It took all my strength to break momentum and pull myself backwards. The metal sides of half-a-dozen train carriages flashed in front of my face and I landed on my left hand with a dull, but audible, crack. Some distant part of my consciousness registered pain.

The platform was in chaos. All around me people were screaming and yelling and carrying on. The train doors opened with a ping and the passengers about to disembark stopped short, looking at the commotion in confusion.

Then they saw me and stopped.

I must have looked awful: face sweaty and red with exertion, skin pale and clammy with fear. My heart felt like it was trying to pound itself out of my ribcage and every breath felt like someone was stabbing me in the chest with a pick made out of ice. My left hand was killing me and seemed to be swelling to the size of my calf. Stinging tears had formed in the corners of my eyes...

The worst thing about having these visions is that majority of the time there's nothing I can do to prevent them from coming true. The only deaths I can stop are murders and accidents, and even with those, I can't save every victim.

By some miracle, this time, I did.

Breathing ragged, I looked down at the boy in my lap, my right hand still tangled in the back of his shirt. He stared back at me, trembling like a leaf. I don't know what possessed me, but I wiped my hair out of my face, smiled and said, 'Hi.'

He wet himself and cried.

As if on cue, everyone sprang forward. The other elementary school kids ran up and started bawling, blubbering things about how they wanted their mothers and promising never to play at a railway station again. It took a business woman, a young couple and one stationmaster to try and calm them down.

A man in a business suit got on the phone and called the paramedics, kneeling down and asking me questions like a responsible adult.

What's your name? Evelyn White.

Does anything hurt? Everything hurts.

The answers came automatically, blurted out with no real thought. Might have been the shock setting in, or perhaps it was just that such events had become routine.

I went through it all again when the ambulance arrived fifteen minutes later. The stationmasters had gotten service back on track and most of the crowd had dispersed with the train. As the paramedics helped me stand – I was too stubborn to go on a stretcher – I looked over at the other platform.

Mismatched brown and blue eyes met mine. The boy in the black hoodie stared back at me and the expression on his face was cold.

* * *

Aunt Linda was waiting for me when I emerged from the outpatient wing. My left arm was wrapped in a cast and a sling and she'd brought me a change of clothes since my uniform was wet and smelled like pee.

I don't blame the kid. If I weren't so experienced in life-threatening situations, I probably would have peed a little too.

... I really shouldn't be proud of that. Let's go back to Aunt Linda.

Aunt Linda isn't really my aunt; she's one of those aunts that gained her title by being a good friend of Dad's. The two of them are so close that it took me twelve years to figure out that she and I aren't actually blood-related. If we were, then I'd have a little Mediterranean in me and would tan instead of looking like a broiled lobster after being exposed to the sun.

Dad likes to joke that she's an old flame he dropped when he met Mum. Aunt Linda on the other hand insists that he's full of rubbish and that they only know each other because she assists him with his research.

I have no idea what research she's talking about. My mother was a nurse and according to Dad, his occupation is "treasure hunting".

I would have thought that it had something to do with research for his expeditions because, you know, you don't just pick a place at random and start to dig. You need to do some planning and investigation beforehand. Yet, as far as I can tell, all he does is close his eyes, screw up his face like he needs to use the loo, and point at a random country on the map hanging half-way down the hall before declaring it as his next destination. He's usually gone the next morning – no planning or investigation needed. Heck, he doesn't even leave a note to say goodbye.

Needless to say, I've asked Aunt Linda what research she was talking about, but she refuses to elaborate any further. Apparently the only reason she mentioned it before was because I "ambushed her" while she was drunk at one of her annual Christmas parties.

I swear, all I did was ask how she and Dad met.

I suppose that if I really wanted answers, I could wait until Christmas, pour a bottle of wine down her throat and ask her again, but she'd be furious when she remembered the next day. Trust me when I say that an angry Aunt Linda is not someone you want to meet.

Anyway, when Dad's off gallivanting overseas - as he often is - Aunt Linda is the one they call when I get into trouble. This was the third time in the span of one month that the hospital had summoned her from work and she wasn't very pleased.

The first time was because I was preventing a death by fire and the medics wouldn't listen when I said I was fine. The second was because I was covered in someone else's blood while getting as many people out of their cars as I could after a ten-car pileup five kilometres from school. She's used to picking me up after I've been involved in something big, but that didn't stop her from giving me the same old long, loud lecture about how I could have been killed, crippled, or worse as she drove me home.

I'm never sure what would classify as "worse" since she more or less covers all bases, but I'll admit that she's right. I've had my share of near-death experiences and I know that when I'm trying to yank people out of harm's way, I don't exactly think about the consequences for myself. And I don't mean that in a selfless, heroic way either – more like a pig-headed, simplistic, I-have-a-single-track-mind kind of way. I literally forget all about the possibility of danger until it's staring me in the face and about to take my head off.

All things considered, a broken arm was a small price to pay for changing that kid's future from smooshed by a train at the age of ten to dying at eighty from natural causes. But you know what they say: no good deed goes unpunished.

I let her get the rant out of her system without complaint - just sat there and nodded in all the right spots. Afterwards, she sighed, apologised and started her usual practice of asking generic parent-y questions about school and my day, to which I replied with my best of generic teenage-y answers.

'How's school going?'

'Fine.'

'Keeping your grades up?'

'Yup.'

'Has that Chinese boy asked you out yet?'

I had no idea what Chinese boy she was talking about but the answer was 'no' anyway.

She frowned, keeping her eyes on the road. 'Really? Given how long you've been friends, I thought something would have happened by now.'

'I don't have any Chinese friends, Aunt Linda.' And given how limited my number of friends was, I was certain of the fact.

She flapped a hand at me. 'Oh, you know who I'm talking about. That Asian boy you're always hanging out with... Roy.'

'Ryo.' She always gets it wrong. 'He's Japanese.'

'They all look the same to me.'

'Wow, talk about casual racism.'

'Oh, relax,' she said, flapping a hand and turning into my street. 'I didn't mean it like th— Well, would you speak of the Devil!' She pulled into the driveway and rolled down her window. 'Hello, Roy!'

She definitely does it on purpose.

Seated in one of the two wicker chairs on my front porch, beneath the totally unfunny plaque that reads The White House, Ryo looked up from his comic book.

The sign was my dad's idea. Don't ask.

At Ryo's feet, Hobbes - the German Shepherd Dad bought to "look after me" while he was away - looked up too. His ears twitched and his tail wagged, but other than that, he didn't move.

Ryo put down his book with a sigh. 'Hi, Linda. What are you doing here?'

'I brought back your runaway wife. Come help her out of the car like a good boy.'

With a frown on his face, Ryo got up and obeyed with Hobbes following close at his heels.

Sometimes I think he gets confused about who his master is. Err – Hobbes, I mean, not Ryo.

The frown had turned into a glower by the time he reached the car. I was already out of it by then, fumbling to pick up bags with my one good hand. Without a word, Ryo leaned in and took them from me, eyeing my cast like it was diseased.

I sighed and braced myself for lecture number two.

As soon as Aunt Linda was gone, he turned on me.

Ryo crossed his arms. 'What did you do this time, Rin?'

My answer was immediate. Truthful, yet vague. 'Fractured wrist. Six to eight weeks recovery. Good thing it's my left and not my right, right?'

'You know that's not what I meant.' He narrowed his eyes. 'You got yourself involved in another accident, didn't you?'

'Near-accident. No one got hurt.'

'I think a broken arm counts as getting hurt, or did you knock your head too?'

The question sounded rhetorical so I shrugged.

Ryo, however, was not to be deterred. 'What did you do, Evelyn?'

'I saved a boy's life.' Again, truthful, yet vague.

'And broke your damned arm! Bloody hell, do you even think about the possible consequences before you jump into danger?'

'Sure. If I hadn't grabbed him and pulled him back onto the platform then he would have been hit by that train and died.' Truthful, yet—

Damn.

All the colour drained from his face. 'A train? You jumped in front of a train?' He grabbed me by the shoulders. 'For God's sake, Eburin! What were you thinking?'

That if I didn't do it, then that kid was going to die.

I managed to keep the thought to myself, but the fact that we were even having this conversation was enough to drive me mad. If I saved someone and happened to get injured, he cracked a wobbly. But if he were to get into a brawl with a bunch of snot-nosed delinquents from another school and came home with a couple of smashed ribs, he'd just laugh away my concern. Talk about your double standards.

I knocked his hands away. 'Calm your jocks, Ryo. I'm not that stupid. I didn't jump in front of a train; I just pulled the kid away from the edge of the platform before he could jump in front of a train. Also careful, your accent's coming back.'

'Don't mock me, Evelyn.'

So he said but I could tell that he was taking extra care to enunciate.

'Do you remember what happened last time, with the car accident?' growled Ryo. 'Five people died. You almost died.'

Five out of the twelve that I'd managed to count in my vision, and if things had gone as I had planned, no one would have died at all. But there was no point in trying to explain it; we'd had this argument a thousand times before. He'd never believed in my visions. Never would. And the more we talked about it, the angrier and more frustrated we'd get. It was a stupid, vicious, never-ending cycle and I was sick of it. It took all my effort to stifle a retort.

After a deep breath, I shook my head. 'Not today, Ryo. I'm tired, in pain and want to go to sleep. Feel free to hang around if you want, just lock up after. You know where the keys are.'

'Rin—'

I tuned him out and left.

* * *

The fatigue hit me all at once. Once I'd collapsed on the bed, I couldn't get up, and somewhere between wondering why I still had glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and whether the way I'd acted had been childish, I fell asleep.

The sound of a dog barking woke me up. It wasn't until I heard the scratching that I realised that it was Hobbes outside my bedroom door.

Then I found Ryo sitting on the end of my bed.

I shrieked, swore, and threw a pillow at him – using my left hand. I nearly fell off my mattress, sobbing in pain. Doubled over with my eyes watering, I could just make out a faint grin on his face.

'Sorry,' he said, voice shaking like he was trying not to laugh. 'Did I scare you?'

'What are you doing here?' My words were slurred and my tongue felt gummy. I rubbed my eyes – nearly knocking myself out with my cast – and then turned my head to check the time. 10:30PM. I groaned. 'Go home, Ryo. Your mum's going to crack it if you sleep here.'

The last time he did, she came over to scream at me and threatened to call the police. I caught her digging through my trash the day after. Don't ask me what for.

Ryo just smiled. 'I called her. It's fine.'

Translation: I sent her a text telling her I was staying and ignored her when she called and/or came knocking on the door to tell me to get my butt home.

How irresponsible. I almost felt sorry for Mrs Oshiro.

Almost.

'She's going to blame me, you know. And as much as you may enjoy riling her up, being constantly yelled at by your mother is not my idea of fun.'

He laughed. 'Don't worry, Evy-chan, I'll be sure to protect you from my fire-breathing okama.'

'Hardy har har. I'm going back to sleep.' My head hit my pillow with a thump.

Ryo chuckled again, softer this time. 'Still mad?'

I was never really mad at him to begin with, but I kept silent and turned my back.

'I didn't mean to yell at you, you know. I just... I just wanted to say that you did the right thing, saving that kid. Saving that woman. Not many people would do that – could do that.'

I didn't reply. What was there to say? I forgive you didn't exactly seem appropriate since he hadn't actually apologised for anything. Plus, such a display of sentimentality was... weird. In the nine years I'd known him, Ryo had only apologised to me five times and not once had it been over something as minor as this. Again, not that this really counted as an apology, but whatever.

The floor creaked as he stood up. 'Well, that's all I wanted to say. If you need me, call. I'll be watching, even when I'm not there.'

'Yeah...' I muttered, waving my good hand. 'Because that doesn't sound creepy at all...'

He just laughed and said good night.

Outside the door, Hobbes let out a whine.

* * *

Hobbes is a big dog, and, in my opinion, fairly smart too. I don't know many other dogs that have figured out that they can play fetch by themselves using a staircase and a tennis ball. Provided that they're equipped with push-down handles, he's also very good at opening doors. And so, my good morning call came in the form of a warm, wet lick to the face.

Why get an alarm when you can get a dog?

My eyes were gritty, like someone had poured sawdust into them, and I had symptoms akin to hangover that made my head and swollen wrist pound. It took a dose of hospital-prescribed painkillers and a three minutes with my head in the sink to get the grit out of my eyes and feel like one of the living again.

Part of me was convinced that the whole conversation with Ryo was a dream. The other part wanted to quash the idea since a dream like that had all sorts of weird connotations that my brain was not equipped to deal with. The debate was settled when I stumbled downstairs with Hobbes at my heels and found Ryo drooling into the couch, still wearing his uniform.

Not a dream after all.

I leaned over him. 'Ryo?'

No response.

I looked at Hobbes. Hobbes looked at me. I gave him the signal and the ear-licking commenced.

With a groan of disgust, Ryo covered his head. 'Five more minutes,' he said, voice muffled by the couch.

I poked him in the ribs and he yelped. 'Come on, Ryo. Get up. I need you to help me make breakfast. If I'm cooking for both us, I can't do it one-handed.'

He lifted his head and cracked open an eye. 'If you need help with breakfast, does that mean you need help changing too?'

'I think it's your eyes that need changing. I'm already dressed.'

Ryo rubbed his face. Both eyes open and brain finally awake, he looked me over and sighed. 'You slept in that, didn't you?'

'Like you're one to talk, Mr Crumpled-Pants-and-Shirt. You know, there are two spare bedrooms and you could have borrowed some PJs.'

'It's fine,' he said, rumpling his hair with a yawn. 'The couch is comfy and wearing your dad's clothes is weird. What's for breakfast?'

'There should be bacon. Maybe eggs. Toast for sure.'

Ryo stood up. 'Sounds good.' He took two steps towards the kitchen and then stopped.

I quirked an eyebrow as he looked back. 'What?'

He hesitated. 'Look, about yesterday... I—'

'It's fine, Ryo. Don't worry about it.'

'It's fine?'

'That's what I said.'

'What, just like that? "It's fine"?'

'Well if you want me to be mad, I can.'

'Yeah, no, I'm good. Bacon and eggs?'

'Bacon and eggs.'

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