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Mahiru woke up feeling warmer than he remembered.
Pressing his forehead against the source of said warmth, he let the gentle swaying of his body almost lull him back into the sleep he was barely waking up from. He didn’t understand where he was or how he got there, but he was warm and for reasons he couldn’t immediately recall, that fact came with a great sense of relief.
Listening out he realised he could hear footsteps, quiet and shuffling with the sound of distant traffic in the background. It was enough to figure out he was outside somewhere but he had neither the strength nor the desire to lift his head.
“...Kuro?” He called instead of trying to look, his tongue feeling heavy as he dragged the word out in a slur.
Then the gentle rocking stopped, much to his disappointment, and something nudged the side of his face. A nose. “Mahiru?” Kuro’s voice was incredibly close and- oh, he was being carried on Kuro’s back. Yeah, that made sense. His partner was pretty warm. “Oi, he’s waking up.”
All footsteps went quiet though the sounds of far off traffic persisted and someone lightly touched the back of his hand where his arms dangled limply over Kuro’s shoulders.
“Shirota?” He was asked by a voice almost as familiar as Kuro’s. “Shirota can you hear me?”
“M’sono?”
“Yeah, its me.” Relief was clear in his voice and Mahiru wondered what could have happened to put a rarely heard tremble there. Misono was usually at his most composed in a crisis and he was getting the idea something had gone down. Kuro-piggy backs didn’t happen for nothing, after all. “Can you open your eyes?”
Mahiru tried but failed, his entire body feeling incredibly heavy. Even shifting his head felt like moving a weight and his eyes honestly felt sealed shut. He was feeling increasingly aware of things the more seconds ticked by but all he was figuring out was that he felt awful and could barely move. “Sorry…”
“That’s fine.” Lily was close by to, his voice gentle and soothing, the tone Mahiru had heard him use when one of his subclass were upset. “There’s no rush. How are you feeling?”
“...Hurts?” He mumbled, confused. Because if he focused on it, there actually didn’t seem to be a part of him that didn’t at the very least ache. He quickly went back to focusing on the warmth of Kuro’s back which was much more pleasant. “What happen’d?”
“You were both attacked.” Misono said. “The cat managed to drive them off, but not before things got… messy. You got hurt.”
An attack? His most recent memories detailed walking home from Misono’s and then just… cold, a bone deep, terrifying cold. His brain couldn’t even formulate the cause. “E’ryone ok?”
“Everyone except you.” Kuro said quietly and something shifted… rippled. He wasn’t sure if it was a physical sensation or something through the bond but he knew Kuro was not happy and Mahiru was pretty sure it was his fault.
“You were stabbed, Shirota.” Misono went on to explain before Mahiru had to ask and he felt Kuro’s grip tighten on his thighs as he tried to process the implication of the words. “You were stabbed and I- we couldn’t…” Misono made frustrated noise, trying to sound more matter of fact than upset and barely succeeding. “Things didn’t look good.”
Wanting to see his friends and partner, just so he had expressions to go with the unusually tense voices, the fight to open his eyes began anew and he eventually succeeded, but his eyes didn’t even have time to register what they were seeing before he had to squeeze them shut again, overcome by vertigo.
“Fuck.”
While he waited for the discomfort to fade, someone pulled something over his head. Something fuzzy that smelled faintly of his preferred fabric softener and blocked out any light that tried to attack through his eyelids. Kuro’s hood.
He was wearing Kuro’s coat, he realised in a detached manner. Which was good to know, but it didn’t really change the fact Misono had just said he’d been stabbed.
He clearly wasn’t dead, nobody was trying to stop any bleeding and he wasn’t in a hospital. That meant he was probably ok, at least for the most part, but how? Eve’s were more durable than other humans but they weren’t stab proof and Misono and Kuro were too tightly wound from whatever had happened for it to just have been a scrape or a flesh wound.
Hurting and feeling the beginnings of anxiety churning in his gut, Mahiru swallowed thickly.
“How bad?” He asked and for a long while, nobody answered him.
“It was less stabbed and more… impaled.” The careful answer eventually came from Lily, quiet and somber in a way that added extra weight to the already grim words. “You were ambushed by some of Tsubaki’s subclass that blame us for his disappearance. They attacked you as you were passing through the park before sundown and one of them ran you through with a metal pipe.”
Ran him through? Like in one side and out the other? But… but then how was he… how had he not…
But Lily wasn’t finished.
“Kuro managed to scare them off, despite the sun limiting his actions, and call us for help. But you lost a lot of blood, Mahiru. More than any human, even an eve, can safely lose before-”
“Lily.” Kuro’s tone was one of warning, putting an end to the descriptions Mahiru had asked for but truly no longer wanted to hear. Kuro could probably feel him trembling and his own grip on Mahiru’s legs bordered on being painfully tight.
“My apologies.” Lily said sincerely and they lapsed into silence once more, the gentle rocking motions beginning anew as Kuro started walking.
The sounds of traffic slowly grew louder and Mahiru was pretty sure they were near the supermarket or at least the highstreet by the time he found the courage to ask, “Guys…How’m I ok?”
“We… don’t know.” Misono admitted, clearly hating the fact he didn’t have an answer. “You pulled the damn pipe out before the cat could stop you and instead of dying you just… didn’t. You got better.”
“You healed.” Kuro clarified bluntly, and Mahiru realised Kuro didn’t want to hear this anymore than he did. The thought that he’d almost left his uncle, Kuro and his friends and he couldn’t remember any of it just made him feel sick. And the last thing he’d ever wanted to do was give Kuro more bad memories.
“M’sorry.” He said quietly, but Kuro didn’t offer any sort of response. He’d definitely heard Mahiru though because his grip eased a little and he felt his back rise slightly in a sigh.
“We don’t know how or why.” Misono picked up where he left off, the short pause having helped him firm up his voice. “But the wound just started to close. You passed out right after removing the pipe, but when Lily and I arrived the bleeding had already stopped and the wound slowly started healing. A- at first I thought the cat might have tried to turn you to save you before we got there.“ He admitted. “But your eyes were still brown and you didn’t have any bite wounds...”
“So I’m just…”
“Alive, human and uninjured.” Misono finished with a shaky sigh. “And we have no idea how or why.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah…”
The atmosphere around them was a heavy one as they took what was most likely the back road route to the apartment, the pace slow and careful enough that even Misono could keep pace if Mahiru was counting the number of different footsteps right.
Once they were finally there, the Lust Pair made no move to part ways with them and Kuro left the door open without comment, even carefully passing Mahiru over to Lily while he removed his boots before taking possession of his eve once more.
Mahiru had gone back to slipping in and out of consciousness by that point so his memory of the walk home was blotchy at best outside of his idle footstep counting. He also had no memory of anything passed entering the apartment and he found himself waking up on the couch with Misono and Kuro hovering nearby an unknown amount of time later.
For a minute, he thought he’d simply took a nap and all previous talk of stabbings and being unable to move were simply part of his dreams, but Kuro and Misono both jerked upright when they noticed he was awake and he knew there was far too much anxiety there for him to have simply dozed off while hanging out with friends.
Kuro looked normal at a glance, but his shirt and arms were stained reddish brown from copious amounts of dry blood and his eyes looked blank, hauntingly so. Meeting his gaze made a lump rise in Mahiru’s throat as all notions of the evening just being a dream crashed and burned as it finally hit home that Kuro had watched him bleed out, likely convinced at the time that he was watching his eve die.
Like Misono had admitted to suspecting, he wondered if Kuro had considered biting him to save him. But Mahiru was nowhere near cruel enough to ask. He knew Kuro never wanted to inflict what he saw as the burden of immortality on someone that couldn’t consent, no matter how much he wanted to save them… even if that someone was Mahiru.
“Kuro…” He began, needing to say something other than sorry even if he didn’t know what, but Kuro shook his head with a sigh, denying him the attempt with a tight expression that damn near begged him not to be troublesome and to just let it go for now.
Mahiru almost thought Kuro was going to walk away, to give himself some space now he was awake and Lily and Misono were there to watch over him, but Kuro made no move leave. Instead he kneeled in front of Mahiru and got to work unzipping the coat he still wore while Misono tiredly sat down beside Mahiru once he’d helped get him fully sat up.
“Lily is making us some tea.” The eve said in answer to the question Mahiru never asked, too focussed on the fact his shirt beneath Kuro’s coat was a bloody mess with an unfixable tear straight down the middle and an even messier horizontal tear inches above his belly button. It seemed he’d been left to sleep for a while once they got home, but nobody had wanted to check him over while he was unconscious. A bad idea when someone was hurt, but more understandable if someone had magically healed on their own.
“Is that Lily’s scarf?” He asked as Kuro and Misono somewhat awkwardly helped him peel off his shirt right after the coat. There was a makeshift bandage around his torso made of familiar, and now bloodstained, fabric.
“Don’t worry about stupid things.” Misono scolded in a distracted manner, which was pretty much a ‘yes’, and Mahiru flinched as the material was pulled away so they could see what was underneath, Kuro’s fingers hesitantly brushing over the oversensitive skin of a freshly healed wound.
There were smaller scratches around it that still looked fresh and unhealed, possibly from Kuro’s claws catching his skin as he tore the shirt open to check the wound after Mahiru apparently de-piped himself. But the huge injury itself was completely scarred over.
“It looks weeks, maybe months old. But it’s only been hours.” Misono observed, relieved but also frustratingly baffled.
“But the supernatural beings we know don’t scar…” Mahiru heard himself say in agreement, even as his thoughts went elsewhere now he was staring at definitive proof of his should be dead-ness. The scar was as big as his palm, pink and dead center of his stomach and if where Kuro’s other hand was feeling around was any clue, he had a matching one on his back just a few inches shy of his spine. There was no way that hadn’t torn through at least a few organs...
“Has it completely closed up back there to?” Misono asked and Kuro nodded, letting Mahiru press his hand down on the scar on his front just to hide it for a little while. He felt the scary coldness he barely remembered trying to come back the longer he looked at it, but the feeling faded under Kuro’s palm. “We need to figure out how this happened.”
“Can we not?” Kuro sighed before Mahiru could answer, which honestly felt like the first truly Kuro-like thing he’d said since Mahiru woke up being carried on his back. It made the eve smile a little, even as he agreed with him.
“Sorry Misono, but I’m with Kuro… I get that we need to know how this happened. But can we do it when it’s not all so… fresh?”
Misono looked displeased, making Mahiru fear a lecture was on the way but instead he seemed to think better of it and just… deflated, possibly understanding that just because he found reassurance in knowing all the answers, it didn’t mean others did. Mahiru still ended up with a finger in his face though.
“Fine. But I’m definitely looking into this even if you don’t want to. We need to know how this happened.” He said firmly and Mahiru nodded.
“I know, and we’ll help.” He assured, ignoring the thud Kuro’s head dropping onto the couch beside his legs at the dreaded ‘we’. “Just… not tonight.”
“We’ve had quite the scare. We should try to unwind for now.” Lily agreed as he walked over with a tray of four steaming cups, placing them down on the coffee table without spilling a drop even with his eyes naturally gravitating to the wound still hidden under Kuro’s palm.
Lily seemed to be dealing with it the best, but Mahiru could tell he’d been spooked by this whole thing to and he was more than happy to agree to whatever the three of them wanted to try and make up for being the only one that couldn’t remember a damn thing.
Not that he honestly wanted to remember anything, it scared him enough just hearing about it second hand. But it seemed unfair that he was the only one not burdened by the memory of an event he was the center of.
“Do you two want to stay over?” He found himself offering. “If you don’t want to bother with the futons you can stay in my uncle’s room.”
The invitation caught everyone off guard, even Mahiru himself when he remembered he could hardly look after any guests like this. It earned a genuine smile from Lily though, so that was a start.
“That might not be a bad idea. What do you say, Misono?” The willowy vampire clearly liked the suggestion but left the decision up to his eve, who crossed his arms and scowled thoughtfully.
“We don’t know if those subclass will come back and they might know where you live.” Misono said, though the flush on his cheeks betrayed his happiness regarding the sleepover invitation. “The cat can likely handle anything without issue now it’s dark out but it’s probably for the best that we stick together, at least for the night considering what happened.”
“Y’know, ‘Yes, we’ll stay because I’m worried’ is a much shorter way to say it.” Kuro drawled, rising from the floor to sit beside Mahiru, curling up so he could rest his chin on his knees while holding his cup. Mahiru was surprised he hadn’t retreated to cat form yet. “Or even just ‘yes’.”
“Nobody asked you. I’m just being practical.” Misono huffed defensively, but Mahiru appreciated him refraining from shouting like he normally would when embarrassed. His head hurt too much for yelling.
“He’s got a point Kuro. I mean, that’s not why I asked, but he isn’t wrong.”
Kuro just sipped his tea with a passive stare, leaving Mahiru to face Misono’s mildly baffled expression alone.
“Why did you ask then?” He asked and Mahiru shrugged.
“Simple. It’s been a bad night and I don’t want you guys to leave yet.”
Misono’s deepening blush was unsurprising and so was his stuttered response that was a mix of awkward and bashful but, like Kuro’s kuro-isms, the sheer normalcy of the reaction eased something in Mahiru’s chest and he would have smiled, had he not yawned first.
God he was tired.
He was also covered in dry blood he didn’t want to flake all over the couch. He really didn’t feel up to it, but he really needed a bath.
“Kuro, help me to the bathroom? I want to get cleaned up.”
“Right now?” Kuro’s expression said exactly how much he didn’t want to but it also spoke volumes of how on edge the evening had put them all that he didn’t outright say no or complain. He hadn’t said ‘troublesome’ or ‘can’t deal’ once and that was unnerving all on its own.
“Drink your tea first if you want. I’ll just-” He braced his hands on the seat cushion and tried to push himself up and failed. “Or not…”
He couldn’t stand up.
He’d thought with his speech no longer slurring and improved awareness that he’d recovered at least somewhat. But as he tried to stand, his earlier aches flared to life and his legs refused to bear any of his weight. He’d barely got a few inches off the couch before they gave in and he was sat back down again.
“You ok, Shirota?” Misono asked as Mahiru sighed and rubbed a hand down his face.
“...I might need more than just a hand to the bathroom.” He admittedly quietly, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed of the state he was in.
“Does it hurt?” Lily asked with concern, referring to the injury. “Do you have anything around you could take for it?” He looked ready to start searching the apartment but Mahiru shook his head.
“It’s not the wound. That feels fine. It’s the rest of me. I feel like I have no strength and my body won’t do what I want it to…”
He raised his head to see Kuro and Lily exchanging looks. Kuro tilting his head slightly as Lily nodded before speaking again.
“It’ sounds a little like how we feel sometimes.” He said tentatively, perching himself on the arm of the couch beside Kuro with his own cup of tea now in hand. “We might be immortal, but a tough fight with a lot of injuries even leaves us vampires feeling pretty tired afterwards. Especially if we haven’t drank any blood beforehand.”
“And sore.” Kuro added, likely to validate his often used post fight excuse to not do anything.
“So this is some sort of injury healing after-effect?”
“Quite possibly.”
“Theres also the fact you aren’t a vampire.” Misono added. “Just because the wound somehow healed doesn’t mean your body instantly replenished all the blood it lost or whatever energy was used to heal you in the first place, so that’s likely a factor as well.”
“Yeah… that’s true.” Mahiru resisted the urge to sigh again and looked to Kuro who was already watching him through half lidded eyes. “Sorry.” He said, knowing he was going to be asking more of Kuro than just a walking assist. “But it’s a chance for you to get cleaned up to. You’re almost as gross as I am.”
Kuro looked down at himself as if only just realizing and with a look of disdain, he placed down his cup and dragged himself into a standing position, holding out a hand for Mahiru.
“We’ll go now.” He said, not being covered in Mahiru’s blood suddenly trumping the desire to sit and drink green tea.
“Call me if you need anything.” Lily said, looking ready to assist until he saw Kuro actually do a decent job of lugging Mahiru towards the bathroom like he was a wounded soldier.
Compared to Kuro’s somberness and Misono’s badly hidden anxiety, Mahiru was actually grateful for Lily’s calmer sort of worry. He was clearly much more used to taking care of people compared to the other two and it was reassuring in it’s own way. He really really hoped they didn’t need an extra pair of hands though. There was something degrading about the idea of needing two men to help him bathe when his serious wounds were technically a thing of the past. Kuro helping him was much less of an issue simply because Kuro was well… Kuro, and they pretty much lived in each others space. He just hoped the cat didn’t half ass this enough that he did actually need to take Lily up on his offer.
Luckily, he didn’t and Mahiru soon found himself sat under the spray of the shower head with a soapy cloth wiping up and down his back. He didn’t look at the rust coloured water going down the drain and he was pretty sure Kuro was looking anywhere but as well but it felt good knowing it was all being washed away.
“What kind of master makes their pet look after them?” Kuro asked tiredly, practically mumbling under his breath while plopping the cloth on Mahiru’s shoulder so he could reach around him for the shampoo. Both of them were completely undressed with only the towel draped across Mahiru’s lap giving either of them any sort of covering.
“The kind of pet with the full title of ‘Servant Vampire’.” Mahiru supplied tiredly, unable to muster his usual level of bite. It was a good sort of tired now though, or it was gradually becoming one. Warm water and gentle motions helping him to relax and make the bone deep exhaustion feel like a more natural sleepiness that almost let him believe he’d just had a long day, rather than got himself stabbed through the gut.
He could close his eyes like this and not have to worry about that horrible cold feeling coming back to…
“What are you doing? Oi, Mahiru…” A strong arm wrapped around Mahiru’s shoulders from behind before he could even realise he’d been falling forward. Kuro’s voice sounding increasingly distant as he passed out for what had to be at least the third time that evening.
---
“I passed out naked, didn’t I.”
The same way he woke up on the couch earlier, he woke up in his bed. Meaning he had absolutely zero memory of how he’d got there. The only real difference was that he was pretty sure he was wearing underwear, a rather notable change from his last known status as a naked guy with shampoo in his hair.
“Yup.”
Beside his head, Kuro was curled up in cat form looking tired, worn and incredibly unimpressed with Mahiru’s new fainting habits. His eyes still had that dull, hollow look to them but it was less intense now, possibly diluted by the fact Mahiru’s injury had remained healed.
In silent apology, Mahiru dragged an arm out from under the duvet that felt heavier than he remembered so he could gently scratch Kuro’s head. He kind of wanted to ask if Kuro had needed to call Lily to help deal with him but he felt better not knowing. Instead, he just nuzzled his fresh smelling pillow, glad he’d changed the sheets that morning and sighed, curling up into a ball so his free arm could hug his knees beneath the sheets.
He’d woke up feeling a little cold this time…
He ached less than before though and he no longer had a headache, but there was a chill he really shouldn’t have been feeling in the summer while under a thick duvet. It unnerved him, becoming more noticeable the more he thought about it and he actually started to shiver a little.
“What?” Kuro asked, sounding resigned to his eve not becoming any less of a pain any time soon and Mahiru realised he’d stopped petting him, his hand merely resting on his head. He didn’t answer though, the chill dragging his thoughts elsewhere. Somewhere he didn’t really want them to go.
Walking… Yelling… Insults… Pain…Cold...
His eyes were open but he wasn’t really seeing Kuro, his bed or his room. Instead he was seeing the park, his blood smeared on the kiddy slide and his hands gripping a long piece of metal protruding through his stomach. It hurt, a lot had hurt, the stricken look on cat-Kuro’s face hurting his heart as much as the pipe hurt his body.
He’d been dragged to shade somehow, then human hands tore at his shirt, but cold.. so much cold. The pipe was gone by his own doing but the cold only grew. Shivering, spreading, overtaking the hurt with something much more terrifying that tore at his contract with Kuro. It pulled him under but something stopped it from severing the bond or smothering him completely and…
“Gonnabesick.” It was the only warning he could give but paws became hands in a flash and helped him roll over and position him over the trash can beside his bed right before his empty stomach attempted to empty itself even further.
There were no soothing words or hands rubbing his back but there was a tight grip on his shoulders and that was grounding enough. His eyes tearing up as his throat burned from his body having nothing to reject but bile and the last, undigested part of the dinner they’d had at Misono’s.
With very little to really come up, Mahiru was soon just dry heaving. His body convulsing a little as it sought to expel stomach content that simply wasn’t there and when he was done, he slumped back tiredly. Blinking away unshed tears as he was handed a tissue to wipe his face.
“Thanks…” He wiped away the drool and tears with a trembling hand. Behind him, Kuro said nothing, but his shirt covered torso was an unmoving support and one of the hands formerly gripping his shoulders moved to rest on Mahiru’s side. “I’m ok now.”
“What brought that on?” Kuro asked, his voice quiet but unmissable right next to Mahiru’s left ear. He closed his eyes and let himself lean more fully on his vampire, the cold that brought the episode on fading with the contact.
“I remembered what happened… sort of.” He confessed, seeing no benefit from hiding it or telling a lie. He felt Kuro tense up and managed a small, humourless laugh. An uncomfortable thing with how his throat was still burning. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to talk about it either.”
Kuro's 'thank fuck for that' went unsaid but otherwise he didn’t even try to hide his relief, his forehead coming to rest on Mahiru’s shoulder. It was almost a reverse of their earlier position, minus any actual piggy backs occurring. But like Mahiru had said to Misono, it was all a little too fresh for them to want to talk about it, so all remembering did was put them on the same page. Mahiru certainly hadn’t gained any new information to share with the class. He just had what they’d already told him but from a first person perspective.
He sighed. It was a shaky thing but it helped him gather himself a little.
“I do want to brush my teeth though.” He said once his stomach had settled. “Help me to the bathroom again?”
Kuro’s responding groan was heartfelt, but for Mahiru his laziness was as comforting as a hug that helped ease some of the tension stirring while the memories seemed to cycle on a loop in his mind. He probably had a nightmare or six in his future but Kuro Kuro-ing right now was almost like a balm that soothed the worst of it. Enabling him to be rather matter of fact about his regained memories, rather than a sobbing mess he could well have been if he was alone.
“Come on, I promise not to pass out again.”
“You passed out while naked under running water… Your word means nothing.”
“That’s true… I promise to try?”
It felt like a weak attempt at normal convocation but the genuine need behind the request made it normal enough. He really needed to wash the taste of bile out of his mouth.
And so, with a lot of grumbling and griping, he was helped to the bathroom a second time and was soon sat on the rim of the bathtub, brushing his teeth. He’d almost been able to support his own weight on the way there, showing each phase of unconsciousness was at least helping him recover faster, but he’d still needed to brace himself on Kuro so as not to face plant.
It was late, gone 2am late and Lily and Misono had likely long since retired to his uncle’s room. It left the apartment quiet, but not empty and just knowing they were there did Mahiru good.
Leaning over, he spat into the sink before grabbing the mouthwash and starting a rather spirited gargle and rinse session considering his tired state. It got him an odd look from Kuro, who was stood leaning on the doorframe with a weary slump but Mahiru felt a lot more like himself once he was done.
He was under no illusions that this whole thing would have him messed up for at least a few days. He was a shaken 16 year old boy that had almost died, probably should have died, and he mysteriously hadn’t. He was scared and he wouldn’t deny it. But small measures like knowing Lily and Misono were close by, being able to meet his own tired gaze in the mirror and being able to feel Kuro through the bond, strong and unbending like it had never been in danger of breaking in the first place, helped remind him that the danger had passed and that for now everything was ok.
He was alive, he hadn’t left Kuro and he was getting better by the hour. It didn’t take away his awful new memories or his sudden fear of cold but for now it was enough, and not just because it kind of had to be.
Wiping his mouth and turning off the tap, he used the wall for balance and took a few small, stumbling steps towards Kuro until he pretty much bumped into him.
“Bed?” He suggested, looking into the eyes of his vampire that seemed to be looking at him and through him at the same time.
“Bed.” Kuro agreed, seemingly assessing him for another second or two before taking his arm to once again drape it over his shoulder. Carrying would have been faster, but Mahiru was pretty sure Kuro had done enough carrying for one evening.
Once back in the bedroom, they settled into their earlier positions with Mahiru curled up under the covers while cat-Kuro took up half of the pillow. He couldn’t speak for both of them, but sleep came quickly for Mahiru, exhaustion muting the loop of memories he’d likely be losing sleep over at a later date.
It was literally just a matter of him closing his eyes and drifting off, not even rousing a short time later when the cat became a man and a tentative arm pulled him towards a shirt covered torso. The bodily contact spread warmth across his back and Kuro’s hand pressed lightly on the scar marring his stomach.
Oblivious, Mahiru was also too far gone to feel the mouth that pressed against the bare skin of his shoulder or hear the words they mumbled against it. But the words resonated with him, despite going unheard, and would be felt for days to come largely because he and the contract that bound him to Kuro, echoed the sentiment behind them.
“Thanks for not being dead, Mahiru.”