Chapter Text
Teru didn’t see Akane for the next few days. He definitely was still attending school; Teru had seen him pass by in the hallways in between classes, but he was going out of his way to avoid him. At first, he could just chalk it up to a conflict in their schedules. Akane was a busy guy, always stretching himself paper-thin with extracurriculars and after school activities. But when he’d gone halfway through the week without even a word in Teru’s direction, even in passing, the suspicion that this was far from unintentional started to creep in, gnawing at the back of his mind like a parasite.
Well, that was just fine. Even if some ugly part of him bristled at the fact Akane was mad at him in the first place. Rationally, he understood it. He’d probably be left thinking much the same thing if their positions were reversed, not knowing that it was his care for the lives of his classmates that had gotten him into this whole mess in the first place.
“The second it gets inconvenient for you, you cut people off and abandon them to die,” Akane had said to him. If only. Not caring would have saved him a lot of trouble and heartache, but he couldn’t just leave someone in peril knowing that there was a chance, no matter how fleeting, that they could still be saved.
Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that Akane had decided he wanted nothing else to do with Teru anymore. It was much easier to focus on what needed to be done without Akane there to distract him with coffee dates and silly figurines. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it had happened, but he’d messed up somewhere along the line. He started to enjoy spending time with Akane, more than he ever initially intended to. It got too easy to stay by his side, talking with him, going out for coffee together, and telling him far too much.
(He wasn’t sure why he just couldn’t bring himself to lie about the Severance when he’d spent his entire life thus far living a lie in one way or another. Doing it then especially when they both knew it was a lie felt like a betrayal of whatever weird thing they had going on.)
Teru had gotten all of his schoolwork done early that day in hopes that he wouldn’t have to stick around for too long afterschool. The sooner he could leave, the more sleep he could pack in before he’d have to go out again that night. This entire thing had been taking its toll on him in more ways than one and he found himself dozing off more and more at unideal times.
He was just about to pack up and go home when something pink and orange in the corner of the room caught his eye. He crouched down to see what it was only to find a mokke holding Akane’s haniwa figure in between its ears. He reached blindly for the clay figure, feeling the mokke scuttle away from him to hide behind one of the desk legs.
He held the figure up to the light, finding it to be far heavier than he thought it was, and examined it carefully for any cracks. A strange feeling of relief spread through him when he’d finished inspecting it to find that there didn’t seem to be any damage. He had the distinct feeling that the figure was very important to Akane for whatever reason.
“Leave it to him to leave his stuff in here.” He sighed and placed the figure in his backpack. “I suppose I should return it to him… Did you bring it here so that I could give it back?”
The mokke cowered in fear, shrinking away even farther behind its hiding place. It squeaked out a quiet “yes”.
Teru reached out to the terrified mokke and petted it with one finger, scratching behind its ear. It flinched at first but then melted into the touch, nuzzling his hand affectionately. “Good boy.”
As Teru turned to leave and go find Akane to return the figure, the mokke followed him, bumping into his leg clumsily like a cat. Despite his hatred of supernaturals, he had to admit that he had a soft spot for the mokke. His sister adored the small creatures and even kept one of them as a pet at home. He hadn’t been pleased with that, at first, but one look at how tightly she clung to the creature and the tears that filled her eyes when he said they couldn’t keep it meant he couldn’t stay upset about it for long.
“Do you want to come with me?” Teru asked, to which the mokke hopped up and down in response. “Well, okay then.” He lowered his hand for the mokke to jump up on and brought it up to his chest. It hopped into his shirt pocket. “Let’s go.”
First, he checked in Akane’s classroom, yet strangely he wasn’t there. That was odd. He could have sworn that Akane usually ended up staying late at school because of student council and his class rep duties. It wasn’t likely that he’d gone home yet, so he’d just have to keep looking. He had to be around somewhere.
Yashiro was still sitting at her desk, scribbling away furiously at a piece of paper. He didn’t think that she and Akane were particularly close, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“Excuse me, Yashiro-san,” he said, giving her a warm smile that made her heart melt like chocolate.
She stopped writing instantly, letting her pencil drop on the desk and nearly roll off. “Oh, Minamoto-senpai! What can I do for you?”
“Have you seen Aoi around lately? I have something that I need to return to him.”
“Akane-kun? No, actually, I haven’t seen him lately much at all. I thought he would be in the student council room. Have you checked there yet?”
“Yes, he wasn’t there either.” Even more bizarre. Not that he was worried though.
Yashiro leaned forward, resting her head in her hands. “Oh? I hope nothing is wrong… You don’t think he’s sick or something, do you? Maybe I should make him a care package. I don’t really know where else he would be. Sorry!”
“Well, thank you anyway. I’ll keep looking.”
“Good luck, Minamoto-senpai!” she called after him as he left.
Okay, he wasn’t in the student council room or his classroom… He was usually quite the studious type. Slacking off wasn’t like him. He decided to head to the practice gardens outside the school next to look for Aoi. She knew him better than anyone else so if anyone was going to know his whereabouts, it would be her.
“Hello Akane-san,” he greeted her, giving her a polite bow, “You haven’t seen Aoi around, have you?”
She shook her head, setting her watering can down. “No. Actually… I was just wondering where he was too. I hope he’s alright.”
“Is… something wrong?”
“I’m not sure. He’s been kinda distant lately. I think something is bothering him, but I don’t know what. I tried asking him about it, but he just shrugged it off. He’s not really the type to talk about those sorts of things…”
“I see…” Maybe now he was a little bit worried. Just a little bit. A perfectly reasonable amount of worry for a missing classmate.
“I noticed that he likes to clean the clocks around the school sometimes,” Aoi suggested, returning to her gardening, “He might be doing that maybe? Let me know if you see him!”
“Will do. Thank you, Akane-san!”
It occurred to him that he might have been in a boundary. Maybe the Clock Keeper’s boundary? It wasn’t unusual for them to ask him to run errands for them. Or… A more worrying thought crossed his mind. It was possible that something bad had happened to him again like when he was trapped in the Nowhere. That brought a whole new set of anxieties to think about.
“Is something troubling you, Minamoto-kun?” came a voice from behind him.
Teru spun on his heel and turned around to see Tsuchigomori standing in the hallway with a stack of books and papers in hand. He pushed his glasses back into place and gave Teru a nervous smile.
There were a lot of things that Teru didn’t understand about the behavior of supernaturals in general, but this one in particular baffled him. Teru had made it abundantly clear that he despised anything supernatural yet Tsuchigomori always tried looking out for him whenever he could.
Teru looked around the hallway to make sure there was no one else within earshot. “Actually. Two things.” He rifled around through his bag for Akane’s book from the 4pm Bookstacks. “There’s- Something happened with this book.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Tsuchigomori peered over Teru’s shoulder to look at the book.
Teru flipped the book open to the date from a few days ago and showed him the scribbled out passage. “This happened the other day. Is this normal for the 4pm Bookstacks records?”
Tsuchigomori took his glasses off, cleaned them, and then put them back on to make sure he was seeing it right. “No… That’s not normal. In all of my years as curator, I’ve never seen such a thing happen.”
He reached to turn the page to a different day when bright red started spreading across the paper until it had stained the entire book. Teru dropped it immediately like it had burned him, splattering the blood-like substance all over the floor. It spread over the tile only for a moment before returning to the book like it was being sucked back into a vacuum.
“What the…”
Tsuchigomori grabbed the book and slammed it shut, stopping the bleeding. “I think that I should keep this book for the time being. It’s too dangerous to take it out of the library. The rumor is still in effect even if I’ve been unseated.”
“Wait.” Teru grabbed the edge of the book, preventing Tsuchigomori from leaving with it. “I’ll keep it. I won’t read anymore of it, but I want to keep an eye on it to see if it changes again.”
“...Alright…” Tsuchigomori sighed, handing the book back over to him. “Aoi-kun really is lucky to have someone like you looking out for him.”
“Speaking of, I don’t suppose you know where he is right now, do you? Probably not, huh?”
“I believe I saw him going up to the rooftop earlier. I greeted him, but he just walked right past me. He seemed preoccupied with something.”
That seemed to be the common thread and it didn’t do anything to ease his nerves. Had their argument the other day really affected him that much?
“Right, thanks,” he said curtly before making his way to the stairway that led to the rooftop.
Tsuchigomori shook his head dismissively as he kept walking down the hallway. “I just don’t know about those two.”
Just as Tsuchigomori had said, Akane was on the roof with no one else around in sight. He was sitting alone on a bench overlooking the school’s track and field.
“Aoi.”
Akane visibly cringed. “Yes? What do you want now?”
“You’ve been avoiding me. Why?”
“Ah, so we’re doing this now then? Straight to the point as always…” Akane said, something close to anger or disgust in his voice. Teru didn’t know which one would be worse, which one would hurt more. “You’re the one that told me to stop following you. ‘Like a lost dog’ I believe were your exact words. I’m sure you still remember.”
“Since when do you do anything that I tell you to? There’s something else going on here.” Teru took the seat on the bench next to him. “Want to tell me what’s really going on with you?”
“No, I don’t. It’s none of your business. I’ve been getting all of my obligations done on time. My grades haven’t dropped. Really, there’s no cause for alarm.”
“Well, you’re sitting alone on a rooftop instead of hanging out with your best friend. It doesn’t bother me if you want to sulk and feel sorry for yourself, but Akane-san is worried about you. Yashiro-san too.”
Akane sighed, dragging his hands down his face. “Is it so wrong to just want to be by yourself sometimes? Speaking of, I would prefer to not be in your company right now either.”
“I’ll leave once you tell me what’s going on,” Teru insisted.
“I already did. You told me to leave you alone and this is me doing that. There’s nothing else to it.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that’s all this is. This isn’t like you, Aoi. Did something happen-?”
“When are you going to stop this hot-and-cold act? One minute you act like you can’t even bear to look at me and now you want to act like you’re my best friend? It would make these moments where we’re in between hating each other a lot less awkward and confusing if you could just say how you feel for once in your life.”
“I’ve never hated you.”
Akane wrinkled his nose at that. “You have a funny way of showing it, Minamoto.”
The air around them froze, feeling suddenly much colder. A jumble of words got lost in Teru’s throat, none of them finding their voice. There really wasn’t any easy way to say I can’t allow myself to get too close because I don’t trust myself. I’m afraid of screwing things up and letting you or someone else get hurt again.
So what if Akane hates him or thinks Teru hates him in turn? If it keeps him safe—keeps him alive at the end of all this—then it shouldn’t matter how Akane feels about him. Let Akane hate him as long as he stays alive. But just the thought of leaving things like this feels like a hook in between his ribcage.
Teru let out a heavy sigh and sat down on the bench next to Akane, overlooking the school’s track far below them. “Listen, about what I said before… I’m sorry.”
Akane blinked at him like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Do we need to call another exorcist? Are you possessed? Or dying maybe? Is this a deathbed confes-?”
“Shut up. I’m trying to be sincere here,” Teru said, but there wasn’t any bite to it and he was trying his hardest not to smile. “But… You were right about Yashiro-san. The truth is that I didn’t know what to do about it. It’s just another thing to worry about added to the list…” He rubbed his temples soothingly, finding that it did very little to help.
“Wow. First an apology and now an admission of wrongdoing. This day will go down in the history books. But… I guess I should apologize too.”
“Apologize for what?”
“I’ve known Yashiro-san since middle school. I mean she’s Ao-chan’s best friend so it’d be kinda hard not to know her. And she’s always just been so… bright. And kind, unconditionally. I don’t think she has a vindictive bone in her body. So seeing her, of all people, meet such a terrible fate like that…” Akane trailed off, frowning. “It’s so unfair and I just got so blindly angry thinking that you knew and you decided to do nothing about it. But I shouldn’t have assumed the worst.”
“I know what you mean. It’s hard to imagine her like that.”
Akane nodded, swallowing the lump growing in his throat. “Maybe your brother will find some way to help her. If anyone could do it, it’d be him. Kid’s seriously determined.”
“I hope so. If there’s any way to help her, we’ll find it.”
“You know, you are seriously the most confusing person I’ve ever met, but I was wrong about you.” Akane rested his chin in his hands, looking at Teru intently. “I keep finding myself thinking that. As soon as I finally think I’ve gotten you figured out, you do something to make me reconsider everything. At first I thought you were just an unrepentant jerk, but now I think you’re just so emotionally repressed you-”
“Like you’re one to talk about that,” Teru retorted, elbowing Akane in the arm.
“I’m not nearly as bad as you are! You might be a bastard, but I was wrong to say that you don’t care. You’re just the absolute worst at showing it. Which might be a good thing because if you ever said it out loud, the world might just end.”
“So, do you finally have me all figured out? What makes you think I care as much as you say?”
“Hmm,” Akane gave Teru an appraising look and a small smirk that chased away some of his anxiety. “Would you be here if you didn’t? You can pretend that you’re only here to ease other people’s worries, but I know better than that. I think you might just like me more than you let on.”
“Keep dreaming,” Teru said, laughing into his hand.
“You’re such a bad liar! To me anyway. I thought you’d be better considering how tightly you have everyone else wrapped around your little finger.” Akane’s expression brightened, a glimmer in his eye that Teru hadn’t ever seen before.
“Would you rather I be fake polite with you like I am with everyone else?” Teru gave his best, most winning fake smile and put on the pleasant, perfect student council president voice he’d spent the last two years honing. “Good afternoon, Akane-kouhai, is something bothering you?”
Akane’s face scrunched up and he sputtered out a laugh. “Never do that again. That was just unnatural. The day you ever say something that nice to me is the day you’ll tell me I’m dying or something. But okay, okay. What about the 4pm Bookstacks then?”
“What about it?”
“You could have just left me to deal with that monster back there by myself. I could have handled it, but you still stepped in to help me. Even if your method of helping was… less than pleasant.”
“How was I supposed to know you were afraid of heights?” Teru asked innocently.
“I’m not afraid of heights! What I’m afraid of is people shaking already rickety ladders while I’m trying to climb them. Perfectly reasonable fear.”
“It’s okay if you’re afraid of heights, Aoi.” Teru smirked at him which only made Akane bristle even further, outraged at these salacious accusations.
“I’m not.”
“Okay, I’ll pretend I believe you. And about the 4pm Bookstacks… I was the one who let you tag along anyway. It wouldn’t be right for me to throw you to the wolves when you were only there because of me in the first place. Does that explanation cut it for you?”
“And then there was that day at the coffee shop. You spent so much time and money on those gachapon machines. You wanted to get me the last figure I needed. Am I wrong?”
“I really did spend a lot of money on those, didn’t I?” He thought about the pile of repeat figurines collecting dust in the wastebin in his room and deflated at that. “Well, maybe I just wanted to get the last one you needed so I could rub it in your face. Who knows?”
“And what about what happened with those upperclassmen? You went through a lot just to find me and bring me back safely.”
“Anyone else would have done the same thing,” Teru said, a bit too defensively. Evidently, he’d let on far too much already. He knew Akane well, far better than most people did if he had to guess, but he hadn’t fully realized that knowing someone was a two-way street. “It wasn’t like I could just leave you there to wander forever.”
Akane looked far from convinced. “Any one of those excuses in isolation might make sense, but all of them together? I don’t buy it. You might be aggravating. You might overwork me a lot and blame me for things I have no control over yet ask me to use my powers whenever it suits you. You might be hypocritical and fake and stuck-up, but you’re not all that bad when it comes down to it. Your heart is in the right place… mostly.”
“What high praise. Thanks for telling me I’m not the absolute worst I could be. It sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this, Mr. Honor Student.”
“Only you could make that sound like an insult,” Akane huffed and then shook his head. “Well, lie to yourself if you like. I know the truth.”
“So are we good?” Teru asked, voice wavering slightly in a way he hoped Akane hadn’t picked up on. He knew he was teetering on a line he shouldn’t cross. He was getting too attached, going too soft. He didn’t want to let Akane in, to let him tear down all of the walls he spent years building to protect himself. Though, a part of him knew he already had.
“It depends.” Akane leaned back against the bench, giving Teru a sideways glance. “Will you let me help you this time? For Yashiro-san’s sake and the person you want to help. There are a lot of people here that I care about here too you know so… you’re not the only one who wants to stop the Severance from happening.”
Teru’s throat felt dry suddenly. Just the word Severance and its finality made his skin stand on end. “I don’t… I don’t think that’s a good idea, Aoi. It’s not something we can afford to play around with-”
“Don’t give me that,” Akane interrupted him, “You don’t need to shelter me from this. I can protect myself.”
Teru let out a deep breath that came out more as a heavy sigh. “You remember those upperclassmen that kidnapped you? And the ghost that was with them?”
“Kinda hard to forget something like that…”
“And they asked you about me, didn’t they?”
Akane nodded. “Well, yeah. I guess it was weird, but I came out alright in the end.”
“They only kidnapped you and interrogated you about me because of something I did. I changed something, only a small change—one I didn’t even think about at the time—and it led to an attempt on your life. You were never supposed to meet that ghost or ever enter The Nowhere. Me messing around with time carelessly… it could have killed you. That’s why it’s better if you don’t get involved.”
Akane stood abruptly and stood in front of Teru, blocking his view. “And what about you? So I’m just supposed to let you endanger yourself then? You’re always looking out for everyone else, but who’s going to look out for you? That one day you came back to the SC room injured and about to pass out… That didn’t happen originally either, did it?”
“Well…” Teru said sheepishly, running a hand through his hair. “No, not exactly. But I was fine. This is my problem to deal with, Aoi. You don’t need to worry about it.”
“Oh, bullshit. If you overexert yourself and drop dead trying to save an entire school by yourself, that’s something I don’t need to worry about? You’d sooner die than ask for help by yourself, so… Just let me help you and save ourselves both the hassle.”
Teru paused, sighing deeply and avoiding Akane’s gaze. Was he sheltering Akane? Or was it for his own wellbeing that he was trying to keep him at arm’s length? “I won’t apologize for how I’ve acted thus far. Through this entire ordeal, I’ve only done what I thought was best, but if you truly do wish to be involved then… I suppose I can’t stop you.”
“Wait, really?” Akane’s voice rose slightly, daring to let himself get his hopes up just a bit. “I… Thanks… Thank you.” He stuck his hand out to Teru. “Truce?”
Teru took it, finding that shaking his hand was taking a massive weight off his shoulders he hadn’t fully realized he was carrying. “Truce. But, I’m going to set up some ground rules for this alliance.”
“Okay,” Akane nodded, “Okay, just name them.”
“You can’t tell anyone about this. Not a single word.”
“Well, obviously. It wasn’t like I was going to go around the school bragging about knowing the future. First rule of time travel club is ‘don't talk about time travel club’ and all that, right?”
“Shut up. Second, I can’t tell you everything, not all at once anyway. And before you say anything, it’s months worth of information, a lot of it that’s hazy to me even.”
Akane opened his mouth to argue but then closed it again. “Fine. I guess that makes sense. The memory wipe effect does get stronger the farther time gets turned back. Just how far back did you go?”
“The Severance happened right before summer break.”
“So we only have another couple months to prevent it from happening. Not a lot of time.” Akane frowned.
“No, it’s not. We’ll find a way, though.” Teru hadn’t realized just how much he meant those words until they’d left his mouth. He wasn’t doing this alone anymore—he wasn’t just one kid faced with the looming threat of 2 deaths weighing on his mind with no one else to talk to or ask for help. Logically, he still knew that Akane helping him didn’t necessarily help their chances of success at all. Hell, he didn’t even know if it was possible to change that outcome no matter what they did. But it didn’t feel like such a daunting task anymore.
“If you can’t tell me about the future, can you at least tell me about what you've already changed?”
Teru stood from the bench, dusting himself off and making his way back towards the stairwell. “Buy me lunch and I’ll think about it.”
“This is extortion, Minamoto,” Akane said, following Teru towards the school’s front gate, “To your underclassman too…” He melodramatically shook his head in disapproval.
“You’re the one who wanted to work with me.” Teru smiled and shrugged. “Besides, you said you wanted to hang out again sometime, remember?”
“Against my better judgment, yes… But I’m choosing the place.”
—
They ended up at a ramen place not far from the train station. It was a bizarre sensation for Akane, seeing Teru sitting across from him from their booth, looking so… normal from this angle.
Akane had never really thought about him like that before. He always seemed so high up and untouchable, like he was above doing such ordinary things. At the end of the day, he was just a normal kid except for the fact that he could summon lightning out of thin air and always carried around a sword. And with his sword tucked away at their feet, he just looked like the run-of-the-mill high school student stopping by for the afternoon lunch rush with a friend.
Oh shit.
Akane nearly choked on his water.
Were they friends? Is that what this was?
Somehow “friendship” didn’t quite seem to cover it. Whatever weird thing they had going on was nothing so soft or pleasant like friendship, not in the way he was friends with Aoi or Lemon. But at the same time, being with Teru came easily. There wasn’t a fear of saying the wrong thing or messing things up with him.
Teru might have been a prick, but it wasn’t like he himself was a saint, either. He didn’t have to worry about hurting Teru because they were the same in that weird way. Akane doesn’t have to pretend to be a nice person when he knows he isn’t and Teru’s never held that pretense of the sweet, beloved prince of the school with Akane. So that made it okay for them to talk like this.
(Is that fucked up? Definitely fucked up, Akane concluded, a little unnerved at how little the thought bothered him.)
“Earth to Aoi.” Teru waved his hand in front of Akane’s face, “Anyone home in there?”
Akane blinked and then swatted Teru’s hand away. “Okay, now that we’re here, will you at least tell me what happens next? In the future, I mean.”
Teru gave him a sly look, leaning forward to rest his chin in one hand. “That wasn’t what we agreed on, though. I said I’d tell you about the things I changed.”
And Akane was about to argue when the waitress stopped by their table to drop off their food. All it took was one look at Teru’s bowl, overflowing over the rim, for Akane to be suddenly more preoccupied dreading the sizable hole this meal would be burning through his wallet.
Teru picked at the various toppings with his chopsticks before picking up what looked to be a soft-boiled egg and flinging it across the table into Akane’s bowl. The ramen broth splashed all over the table and Akane hurried to wipe it all up, not wanting to leave a mess for the wait staff to clean up.
“What the hell?”
“Didn’t want it,” Teru said with a shrug, picking at the rest of his bowl and flinging whatever toppings he deemed not good enough into Akane’s ramen.
“You didn’t even try it-”
“It was squishy.”
“It’s a soft-boiled egg! Of course it’s gonna be–” Akane stopped himself and took a breath. “Listen, I’ve been a good sport about this all. Just one thing about the future?”
“Hmm.” Teru mulled the thought over for a minute, taking way too much joy in the fact that he held all of the cards in this scenario. “In my infinite kindness, I’ve elected to tell you what’s gonna happen next week. I know, I know. Save your praise.”
Akane swore he felt a blood vessel pop in his forehead and his eyebrow twitched. “Oh, I’m certainly holding back some comments. Don’t know if I’d call them ‘praise’, though.”
“Say, Aoi, how much do you know about School Mystery No. 3?”
“No. 3? Nothing really. I try to avoid anything about the School Mysteries if at all possible.”
Kako had insisted and Mirai had practically begged him to go to one of the School Mystery meetings, wearing him down until he finally relented just so they’d stop bothering him about it. He kept his mask and hood firmly on the entire time, but it did little to ease the unnerving out of place feeling of being the only human in a room filled with specters and other supernaturals. They hadn’t asked him to go again after that, something he was forever grateful for.
Even if he’d never tell them that.
“Next week, the current No. 3 will be unseated and replaced by a new supernatural. And you,” he paused for what Akane could only assume was dramatic effect, “are going to be there when it happens.”
“Me? Why? Wouldn’t my presence possibly make things worse? What if that somehow stops No. 3 from being unseated?”
Teru frowned and bit the inside of his cheek. “That very well could happen. To be honest, I have a bit of a personal reason for wanting you to be there.”
Radio silence. Akane waited one, two, three seconds for Teru to elaborate but he just went back to eating his ramen without a single explanation.
“And that is?”
Teru looked up at him, mouth full of noodles. “And that is what?”
He couldn’t possibly be serious. “What’s the personal reason? You just stopped talking.”
“Ohh. You should be more specific next time.”
“I need to be more specific?” Yep, Akane’s eye was definitely twitching now. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“The supernatural that will replace No. 3… I’ve seen him before. He was a ghost, a friend of my brother’s, too. And well I thought he was gone, permanently. His rumor got changed, you see, so… I had to exorcize him.”
“If you exorcized him, how is it possible he could come back? As a School Mystery no less?”
“It shouldn’t be possible,” Teru confirmed, “That’s why I need you there so I can understand. It’s a selfish request, but-”
“It’s not selfish to want closure,” Akane interrupted, “I’ll do it. Just tell me what I need to do.”
For once, Teru has to fight to keep his expression neutral. It’s so close to what he’s wanted someone to say to him this entire time that it’s almost a little overwhelming. This past month, he had just been flying blind, hoping that he wasn’t making things worse, hoping that they weren’t all destined for tragedy long regardless of what he did.
“Yashiro-san will be dragged into No. 3’s boundary. Normally, Kou and No. 7 would take No. 2’s boundary to find her, but if it came down to it I could just forcibly connect us straight to her location.”
“You can do that?”
“Mhm,” Teru nodded, “Make up an excuse to be around them when it happens and whenever Yashiro-san gets pulled into the boundary, come and get me. I would just volunteer to go myself but…”
No. 3’s power was a devious one, feasting on the darkest fears and insecurities of whoever wandered into its domain. Whatever security and control over the situation Teru’s presence would bring would be overshadowed by how much power he might accidentally end up giving No. 3. There was too much at stake, too many secrets that Teru had been trying so desperately hard to keep. He couldn’t go in until absolutely necessary.
“It could cause some unintended side effects,” Teru settled on saying.
“That makes sense, I guess. But it feels kinda gross to use Yashiro-san as bait knowing how short her lifespan is… It’ll be dangerous, won’t it?”
“Yashiro-san will be safe. We’ll both be there to help her. Plus, she’s a great deal more resourceful than you might initially suspect. Well-versed in the world of supernaturals, too.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust her capability. It’s just…” He gnawed the inside of his cheek and picked at his food, finding himself having very little appetite. “I could do it instead.”
“Aoi, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“No, seriously. Yashiro-san doesn’t need to be taking any risks, unwittingly or otherwise, with her lifespan the way it is. But, if I’m not in the same danger she is. It’d be fine if I went into No. 3’s boundary in her place, right?”
If only you knew, Teru thought.
Teru pushed his half-empty bowl towards the middle of the table, suddenly not hungry anymore. A lump of ice had settled in his stomach, the cold feeling of dread spreading through him like he’d been submerged in water. “Who knows how that might change things?”
“Me being there in general could change things.”
“Yashiro-san is the only one capable of removing No. 3’s Yorishiro. Just trust me on this, Aoi. You entering No. 3’s boundary alone will only cause more issues.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t sulk about it, Aoi. It’s for the best.”
“I’m not sulking,” Akane said, most definitely sulking, “I don’t sulk. You sulk, I.. I’m just thinking.”
“How about I tell you about the things I’ve changed then? To cheer you up. Since I’m such a nice upperclassman.”
And so Teru did. He talked about the day on the rooftop with No. 7 and his brother, how that had been his first test on just how much control he had over the outcomes. He explained how in the original timeline neither of them had ever stepped foot in The 4pm Bookstacks and how Akane had never met the Broadcasting Club either. As Teru went on, it got easier and easier for him to talk about it until he realized he needed this just as much as Akane did. Keeping all of this knowledge in his head with no one to talk to had been a weight pressing down on him from all sides.
Having Akane with him didn’t lessen the danger they were faced with, but it was a lot less lonely and that was a start.
“That pretty much brings us to today. Oh! I forgot.” Teru rummaged through his school bag—was it always so cluttered and messy or just when he needed to find something?—until he found the haniwa statue. “This is yours, isn’t it?”
Akane took the clay figure gingerly, a dopey smile tugging at his lips that Teru had never seen before. He could get used to seeing that smile, though. “I was looking everywhere for it! I thought I was losing my mind. Where did you find it?”
Teru reached into the front pocket of his shirt and carefully pulled out the now sleeping mokke. The creature curled up in his palm, snoring soundly. “This little guy showed me.”
“What are you talking about? Wait.” Akane took off his glasses and hooked them on the front of his shirt. “Why on Earth would you bring that thing back from school?”
“He’s kinda cute, isn’t he?” Teru held the creature out towards Akane who recoiled as far as the back of their booth would allow them. “He brought your figure to me and well… I guess I just forgot that he was in there.”
“It just brought my hanitarou to you?” Akane asked, raising an eyebrow, “You know it probably stole it, right?”
“How can you stay mad at that face?”
“Easily and with pleasure. Those things are EVIL.” Akane crossed his arms and turned away from the sleeping creature.
The mokke stirred suddenly, having been woken up by Akane’s loud voice. It uncurled lazily, flopping over out of Teru’s palm. Its beady eyes opened and it looked around before nuzzling up against Akane’s arm. Akane scooted farther back into the booth but the mokke just followed him until he ran out of space to scoot over.
“I think he likes you.”
—
The bill, thankfully, didn’t completely bankrupt Akane even with Teru’s excessive extras. Akane paid for their meal with Teru grinning like a child the entire time and afterwards they set off towards the train station again.
Teru had told him a lot and Akane had no real reason to think he was lying about what would happen. The entire situation sounded crazy, but so did everything about his life after coming to Kamome Academy. He had begun to think craziness just followed him around like the plague. But even with that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Teru wasn’t telling him something major.
“As for why you don’t remember… all I will say is that I don’t think you were in a state where you could remember.” Kako’s words kept replaying in his head, ringing out like the chime of a clock.
“Hey, President?”
He thought of the overwhelming sense of deja vu he got while walking through the hallways and the weird flashes of phantom pain. The nightmares of centipedes and tendrils that he had dismissed as him just being under a lot of stress.
“Yeah?” Teru didn’t look back at him, just kept walking beside him.
“Nothing bad is going to happen to me in the future, right?”
“No one’s future is 100% positive, Aoi,” Teru said vaguely, expression carefully neutral.
“Well, obviously. I just mean that… You would tell me if there was something I needed to know about in mine, wouldn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you, Aoi. You trust me, don’t you?”
“What is a human life worth? You said back there that supernaturals don’t understand how precious human life is, so what price would you put on it?”
“I do trust you,” Akane said, not realizing just how much he meant it until the words left his mouth.
Teru’s notebook flashed in his mind—SEVERANCE written at the top in bright red lettering. Severance, the end, finality. It wouldn’t leave his mind.
I do trust you, but there’s something you’re not telling me.