Ink Stained

84: yamajijii's truth*

山爺の真実

Her desk rattled as she jerked awake, hitting her knees on the underside of the table.

Pai winced when she put a hand to her aching ears, wiping away the blood that flowed sluggishly out. It was warm on her frosty skin. It wasn't as much as it usually was, and when she glanced down to her shoulders, it was to see that none of it had dripped onto her shirt. It would be difficult to explain it away to Shiori with another lie that it was tomato sauce in miso soup.

She looked around herself, blinking away the last vestiges of sleep as she scrubbed the drying blood from her ears off her hands. It was the end of the school day, and she'd just finished cleaning the whiteboard, and taking out the paper waste bin. She was alone in the class now, having sent off the classmate – Nanami – who was assigned to do clean-up duties with Pai that day. Nanami so scatter-brained and doing more harm than good because she had somewhere to be that Pai made her go home early.

Everyone else was at their after school club. She could hear the laughter and chatter of indoor clubs taking place in other classrooms around her. Shiori was at basketball, Aoi and Natsume at Astronomy – which turned out to be more of sitting around and lazily talking about the stars than anything else, and planning for when and where to go stargazing – and Shuusei was at baseball. She'd chosen to stay behind in homeroom to nap, deciding it was safer within the school buildings than anywhere else.

Haru had been roped into a teacher's meeting. From his mournful face when he slumped off to the teacher's lounge, it was a possibility he hadn't quite considered when he volunteered to be a teacher. Shouta was watching Shiori while coaching the baseball team as well. She had no idea how he was managing to multi-task like that, and wished him luck on it.

Especially when she saw Seiran, younger brother to the King of the Kitsune, whacking baseballs out of the air right alongside everyone else on the boys' baseball team.

Everyone was a warier now, especially Haru and Shouta, since they finally knew who the mysterious Hengen was, but didn't know why he was there. If Seiran's words to a suspicious Shouta the other day were to be believed, Seiran was only here because he liked baseball. He did look like he genuinely enjoyed playing the game.

Still no one believed him.

Shin didn't come to school that day for some reason, one she hadn't had time to ask. Considering she was trying to stay away from him to stop herself from asking, So what now? when she thought about how she felt about him, that was probably a good thing.

It had only been two days since they'd come back from Ukabarenairei. Everything was back to normal – if she could think of it like that, which was hard to. More like she found it hard to think of a specific person as 'normal' now that she knew he wasn't entirely as he had been before.

The kids were back, bringing with them renewed joy to the house that seemed barren and devoid of life without them. When given the choice, none of them wanted to stay in Kyoto once they knew they could go back home with their family at Ayashi House. The entire cohort had launched themselves at Pai and Shin when they got back, excited that they were home again.

Shin, for the first time since that fateful night in Kyoto with her, laughed when they threw themselves at him, clambering all over him as he tried to settle them down. The Daitengu, Shiori, Mizutani, and Yukiji all came out to welcome them back home – Ryuu didn't because he was at a friend's house for a sleepover, and Obaasan was peacefully sleeping.

No one wanted to wake Obaasan just then. She was more likely to whack Shin on the head for being the reason her sleep was disturbed, and only then welcome him home before attempting to shovel food down his throat, which Haru would duly endeavouring to steal it all from right under Shin's nose.