Ink Stained

98: tests*

The thought stung like bile coating the back of her throat.

"What is going on?" she asked, sitting up on the bed and putting her clenched hands on her lap.

She didn't know what the two healers been arguing – debating? – about. Her flighty nerves and perpetual fear of what would happen next, now that everything was out in the open, practically made her deaf to everything happening outside her head.

"Is everything all right?" she went on, watching as Kanou walked around the bed to stand beside Kaede.

Aihara nodded. "Everything is fine. I was just reassuring your sceptical healer that what I'm about to teach you to do now isn't some mind-controlling, brainwashing trick."

She stared blankly at her. She looked at Kanou, who was watching Aihara with single-minded focus, as if he was looking for the odd tail or errant extra ear to indicate she was Hanyou. He had his arms crossed over his chest, grizzly brows lowered to a fierce frown of concentration. He didn't look at ease in the least. That in turn made the ball of nerves in her stomach squeeze ever tighter.

Kaede was so silent that she kept forgetting he was even there. She was pretty sure Aihara was, too. His green eyes glowed slightly with fierce intensity as he focused on the woman. Pai narrowed her eyes when a flicker of pain had him twitching a little. He caught her look, but shrugged it off and nodded back at Aihara.

Focus on her, he mouthed.

Are you okay? she asked.

He nodded, pointed again. She eyed him warily before turning back to Aihara. "What do you want to teach me?"

"Hanyou are half-Ayakashi, and thus, we have special [abilities], powers, if you will, that speak to our Ayakashi halves." Aihara answered, ignoring the silent question she'd seen Pai mouthing. "Before I became Hanyou no Ningen, my [ability] was body tissue regeneration. That is something all Ookami are capable of, and why they're the longest-living Hengen, after the Kitsune. Even though I chose to become human, I can still use my [ability] a little bit. Not as much as I used to, but a little."

Pai was lost.

"What does that mean?" she asked. "Body tissue regeneration?"

Aihara opened her mouth to explain, and then shut it and looked away. She walked over to her purse set on the table by the window overlooking the parking lot of Dokokai Hospital. They were way up on the twelfth floor, five levels above the floor she had been in after the Onihitokuchi's attack. Being back in this hospital stirred up unpleasant memories of a world with an angry sea boiling beneath clouds firm enough to walk on, giant serpents that rose up from those watery depths and screamed to the heavens.

She resolutely fought to keep from dwelling on them as she watched Aihara return with a small but sharp knife in her hand. She tensed and shuffled away from the blade. In an instant, Kaede was no longer sitting at the table, but standing protectively in front of Pai as he glowered menacingly at Aihara, grasping her wrist in a steel grip to keep her from moving another inch.

Aihara froze at his sudden appearance, her hand clenching around the hilt of the knife, before easing her hold on it. Kanou, behind them, watched the nurse carefully from where he perched by her purse.

"Don't worry, Suzuki-san," she said reassuringly, twisting her wrist in his hand. He didn't move an inch. She scowled at him. "I'm not going to hurt her, if that's what you're thinking. I just think it best to demonstrate what my [ability] is, rather than to explain."

"I thought you said you are human," Pai asked sceptically.

"That's what I want to show you." She didn't take her eyes off of Kaede. "I promised not to hurt her, remember?"