Ink Stained

109: what's wrong?*

"I thought I lost you."

The memory of those warbling, heartbroken words, said in a voice that never wavered as it did then, twisted her gut to knots. Her heart ached with something heavy as she tried to imagine Rikuto caring enough about her that something like that happened because he thought she'd died. The jitters in her veins surged and she rose to her feet, wincing at the light taps of pins and needles pricking her ankles and feet.

Finally, her attention slipped its reigns from wholly focusing on Rikuto, and she glanced around herself. The convalescence room was empty; not even Kanou was at his desk as he usually was, though the desk lamp was on, so maybe he had been here recently. The room was otherwise plunged in grey darkness, the only other light that of the full moon's rays illuminating the dark corners of the room. She didn't know what time it was, but it couldn't have been that late into the night. The sky outside wasn't dark enough for that yet.

She found a short note from Shin placed on the bedside table, saying that if she woke up before he returned, if she wanted to she could find him most likely with Kouta, talking to Sojobo Kurama. She winced when she read that before carefully folding the paper and glancing at herself. She was in her pyjamas and had no pockets, so she closer her fingers loosely over the note and held on to it as she slowly stood and approached the door to leave.

She glanced back at Rikuto when she reached the door; he was still deep asleep. She hesitated for a moment. Shin had left her a note because he knew she might wake before he returned. She knew she would have jumped to the worst thoughts if that note hadn't been there, if no reason was there for why Shin wasn't in the convalescence room with her. Maybe he had known it, too.

What would Rikuto do if he woke to find her gone, before she could come back here?

"I thought I lost you."

She doubled back to Kanou's desk and picked up one of the many pens he had, scrawling a quick note on the back of the paper. As she did, she glanced at the little clock on Kanou's desk. It was just gone past one a.m. No one should be up and about at this time. Slowly, she went back to the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible as she left the note on the pillow, with her words on it facing up so that Rikuto would see it first.

She left then, wandering down the silent, moonlit halls like a lonely ghost. She didn't know where she was going, just walking as her mind flicked through the few pictures she could remember from yesterday, unclouded by the red haze, trying to see where it unravelled so quickly. She could barely make sense of the things she remembered thinking, how – how angry she was, her hands shaking from the pure force of her pained hatred that even now, she could still feel the vestiges of.

And it was all her. Kuniumi wasn't there to influence her. All that pain, all that rage – it was all her.

She was scared of it. She didn't know what it meant that she could use power like that, that she was capable of tapping into it so clouded by anger. It scared her.

"Why?" she screamed, throat burning from the pain, barely able to see through the tears swimming in her vision. "Why didn't you kill me when I told you to, when I begged you!"

She hadn't had a choice but to ask Midori for it, then. Somehow, So Fu kept their little pets from hurting themselves on purpose, enough that Pai hadn't had a choice but to go to the sister who hated her, for help.

Midori refused, every time.

But Pai wasn't in So Fu anymore. She had a choice now. If something went wrong, if she couldn't control herself the way she nearly hadn't been able to yesterday without Rikuto and Shin there, she had a choice now.