Ink Stained

97: his trigger*

Clearly there was another way, considering she'd gotten out alive (as a drug addict, but alive, which still counted), but she now lived in an almost constant state of fear that So Fu would find her and attack Ayashi House, that by remaining she would bring death to the people she loved.

Her fear, however, didn't hinder her logic.

She was scared of what would happen if So Fu attacked, but she also knew exactly who lived in Ayashi House. There might have been a touch of arrogance in Kouta's confidence when he repeated her words back at her of how So Fu didn't target those stronger than them, but it wasn't unwarranted. He was right. There were eight Daitengu here. One of them well on his way to being a full-fledged Shinogami, and they seemed to be feared even by Kamigami standards – those had to be high, considering these were actual gods.

Gods didn't die. For a god to be afraid, it had to mean something.

So Fu lurked in the shadows, doing their deadly, murderous work out of sight and out of mind. They went after high-level Hengen, but not those more powerful than they could handle. If they tried to stretch themselves out further than they could reach, they would have been found out and obliterated by the Hengen world long ago.

But that was why, in her last memory, she was so confused by Kagetora's presence. She didn't know the exact details of what that mission entailed, but Kagetora wasn't supposed to be there. Going after a King was tantamount to suicide. So Fu knew that. Even if they risked exposing themselves like that, they wouldn't have sent only two Agents – they'd have deployed an army to go after Kagetora. The only ones who were there to face Kagetora, though, were her and Rikuto alone.

It didn't make sense. At all.

Daitengu were only a step below Kings, too strong for So Fu to make a pass at. If they found her, would they risk exposing themselves to some of the most powerful Hengen in the entire Ayakashi world by trying to get her back, or would they kill her to silence her and what she could reveal about them? She wasn't sure they would.

So Fu were not stupid. Everything they did was calculated, weighed with pros and cons. They didn't act foolishly or blindly. But she couldn't shrug off the feeling that she was endangering the lives of everyone at Ayashi House by staying, yet she couldn't bring herself to leave them.

She didn't know if So Fu knew she was here. She hoped they didn't. But if they did, why hadn't they made a move yet? Or was she just being paranoid obsessing over it?

She wondered when that fear would dawn on everyone else. She wondered when it would truly register with them, that she had killed Ayakashi, that maybe one of those she killed had been someone they knew. Just like how Kahori Saeki was someone Kouta once knew.

She tiptoed around everyone now, waiting for them to lash out and demand to know why she had gone and killed all those people. Nothing of the like had happened, but she was waiting. She couldn't let her guard down, no matter how normally everyone continued to treat her.

Daichi and Kaede still trained her, adjusting the program to suit her body's fluctuating capabilities. Haru now snuck her onigiri whenever he planned raids on the kitchen with Shiori and Ryu (who forgave him for hiding his cooking skills in favour of working together than apart to steal food). She was pretty sure Obaasan knew where the food was going, because she never said a word (they all heard Haru's squall of defence when she caught him in the pantry the other day, though, so she wasn't that forgiving).

Ryosuke made playlists for her to listen to when she had spare time – which was often, now that she wasn't going to school. Sometimes he included songs he'd made himself, and it was no exaggeration on her part when she found herself listening to them on loop because they were good. One day, he'd even engaged her in a surprisingly heated debate about whether or not it hypothetically made sense for a character to continuously keep levelling up to the point that the villains they faced became flat-out ridiculous (he was still sour about Haru's defence of Bleach).