Rebel Red Carnation {Kiribaku}

XVI

...my mother, who surely won't let me get off without explaining everything to her. Yeah, I could try and tell her I went to visit the guy she thinks is Tetsu, and it wouldn't necessarily be a lie, but she knows I wouldn't up and disappear without telling her and explaining why, let alone do that for more than a day.

No. I'll have to tell her the truth. I don't know for sure what the royal family is going to do or how much my stupid decisions have affected the rest of the slum dwellers or if Eijirou's punishment will be entirely unrelated to us, but if there truly is a possibility of those assholes deciding to take this giant shit show out on us, I have to tell her. And then she can pummel my face in, give Eijirou a few more scars, and maybe even decide to kick me out herself. (After all, I sure as fuck wouldn't blame her...)

I don't even make it halfway up the street where there hasn't been a single sign of life because everyone is holed up in the buildings to shield themselves from the cold when a head pops out of a doorway—a very familiar head. Ochako. The little shit probably heard me coming; it's like what I lack in hearing she makes up for.

"'Suki!" she gasps as soon as she sees me, stepping out of her own rundown little townhome. Without the slightest hesitation she's jogging in my direction. "Where the hell have you been?!" she asks, automatically throwing her skinny arms around my neck.

"It's... complicated," I mumble, giving her a relatively complacent pat on the back. "'M sure Mom's freakin' out, so come with me and I'll explain."

There's a frown pressed into her baby face when she steps back, but she nods anyway. Pausing to tell her own parents where she'll be, she follows me up the street to the curtain acting as my front door.

I'm holding my breath when I push the curtain aside, wondering just how much of a wreck my mother is due to my sudden disappearance. She wouldn't be alone had the royal family decided to take me out with a firing squad, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't have lost what little is left of her family, and I know that would nearly destroy her.

She's in the main room as she was last time I disappeared for a while and came back, where she tends to stay if she's alone. With me acting as her eyes, she feels safer being in the next room over while I'm around, but the best way she can defend herself when I'm not is to stay situated next to the grill, flickering weakly with dying embers.

She's awake, though, and her head lifts when she hears the brushing of the curtain. Her hand tightens around her usual steel pipe.

"Don't freak, Ma, 's me," I tell her. "'Chako's here, too."

She relaxes immediately. "Dammit, Katsuki," she sighs, wiping a tired hand down her face. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I bite back my snide remark and take a seat on the floor near her, Ochako following my lead and kneeling right beside me. "Hey, Mitsuki," she murmurs, always and forever in the habit of greeting my blind mother.

"Hi, sweetheart," Mom says roughly in her direction. "Maybe I should adopt you as my daughter, since you're about a hundred times more reliable than my son," she quips.

"Listen, ya hag—"

"Don't even start with your excuses, Katsuki!" she hisses, following that up with a cough. "Best believe that if I didn't need you to be my eyes so much I'd put you on lockdown in this house, and—"

"Fucking listen," I cut in through my teeth, firm. "Just let me fucking explain, okay? No excuses or lies."

Her brows shoot up. "Everything?"

Stifling a sigh, I say, "Everything."

"...I'll get the fire going again," Ochako murmurs, moving back to her feet to do just that. I don't let my eyes move away from Mom as she does so, all the while hating how good my memory is because it's like I can recall every single instant where I avoided answering any question she had about anything pertaining to Eijirou for the past several months. Back then, I'd given her a brief version of what happened during my first palace visit, that I'd been caught and put on lockdown until they discovered me hoarding the food they gave me and whipped me for it before dumping me on the street, and how I'd run into Eijirou—'Tetsu'—on the way home. I never directly answered a single question about where any of the supplies came from, either, no matter how hard she tried to pry. The one fortunate thing about her pneumonia was that it preoccupied her so much that she stopped asking, and those shitty palace guards snatched me away before she asked again.