ah! Neomu mulyehae." She waved me off. 

Jeremy patted my head. "What are you sad about now? You're alive, a champion, why you can eat all the ramyun you want in the world. Is it because you lost your beautiful colors? You're like a unicorn without its horn."

"That's...definitely not it," I said.

"He's obviously distraught over something very personal," Tri snapped, pushing Jeremy away. "And therefore should be left to enjoy his depression ramyun in peace."

"It's not depression ramyun—"

"Life can be so tough for such a small creature," she cooed, stroking my hair with her flower-inked fingers. "Take solace in the Audrey." She flicked her fingers and my ramyun stirred itself in a whirlwind, before several noodles lifted themselves into her mouth. 

Li said, "What solace is he gonna take in thievery?"

"You gave the last good one to him," she defended, and retreated through the beads.

Jeremy gasped and elbowed me. I whipped my head to him. "Don't spill my depression ramyun."

"Table your noodles, sweetheart," he whispered. The front door bell rung through the store. "You might need them for later."

I frowned. I turned around.

Kane stood under the garish yellow light, blue and green, crutch-less, sling-less, watching me before I watched him. A single silver crow dangled from his ear.

Kane said, "Sorry to intrude."

Li pointed outside. "We close in twenty minutes, pretty boy." She threw him a breakfast bar. "Keep it short."

Kane caught it with his left hand. 

I got off my seat and said, "First rule?"

Kane's face would haunt me like a dream. "First rule."

We went outside.

"Why'd you come here?" I asked. "Sunhee is back."

"She had to pack for her flight tomorrow," he replied, taking a bite of the breakfast bar. "I figured you'd want company this late."

"I'm not alone," I said. He just shrugged. I sighed. "Don't strain yourself. You're getting better, don't ruin it this far in. Isn't the bus ride more than an hour to get here?"

"Red Diamond starts next week."

I went quiet. Kane tossed a ring between his fingers and it resonated with a twang every time it hit the others on his knuckles. "I saw it on the calendar," he said. "It sort of shocked me. I thought, maybe it's wrong, and I'm looking at the wrong month. It's still June. Or, maybe February. But it's August." He pressed his mouth to a thin line. "It's August and I haven't raced."

I hoisted myself up to sit beside him on the table. "It's August and you're walking," I argued. "It's August and you're catching shit in mid-air and taking the bus at ten PM. It's August. It's okay." I bumped his shoulder. "Take a damn breath."

Kane let out a dry laugh at that. "Maybe."

"What's the rush, man?" I said. "You're already there."

"What's that mean?"

"Means it's August, and then it'll be September, and one day Red will be over, and another day you might race, and another day you might not, and what? It'll happen. Happening happen." I raked fingers through my hair. "Give yourself time."

Kane considered that for a few moments. I leaned my head on his good shoulder, content to let our legs rest against each other. Kane sighed.

"Always time," he said.

I shrugged. "It's worked so far."

He took my hand, toying with my fingers until he found the ring and spun it about against my skin. He trailed down, and fiddled with the bracelet around my wrist, the little star gleaming in the moonlight.

"I think I've gotten attached," he murmured. "I went to find you in your room and when you weren't there, I got a little confused on what to do about it."

"I'm a strong presence," I said. "There's Diego. Zahir."

"I know."

"You shouldn't play favorites." 

Kane let the star drop back against my wrist. "Are you scared?" he said. "For Red?"

I thought about that. "Yes," I admitted. "Are you?"

Kane said, "Yes."

"But?"

"But," he continued, "it's Corvus."

"And?"

"And I've never had to doubt them before."

It was August. It was summer. It was blue, blue, blue.

I handed him the second breakfast bar. He said, "It's all right."

"Take it," I said. "Just enjoy it."

Kane hesitated. Then, took the bar and ripped it open. He took a bite. Kane's fingers grazed my palm. He said, "We should go back."

I shook my head. I closed my eyes. "Let's stay here," I murmured. "Just for a little while."

I let the moon settle beside me with Kane's heart in mine.

________________

September was Red. Everyone knew that.

Rosalie wrapped her hands twice more in the bandages before yanking on her gloves. Zoe fastened hers and turned to me to help with mine. She said, "Second Red."

"Are we pros yet?" I asked.

"C'mon, c'mon," Wynter called, buckling her cleats. "We're practically our own team."

"IPRA-wannabes," Zoe said.

"IPRA-bound," I added.

"C'mon, c'mon," Wynter said.

Rosalie tightened her glove and said, "Just win the damn match, rookies."

"Former rookies," Wynter snapped.

Zahir patted her head and ducked her swing. He said, "Maybe win Red first and then we'll talk about being pros."

Edwards clapped her hands together. "Forget being pros, just win this match, okay? I doubt it's harder than what you've managed before."

We all glanced at each other at that. "Got it, Coach."

"And, Yun."

I looked up. She sighed, and jutted her thumb behind her. 

"When this is over," she said, "you're on press duty."

Everyone groaned at that.

I just smiled. "Got it."

"Echo! Echo!" I nodded at the woman in the very front. "What are your thoughts about being the first Omega in a Red-Diamond-winning team of NCAA D1?"

I shrugged. "It's nice."

"Can you elaborate?"

"Not really?" I said. "I don't really know what the big deal is."

Another man shot up. "Are you saying that you don't care about class in the NCAA?"

I raised a brow. Coach shot me a look to keep calm. I scratched the back of my neck. "I'm just saying that if I told you I was a Class I Rothrock Beta, no one would question squat about what I or Corvus has done up until this point. It's not that I don't care about ranking. I just don't think it's relevant to the conversation."

A girl raised her hand. "Why did you hide you were an Omega for so long?"

"Because of—" I gestured around us. "—all of this."

"The sport of square racing is specifically for Beta and Alpha lycans due to the high rate of intense injury and the necessity for healing to be efficient and effective," she went on. "Are you worried being an Omega puts you at a disadvantage because of this?"

"I've gotten this far," I said. "I think my only disadvantage is the label."

A woman leaned through the aisle. "What do you have to say to people who question whether you should be here at all?"

I drummed my fingers hard into the wood. "Why?" I snapped.

"Pardon?"

"Why does it matter?" I said, louder. "Why can an Alpha sit up here and answer questions about the match, about their skills, about their stats, and all the questions I have to answer are about the three lines on my ID card? Why is that?" 

She paused, a bit flustered.

"I take it back," I said. "You're right. I don't care about rank. I, frankly, don't give a damn about those three lines."

"Echo," Edwards snapped.

"If I can do something and do it well, then talk about that. Quit your podcasts, and your talk shows, and your press interviews about who I am when I do it. I've got every pack and racer in the damn industry trying to take the carpet out from under this team, and you've all been wrong time and time again, two years in a row now." I got to my feet. "Take a hint. Get it straight. Screw your three lines. I can race. I can win. Talk about that."

I spun on my heel, and headed out the press room.

Corvus was seated in the lounge, watching on the TV propped up before them. At my entrance, Coach at my back, they gaped. 

Wynter said, "In another world, I'd kiss you."

I said, "Just tell me I'm crazy."

"Oh, Hell, cobayo," Diego said with a cackle. "You're fucking crazy."

Edwards dusted her hands off. "That went as horribly as I imagined," she muttered. "That being said, you didn't say anything that wasn't true."

"Conclusion?" I asked.

Rosalie twisted her knuckles into my temple and smiled. "You're Corvus, all right." She hooked me under her arm. "Let's book it. Before we get mobbed."

Relief was sweet as candy on my tongue.

_______________

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[Message : happy halloween]

2:03 AM - Me

i thought u weren't allowed to help me

2:09 AM - Sunny wang

Not help! Just for Halloween celebration

2:14 AM - Me

don't send any more. it's okay.

2:15 AM - Sunny wang

You know autumn is prettiest in Korea? I think it's better than any of the other seasons here. Perfect weather!
You should come and see it some day.
When u do, u can pay me back with lots of hotteok!

2:18 AM - Me

don't send more.

2:20 AM - Sunny wang

Call it a gift. 
Happy Halloween Echo

"Kitty White," I turned the bag of gummies on Ramos. "Now dressed for Halloween."

Ramos laughed at that. She took the bag of black and orange gummies to toss into the Ralphs cart. I quickly evaded the bloodier decorations in the other aisle and skipped to the chocolate selection. "How much candy do you think they'll really eat in one night?"

"Enough," she said, and tossed a variety bag in.

Meredith had developed the idea of putting on a Halloween movie night as to make it easy for Kane to participate. It had dawned on me as she spoke that I'd never really bothered with watching holiday movies, and the titles they listed off hit me either as foreign or faint. Diego grabbed my shoulder halfway through the listing with the inevitable.

"Oh, no, cobayo," he said. "Don't tell me you've never watched these films before."

I faced them. "I've never watched any of these films before."

Rosalie shook her head. "You know, at some point, Yun, the mafia is just not a good enough excuse anymore."

"No time for Tim Burton in between empire takedowns? Ow." Wynter rubbed her arm as Zoe shot her a look.

"Not even for sandwiches," I replied. "What're we watching?"

"Oh, just you wait," Zoe said, scurrying for her phone to look up titles. "Your eyes will be burning by the time we're through here."

Halloween itself had never sat well with me, all gore considered. But I figured I could handle a jack-o-lantern or two given the circumstances. That, and the candy was a plus. 

Ramos said, "Kane is getting better. Jamie said he might be able to start real exercise come next week. If he wants, he can even join some sports."

My head swiveled away from the caramel melts. "Like square racing?"

Ramos pursed her smile between her lips. "Well, not in so many words..."

"Holy shit." I grabbed the basket rim. "You're kidding. You're really kidding. Could he?"

"It's being discussed," she said, putting a finger up. "Nothing is guaranteed. Jamie wants a full physical and bloodwork done before he gets a full clearance. If he does, he'd have to start with the specialized team at SPERO, before anything."

Racing was racing. My heart was in my throat. "Do you think he could?" I breathed. "Do you think, maybe...?"

Ramos grinned, her hazel eyes crinkling. "I think," she began slowly, "maybe yes."

I let out a starburst of a laugh. The world was a shade brighter, two tons lighter. I thought of it. The track. Kane King. Racing.

"A Halloween miracle," I told her.

Ramos shook her head. "No miracle," she corrected me. She grabbed a bag of Kuromi jellies. "Just time."

I sat between Kane and Meredith on the couch, October a cool breeze outside the window, the distant thump of Halloween party bass and the occasional piercing shrieks of drunken college kids mixing in with the autumn leaves' rustle. The level above and below us had a faint thrum of music to it, an occasional thump of heavy footsteps or something likely precious falling in some poor resident's unit. We were a minority of quiet in the midst of the collegian chaos.

"I hate Halloween," Rosalie concluded as she opened up her HALLOWEEN HULLABALLOO watchlist. She placed her hand on her hip and gestured at the carousel of movies displayed on the screen. "All right, assholes. We'll be starting with the complete stop-motion animation Halloween collection. Then, it's onto Disney Halloween, show and movie. Then, and only then, does everyone else get to pick."

"How come you got to choose?" Diego argued.

Rosalie pointed at Kane. Kane said, "Captain chooses first."

"That was not a rule I voted on," he said.

"The pamphlet's been amended," she snapped back.

"I knew there was a pamphlet," I murmured.

Meredith raised her hand. "Could we skip Coraline? I get nightmares."

Zahir raised his hand. "Could we skip Coco? The skeletons make me jittery."

"Wow," Rosalie said.

I raised my hand. "Do we all get our own bowl of popcorn? Because someone ate half of it and I'm not blaming anyone. Wynter."

She stuffed another fistful into her mouth. "I'd like my own bowl," she said.

"Wow," Rosalie said again. She looked at Kane. "Wow."

"Welcome to my world," he muttered. 

Rosalie said, "Everyone fights for the popcorn and we watch Muppets Haunted Mansion."

Wynter plucked the bowl from my hands. "I'll be taking that."

Rosalie selected the aforementioned movie and settled down between Wynter and Zoe. Diego slumped against Zahir, chattering away about something or other concerning who his favorite Muppet was. 

I sank into the couch, the night heavy on my bones in the way a soft blanket was. Kane nudged me, and I craned my neck.

He withdrew a bowl of popcorn from the other side of the couch, and set it in my lap. I gaped. He watched the screen, the images blue and green in his thick glasses, and said, "This isn't the first movie night we've done."

I stared at him for a few moments. I said, "I'm probably gonna fall asleep during the movie."

Kane said, "All right."

I pushed the popcorn to him. "Help me eat it." Kane glanced at it. He chewed his lip. I said, "Or I'll fall asleep so fast I'm gonna take you out with me."

He reached and grabbed a small handful. "At least watch the first twenty minutes."

I leaned my head against him. "No promises."

"Fifteen?"

"Don't push it."

"Ten, then."

I smiled against his sleeve, and didn't really care who saw. 

"Thanks for the popcorn, hyung," I said.

October breathed easy, and faded like the summer washing out of the leaves.

________________

Our second-to-last Red match was in the grimy, gritty, rhapsodic city in none other than New York.

November had turned New York into a postcard of autumn, a series of amber-faced edifices and structural integrities. The leaves sank jaws into the cool concrete, and the cars whistled winds up and over into people's paths. Nowhere was very safe from the onslaught of rusty foliage, its presence an omniscient one. NYU's Violets were to be our opponents, leading us into the hearth of the space that sat between Greenwich and East Village, giving us the every-which-way option of Union Square, Soho, the Financial District, and Kenzo Watanabe's lonely penthouse in Manhattan.

"We have to see him while we're here," Meredith said. "We're here, after all."

"Will he want to see us?" I said. "What about everyone else?" The team had gone into the city to see more of the sights around us during our two-day stay.

Meredith just smiled, and grabbed her coat.

It took us through two series of doors and two more desks before Kenzo could let us up. The gargantuan building held more residents and square footage than I'd ever know what to do with. Even knocking on Kenzo's door made me fear I'd break the precious brass doorknob right off.

It opened a moment later, revealing Kenzo clad in purple pajamas and hair so blond I thought I was going blind for a moment. He had a bandage over his cheek that shifted when he said, "I don't like surprises."

Meredith held up a box of chocolates. "Surprise!"

Kenzo let the door swing open to let us in. I kicked off my shoes. "You took my look," I said.

"Forewent the hair dye," he corrected. 

The penthouse was as expected from Kenzo: massive to point of obnoxiousness, and as blank as the look on his face. The bare minimum of furniture occupied the space, but other than a few fancy light fixtures and a coffee table sporting a set of sports magazines, there was no evidence of life elsewhere. Some things never changed, then.

Kenzo slid two glasses of water our way. Meredith traded him for the chocolates. "We thought we'd drop in to say hi," she said. "See how you're adjusting. Is it nice, being back in New York?"

Kenzo hummed. "It works."

She grinned. "We're here for Red."

"I know."

"You should come watch. Come and watch."

Kenzo nodded. Meredith lit up. I raised a brow. Kenzo opened the chocolate box to offer one to Meredith and turned to me. 

"How's King?" he asked.

"Fine," I replied. "He's getting better."

Meredith glanced at me, then him. Kenzo gestured towards a room behind us. "You should see the view."

Meredith turned on her heel at that, nibbling on her chocolate. "I'll leave you two alone," she said.

When the door shut, Kenzo switched to Japanese. "How is the money?"

Ah, the inevitable. I said, "I'm making the payments. I'm not behind. How's it on the Yankees?"

"Bearable," he replied. He must like them. "How is it being a starter?"

"Terrifying," I admitted. "You want to ask me something."

Kenzo cocked his head to the side at that blunt statement. Autumn was cloudy, shrouding the apartment in blue light and white fog. Kenzo looked pale, unreal, a figment of something.

He tapped his glass. "You want to ask me something."

I did. I said, "Who's your sister?"

Kenzo seemed unsurprised. He straightened, going for the cabinet. "She did not pass the test," he said plainly. "No one knows of her."

"Why mention her then?" I said. "Why mention it to me?"

Kenzo took out a small brown bag. He set it on the granite counter. "I knew your brother," he told me, and my lungs nearly popped. "Not closely, but I knew him. As time went, I suspected you must be lying about your history. It wasn't until later I figured you and him must have a relation."

I blinked. "How?"

He shrugged. "Too many story gaps. Too many things lined up. Besides, you can hide behind the height and hair color to plenty, but it doesn't discount identical twins." I pursed my lips at that. "I told you to see how you reacted to confirm."

"You could've told Kane," I said. "You could've ratted me out."

Kenzo eyed me. He said, "I haven't seen my sister in eleven years." The look in his eyes, although faint, was broken. "I won't ever know what happened to her or if she's even still alive. I can only hope that, wherever she ended up, she found a way to live without burdens of the past." 

He pushed the brown bag towards me. "I don't agree with the way you did it all. But I understand why. That being said, it's over, you've gained your life, you've proved your place, and you are the last Yun left," he told me. "Stop living like a ghost. Start acting like you belong here."

It's over.

I'd never said it aloud before. Maybe out of fear that it truly wasn't.

But, there I stood. 

Meredith appeared from the bedroom as if on cue. "The view is beautiful," she said. "If we ever come back to New York, you've got to let us stay with you."

"No promises," Kenzo told her. "Go. Before the whining."

Meredith laughed. She pulled him into a tight hug, whispered something quickly in his ear, then scurried over to hook her arm with mine and haul us both towards the door. I took the brown bag with me. 

At the door, I gestured at it and asked, "What for?"

Kenzo watched me, not with blankness or with disdain as he often did, but with a quiet solidarity, a peaceful resignation, and a simple understanding. 

"Your birthday," he said, then in English, "Happy twenty-one."

November 24th.

I said, "Thank you."

Meredith pulled me out the door before he could reply, nothing but the paper bag to prove I was ever there at all.

Kane said, "What's that?"

I looked up. He was halfway through forcing his left arm to pick up a pan of stir-fried vegetables. The smell wafted through the living room. Thanksgiving break typically meant everyone was to depart for their families, but for a (likely) melancholic reason, Corvus remained together in the Talon. It meant more groceries, but for Kane, more reason to move. A small price, then.

I took out the gift, and set it on the tabletop, where a thin notecard was taped to it.

A crisp photograph of Corvus, mid-celebration in the chaos of crowds and confetti, a triple-column trophy held between our bodies, with me at the center. At the bottom, black pen wrote in bold, CHAMPIONS. I lifted the notecard to my face. 

Never doubt the underdog.

My smile was as real as it could fucking get.

"Just a gift," I said.

____________________

Plainly, it was December. Wind. Cold. Brr. Forget about it (!) Forget about it. That wasn't what mattered.

Jamie said, "Remember, no smashing into anyone's bike, no smashing anyone into any walls, and above all, no headshots. Everyone got that?" The SPERO specialized racing team all held their thumbs-up to him. Jamie smiled. "All right, then go on. Race starts in two!"

Kane turned to me, silver eyes darting this way and that. He strapped and unstrapped and re-strapped his gloves. "I don't know if I should do this," he told me.

"Are you Kane King or are you Kane Chicken?" Diego said, squeezing the back of his neck. "Come on, man, this is a piece of cake! No sweat."

"You'll be perfectly fine," Meredith assured as she fixed his gloves one last time. "Racing is like walking to you."

"And this is low-stakes, everyone here is just here to race, not fight, not tussle, nothing but you and the track," Rosalie added, gesturing down where the track lay. She pointed at his face. "You'll nail it on the head. And if you don't..." She formed a slow fist.

Zoe hurriedly lowered it. "We'll support you no matter what," she finished, side-eyeing her. 

"Although you won't need it," Wynter assured. "You'll do great."

Zahir nodded. "It'll be okay, man. You just have to give it a try."

Ramos hurried over towards us, Ian behind her. She reached up to fix Kane's neck guard, brushing off his shoulder pads, and re-strapped his gloves. "Remember to play nice, don't take it too seriously. This is just a trial run. Say it with me. Say it!"

"This is just a trial run," he hurried.

"Exactly," Ramos breathed, almost as if he was reassuring her. She re-strapped his arm guards. "Any pain, you tell me. Even a bee sting, you tell me. If you so much as feel a prick, you call it, okay? Okay?"

"Okay, okay."

"Take it easy on the turns, be careful with your shoulder, there's still some healing to be done on it. And watch these gloves, oh, these knuckles make me nervous. Hey. No hitting. No hitting no one and nothing. You get it? Say yes, you get it. Say you're a smart boy and won't do something stupid because of that stupid lycan brain in your head. Say it."

"Yes, I get it. Can I not—"

"Say it," Corvus snapped.

"I'm a smart boy and won't do something stupid because of the stupid lycan brain in my head," he sighed.

Diego stopped the recording on his phone with a snicker. "I'll be using that for years to come."

"Not helping," someone snapped from behind him, and he yelped. 

Kane turned his head. Edwards stood by the entry, a Corvus hat on her head, an Avaldi training jacket over her shoulders. 

She smiled at him. "I heard there was a race happening?" She stopped in front of Kane. "Don't tell me you've raced the shitstorms you have and you're nervous about this." Kane pursed his lips and said nothing. Edwards sighed. She clapped a hand on his good shoulder. "Come on, before they start without you."

Ian clasped his hands together. "Let's get you on a bike, yeah?"

I trailed Kane down to the track. Ian pointed out the respective controls to him, explaining each of them, re-outlined the basic rules, then tossed him his helmet, the sides grated and equipped with auditory sensor alerts, before he jutted his thumb at the track. He winked at me as he passed.

"Can't wait," he told me.

I stopped in front of Kane as he stared into the face shield of the helmet. His gloved thumbs pressed against the mirrored surface. It was infinitely strange to see him back in leather and steel, his legs hugging a bike and a helmet in his hands, silver eyes paired with silver hair in the reflection. As if no time had passed. As if too much time had fled.

Kane said, "Moment of truth."

I said, "You sound scared."

Kane shrugged. "Would it be sad if I was?"

"No. Just normal, I guess."

"Are you scared?"

"For you?" I waved him away. "No."

I made a move to leave, but Kane remained where he was. He watched the track, let it settle in the pools of his eyes and swim around and around until it faded away into the black veins. 

Kane pressed his lips to a thin line. "What if I can't?" he said. "What if I can't race?"

The other racers headed for the track with their bikes. Jamie yelled, "Race starts in one minute!"

I pushed Kane's helmet into his chest. "Then, you can't, and we start there," I said. "But you won't know standing here."

"Race starts in one minute, did I mention that?" Jamie called to us. "King! You racing or what?"

I stepped away to head for the railing and called back, "He's racing."

Kane strapped his helmet on, and started the bike up with a pop, flicker, and roar of the engine.

Zoe settled beside me. "You think he'll be able to do it?" she asked.

I watched him lean forward, grip the handlebars, face forward. My mind flew back to watching him at tryouts, to watching him at Red, to riding with him in Busan, at the Corvidae. As if racing was in his very blood.

"I'd bet on it," I told her.

He raced.

Raced.

Raced.

Raced.

I never looked away once.

"So?" I helped him tear off his gloves, toss the helmet to the bench. Corvus surrounded him, chattering about, screaming and laughing, Meredith halfway to sobbing along with Ramos. I sat beside Kane. "What was it like?"

He wiped the sweat from his brow. The smile he turned on me, half-dimpled, the mole below his brow scrunched up with his eyes, the pulse of his heartbeat riding his breath, was enough to turn the whole world into nothing but smoke.

Kane ruffled my hair, and laughed.

"Like breathing," he said.

Like coming home.

"Echo Yun is breaking all kinds of headlines and records this season, let me tell you, because this kid just earned himself a solo sponsorship, yes, a sponsor for Echo Yun only, the first Stirling Omega to have ever received one, may I add!"

"...Yun takes on a new brand to sport on his jacket, TRAX Bikes proudly announces their advocacy for Yun's racing career and that they are 'honored' to have been his 'bike of choice' from the beginning..."

"...has made no comment to this sponsorship save for an Instagram story post, his first one, may I add, this kid seems to be adjusting to the life of a celebrity well. I'm sure his anti-fans are enjoying that one. TRAX is a huge company in itself, sponsors over eighty NCAA racers in total..."

"The final match of Red Diamond approaches, pitting none other than Avaldi University's Corvus up against Princeton University's Tigers. Princeton has been out of Red for the past three years, and they definitely seem eager to be back in the final round, gunning for a whopping 77.5 million US dollars, that's a big victory to take home..."

"...news on Kane King's return, many fans eagerly await his return, but many speculate there will be no return after Sunhee Wang, Janchi's current chief marketing officer, declined to answer reporters about his current state or whereabouts..."

"TRAX Bikes releases a statement regarding the backlash against their sponsorship announcement, stating they are 'confident' in their choice and 'will not be taking any ignorant critiques' either. The hashtag 'StirlingTRAX' has surfaced on Twitter, garnering over 405,000 retweets as of an hour ago..."

"Coach Edwards causes Corvus fans to go ballistic after stating in a recent interview that news on the upcoming season's lineup, including Kane King's whereabouts and new recruits, will 'be released in the coming months'. More on this..."

Coach found me ten minutes before the final match of Red Diamond began.

I sat in Princeton University's locker room, the walls redder than was legal, the wood paneling there for pure dysfunctional aesthetics, with my jacket laid over my lap. Emblazoned below the Janchi brand, was a freshly embroidered "TRAX Bikes". There for all the world to see.

Coach said, "You're supposed to be on the track."

I didn't need to look up. "I know."

"So, why aren't you?"

I shrugged. I said, "Just thinking."

She sat beside me. "About?"

I drummed my fingers against the leather. "It's Christmas soon. It's my second Red. I've never been sponsored before. I'm a junior. I don't know," I said. "Something feels like it's ending."

Edwards hummed like she understood what I meant. She said, "It probably is." She leaned against the bench. "Nothing ends when or how you want it to. Some things just—end. Some things have to."

I blinked. "What do you do with that?"

Her smile was sympathetic. "Start somewhere else," she said. "You know the great thing about racing, kid, for all the shit that we give it? You never have to stay in one place. You lose? You race again. You win? You race again. Class III could be Class I. Class I could be Class III. Stirlings, Drachmann, Huang, Padmore, Fahrhaus, Rothrock. People die for it, people live for it. Racing is brutal and addictive and fucking cruel." She got to her feet. "But it's damn good at second chances."

She grabbed my jacket and gestured for me to get up. I obeyed. She pulled it over my arms and shoulders, zipped it tight. Edwards smiled down at me. Calm, almost proud.

"This is your life, Echo," she said. "This is your choice."

The buzzer sounded for racers to report to the track. Edwards let go of me. She headed for the canopy.

This is your choice. 

This is your chance.

I grabbed my helmet. I followed.

In the spotlight. On the track. Zoom in. Pan out. Right there.

I handed the triple-column trophy to Rosalie, blood on her cheek, in her teeth, joy painting her face anew. 

"Champions?" I asked.

Rosalie wrangled me into a bone-crushing hug.

"Champions," she whispered in my ear.

And, champions.

After a while, when I recognized you, everything was clearly changing.

Kane pushed the tray of cooled cookies to me. He slid his fingers over the countertop, rings tapping against bottles of icing and candy, until he found the piping bag tip. The sound of his humming and the patter of a thick winter thunderstorm outside reduced the whole kitchen to shifting shadows and blue hearth.

My world separates to before and after knowing you.

"It's Christmas Eve," I said. "When's your next check-in?"

Kane fumbled as he tried to find the icing. On the second try, he snagged the red. "January 18th," he replied. 

Ramos had decided to acquiesce to our bullying and finally take some time off to see her family out of state for the holiday. Edwards had gone with her, as her family was scarce. Most of Corvus had decided to stick around for break, but had left for the two days of Christmas to see their families for at least that sliver of time. Sunhee had offered to fly in and see us, but Kane had declined her. A part of me wondered if he was too scared to see her just yet.

So, once again, Kane and I waited out Christmas alone.

When you breathe, a warm wind blows. When you smile, dazzling sunlight shines.

Because you stayed there. Because it's you.

"Reindeers don't have red skin," I said.

"Someone forgot to mix brown," he snapped back. "And you've never even seen a reindeer."

"They're part of the canine community by genetics."

"And we're eating them. Cannibalism?"

"Christmas makes you dark-humored," I muttered, grabbing a Santa to pipe. 

Kane continued piping his cherry red reindeer. I hummed along with him as we went, rain in our ears and the smell of sugar in the air. December was a soft goodbye, a bittersweet fadeout. I could see the finish line coming for me faster than I was coming for it.

"Santa isn't green," Kane told me. 

I elbowed him. "We're gonna eat them anyway. Just enjoy it."

His laugh was enough to give me a hundred years of life.

I follow you as time flows and stops.

I placed the last cookie on the plate, and sat down on the tile floor, my back pressed against the dishwasher, my feet splayed out before me. Kane considered me, then grabbed his jacket off the book and laid a cushion down across from me. He sat with his back to the wood. 

Kane said, "Dr. Woo said she'll be able to tell by this appointment."

"Tell what?" I asked.

He bit into his red reindeer. "If I'll be able to race next season."

All hope. All dread.

"Ah," I said. 

He turned the cookie over in his hand. He looked less shadowed, less fallen, his skin blue from the moon but his eyes wide open and his pulse running strong and his expression awake. A live wire.

He said, "I watched you all, at Red." He glanced at me. "You did well."

I shrugged. "I do all right."

"You did well," he pressed. "You're a good starter."

I stared at him. I said, "I'm just there for a little while. You still have more to teach me, anyway."

Kane considered that. He drummed his fingers on his knees, drew them up to his chest. The white in his hair was brighter than his eyes.

"Poppy told me once that if you ever have something you think you'll be nothing without, you shouldn't have it." He let his head rest against the wood. The black scars crawled around his Adam's apple. "She said she never wanted to be the race she won or lost. She wanted to race, sure. But she wanted to eat good food, and have good friends, and go out at night, and study hard for her parents. She told me, what's wrong with just Poppy? What's wrong with just being? 

"I said I knew what she meant," Kane murmured, his hands spinning his rings around and around. "But I didn't. Not really. I thought being 'just Kane' would be what killed me." He furrowed his brow. "When Dr. Woo told me that she didn't know for sure if I'd race again, I waited for that feeling. That killing feeling. But, I was just Kane for a year, and what?" He waved it away. "The world is as it was."

I turned my body to be parallel to his, my shoulder against his shoulder, my knees against his knees. "Took you long enough to come around to that," I murmured. "What's wrong with just Kane?"

Kane shrugged, then grinned. "Nothing."

I smiled with him. I took a snowflake cookie iced a garish blue. I split it down the middle.

"I think, no matter what happens," I promised, "you'd be a winner."

"Oh?" he said. "Why's that?"

"Because you feel like one," I said simply. 

"Then, what are you?"

I turned to him with a glinting eye. "A damn champion."

I handed him one half of the snowflake. "I lied to you about everything," I murmured. A strike of lightning cut towards us in a shock of white. "My family, me, how I knew you. You could've kicked me off the team and no one would've questioned it. You could've at least just hated me forever." I broke off a handle of the snowflake. "Why stay by me?"

Kane considered that for an endless moment. He let the snowflake dance in the air, catching gold in the lamp light, catching white in the lightning. No silver to be seen.

"Why do I race?" he replied.

Somehow, that was enough.

We bit into the snowflake. 

"Cheosnun," Kane said. 

In a blur, in a whisper, the world came to a close.

______________________

January 18th. The DMC. The aorta. The carotids. The coronaries. Take a knife, hold it steady. Slice.

I tugged the blue cardigan over my body. I said, "Femur."

Ramos placed the block inside the slot. She said, "You're shaking."

"Patella."

"Breathe, Echo."

"Patella."

She sighed. She put the block in. "Two missing."

I paused. I frowned. "I don't remember."

Ramos raised a brow. "That's a first." She placed tibia and talus into their respective places. "Forgetting?"

I stared at the bones. I laughed to myself, even if only nervously. "I sure hope," I muttered.

"Shh," Rosalie hissed, pressing her ear against the door. "I'm trying to listen."

"Me, too," Diego murmured, practically cramming his ear against the wood. 

The rest of Corvus didn't even have the heart to try and pull either of them off, maybe secretly hoping they did hear something. Zoe had chewed through her thumbnail, and Wynter was uncharacteristically silent. It left Zahir and Meredith making poor attempts at consolation. But, even they couldn't wipe the dread off their faces. It was like waiting for a bullet to strike, a bomb to drop, a storm to hit. Is this it? Is this it? 

Edwards pulled both Rosalie and Diego away from the door eventually. She plopped them back into their seats. "Get a hold of yourselves, we'll hear the news soon enough."

"Then call it preparation," Rosalie sighed. "They're taking too long in there. What are they saying?"

"We'll find out," Edwards snapped.

Oh. The waiting. 

Ramos said, "Ilium."

I put the block down.

Time.

It was a massacre in silence.

"Coccyx."

I put it down. 

I said, "Sternum.

"Radius.

"Maxilla."

Time.

January 18th. Lavender sky. Blue sun. The new year ringing in. January 18th. Elias Yun's birthday. Whatever happened to Elias Yun?

I looked out the window, where the clouds were forming, and thought of my mother.

The door opened.

I turned my head.

I heard something. Someone screamed. Someone fell. Someone said something else. There were familiar and unfamiliar faces. Kane had an expression on his face, but I couldn't see it through the fog in my eyes. I heard something. Someone cried. Someone smiled. 

January 18th. Rainstorm. Thunder. Lightning. Crack! 

Someone said, "Echo." It sounded like eko. "Echo. Hey."

What was his face? What did he look like? Was he sad? Was he angry? Was he quiet? All this fog. Clouds. Rain. Blackness. Thrum. Is this it? Is this it? Is it over?

I blinked. I forced myself through the fog, and found him standing there on the other side.

Kane handed me a paper. At the top, it read in bright red ink, CLEARED.

The smile he wore was one just for me.

I took the paper from him. Kane said, "What do you think?"

Time. Time. Time.

And, okay. 

"Welcome to Corvus," I told him. 

_________________

Here's the secret of life: Or die trying.

If you want a translation, that means: Win.

Fuck the surviving part, to be frank.

Let's talk about the winning part.

Kane wrenched his bike in a harsh left, cutting Diego off in a single swipe. He soared around the corner. Zahir hounded after him, howling foul as he went. Meredith laughed.

"That's an illegal move!" he snapped.

"It's a clever one," Kane argued. His bike swerved around a pillar. 

"But is it?" Rosalie said, and slid her wheel into his back one. 

Kane yanked right. I watched Zoe chase him with bared metal knuckles.

"It's really not!" she called.

Kane ducked and slammed his cleat into her wheels. She shrieked. Wynter snickered.

"Amateur," she said.

"Don't be rude," Meredith chastised. "Hey! Point combo! Zahir, do something!"

I rested my forearms on the railing beside Coach. "They seem to be doing well," I told her. Summer was a sweet breeze on my skin, running into my eyes, through my hair. The heat was soft, a god coming to rest on its rightful throne. 

"Lot of nerve coming from a kid who's twenty minutes late," Coach remarked, not even looking up from her tablet. She pointed her pen at the track. "Get off my canopy. You're a starter, not a president."

I held up my hands and laughed. I grabbed my helmet. YUN was emblazoned in pure white at the side, permanent and crisp.

"I said go left," Rosalie snapped.

"I'm gonna be honest when I say I forgot my left," Diego replied.

"You people make Division III look pro," Kane snapped. He cleared the last lap. "This five on one deal isn't very nice either."

Corvus came to a slow halt at the finish line. 

"You're a year off of racing, man," Rosalie reminded. "You're still in training mode to me."

"Then why is he beating us?" Diego huffed, wheezing for breath as he leaned on Zahir. "Maybe he should take another year off, frankly."

"Well, it was supposed to be two on five, but your sidecar is characteristically late," Wynter added. 

"You think he got lost?" Zahir said.

"Got lost? Home is five minutes away."

"Little things get lost easier," Zoe reminded.

I tucked my helmet under my arm. "I heard that," I called.

Everyone turned my way. Their faces lit up. Beaten and bruised and wrapped in black and purple leather and accolades for the ages. History in the making.

Kane pushed his hair back, white strands and all. His eyes found me like twin stars. Sweat beaded on his forehead, the faint scent of concrete and smoke and cotton and soap, a scratch over his brow, a cut on his chin, black threads up his neck. A crooked grin, half-dimpled, and a silver crow hanging from his ear. He raised his left hand high in the sky for me.

I pressed a hand to my heart, and felt theirs beat with mine.

Corvus called, "Echo!"

It was a dream. It was a victory.

And it was mine.