Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He's little. His mother is an herbalist with narrow eyes and careful hands. He learns a lot from her, about the proper way to steep tea and how to tell the difference between poisonous plants and beneficial ones. Their house is an apothecary brimming with sharp scents and quiet flora, so full of things living and breathing in their man made ecosystem that it feels rude to speak any louder than absolutely necessary. Ryousuke learns to move with care from a very young age, to never waste an action or breath on excess. His mother shows him the Invisible Things, the parts of life so primal and simple that few people can actually see them.

His father, for example, can’t see the Invisible Things. He doesn’t mock them, though. He praises his wife and his son for their ability to “see deeper than the surface,” as he frequently puts it. He’s a good man that cares for his family and works hard to keep them fed with more than just what Ryousuke’s mother grows on the windowsill. “Ryousuke,” he’ll say every now and then, watching Ryousuke’s mother from the other room as she hums some song or another to herself, meticulously grooming a bay plant. “You might be too young to understand, but when you're older you'll realize family is more precious than any sum of money you could ever make. As long as you have family, you’ll have home.”

Ryousuke doesn't really grasp the meaning of his father’s words even after Haruichi is born, but he sees the way his father stays at home whenever he can afford it and he sees the way his mother smacks him over the head when he stays out in the field too late and catches a cold and he thinks, just maybe, love and family are more than just words to wave around. He decides he’ll be a part of it, decides he’ll watch out for Haruichi before anything else, even himself. And he commits himself to that, always fighting off anything that might even think to touch him. Sometimes he's not quick enough, or just not aware, but everytime without fail he’ll come back at whatever hurt him twice as hard. Bullies learn to stay clear. Ryousuke learns to fight dirty. And Haruichi learns to keep his head down.

Ryousuke notices this flaw quickly enough and changes his tactics. At age nine he starts to give Haruichi leash, letting him choose for himself how to face his problems. Ryousuke still looks out for him, though. He has more scrapes than any of them, even if he's the most well behaved around the house.

Haruichi sees the Invisible Things too, it turns out. Their mother finds him harmless ones to play with, and he and Ryousuke sometimes chase them around in the garden with big nets. The villagers give them strange looks, seeing them clap their hands over thin air, but to Ryousuke and Haruichi, it's normal, and if anyone turns to whisper to his friend about the crazy kids in the Kominato house neither of them really seems to notice.

They don't know anything about mushi yet, except for the name. They're like any other bug they can find around the house, except for the way they glow. At night, some of them gather on the ceiling over Haruichi’s bed, and the two of them pretend they're stars and draw new constellations that almost seem to come to life for the way the mushi move.

Ryousuke thinks, at times like these, he's able to understand the things his father says about growing old and giving back.

He's ten years old. Spring is turning over to summer, the sun picking up its habit of burning against the bared skin of Ryousuke’s shoulders as he bathes alone in the river near their village. This far off from civilization, the forest is quiet except for the sounds of the birds and the wind in the trees and the water as it rushes over stones. He scrubs at his skin with a washcloth, allowing his thoughts to wander.

He doesn't think much of the world beyond his home. Whenever he does, he urges the thoughts away, mostly out of fear that if he becomes too enamoured with what he hopes might be out there he’ll be called away, carried on the current of adventure and curiosity so far out that he’ll never again be able to return home. It's a selfish desire, but it's the only one Ryousuke’s been unable to fully quell all his life. No matter how he tries, it always resurfaces, like a turtle coming up for air. Somehow, it survives beyond his efforts, and it catches him now as he numbly watches how the water slips downstream and out of sight.

“What happens to a river when it gets to the end?” Ryousuke had asked, several years ago.

His mother had followed his gaze to the bend in the river. “It joins all the other rivers in the ocean,” his mother had replied.

Ryousuke had paused to consider this. “But then, what happens when the mountains run out of water? Will we have to move to the ocean?”

His mother had laughed then, tugging him into her side. “The mountains never run out of water, Ryou-chan. The rain always refills it.”

“But how does the rain get there?”

His mother smiled. “I don’t know, Ryou-chan. You’ll have to find out and tell me, someday.”

Now that he’s older, Ryousuke knows how ridiculous his questions had been. But still, his mother’s throwaway comment sticks with him. Had she anticipated that he would one day stare out at that same river and picture himself carried by the current away and out of sight? Knowing his mother, it’s not unthinkable. Still, it must have been a sad thing to admit to herself. Family’s something of high value in the Kominato household. Even with his fantasies, Ryousuke can’t even imagine actually leaving them behind.

Ryousuke sucks in a breath and ducks under the water, his feet gripping a rock to keep himself from being pushed over by the current. He squints into the foggy, green water, letting his eyes adjust slowly to the sting. He sees sleek, silver fish following the river leisurely, weaving around rocks like it’s second nature. There’s a spiny snapping turtle resting nearby, eyeing Ryousuke wearily like it suspects he might step on it. Every now and then, sand swirls up in a cloud when the flow of the river deviates a little from the usual.

There are mushi too, of course. Ryousuke recognizes a few of them from the other many times he’s been here. There’s a cluster of slick, eel-like shapes poking around in the mud. They glow blue, like the ones that gather on his and Haruichi’s ceiling at night. Flower-shaped mushi drift along with the pull of the current, twirling like pinwheels whenever they come into contact with each other. A fish swims by with a troupe of mushi suctioned to its back for the ride downstream. Ryousuke reaches out to poke at a glittering patch of algae that changes from gold to red when he touches it.

There are enough wonders where he is, he thinks, for him to spend his life studying. He doesn’t have any reason to leave, and if he can convince himself as much, he’s sure eventually he’ll be satisfied.

Ryousuke resurfaces and wipes water out of his eyes. He shivers at the feeling of the cool breeze sticking to his wet skin as he steps up onto the stoney riverbank. He’s looking around for his clothes when he hears someone call his name further up the path. He turns to see Haruichi climbing down the rocks to get to him, holding onto the wooden rail the village had placed there to help the young and elderly down to the water. Ryousuke waves to him and gathers up his clothes. He’s retying his yukata when Haruichi reaches him.

“It’s getting a little late for a bath,” Ryousuke says, shooting a glance at the sun as it inches towards the horizon. He turns back to Haruichi. “Make sure you're back before it gets too dark.”

Haruichi nods and says, “Aniki, mother wants you to make a delivery for her.”

Ryousuke sighs, swiping wet hair back and out of his eyes. “And right after I've just bathed, no less,” he complains, not really meaning it. Haruichi shoots him an apologetic look that Ryousuke waves off. “I'm joking. I'll see you later, Haruichi.”

The walk back to their house only takes about fifteen minutes, long enough for Ryousuke’s skin to dry. His hair is still dripping when he steps up onto the porch. He slides the door aside and announces his arrival, leaving his sandals at the entryway. He hears his mother’s voice, calling to him from one of the back room where she prepares medicines for the people in their village.

“Ryou-chan,” she says when he finds her, tying a folded cloth around a small, wooden box. “Take this down to Isada-san’s. That old man never knows when to stop overworking his bad knees,” she adds, shaking her head to herself as she turns back to her work. “Dinner should be ready by the time you and Haruichi get back.”

So Ryousuke changes out of his bathrobe and into the kimono he typically wears in this season, slips his feet back into his sandals and sets off in the direction of Isada’s house. The sky is darkening by the time he makes it there, and he announces his presence to the door at the same time he wonders whether Haruichi’s finished up in the river.

“Bring it in, Kominato-Boy!” Isada’s cranky response doesn't surprise Ryousuke in the least, and his smile never wavers as he removes his sandals and slides open the door, entering the room with a curt nod of respect.

Isada scoffs. “Well, don't be frugal with it! My joints are killing me! Help me apply it, boy.”

Right. Isada’s the lonely old man that finds any excuse for company. Ryousuke doesn't know why he forgets sometimes that Isada will make up any reason to keep someone around just a little longer, especially since Ryousuke’s always the one that gets stuck doing deliveries for him. Isada’s wife had died a few years earlier, and ever since he’s been working himself until his very bones ache, and the Kominatos are left to look after him. Ryousuke imagines it must get excruciatingly lonely without family to take care of him. His only son had moved away long ago, with big dreams of making it in the capital city.

Ryousuke opens the box his mother uses to store Isada’s cream and sets to work massaging it into the old man’s legs. Isada starts to ramble, and Ryousuke clings to his every word like it might offer some escape from this unpleasant task.

“If there's one good thing about this place, it's your mother, you know,” Isada says gruffly, sitting back in his chair with a sigh. “Always helping people without getting anything in return. I can't even imagine where she learned all this stuff about plants.”

Ryousuke knows. His mother’s from a place far away from the village they live in, from a place Ryousuke’s never seen but has wondered about often. When she was younger, she traveled. She was a doctor trained in medicinal herbs, trained by her mother, who'd been trained by her mother before her.

“It's a family business,” Ryousuke starts to say. “Mother’s from a long line of—”

“That’s the thing about this place, you know.” Isada goes on, like he hasn't heard a thing Ryousuke’s said. Ryousuke snaps his mouth shut, smiling patiently. “Everyone’s a farmer or something just as self-involved. I swear, when I die, if I have to come back and live in this place again I’ll just up and let the mountain have me!”

He guffaws heartily at his own joke. Ryousuke smiles along politely as he moves onto Isada’s other leg. “We’ll be sorry to see you leave us again so quickly,” he says. “Surely there's something to—”

“But anyways, you're a nice kid. You should look beyond this cage of a village and make use of your talents. Doctors like you people are good to have around, but they're not so common in these parts, you know.”

“Actually, sir, I’m not—”

“I always wanted to travel,” Isada interrupts again, taking on a faraway look that does nothing to ease Ryousuke’s mounting frustration. ( Calm down, he tells himself. Be professional. ) “You know there’s another village not far from our own, just a few miles up the stream. Curious how even though we’re so close, we never even interact!”

Ryousuke’s curiosity piques at this. “Another village?” he echoes. He's never heard anything about that. They get travelers from time to time in need of medicine in their apothecary, but they're usually from far away places more unimaginable than the forested mountain Ryousuke’s spent his life on. They're unattainable, and so they fill him with a sense of reluctant melancholy every time he hears about the ocean, or the year-round snow, or the open fields that seldom see rain. He can't picture these things, can't imagine how people manage to survive in climates so unlike his own, and so he craves them even though deep down he knows he can never see them.

But a village downstream is attainable, and that's why Ryousuke finds himself listening more intently than he’s ever listened to Isada before.

“I’ve never been, o’course. Barely knew about it myself ‘til last winter, when their elder sent someone to buy excess rice after they lost a terrace to flooding. Maybe I’ll go sometime, just for the novelty of it. I'm sure it wouldn't be so hard to build a raft and float off downstream!”

He laughs, and Ryousuke does too, but there's no heart in it. Instead, he's picturing himself following the river down for a day, just to see what lies beyond their village. He doesn't expect it to be that different. Anything so close by should be about the same as his own environment. Maybe seeing something so disappointing would ruin his desire to see the world once and for all.

Ryousuke finishes up and bows out of Isada’s house, rushing home as the sun disappears from the horizon. His mind is made up. All he has to do now is wait for an opportunity.

The day Ryousuke leaves to see the village is a rainy one. He doesn't tell anyone where he’s going, slipping out the door early before the sun’s fully up. The rain isn't at all heavy, only lighting against his skin every now and then as he makes his way down the forest path to the river. The rocks are slippery; he holds tight to the rail as he lowers himself towards the bank.

The walk takes several hours, even with Ryousuke’s enthusiasm pushing him to hurry. Every now and then the rain will stop or pick up, but with the trees overhead he manages to keep himself from getting soaked. When he finally arrives at the village, it's as disappointing as he’d hoped.

It's like his own village, but smaller. There aren't as many trees in the area, and the villagers are all too busy in the fields with the rice to pay him any attention. He slips through the streets mostly unnoticed, his enjoyment of the change of scenery ruined by the fact that nothing noticeably different really stands out at all. Somehow, though, by the time he decides to turn back and head home, he’s satisfied.

There’s no reason to leave, he tells himself, finally able to put evidence into his thoughts. You won't find anything more interesting out there.

He ignores the voice in the back of his mind that reminds him of the ocean and the snow.

The journey back is less enjoyable than the journey there. Ryousuke finds that along with his satisfaction, there's a peculiar sort of heaviness weighing his feet and making every step seem more exhausting than the last. It's not too late; the sun has only barely started to set from what he can tell through the cloud cover. Ryousuke takes a minute to sit on a rock overlooking the river and collect his thoughts.

“It really is a shame, though,” he says aloud, propping his chin on his upturned palms and kicking his feet over the river. “I was hoping for something different.”

He can't tell if that's true or not. He tells himself he’s seen enough. Obviously, a village is a village is a village, and no matter how far away he gets from home that will always remain true.

(He hopes that, in lying to himself over and over again with enough conviction, he might be able to trick even himself into believing it someday.)

Ryousuke dips his toes in the water, watching as fish come up to the surface to investigate. Thunder rolls distantly; it’s the rainy season, after all, but he doesn't expect the downpour will hit anytime soon. He should be getting close to home anyways—the woods are starting to look familiar.

With a sigh, Ryousuke gets to his feet, slipping on his sandals before he steps off the rock. “No point in idling, either way,” he tells himself. “Mother will be furious if I catch a cold.”

He makes to set off then, but a sharp sighing noise off to his left stops him in his tracks. Ryousuke pauses, turning to face the swaying ferns where the noise had come from.

The sigh comes again, and Ryousuke feels the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. It's certainly not human—more like the way mud sounds when air bubbles make it to the surface of a puddle. Not quite whistling, but still high pitched.

And never that loud.

Ryousuke angles one foot towards the sound, but stops again before he can make any decisive movement. Behind him, the river babbles on like it could care less what happens to him.

“Hello?” Ryousuke calls, maybe stupidly. If it's not human, it's not going to respond. Somehow, it makes him feel better anyway to break the silence.

The sound comes again, closer this time. Ryousuke can't deny he's nervous, though would never admit to being afraid, so he stays right where he is, waiting.

For what? he asks himself. You're going to wait around for this thing to show up? Might as well dive headfirst into the shallows of the river while you're at it!

Stop being a baby, he snaps back. It's instinct versus conditioning, and he's stubborn enough to know without a doubt which one will win. You're the one always telling Haruichi monsters aren't real.

So he stands his ground as the sighing gets closer, waiting for whatever it is to appear.

He tenses as the ferns rustle suddenly, his hands curling into fists. He swallows, nervous despite his determination not to be, because he might be Kominatos Ryousuke but he's also ten years old and there are things in the deep forest that never fail to terrify.

From the ferns emerges a small, waddling hog, gray and shriveled with age. Ryousuke releases a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and kneels, reaching a hand out for the hog to sniff.

Its movements are stiffened by age, and it shakes tremendously with effort as it inches closer to Ryousuke.

“Hey there,” he says quietly as the hog bumps its nose against his palm. “You're pretty old, aren't you?”

The hog wheezes in reply, then its trembling joints collapse beneath its weight. It snorts sadly, shaking its head like there are flies in its ears. Ryousuke feels his heart clench at the sight of it.

“Are you going to die?” he asks it, worried. “Oh no, um, I’m not the person to help you with this.”

The hog sighs again, its pale, filmy eyes looking searchingly upward, as if trying to meet his own. Ryousuke sits down and reaches out to pet it hesitantly, holding his breath. Something about this moment feels immensely profound, and he's afraid to shatter it.

“Don't worry,” Ryousuke assures the hog in a voice that only barely shakes. “You’ll be back. Mother says life is like the rain; it goes away for a while to a place you can't see it, but then it always comes back.”

The distant thunder seems to agree with him. Ryousuke leans down to meet the hog eye to eye, unsure if the animal can actually see him at all. The more he stares into its eyes, the more peculiar they look.

Unlike the blind eyes of Old Fukijou-san back in the village, the pupils appear deep and black beneath the film over the orbit. Of course, Old Fukijo-san had been born blind, and Ryousuke remembers his mother saying once that the eyes of people born blind look different than those of people who become blind. Is this what she'd meant? He'd never encountered any other blind people, so it's possible. As he stares deeper into the hog’s eyes, the world in his peripheries seems to slowly disappear, giving way as the inky darkness of the hog’s eyes ripples and expands, and as the hog sighs its final breath, Ryousuke’s hand stills on its flank.

He doesn't remember much after that.

Chapter Text

The morning Rei gets a letter from a stranger is the morning she decides she needs to replace her Uro cocoon. She happens to have it out on the floor next to her as she grinds herbs with a mortar and pestle when suddenly it twitches, a movement inside rocking it back and forth.

She's not expecting any mail, but that's not unusual; every now and then Oota sends a broadcast message through to every Mushishi in his mailing list, if there's an emergency that needs the attention of anyone in the immediate area. Sometimes she’ll get mail from other Mushishi asking about something, but for the most part she doesn't get much out of the ordinary.

The paper comes out wrinkled and slightly torn in some places, much to Rei’s chagrin. “Honestly, these things really don't last long.” She’ll have to put in a word to Oota about a new order. She unrolls the note, surprised to find two papers in different handwriting.

The first she immediately identifies as Oota’s script. It's short, but intriguing. It says, Takashima-san, a letter came for you from an Uro-chan Post Center in the Kanagawa Prefecture. The letter says “Kominato”—I hope you'll know more than I do.

Rei reads the next letter. It’s longer, and the characters are articulate and precise, flowing smoothly down the page in a hand that looks more poetic than any letter she's seen.

Takashima-sensei,

Forgive me, your family name was all I could remember since you visited our village four years ago. We never spoke, but I remember your passing through and that you're the only Mushishi I know in the area.

My son has a problem I don't know how to fix. I can see there are mushi in him, but I'm just an herbalist, not a mushi specialist. We need your help.

Safe travels.

Signed, Kominato Haruna

It takes Rei a second to recall where she's heard the name Kominato before. There are a few different places; she remembers them being a well-known family of travelling doctors in and around the Kanagawa prefecture. But if they met four years ago…

A memory comes to her in a flash of insight: a thick forest between mountains where it frequently rains, a village by the river with a woman whose fingernails had turned black, a mention of an apothecary run by a pink-haired woman that couldn’t do anything to help. Rei remembers trying not to laugh at the idea of an herbalist trying to heal an affliction so obviously caused by mushi. That hadn’t been a serious case, but Kominato’s reluctance to divulge any specific information about the nature of the parasitism has her suspecting this is far less harmless.

“Takashima-sensei?” The tentative call surprises Rei, and she glances up as her host kneels beside her. “Is something wrong? You looked concerned.”

Rei hadn’t noticed she’d been making any expression, but she supposes it’s not unlikely, cautious as she is around unknown parasite cases. “Not at all,” she replies. “I just received a letter informing me of an urgent case in Kanagawa. I apologize, but I’ll have to leave tomorrow morning in order to get there as soon as I can.”

The young woman smiles gently at her. “It’s no problem; you’ve helped us so much as it is. I’m sure I know how to fix the poultice by now anyways.”

Rei offers a tight-lipped smile back and tucks the note into the fold of her kimono. “I appreciate the hospitality you’ve shown me.”

They exchange a few more pleasantries before the hostess leaves to go to bed. Rei works for a little longer before dimming the candle of her lantern and lying down on her futon to sleep. As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she stares at the note still lying open beside her things.

She can’t suppress the feeling that something ominous lies waiting for her in Kanagawa.

Rei leaves the next morning with a reminder to the woman to apply the poultice twice a day until the rash has completely disappeared. Within the hour, the village has disappeared behind a bend in the mountain and she's on the road again.

It's a foggy morning. On days like this as the rays of sun catch and refract on water in the air one can see the normally translucent worm-like asumizu making their early morning pilgrimage up from the earth and into the trees. Rei steps carefully around a lumpy patch of earth, where a family of burrowing morumoru are rising to enjoy the warmer topsoil of the summer. She spots the ghostly, towering legs of a massive deer mushi, whose antlers are visible if she squints through the mist above the trees. Rei makes sure to steer clear of him, not entirely keen on getting crushed now that she's got a mission in mind.

It takes her a little less than a month of traveling like this between mountains and villages to get to the valley the Kominato woman lives in. She stops a few times along the way to check in on previous business ventures, small towns once plagued by skin parasites or wood eating mushi that she'd helped out in the past. Only one of the cases had flared up during her time away, but it's not nearly as severe as before and she only has to leave the elder with instructions on patching mushi-eaten holes with shredded bark from hundred-year-old trees before she's on her way again.

She reaches the village in the middle of the night, happening upon it almost by chance after following a familiar river a little ways. It's midsummer, and the nights are warm and humid in this part of the country. Her kimono is light enough that it's not stifling, but constant travel in this climate isn't exactly easy on her stamina, so when she finally spots the curious but familiar manmade rail and jagged steps cut out from the rock, she silently thanks the mountain lord for mercifully guiding her in the right direction.

Rei follows the path from there to the village. The surrounding woods are mostly quiet, but when her sleeve brushes against a branch glowing, starlike mushi are startled chirping and spiraling into the air, so she knows it isn't anything unusual. Rei smiles and keeps moving, and eventually as she comes over a rise in the path the road levels out and she spots the first building through the trees.

As she gets closer, though, she doesn't really see any other nearby buildings until she squints through the trees. The gardens around the house are in full bloom, lush greens crowding the door and windows so that Rei can hardly move around the perimeter without her kimono catching on something.

This must be the place, she concludes, observing the clustering variety of tiny mushi that flicker around the house. She comes around to the door and, after taking only a moment to consider the hour, calls into the house.

“Kominato-san?” she says, leaning close. “It's Takashima Rei, the Mushishi you summoned. I hope I'm not troubling you by coming by so late—”

The door slides open before her sentence is finished, revealing a small woman with pink hair and small eyes. She doesn't look surprised to see Rei, or even like she’d just woken up.

“I’m glad to see you're here,” Haruna says, stepping out of the way to let Rei in. Rei removes her shoes in the entryway and takes a look around the room, which is sizable and well kept for a village like this one, but is lined with plants and flowers and gardening supplies to the point that it's hard to tell. An open door leads into a narrow hallway that Rei suspects leads to a bedroom. “He said you’d be here tonight.”

“Who did? Your son?” Rei says, surprised. Haruna leads her to the hall, nodding.

“He says things, lately. And—understand, Takashima-sensei, my family’s been in the business of medicine as far back as I can trace my name, but while we’ve always been able to see mushi, we’ve never dealt in cases with them. I'm doing all I can not to lose my mind over this but I'm horribly concerned.”

Rei absently reaches into her sleeve to pull out a cigarette, rolling it between her fingers but making no move to light it. “The ability to see mushi doesn't obligate you to study them, similar to how the ability to see plants doesn't obligate you to grow them.” Haruna seems mildly comforted by this, but her fingers are still clenched together. Rei raises the cigarette to her lips and glances sideways at the screen door. “Let me take a look at him.”

Haruna nods and slides the door open and takes a careful step inside. “Ryou-chan,” she calls, folding her hands neatly in front of her. “Takashima-sensei’s here to take a look at you.”

“I know,” replies a voice from inside. “I told you she would be here.”

Haruna nods. “Of course,” she says soothingly. “Are you ready to talk to her?”

There's no verbal response, but Rei assumes that he nods because soon after Haruna steps out of Rei’s way and lets her into the room.

The first thing Rei notices when she steps into the room is how warm it is: the windows are shut and the ground stove has a fire lit despite the humid heat hanging like a curse around the village already. The boy is sitting on a futon with his eyes squeezed shut. Rei takes note of this; there are many types of parasitic mushi that either live in the eyes or affect a person’s sensitivity to light. She kneels down in front of him, setting her shoulder bag to the side.

“It's nice to meet you,” she starts warmly, adjusting her glasses where they perch on her nose. “My name is Takashima Rei. I'm a Mushishi—someone who specializes in the study of mushi.”

“I’m… Kominato Ryousuke.” Rei notices the pause, but doesn't give anything away. “You're here because of the snakes in my eyes. You're not going to know what to do.”

Rei does react then, raising an eyebrow but, assuming this to be part of Ryousuke’s ten-year-old temperament and reluctance to believe one’s parents can solve anything, she huffs, humored. “I've encountered many people who've told me the same about very common cases, and—”

“‘—and you've solved all of those just fine,’ right?” Ryousuke finishes, almost verbatim.

Rei takes pause. After a moment, she opens her mouth again, her warm disposition giving way to serious curiosity. “These snakes, in your eyes… do they show you the future?”

To Rei’s surprise, Ryousuke shakes his head. “Not that I can tell. They let me see though, even when my eyes are closed.”

Rei hums, then turns to Haruna. “How long has Ryousuke-kun been affected in this way?”

“Almost six weeks now,” she replies, a subtle tremor in her voice telling of the worry she's doing her best to keep at bay. “He can still see as well as if his eyes are open, but when they actually are…”

Haruna trails off, twisting the fabric of her kimono with her hands. “Ryou-chan,” she says suddenly, like she's squaring up to her concern, raising her head and furrowing her brow determinedly. “Would you open your eyes for Takashima-sensei?”

Rei’s not expecting anything extraordinary. So far, it just sounds like an unusually fast onset of the symptoms experienced by those who are parasitized by ganpuku , small worm-like mushi that inhabit the eyes and give the host fantastic but unlimited vision. She's only come into contact with one other case of ganpuku before, and the tragedy there had been that nothing she did could exorcise the mushi from the host before they stole his eyes. When Ryousuke opens his eyes though, her thoughts and theories and always-calculating mind go still.

She thinks, at first, (and is terribly afraid,) that Ryousuke has nothing but empty sockets. It takes her a minute in the low light, but soon enough she discerns that Ryousuke's eye sockets are actually not vacant, but occupied by something that moves when exposed to the light. Rei leans forward with morbid curiosity, her stomach clenching at the unusual sight but her heart racing all the same. Her first thought is, This isn't something I’ve ever seen before, which is followed by the far more solemn, I have no idea how to treat this.

“Incredible,” she murmurs. She quickly pulls her medical box from her shoulder bag and pulls out a small flashlight. She tells Ryousuke to stay still as she leans back in with the light.

When she clicks it on, the thing behind Ryousuke’s eyelids shifts like it’s unhappy. It’s black and smooth, like a reptilian carved from obsidian. Its muscles contract and it unwinds itself and slowly, the flat but pointed head of a snake comes blinking into the light. Its eyes are filmed over; the snake is blind.

It hisses and snaps suddenly at her light, and Ryousuke winces, his hands jumping to cover his eyes. “They don't like the light,” Ryousuke explains, once the snake calms down.

“They?” Rei echoes, putting the light back in her box. Ryousuke nods.

“There’s two of them. They let me know things.”

“You mean they let you see the future?”

“I can't see the future,” Ryousuke repeats. “They don't show me anything I couldn't see before I had them.”

Rei pulls her bag over, pushing through it until she finds the encyclopedia she's looking for. “Can you tell me exactly what they let you know, and how?” She goes to the division for parasitic mushi and starts thumbing through the pages, glancing at names and illustrations that might look or sound familiar to what she's seeing.

“Um…” Ryousuke’s hesitant. “They don't show me anything. It's more like… they tell me—not with words, but just… with knowing.” His voice is even, but his face is twitching with frustration, and his hands make fists in his lap just like his mother's. “I always know when it’s their thoughts, but I don't have to really think about them.”

Rei pauses on the page for ganpuku , her eyes skimming through the Disambiguation section near the bottom and coming to rest on the subheader, Unusual or Mistaken Cases. “And what are some examples of the things you learn from them?” she asks, dividing her attention between him and the book.

“That you don't know what they are, or how to help me.”

Rei pauses, her finger catching where she’d been running it down the surface of the page, and she glances up at Ryousuke through her glasses. His expression is stoically calm, but there’s a certain tenseness to his shoulders that tells to his anxiety. She huffs a laugh. “You said it yourself: they don't show you the future, Ryousuke-kun.” She taps the page with her fingernail and holds it up for him to see. “What I don’t know now, I can learn soon enough.”

Ryousuke watches silently as she flips to the page indicated by the mistaken case (see page 460 for information). The illustration at the top of the page is articulate, outlining both the appearance and anatomical influence of a mushi called the mehebi.

“Looks like you're not the first to encounter this mushi, Ryousuke-kun,” she says, unable to keep some of her relief from slipping into her voice. The notable shortness of the article is a definite setback, but Rei will take small victories where she can find them. She marks the page and snaps the book shut, intent on reading it later. “They're called mehebi. I’ll have to read into them more, but aren't you glad to know we’re not taking shots in the dark?”

Ryousuke smiles pleasantly. “I appreciate your efforts very much, Takashima-sensei. I'm relieved to hear that.”

Rei smiles back genuinely, then sighs and gets to her feet. Haruna follows, looking immensely relieved. “We should all get some sleep for now. I'll read up on things and see what we can do in the morning.” She turns to Haruna. “Is there a spare futon I can use while I’m here?”

“Of course!” Haruna replies, and she guides Rei out into the hall. She calls a quick goodnight to her son along with a reminder to mind the stove, then slides the door shut. When she turns to Rei, her cheeriness ebbs.

“Takashima-sensei, before I forget…” She trails off, glancing at the door she's just shut. Then she turns to lead Rei further down the hall to a small closet, which she opens and starts pulling a rolled up futon from. “I want you to know something about the Kominato lineage.”

“Oh?”

“Yes—you see, we’ve always been doctors, ever since the very first of us came to be. We’ve got an–an affinity for it, you could say.” She pulls down the futon and pauses for a moment, seeming to brace herself. “Generations back, the first Kominato was supposedly borne of a mountain during a time of disease in a small village. He brought health back to the people almost overnight, and he continued to teach his skills to his children as he grew older.” She turns around, her face oddly stern as she looks up at Rei. “I'm not sure if this will affect Ryousuke as you go about treating him, but I think it’s important for you to know, for full disclosure, that my family is descended from mushi.”

It's not what Rei expected to hear, but she can't say she's really that surprised either. “That makes sense,” she says. “If nothing else, your family certainly looks the part. Pink hair is a defining trait no matter where you come from.” Haruna smiles thinly. “I don't expect this will be much of a problem, but I'm glad you told me, in case there happens to be any complication.”

“That's a relief,” Haruna sighs, and she squeezes past Rei and reenters the main room, apologizing as she rolls the futon out in a spot as unaffected by plantlife as she can make it.

“Usually I have guests or patients sleep in the stove room,” she explains, sweeping dead leaves into some semblance of a pile. “But Ryousuke can't sleep with other people around, because then the snakes never stop talking.”

“Interesting,” Rei says. “And it's more than alright. I'm sure you know, being a traveling doctor once yourself, that any place with a roof on it is a luxurious improvement from nights on the road.”

They laugh together about that, then Haruna bids Rei a goodnight and disappears down the hall into a room Rei assumes they reserve for sleeping. After a few seconds of sitting in the relative silence in the dark, she sighs and reaches for her lantern.

Rei doesn't find much to go by.

The article in the encyclopedia is sorely lacking in any positive information; as far as she can tell, there has only ever been one other notable case of a mehebi infestation, and it was on an old woman who died of natural causes not even a year after the mehebi took over her eyes.

Fortunately in that case, the woman had been compliant enough to allow researchers to dissect the body once she passed, so the book offers an extensive medical evaluation that basically passes for a goldmine with rare cases like these. According to the diagrams, and the longest paragraph, titled Anatomical Correlation and Effect, goes into detail about how the mehebi act as substitute optic nerves once they’ve swallowed the victim’s eyes, not quite rooting themselves in the brain, but fusing with the nerve and skull to make a very stable, very permanent home. The snakes themselves are actually one snake, conjoined at the middle where their tails cross to match the appropriate nerve. The book doesn't offer much else from there, explaining in a sub note at the bottom that the brain is an organ they've only just begun to study, so details about how the snakes supposedly communicate and allow the person to see remain unknown. After that, it’s mostly just a listing of potential symptoms, including a heightened sensitivity to cold, an aversion to light but also an attraction to the sun, and also, the very obvious problem of there being snakes in your eye sockets.

There’s no cure listed, nor any form of treatment that can stave off the effects the mehebi have on the host. Under the rating for potential fatality risk, there’s only the word Unknown . There is, however, a warning listed underneath that, mentioning that the nature of this mushi makes it unpredictable, and while it tends to stay dormant within the host there have been recorded occasions of it attacking anyone who injures or surprises the host, though its range is limited and it isn't poisonous.

When she wakes up the next morning, her mind is buzzing with this new information, and as she dresses in silence she can't help but entertain the idea that she might have stumbled upon the scientific opportunity of a lifetime. It's not a new discovery, but it wasn't well known at the time of the encyclopedia’s updated publication twenty years ago. For Ryousuke’s sake she hopes there have been more developments since then, but the side of her that worries there haven't been is reassured by the idea that she’ll be able to learn something entirely new from all of this.

In the hall, a door slides open, and Ryousuke steps out of the stove room, looking fresher than anyone, let alone a ten year old, has a right to this early in the morning. Rei smiles. “Sleep well?”

Ryousuke smiles back, making his way to the low table to the side of the room. It's decorated by festively bright flora and overlooked by hanging plants above, so Ryousuke has to unearth the surface from beneath a blanket of leaves. “Yes. You did as well,” he notes. He goes around and sweeps out the room, sliding open the door to flush out all the mess as Rei stands there wondering if this boy knows everything about her, or if he could know with only a glance.

“You learned things about the mushi,” Ryousuke continues once he's done sweeping the room. He goes to open a small box full of plates and chopsticks and starts to set the table. “What are they?”

“Nothing alarming,” Rei assures him quickly, not wanting him to have even a moment for worry. “I’d like to discuss it with your family as well though, so I’ll wait for them to wake up.”

“Dad’s awake,” he reports without looking up. “He leaves for work early in the mornings. I assume you're the only reason he's still here.” He glances back towards the hallway briefly, before returning to his task. “Mother’s cooking in the stove room. Haruichi’s the only one still asleep.”

“Oh?” Rei hums, impressed. “And you can tell all of this because of the snakes?”

“No,” Ryousuke replies, amused. “The walls aren't very thick in this house; you can tell who's awake by the weight of their footsteps. Also, I slept in the stove room. Obviously I know my mother’s in there.”

Rei’s patience bends at the contempt smile on his face, but she tries to maintain composure against his sudden overwhelming display of superiority. That wasn't there last night, she notes with gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Ryousuke says suddenly, surprising her once again. “You got upset when I said that, because it was disrespectful.” After another second, he adds, “The snakes told me that.”

Rei laughs. “Don't worry about it.”

Ryousuke's father comes into the room fifteen minutes later, gracious and warm and making absolutely sure Rei knows how thankful they are to have her here. He's got a younger boy in tow, someone Rei suspects is the aforementioned Haruichi. He's shy and hides behind his father, his head tilted anxiously up at Rei like she's a criminal and not a doctor.

“Don't mind him,” Ryousuke chimes in, like he's read her thoughts. “He's always like this around new people. He’ll warm up to you.”

Haruna comes in not long after, asking Haruichi to help her carry food to the table. There's rice and a thin vegetable soup, which Rei assumes must have been made with fresh produce from the garden. Her husband, Daisuke, sets up a place for Rei to sit, and soon enough, they're all seated and digging in to the first hot meal Rei’s had in days.

“So, Takashima-sensei,” Daisuke starts, talking around a piece of potato. “What inspired you to become a Mushishi?”

Rei has to think about that one. “I’m afraid it's not a very interesting tale,” she admits after a second. “I've been able to see them ever since I was little, and I was very curious of them. There was a stationary Mushishi that watched over our village, and I learned much of what I know now from her.”

Daisuke and Haruna hum a sound of admiration. “That is interesting,” Daisuke insists. “How incredible, that you've always been able to see them!”

“My husband’s never been able to see mushi,” Haruna explains with an amused smile. “Even the mention of the ones that float around outside excites him.”

“It's easy for you to laugh, when you've always seen them too,” he argues petulantly. Rei stifles a laugh.

Haruna turns to face her after a moment, and the air becomes tense with sudden seriousness. “I hate to be so forward,” she admits, sounding slightly nervous. “But did you find anything useful in that book of yours last night?”

Rei finishes chewing her bite of rice before answering, clearing her throat and adjusting her glasses in a businesslike manner. “The encyclopedia shed light on a few necessary things, but I'm afraid that one of those things is that, excusing the past twenty years, there has only ever been one recorded case of a mehebi infesting a human. However,” she goes on, trying to reassure the uncertain looks on the Kominatos’ faces. “What came of that single case was what would be considered a massive stroke of luck, since the woman, already very old, died soon after of natural causes, and the Mushishi were able to learn much about the way a mehebi ingrains itself with the host.

“To be clear, the fatality risk of this mushi is unknown. The woman who had it seemed to live a perfectly healthy, if not slightly abnormal, life after being affected, until the time of her death a year later.”

“That’s good,” Haruna insists, glancing at Ryousuke, who doesn't look up from his food. Rei wonders if he knows what she's going to say next. “Our family can adapt.”

“Unfortunately,” Rei continues, acutely aware of how Haruna’s face tenses at that one little word, “there is no listed cure or method of exorcism for a mehebi. Currently, it is considered a permanent thing.”

The table is silent. Haruichi looks like he wants to cry.

Then, Daisuke breaks the silence. “That's a minor setback,” he decides confidently, much to Rei’s surprise. “We already have more information than that old woman did going in, so there's already an advantage.”

Haruna nods in agreement. “Of course! And even if it's permanent, we can learn ways to overcome it, can't we Ryou-chan?”

Ryousuke smiles, but only replies with a hum.

“I'm glad to hear you're all determined,” Rei says. “Because I have a proposition to make.”

They turn to her expectantly, all except for Ryousuke, whose closed eyes are slitted slightly open, watching the reactions of his family. It makes it hard for Rei to continue.

“The mehebi is a mushi in dire need of further study,” she says, straightening her posture. “I’d like to spend as much of my time as possible learning how it affects its host, how it grows, and if there are any ways to subdue it, or even remove it.

“Unfortunately, I have a route to maintain, and I can't abandon my other destinations to remain here like I want to. In this case, I must impose my proposition upon you.”

She turns to face Ryousuke. “I’d like Ryousuke to travel with me.”

Chapter Text

“Be careful not to fall in, now.”

The water slips across the bridge and splashes every now and then against Ryousuke's ankles, soaking the hem of his kimono and the fabric of his sandals. The rotting wood creaks beneath his feet as he slowly moves across it, holding steady to the decaying rail to balance his weight. The film of algae coating the structure doesn't make it any easier to cross.

The snakes are scared of the running water; they've gone quiet, for once. He told Rei this when they first encountered the river, and she took note of it in a leather-bound notebook filled with pressed herbs and careful designs. She's been doing that a lot, taking notes. The whole reason he's with her in the first place is so that she can learn about the mehebi while he helps her search for a treatment. He wants to believe there might be one. The snakes tell him Rei’s determined to help him either way, but what they don't say (and what he already knows) is that when it comes to wanting something there's a very wide gap between things that are realistic and things that are impossible.

Ryousuke catches himself as his foot starts to slip on a particularly slick patch on the bridge. Rei looks back to check if he's okay, then continues crossing herself. “This river’s long been a site of migration for a rare type of mushi,” she calls over the sound of the rapids a little ways down. The bridge shudders and groans as a particularly powerful current swipes at its foundation. Ryousuke digs his fingernails into the soft wood instinctively, but Rei continues on like nothing had happened.

To move with that sort of confidence, Ryousuke thinks, is the mark of a truly wise person.

“They follow the current until the falls up ahead, where they draw energy from the water in motion. It's at this time the whole river freezes over; this is why the waterfall is able to freeze mid-flow.” Rei steps onto the solid ground at the other side of the bridge and turns, smiling fondly as she stares off down the river. “They use the energy to travel all the way up into the mountains, but only every three years, and only for a few months.”

The weather’s been getting cold lately; soon it'll be winter. And me without my scarf, Ryousuke muses to himself dryly as he slips again on the bridge. “How come they only go every three years?” he asks, steadying himself. He suppresses a groan at the realization that he's only halfway across the bridge. “Why hibernate at all if they can survive the winters anyways?”

“A good question,” Rei praises, “and one that took Mushishi decades to answer.” She does that thing where she adjusts her glasses, the way she does before she goes into a long-winded speech about the history of mushi. Ryousuke only gives her half of his attention as he focuses on making it safely across the bridge. “Not all mushi experience time the same way humans do. Some are even capable of manipulating time, or at least our perception of it. These mushi don't actually exist in the same constant state the way we do. They dissolve into the Veins of Light for two years, during which time they slowly regenerate any physical damage taken on by their corporal forms. Then, around springtime, they manifest again, rising up through natural geysers. They're very fluid in shape, but when they all meet together in the mountains for the winter, they join together in a single form to help generate warmth. They coexist peacefully with the mountain lords, typically. Most often the mountain lord will treat the mushi as honored guests. Many Mushishi have observed this unique behavior as indication of a previously unknown hierarchy, but it's all just conjecture at the moment…”

Ryousuke ends up tuning her out at some point. In his defense, the bridge is really dangerous. He makes it across without incident, though, and she seems satisfied enough that he's retained some of what she's said that she drops the subject as they continue on.

It's been a few months since they left Ryousuke’s familiar village behind. Rei showed him his first map of the country a few days into their journey, and it only took him about a week to familiarize himself with the general topography of the land. He wants to follow the river, to the place where all rivers inevitably end up. The ocean his mother had told him about once when she taught him that water never ends.

How does the rain get to the mountains? He doesn't dare ask now. He worries he'll be disappointed by the answer.

They're not heading towards the ocean anyways. Instead Rei’s route will take them further inland, deeper into the mountains to places just as foreign to him as the ocean (he assures himself). Rei tells him stories about open plains and bamboo forests, terraced rice paddies and frozen lakes. There are mountains so close together the valleys between them become canyons, and the mushi that hide in the crags and the cave lure unsuspecting travelers to their deaths, if they're unlucky. Ryousuke listens to all these things and tries to picture them. They're things he never knew to wonder about, and they're even harder to picture than an endless expanse of water.

Rei interrupts his thoughts with a hum.

“What is it?” he asks her. The snakes shift beneath his eyelids in the way his own eyes would have shifted to look at her.

“I've been thinking of ways to repress the effects of the mehebi ,” Rei explains, picking her way carefully over a tangle of gnarled roots. “We’ll be at our next stop any day now, and I’d like to have some way to keep their activity to a minimum while we’re in crowded areas.”

The snakes don't say anything, instead hissing at whatever it is they see in Rei’s mind. “They don't seem to like what you've come up with this time,” Ryousuke says optimistically. “Maybe it will work.”

“Really?” Rei smiles. “That's a good sign. I'll have to follow this vein of thinking, then. Let's see…”

They set up camp later that evening in a divot in the land. Rei explains that he should never sleep at low elevation if it looks like it will rain, but the skies have been clear for days now and she's confident they have nothing to worry about tonight. Ryousuke leaves dutifully to collect firewood while Rei rolls out her mat for sleeping. When Ryousuke returns from a second run, she has her medical kit out and she’s grinding something into a thick paste with her mortar and pestle. His head is immediately flooded with the snakes’ intuition: recoiling disgust, fear, loathing. He reports as much to Rei, whose lips spread in a thin smile.

“Up north a little more there's a path that leads to a mountainside community,” Rei says instead of expanding on what exactly it is she's doing. “Some of the mushi I was telling you about, the fugori, migrate up to their mountain every few years. I always have to remind them not to hunt in the mountains until spring. They're very stubborn and don't put much faith in mushi.”

“What do you mean?” Ryousuke asks as he pitches his timber into a tent, stuffing kindling in the center like he's building a nest for a squirrel or something. “I thought mushi were a scientific fact?”

Rei sighs. “For some people, the word ‘science’ is nothing more than another word for ‘religion’. People like to trust that what they see is what exists, and some people like to believe that what they don't see doesn't exist. In some cases, people like to believe Mushishi are just traveling extortionists who make things up so people will give them shelter for awhile.” She finishes stirring the dark, mysterious paste and opens a compartment in her medical kit filled with tightly bound rolls of fabric. She takes each one out and holds it towards Ryousuke, observing his reaction to each color. He leans away at the white roll, and, satisfied, Rei unrolls a strip of the undyed cotton and pulls out a calligraphy brush. “That's what these people believe. It's partially because the fugori arrive at such an inopportune time for them, when they need to rely more heavily on things they can't grow. Things they get from the mountain.”

“And the fugori don't like people hunting while they're around?”

Rei shrugs. “Possibly. No one can say for sure, but I’d speculate it's more likely that the mountain lord doesn't like when people disturb the environment when such an esteemed guest is around.”

“Assuming that speculated hierarchy exists,” Ryousuke reminds her, lighting a match under the kindling. It's been thankfully dry recently, so the fire catches quickly. Rei smiles in approval at his efficacy.

“Of course,” she concedes. She finishes painting something on the fabric a minute later and sits back to admire her work. The snakes don't like it one bit.

“That should do it,” Rei muses. “What do you think?”

“I think the mehebi don't like it, and that's enough for me.”

Rei’s glasses glint in the quickly growing light of the fire, and her eyes are bright with accomplishment. She quickly takes out her journal and starts writing things down. “If this works, we’ll be a step closer to a permanent solution.”

Ryousuke smiles at the idea in spite of himself. He decides to set up an incense to busy his hands. Forests can be busy places for mushi, even if there aren't many to be seen at the moment. He takes a roll of mushi tobacco and lights it over a tray.

“We’ll let it dry overnight,” Rei says after he finishes. “Let's get to bed so we can wake up early. There's a Vein of Light running underneath this trail, and I want to teach you how to see it before we get to the village.”

They bid each other goodnight and lie down on opposite sides of the fire. Ryousuke faces the forest around them, his eyes closed but still seeing. When he finally manages to drift off to sleep, he dreams about the things around them: the owls that watch them from a nearby tree, the spiders that dance bravely towards the fire, the wild dog that runs the mountain and observes their presence cautiously from its seat on a cliff overlooking the valley below. Sometimes Ryousuke wonders about how he can see all of these things, because he knows they're real. Sleep doesn't feel as restful as it used to when the snakes explore the goings-ons of the world around him. He can't complain, though. He’ll never complain. If there's one rule he’ll stand by through anything, it's that he'll never give anyone a reason to consider him trouble.

So his mind wanders the mountain while his body stays asleep by the fire, and he doesn't so much as shiver when it dies down to crumbling embers.

The blindfold Rei makes works miraculously. Ryousuke doesn't know why or how, but as soon as he has it tied over his eyes the snakes go silent like he can't ever remember them being with another person around. It makes him a little nearsighted, but not unbearably.

The snakes don't completely shut up for long, though. They hate the blindfold but they hate staying quiet even more, so every now and then they'll point things out to him like usual, though they're far more easily ignored. All of this information delights Rei, and by the time they reach the path to the village she’d talked about she’s written four different letters detailing her findings to whoever it is that receives what she sends through her little mail cocoon.

“To think it only took us a few months,” she raves over dinner one night. “Just imagine what we can learn in the years to come!”

Ryousuke's gratified that she would include him in the process of her discovery. The years to come… That's right. He didn't think this would be a short trip. Honestly, he's not sure if he'll ever be able to go back to living at home like he used to. It was comfortable, and he does love his family, but he thinks back to that day in the river and all the days like it before, when he'd daydreamed about the world beyond his town, and he knows he can never be truly stationary again, not for a while.

He decides that's fine with him as the town comes into view. Despite being located at the base of a mountain, the forest Ryousuke’s so familiar with has given way to open sky, and the tall grass is brittle and golden as it sways in the wind. The houses are terraced up the steady incline of the mountain face, bordered by countless rice paddies reflecting the clear sky like glittering mirrors from where Ryousuke stands. It's hard for him to make out details yet, but it's a new place nonetheless, and his familiar excitement finds him again as he and Rei draw closer.

“We’ll be meeting with the village elder,” Rei says as they enter the town limits. Around them, farmers look up from their work, giving them looks varying from curious to accusatory, like they've done something wrong merely by existing. Something about it makes Ryousuke’s heart beat a little faster, makes his breath shorten with the familiar, addictive adrenaline kick that comes whenever he's presented with the desire to fight. He keeps himself in check though, because self control is his greatest virtue and he's not about to lose it here. “His name is Seikanji-san, and he's one of the only people left in the village that believes in the fugori .”

It's like the villagers know what's coming. Ryousuke suspects they probably do, if Rei’s been following this same route for years. The townspeople gather around the elder’s house in a sort of disgruntled mob, a silent protest pressuring Seikanji into changing his mind about something that isn't his decision in the first place. Ryousuke raises his chin defiantly and follows calmly after Rei, even as the snakes start to whisper with all the bitter thoughts pointed at the two of them.

They make it to the elder’s porch without a confrontation, and Rei calls through the door normally like there isn't a whole village gathered in opposition behind them.

“Come on in!” the voice of an old man answers from behind the door. Rei slides the paneled wall open and bows slightly as she enters the room. Ryousuke mimics her and leaves the sliding door open despite his pressing desire to close it.

“Takashima-sensei, how good to see you again!” the old man says cheerfully, struggling to his feet on brittle legs and clasping Rei’s hands in his like he's enjoying the company of an old friend. “And I see you have an apprentice with you! Now where’d you pluck this one up from?”

Rei smiles politely and guides the elder back to his seat. She kneels in front of him and Ryousuke kneels beside her, and outside the crowd starts to grumble. “Seikanji-san, this is Ryousuke-kun. He's from a forest village a few months southeast of here.”

“You're a curious one, aren't you!” The elder laughs. “Pink hair, now that's something you don't see everyday!”

Ryousuke copies Rei’s smile and ignores the clicking in his jaw warning him not to grind his teeth. “I assure you it's very common where I’m from,” he lies.

“Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure,” the elder humors him. “Anyway, I’m sure you're here on business. It's that time of year again, isn't it, Takashima-sensei?”

“I’m afraid so, Seikanji-san. I know your village dreads to hear it, but it's a necessary precaution.”

“Pah! The village will get over itself,” the elder scoffs, waving his hand in dismissal. “None of them were alive back when the mushi problem was rampant. Back then, the mountain was a terribly place to live! Nothing ever grew and the land was always dry and gray. They've gotten so used to living comfortably, they just start crying about the most insignificant things!”

Rei nods like she's waiting the story out. Ryousuke guesses it's something she's heard plenty of times before. “They say wealth is the scourge rather than the reward of hardship,” she says sagely.

“And they're damn right about that!” The elder declares. “Even so, it'd make my life awfully easier if we could squeeze out even a few days of hunting before the fugori show up. What do you think, Takashima-sensei?”

They discuss the timeframe, build a schedule for the coming winter season. It's boring, but Ryousuke pays careful attention anyways. He wants to learn everything he can as quickly as he can, and the boring things are best learnt in the moment.

He thinks things are starting to wrap up when they're interrupted by someone announcing himself in the doorway. Ryousuke looks up.

It's a kid about his age with wild hair and wilder eyes. Ryousuke’s immediately intrigued, but he can't for the life of him say what by. Maybe it's the dark tan of his skin, or the basket of roots in his hands, or the way one of his sandals has a broken strap. Maybe it's something about the hot flush spreading over his skin as soon as he realizes he's interrupted something, or the fact that he was stupid enough not to realize there was something to be interrupted in the first place. Whatever it is, Ryousuke’s attention is locked on him like whatever strange spell this kid carries with him will evaporate if he dares to look away.

The kid opens his mouth, probably to apologize, maybe to say something fittingly ridiculous. The elder cuts in. “I'll be right with you, Kuramochi-kun,” he says, his tone taking on a kind undertone that the snakes in Ryousuke's head read into.

Village outcast, they decide for him. High on a cliff. Shoes? Shoes! Broken shoes and Mother’s busy hands. So much sun. So much work. Father? Father? What good a father? The sight, the sight, the sight, the sight…

Ryousuke wills them into silence with tense effort. He's missed whatever Rei and the elder we're saying, but he doesn't miss the look that Rei shoots him that makes him suspect he didn't react properly to some social cue. The conversation’s already over though, so Ryousuke doesn't have a chance to redeem himself. He gets the sense it wasn't really an issue, at least, as the elder graciously welcomes them to stay with him and Rei stands up to leave.

Ryousuke follows her out, passing the radish boy on the porch. He feels the boy’s eyes on him as he passes, and enjoys the smug sensation inspiring awe in others leaves him with.

I wonder… if I'll have the opportunity to speak with him, Ryousuke thinks as he follows Rei into the town, most likely to restore their supplies. He's not sure how he would even start a conversation, though. He could make a snide comment about his broken sandal. There, perfect segue.

Ryousuke misses his chance, though. The sun sets sooner than he thought it would, and Radish Boy is long gone by the time Ryousuke manages to slip away from Rei to search for him; he and Rei leave the following morning.

Ryousuke spends the next seven years with Takashima Rei. The day he officially asks her to train him to be a Mushishi she assures him she can teach him everything she knows in ten years. Both Ryousuke and the mehebi know he'll only need half of that.

Ryousuke gets his first Uro cocoon when he's twelve, and gives it away a year later to a sharp-eyed kid who runs away from loss. The kid ends up becoming a Mushishi; they keep in touch.

He learns the entire mushi almanac cover to cover. He memorizes which herbs can be used for what purposes and how they're best presented. At times he stands so close to the Vein of Light that his eyes burn, though he always backs off before any true damage can be done.

Ryousuke learns there are people that can't be saved, sometimes. He learns to school his emotions into a sort of detached serenity, because if a person prefers death to a miserable life Ryousuke doesn't think he can quite deny them that. He's still working on the not blaming himself part, which Rei insists is important, but Ryousuke doesn't care much for. How's he to improve if he never owns up to his own failures?

He sees plenty of new things over the course of those seven years. In the summers Rei’s course takes them to the shoreline, and Ryousuke becomes familiar enough with the ocean that it becomes less of a novelty by the time he's seventeen. The routine Rei follows bores him quickly; when his fifth year in her company rolls around and he's learned as much as he can, he decides to make a final loop to tie off loose ends. He runs into Kazuya once, but the kid doesn't stick around for long. He's got the same sort of affliction Rei does, with the mushi flocking to him should he ever stay somewhere too long. He says he's got places to be, but Ryousuke knows better; a rogue like him isn't interested in following the migration patterns of elusive mushi. He takes work where it finds him, whether that's as far north as Hokkaido or back in the same, salt-eaten fishing village he and Ryousuke had met in. He hasn't returned to Osaka yet, as far as Ryousuke can tell. Perhaps there are some things that can't be faced alone.

What Ryousuke’s really staying for, though, is Kuramochi. When he finds him and his mother holed up in their home unable to stand for the munesuwaru weighing on their chests a surprising dread fills up inside of him. He learns then that the prospect of setting off on his own, while exciting, is equally aimless. Ryousuke likes Kuramochi; they get maybe ten minutes of each other’s company every three years but they're good minutes , and the snakes feed Ryousuke promises that Kuramochi likes him just as much and suddenly the prospect of never seeing him again is far heavier than Ryousuke thought it would be.

The night before he and Rei leave for the final time, Ryousuke lets the snakes’ sight roam the village. He's learned how to reign them in with time. Their voices seem to get quieter every year, and Ryousuke wonders if they’ll eventually go silent forever.

Ryousuke observes as Kuramochi packs his things, watches him fret over whether he should sleep or not before taking up a perch at the window, staring intently down at the elder’s house for any sign that Ryousuke and Rei are leaving.

It's probably creepy, what Ryousuke's doing. He can't bring himself to care.

They leave Rei behind about a month later. He's more than ready, and she knows it. Somehow, though, even after seven years, she feels the day has come far too soon.

Chapter Text

Ryousuke’s chest burns in protest as he forces his legs to move faster. In his head he tries to recall the exact order of steps he’s supposed to follow to exorcise a nigemono , but the mehebi are clouding his thoughts with useless observations and irrelevant information and Ryousuke wishes he hadn’t lost his blindfold a mile or so back because they are annoying as hell. At least it makes his vision sharper. It’s a virtually moonless night, but he can see as well as if the full moon was out.

He vaults over a fallen tree and keeps moving.

This is so stupid, Ryousuke scolds himself, which doesn’t help at all but does put things into perspective a little. Ryousuke knows he’s at no fault for the current situation; if the woman had just spoken up before when her son had started acting strange, he and Kuramochi wouldn’t be on this pointless chase right now.

Kuramochi, the faster of the two, had split off from Ryousuke about an hour ago to corral the mushi-afflicted boy back towards the village. Ryousuke wasn’t sure how much longer he had to prepare before he intercepted them, but he had to work quickly, otherwise the nigemono would sense him and just run away.

“If you’re not going to be helpful, you might as well shut up!” he snaps at the mehebi. They oblige; after eight years they’ve learned not to mess with him when he’s stressed. They’re not really so terrible–they’ve proven more helpful than anything, on certain occasions–and they’ve formed a sort of symbiotic accomodation for each other that Rei has written paragraphs about. He narrows their collective focus on the task at hand.

With the help of the mehebi, Ryousuke’s able to estimate the general direction Kuramochi and the boy are coming from. He guesses he has maybe three minutes before he intercepts them, so as he runs he pulls the sachet of pre-prepared cloaking powder (which in reality is just a myriad of crushed herbs and clay that can temporarily confuse the sensual perception of low-grade mushi, and is something Ryousuke himself invented during his sixth year under Rei) and throws it, casting it into a fine cloud ahead of him as he runs through.

Properly disguised, Ryousuke jumps from a ledge cut into the downward slope of the mountain. The mehebi immediately tell him it's a longer drop than he'd initially thought, so he bends his knees and rolls when he hits the ground, cursing under his breath even as he smoothly rolls right back up and keeps running like the drop hadn't even happened. He extracts a thin loop of twine made of local tree roots and threads it quickly between his fingers, expertly forming a small, complex net that he presses, still hooked around his fingers, between his palms and blows warm air over. It's smaller than he'd like, but it's all Ryousuke has to work with, so they're going to have to make due.

Run, run, run! Never stop, never caught! Run, run! When the snakes start filling his head with foreign thoughts, Ryousuke knows the boy's coming. He ducks behind a tree and raises the net between his hands over his head, holding his breath against protesting lungs as he waits, listens until the sound of a person sprinting finds his ears. Run! Run! Have to get away! Ryousuke sighs, bracing himself.

Nigemono really are such a pain, he muses bitterly.

He whips out from behind the tree right as the boy steps next to it, holding the net towards the boy’s face and grounding his feet against the collision that’s sure to hurt. The boy doesn't even have time to blink in surprise before he barrels right into Ryousuke, knocking them both to the ground. Thankfully there aren't any rocks around, but some stupid twig scrapes right through the skin of Ryousuke's arm and in the back of his mind he suspects that’s the dumbest mushi related injury he's ever gotten.

The boy groans on top of him, blinking slowly and making to stand. Ryousuke pulls him down just in time to keep him from getting kicked in the back of the head as Kuramochi leaps over the two of them, taking off after the now hostless nigemono.

“What's going on?” the boy asks, looking equal parts terrified and confused. Ryousuke, trusting Kuramochi to catch the rogue mushi, smiles and sits up, helping the boy off of him.

The net had done its job, thankfully. Typically when separating a nigemono from its host the Mushishi will use a much larger net strung up between two landmarks, like trees or houses or something. When the host runs into the net, it’s forced to stop, but the mushi’s momentum usually launches it straight through. Those Mushishi usually had time to prepare, though, and Ryousuke, who didn't, had to improvise.

“You were possessed by a mushi that roots itself in the adrenal gland,” Ryousuke explains, overlooking the fact that this village kid probably has no idea what an adrenal gland is. “You were running all over the place like a crazy person. You're lucky my partner and I showed up when we did, or you might've run right off a cliff.”

The boy doesn't look at all soothed by this information, even when Ryousuke throws in a Don't Worry for good measure. He decides not to mention the fact that his heart could’ve ruptured if he’d been lucky enough to avoid cliffs, which would have been much more inevitably damning.

A shout of triumph from up ahead distracts them, and Ryousuke turns with a smile. “Come on,” he says to the boy, “it sounds like my partner’s caught it.”

Sure enough, as Ryousuke and the boy make their way towards the shout, a thicket of bushes rustles and Kuramochi tugs himself out of the thorns, a wild grin plastered across his face despite the branches tearing at his kimono. “Ryou-san!” he says, “I caught it! Just like you told me!”

The nickname, fresh as it is in their dynamic, sends a private thrill down Ryousuke’s spine each time he hears it. He likes to make a game out of pretending it doesn’t. “Good enough, Kuramochi,” he says, folding his hands behind him as he levels his partner with a cool gaze. “Just be sure not to lose it now.”

Kuramochi looks startled, like he hadn’t even imagined that the nigemono might escape, and he frantically peels back one of the layers of the onion in his hand like he might be able to see the mushi trapped inside of it. Ryousuke smacks his hand away before he can actually do anything damaging.

On the way back to the village, Kuramochi asks, “Ryou-san, why do we use onions to catch mushi like this?”

He’s turning the bulb over in his hands like he’s trying to discern its secrets. Why, yes why, onions? Onions, trapped, need to run! Onions. The mehebi chatter pointlessly, reporting the combined thoughts of the two people and the nigemono in their company. “Onions are versatile vegetables,” Ryousuke explains. “As well as having plenty of herbal benefits, they’re used to trap nigemono because of all of their layers, which can be confusing for them, like rings in a tree trunk. But it’s harder to carry around a tree, so we just use onions.”

Kuramochi scratches his head. “I guess that makes sense. God, how do they even come up with this stuff? So many random solutions…”

“Being a Mushishi’s all about thinking outside the box,” Ryousuke reminds him. “If it works like it’s supposed to, I don’t see the problem.”

Kuramochi sighs and keeps silent. By the time they get back to the village, the sun’s starting to rise, and the few anxious villagers still uneasily lingering at the fringe of the trees cry out with joy when they see the three of them coming through the trees.

They crash at the boy’s house and sleep until noon. Ryousuke gets up before Kuramochi and steps outside to wash himself with a bucket of water drawn up from a well. When he’s done he throws a cup on Kuramochi’s face to wake him up. He’s a light sleeper, so it’s not necessary, but it certainly is fun.

They’re on the road an hour later. The grateful clients give them some non-perishable foods as thanks, insisting they stay to rest a little longer. But after spending so much time with Rei, Ryousuke’s resistant to staying anywhere for longer than he has to, and he has to bury the onion soon anyway. It’s growing at an alarmingly rapid rate–with nowhere else for the mushi inside to channel its energy, the development of flowers on the fresh green stalk is expedited, and Ryousuke’s pretty sure it’s freaking Kuramochi out.

(Which he takes joy in, but that's besides the point.)

They bury it on the mountainside as they walk along a craggy trail. Kuramochi sighs with relief and adds something about being grateful that whole mess is finally over. Ryousuke raises an eyebrow in jest.

“I thought you loved to run?”

Kuramochi shrugs. “Sure, but not when someone’s life is on the line.”

Ryousuke hums, looking ahead. “Someone's life is almost always on the line. You'll get used to it.”

“God, I hope not.”

They continue on in silence for a few minutes. The air is heating up around them, the sun beating down like it always does in the high of summer. Cicadas hum in the trees, not as loud as they will be in a few weeks, but still rising to a substantial thrum that Ryousuke feels settle like a physical cloud of sound over his shoulders. It’s a strangely uplifting sensation.

After a few minutes of companionable silence, Kuramochi speaks up again. “So, where are we going now?”

Ryousuke tilts his head to the side as if listening for an answer. The mehebi supply it reluctantly. “West,” he declares as they come to the peak of the hill. Out in front of them, the crags stretch in a winding, gnarled mess of rocks and brush, eventually whittling down into a thin forest at the base of the cliffs. Not having a destination in mind used to be daunting; now, he just finds it exciting.

“Okay, well I could guess that,” Kuramochi snarks, “but you know what I meant. Are we talking, like, more mountains? Or forests? Or the coast? Have you ever seen the ocean, Ryou-san?”

The memory of the ocean flickers to the forefront of Ryousuke’s mind, and he hums. “I have,” he says. “Many times. It’s very large.”

Kuramochi folds his arms behind his head and sighs. “I haven’t. I’ve always wanted to, though. Ma used to talk about it all the time, and my Dad… He uh, did too.” There’s an obvious lapse in his speech that doesn’t go unnoticed by Ryousuke, or by the snakes that love to whisper speculation on the subject of Kuramochi’s father. He wills them into silence, because that’s not how he wants to learn about Kuramochi Youichi. He might have cheated a little when they first met, but he was younger, and far more curious back then, and certainly not as good at controlling what the mehebi did or didn’t tell him. But the really personal things are yet to be earned, and Ryousuke’s content to wait until they’re both comfortable enough with each other before they talk about anything that involved.

Ryousuke exhales slowly through his nose. “I used to wonder about the ocean a lot,” he divulges, because he doesn’t want to fall into the silence that he senses on the horizon of their conversation. “My village was built on a stream, and I spent a lot of time in the river, wondering what happened to the water after it all ran down the mountain.” He laughs softly, remembering his own astonishment at the idea that the water at the top could never run out. “I didn’t understand the concept of a water cycle.”

“No kidding?” Kuramochi replies. He turns his gaze up to watch the thick white clouds scud across the sky. “I guess I never thought too much about that. In my village we always just thought more about whether the mountain would let us hunt or not that given year.”

“You did have quite a unique situation,” Ryousuke agrees. “I imagine turning to embrace the very science that caused that problem won’t win you many friendly endorsements back home.”

Kuramochi scoffs, kicking at a rock on the edge of the path. “Yeah, who needs ‘em, though. Not like they were all that friendly to begin with.”

Ryousuke doesn’t press on that subject. He waits a moment to see if Kuramochi will elaborate, and when he doesn’t, Ryousuke promises they’ll make a stop at the ocean eventually. Kuramochi’s face lights up, entirely erasing the more reserved creases from before and instilling within Ryousuke’s chest a strange sense that he needs to look out for that smile, and do everything he can to keep it within reach.

“I honestly didn't think you could get any more ridiculous,” Ryousuke muses through his teeth as he tactfully maneuvers his way down the cliffside. “I also believed you'd never be able to prove me wrong about something, but here we are.”

Kuramochi groans from the base of the steep (but thankfully short) slope, sitting up and rubbing his head and throwing a rueful glance Ryousuke’s way that the mehebi find absolutely hilarious. “What're you complaining for? You could’a given me a warning with those psychic snakes of yours.”

Ryousuke reaches carefully out for a clump of bracken that cracks and falls as soon as he tests his weight on it. He finds another, more stable branch to hold on to and lowers himself until he can safely make the rest of the jump down. “I literally did. I said, ‘Kuramochi, be careful, there's a drop that way,’ and you said, ‘Don't be so cautious, Ryou-san, I have eyes.’”

Kuramochi frowns, then hums and relents. “...I did say that, didn't I?”

Ryousuke kneels beside him, allowing the mehebi just enough reign to check him for injuries. “Yes, you did.” There’s a cut on Kuramochi’s knee, and scrapes on his palms and arms where he'd tried to catch himself, but for the most part he'll probably just end up bruised. “You're lucky you didn't sprain anything,” Ryousuke sighs, reaching for his water canteen and sparing what he can to clean Kuramochi’s knee. “I hope there’s a clean water source nearby. I’m running low.”

“We can share what's left of mine,” Kuramochi offers. Ryousuke doesn't reply, instead finishes cleaning out the scrapes and recaps his canteen, then sits back on his heels to collect himself for a moment.

It shouldn't be too hard to get back onto the path from here. It's a steep way up, but it's not that high of a drop, so at the very least there should be a way back around and onto the trail.

Wait, the snakes whisper, and Ryousuke stays still. Wait, wait. Water, people. Hungry forest people. Wait.

Ryousuke raises his head, angling it over Kuramochi’s shoulder. The snakes let him see the tall, dark wood trees that rise like a barrier down the mountainside, and his vision shifts further, like someone's adjusting the lense of a microscope, and he follows the forest downhill to the dip of the valley, where it opens into a tapered clearing dotted with clusters of dark, lifeless buildings. Hungry forest wait, the mehebi insist. Ryousuke blinks back to the present environment, senses more than sees how Kuramochi’s staring at him.

“There's a village downhill from here,” Ryousuke reports, getting slowly to his feet. He offers Kuramochi a hand, then, remembering his scrapes and thinking better of it, reaches down to hold him by the wrist and tug him up. “It might be a good idea to stop there and restock supplies.” He's not sure if the snakes are predicting that they’ll need food soon or if they're suggesting the villagers are in trouble, but either way it's a good idea to check in.

“Works for me,” Kuramochi says, dusting off his travel kimono and wincing as he forgets his hands. “They’ll probably have somewhere we can get more water too. And a bath wouldn't be a bad idea,” he adds, wrinkling his nose as he tests the smell of his clothes.

“Don't get too excited,” Ryousuke warns. “We might have work to do.”

They begin to pick their way downhill, far more carefully than before. As soon as they reach the tree line, the heat wavers and eases a bit, and the canopy is thick enough that the mehebi begin to stir into a more cohesive wakefulness. Ryousuke suppresses a sigh. They’re the most unruly in the dark. He does his best to tune them out as they delve further into the woods, picking his way carefully over obstacles as they appear before him. Using the mehebi to see is like trying to see in a dream: most of the time, he doesn’t have any problem, but every now and then his brain remembers he’s not actually seeing anything (at least, not with his actual eyes), and his vision begins to tunnel or fail altogether. Ryousuke’s gotten much better at adjusting to secondary vision over the years, but for some reason as he and Kuramochi make it further into the forest, his sight starts to dim.

He hisses under his breath with annoyance as he stubs his toe on a tree root he hadn’t noticed, catching himself on the trunk before he can stumble.

“You good?” Kuramochi asks him, instantly at his side. Ryousuke waves him off.

“Fine,” he replies, inwardly cursing the snakes. They whisper restlessly, muttering nonsensically about people and the forest and hunger. “Something’s disturbing the mehebi. Be on your guard.”

He senses Kuramochi nodding at him, and they start off again, more carefully than before. Ryousuke uses one hand to guide himself around tree trunks as he slowly urges his vision back. The snakes comply reluctantly, though the forest seems dimmer than before. Ryousuke slows to a stop.

“Ryou-san?” Kuramochi asks, stopping once he notices the other is no longer directly behind him.

“Something’s not right,” Ryousuke decides. He looks around, trying to see between the trees, but the snakes don’t want to cooperate, pushing back harder the more he urges them. He can’t tell if it’s their fault that the trees seem to be closing in.

Hungry! the mehebi hiss. Hungry! Forest people! Hungry forest! Hungry! People!

“What d’you– oof!” Kuramochi trips over something and falls, hard, throwing his hands out to catch himself. Ryousuke steps forward instinctively to help him up, but freezes when he sees what it is that Kuramochi’s tripped over.

“Ugh,” Kuramochi groans, accepting Ryousuke’s hand but pausing when he notices how limp the other’s grip is. “What is it?” he asks, then follows the angle of the other’s head to his foot.

Hungry! Hungry! Forest hungry, people!

A human skull protrudes from the earth, the white of the polished bone setting off alarm bells in Ryousuke’s head that have nothing to do with the snakes writhing behind his eyelids. He pulls Kuramochi to his feet instantly and backs up a few steps. Around them, the trees creak and groan as their branches rustle as if disturbed by a sudden wind.

“It’s not a forest,” Ryousuke breathes as Kuramochi inches closer to him. “It’s a mushi .”

As soon as he says it, the roots of the trees around them lurch to life, snaking towards them like tendrils from some deep-sea creature. He tugs Kuramochi out of the way before they can grab him and turns to search for an opening. The mehebi, for all their useless chattering, actually prove themselves useful as they point out a wider space between trees that he can slip through. Pulling Kuramochi after him, Ryousuke ducks through the gap as the roots suffocate the clearing they’d stood in moments before.

“What the hell kind of mushi is this?” Kuramochi shouts, his voice breaking as it pitches high on fear.

“An aggressive one!” Ryousuke replies, stopping short as another tree lurches in front of them and quickly changing directions. He curses under his breath. How could he be so stupid? The article comes flooding back to him now, a whole page of Rei’s almanac dedicated to the man-eating forest, a rare but dangerous mushi that waits for travelers to pass beneath its boughs before it attacks, leaving very few people left around to tell of what they’ve seen.

“I’ve never encountered one myself,” Rei had explained to him once. “But a colleague of mine did once. He lost his traveling partner to it.”

The memory strikes him as decidedly untimely and makes him all too aware of the thrum of Kuramochi’s pulse beneath his fingers as Ryousuke pulls him along. He tightens his grip and racks his brain for everything else he read in Rei’s entry, anything that might be of use, but for all the hours he spent memorizing the countless pages in her journal, he can’t seem to recall a single thing that might help them.

Village, the mehebi remind him, and that burst of insight sends him veering to the left.

Kuramochi curses as the sudden change in direction and nearly trips over his own feet. “Ryou-san!” he protests, but doesn’t have time for further complaint as a low branch swings down at them, too quick for them to fully avoid. Ryousuke falls sideways into the leaves, using his and Kuramochi’s momentum to push them through the weaker branches before they can ensnare them.

“Don’t let go!” he warns as he feels Kuramochi’s grip beginning to ease. “If we get separated in here, that’s it!”

Kuramochi doesn’t ask for further explanation, and Ryousuke’s grateful for that. He senses the roots beneath their feet shifting as they run and pushes harder, urging his feet to move faster than the danger around them. The village is ahead–Ryousuke would probably be able to just make it out with his human eyes if he still had them–when Kuramochi stumbles behind him with a shout and crashes to the ground, breaking his hold on Ryousuke’s hand. Ryousuke whips around, noticing the upturned root that’s snaking its way around Kuramochi’s ankle as he tries to find his feet again. Ryousuke stomps on the root and helps Kuramochi up.

“Can you walk?” Ryousuke demands, instantly sensing the imbalance that Kuramochi holds himself with.

“I’m fine,” Kuramochi assures him, the liar, but they don’t have time for that not to be true as the forest comes at them again.

“Go!” Ryousuke shoves him from behind, pulling his own foot out of the way of the insidious roots. Kuramochi stumbles but his balance holds, and taking Ryousuke’s hand again he leads the way towards the village.

They break out into the clearing but don’t slow down until they’ve reached the limits of the village. Only then does Ryousuke tug back on and finally let go of Kuramochi’s hand, propping his hands on his sides to help him catch his breath. Kuramochi, ever the drama queen, collapses spread eagle on his back.

They don’t talk for a solid minute as they catch their breath. Ryousuke wills the mehebi to calm as he listens to the forest continue to stir behind them. They’re unhappy; Ryousuke can’t blame them. The mehebi don’t always speak on their own behalf. Before, when they told him to wait, to go into the woods, they were just picking up on the intent of the forest mushi and translating it as well as they ever do the semi-formed consciousness of non-human organisms. No matter how many years pass, Ryousuke still isn’t fully able to discern which whispers are the will of the mehebi and which are just efforts to translate the world around them for the host.

He smiles wryly to himself. This will make an interesting addition to my research, he muses.

From his spot on the ground, Kuramochi groans, bringing Ryousuke back to the present and reminding him of the other’s injury. Straightening up, Ryousuke kneels beside him and lifts his leg to observe the damage.

“Ow, ow, Ryou-san!” Kuramochi yelps in protest. He tries to tug his foot away but Ryousuke’s grip stays firm.

“It’s not broken,” Ryousuke reports confidently. “I can find something to reduce the inflammation, but you’re going to want to keep it elevated.”

Kuramochi gives him an incredulous look. “So we’re not going to mention the trees that just tried to kill us?”

Ryousuke sighs and gets to his feet, turning to look back at the trees settling back into relative stasis. “This clearing’s in the middle of the forest. There’s no way we’re getting out if you have a bad foot. Make yourself comfortable, Kuramochi; we’re going to be here for a while.”

Kuramochi pushes himself into an upright position, leaning back on his hands and grimacing first at his foot, then at the treeline. “Well, at least we’re in a village, right? The people here probably know how to deal with the carnivorous trees in their backyard.”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” Ryousuke chides. Kuramochi gives him a funny look, and Ryousuke tilts his head to the side in counter. “Haven’t you noticed yet?” The snakes rise with a murmur again, assuring him that no, Kuramochi hasn’t noticed. Ryousuke nods in the direction of the buildings around them.

“There’s nobody here.”

“How do you know all this stuff about medicine?” Kuramochi asks him that evening as Ryousuke removes a pot of boiling water from the stove to steep the chayo he was able to scavenge from the meager remnants of the elder’s house they’re holed up in (perhaps for arthritis, perhaps just for taste). This village doesn’t appear to have had an apothecary of any sort, which must mean that there’s one in a town nearby that can arrive at a moment’s notice. That, or the people were just really healthy. It does Ryousuke no good to muse over it now; odds are, any doctor that’s come this way recently has been swallowed up by the forest.

“My mother is an herbalist,” Ryousuke reveals after a beat. “She taught me some, but it feels more like instinct at this point.”

Kuramochi huffs a laugh. Ryousuke turns to face him, raising an eyebrow. He’s not wearing the blindfold–the snakes are put off by the forest around them and don’t make much effort to act out with immediate danger so close–so Kuramochi actually sees this action. “What?” Ryousuke says anyways.

“I dunno, it’s just weird to picture you with a family.”

Ryousuke’s other eyebrow joins the first up on his forehead as he goes for his most incredulous expression. “Oh? Is that what you think of me, Kuramochi? That I just sprung from center of some rock with all the knowledge I would ever need?”

Kuramochi cackles at the mental image that draws up. “Obviously not. I mean, I always knew theoretically you have a family, it’s just… I always knew you as Rei’s apprentice. It’s weird to think of you as like, someone’s kid.”

Ryousuke hums a concession as he sits down in front of the stove to wait for the tea to finish. “I suppose that’s fair. You come to any other big, theoretical conclusions?”

Kuramochi kicks at Ryousuke with his good foot. “You don’t share much, huh Ryou-san?”

“It’s never been a priority before,” Ryousuke reasons. “You’re one to talk. Someone who wears his heart on his sleeve like you, but you’re happier to think about other people than to worry about yourself.”

Kuramochi laughs again. “That’s just ‘cause you already know everything, what with your snakes that tell you all about what people are thinking.”

Ryousuke offers a thoughtful noise from the back of his throat. “They just let me see what’s already apparent and draw conclusions from there. I can’t read your mind.”

“Maybe not, but you’ll get damn close.”

“Probably,” Ryousuke admits. “But that’s more on my ability than it is on theirs.”

“Don’t like to be outdone by anyone, do you?”

“I just want credit where it’s due.”

They lapse into amicable silence after that. Ryousuke pours the tea once it’s finished, snickering as Kuramochi burns his tongue as he goes to drink it right away, and then immediately goes to try and drink it again. Ryousuke sets the leftover tea to the side to let it cool and gets to work unpacking his and Kuramochi’s bedrolls.

“I can do that,” Kuramochi tries to stop him, but Ryousuke bats a hand at his shoulder as he shifts to help.

“Don’t. Just keep your foot elevated.” Ryousuke straightens Kuramochi’s futon and begins arranging his own on the opposite side of the stove. “The faster it heals, the sooner we’ll be able to escape this situation.”

Kuramochi hums a reluctant note of agreement and settles back down. Looking down into his tea, he asks, “So you don’t know everything about me after all, huh?”

Ryousuke huffs a laugh. “Not everything, no. I learned some things from the village, but not everything. I have self-control.”

Kuramochi shoots him a crooked smile. “So you could know everything if you wanted to?”

Ryousuke meets his eyes with a sideways glance. “I’m sure I can work it out of you somehow if that’s what you’re asking.”

Likes that, Ryou-san, likes talking likes Ryou-san. He tries to ignore the snakes muttering excitedly and focuses instead on observations he can make on his own. It might be the heat of the stove burning so close, but Kuramochi’s face seems slightly pink in this light. (Embarrassed! they assure him.) There’s the uncertain angle of his shoulders to read into, though, the one that’s always present whenever Ryousuke is a little too forward. The one that reminds him Kuramochi’s from a small village and hasn’t seen much of the world yet, doesn’t know the extent of diversity that can be found across the country and isn’t yet sure of his own feelings. That’s okay; Ryousuke was the same, once. He knows that it will take time for Kuramochi to figure things out for himself, and with time enough maybe something will come of Ryousuke’s forwardness. For now, he’ll be content to push Kuramochi until he’s only just starting to squirm before backing off.

So he turns back to his futon and offers an out to the conversation. “We should talk about how we’re going to get out of here.”

Kuramochi sighs. “If you don’t know, I’m worried there isn’t a way out.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Ryousuke chides, but he’s holding back the same line of thinking. Without anything helpful to reference in Rei’s almanac, Ryousuke’s at a loss himself. They’ll have to wait for Kuramochi’s leg to heal, which keeps them in the middle of this dangerous situation for longer than Ryousuke would like. He doesn’t want to be around this forest any longer than they have to, but he also knows that trying to make a break for it blindly through the woods doesn’t give them a terribly high chance for success anyways. Maybe Kuramochi tripping up was a blessing in disguise; now Ryousuke is forced to take his time, think through all of his options before making a rash decision.

“This will give us an opportunity to study this kind of mushi, at least,” he goes on, mulling things over aloud. “Figure out how it works and how to protect people from it.” He looks up into the rafters of the building they’re in, then around to the walls and out the windows at the empty houses around them. “Figure out how these people were able to build a life surrounded by something so insidious.”

Kuramochi shifts uncomfortably and looks around like he’s picturing people being snatched away from their daily activities by the roots that came after them less than an hour ago. “I wonder if they had any idea what was going on,” he says quietly.

Ryousuke shrugs, doing his best not to think about it. “It’s an unfortunate situation, but nothing can be done about it now. Let’s just hope we don’t end up like they did.”

Kuramochi goes quiet after that, and Ryousuke doesn’t make any effort to break the uneasy silence that settles between them. Kuramochi finishes his tea and goes to bed, and Ryousuke cleans up before following suit.

Kuramochi falls asleep first. The soft rhythm of his breathing gives Ryousuke a focal point to concentrate on while he tries to clear his racing mind. He’s still awake when the fire starts to die down, keenly aware of fluctuations in heat ever since the snakes took up residence in his skull. He pulls his blanket tighter around himself and waits impatiently until, finally, he sinks into a fitful sleep.

When Ryousuke dreams, he sees what the mehebi see.

They don’t let their sight roam too far tonight, kept close to the center of the village by the threat surrounding them on all sides.

Over a rickety porch. Down cold stone steps. Through a dead garden overgrown with weeds and parasitic lichen. The grass is long, and its shadows cut through the half-moon’s light. Huts with darkened windows and spiderwebs in the thresholds, some without doors or curtains left to hide the gutted interiors.

There are no bodies in this ghost town. The brittle skeletons of civilization stand like aging headstones marking the overturned, root-riddled patches of earth that have since swallowed and digested the people that once lived here. Their bones aren’t here, though. The mehebi know they’re all elsewhere, deeper in the forest than these headstones would indicate.

The perimeter of the clearing is not breached by the trees. For some reason, despite their rustling branches, the boughs keep to themselves as the night passes.

A few days later, Ryousuke is standing in the tall grass looking out into the woods when he feels movement from the Uro cocoon in his pocket. He extracts it carefully, silently grateful that he’d had the foresight to get a new cocoon the last time he’d stopped by Oota’s place with Rei when he sees how the response letter has been wrinkled from Kazuya’s old Uro-chan. He smoothes the letter between his fingers as best he can, then holds it out into the afternoon sunlight to read it.

For Kominato Ryousuke

Ahh, you’ve gotten yourself in quite the situation, huh Ryousuke-san? Must be pretty bad, if you’re asking me for help.

I don’t know anything about carnivorous forests. Sounds scary! Knowing you, you’ll probably be out by the time you get this letter anyways. Oh, but I guess your new partner complicates things, doesn’t he? You’ll have to introduce him to me next time we cross paths! That is, if you make it out of this. Just kidding! I know you’ll be fine.

Sawamura doesn’t know anything either, obviously. Maybe you should check in with Rei-chan? Or send out one of those emergency alerts? Good luck! Don’t die out there!

Signed,

Kazuya

The corner of Ryousuke’s mouth quirks into a wry smile at Kazuya’s backwards encouragement. He folds the note and tucks it into the waistband of his kimono , turning his attention back to the line of trees ahead of him.

He didn’t expect that Kazuya would have any real advice, but he’s the only other person than Rei that Ryousuke could think to ask, and he doubts she’s had any additional experience with this kind of mushi in the months since they’ve parted.

It also feels like a failure, somehow, to go crawling back to his mentor after he only just left her. He knows it’s mostly his pride talking, but he doesn’t want to ask her for help every time he runs across an obstacle. No, if he’s going to ask anyone for help, it’s going to be the connections he’s made on his own.

Which leaves me with very few other options, he admits to himself grimly. He could write Tetsu and Jun, but last he heard of them they were dealing with a tense situation of their own, and he doesn’t want to get them wrapped up in his own problems if he can help it. Takako’s probably his best bet, with the Recorders’ extensive archives of knowledge dating back more generations than Ryousuke himself can imagine, but he has no way of contacting her other than face-to-face thanks to her family-imposed isolation. It’s frustrating, but there’s nothing he can do but find a solution on his own.

The weather is deceptively nice, the sky a brilliant, cloudless blue and the high sun casting comfortable warmth into the clearing below. Ryousuke straightens with a sigh and tucks his Uro-chan away, then turns to head back in the direction of the elder’s house where he’d left Kuramochi. The swelling in his ankle has all but vanished by now, but the bruising is still obvious. If Kuramochi just lets it heal, it should be fine to walk on within another week.

Of course, Kuramochi’s always out to prove himself to be a bigger idiot than Ryousuke gives him credit for, so when he turns the corner of an old hut, he shouldn’t be surprised to see his traveling companion wobbling for balance as he tests his weight on his bad foot.

“Kuramochi,” Ryousuke snaps, startling him enough to upset his balance and send him toppling to one side. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Ah, Ryou-san,” Kuramochi has the decency to sound sheepish as he rubs his sore butt. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon.”

“You’re supposed to be keeping off of that foot,” Ryousuke reminds him sourly, folding his arms. “Are you looking to get us stuck here for longer than we have to be?”

“Of course not,” Kuramochi grumbles, “but you can’t expect me to just sit around and do nothing all day! I can’t think straight if I can’t move around at all!”

“Luckily for you, we’re not counting on your brains to get us out of this,” Ryousuke replies, unfolding his arms and coming over to sit beside the other. He pulls the note out of his waistband and offers it to Kuramochi, who takes unfolds it and skims the contents. “Kazuya didn’t have anything to offer, unsurprisingly. It looks like we’re on our own for this one.”

Kuramochi finishes reading the letter and snorts. “This Kazuya guy has a real shitty sense of humor. Can’t believe you keep up with a guy like this.” He refolds the letter and hands it back.

“Jealous?” Ryousuke mocks, earning a flush from Kuramochi’s indignant expression.

“You wish,” he rebounds. “We can figure this out, though. It’s like you said, right? Being a Mushishi is all about thinking outside the box.”

Ryousuke smiles to himself. “Mm,” he hums in agreement, turning his head so that Kuramochi won’t be able to see just how pleased he is with that callback to his own advice. He looks over his shoulder at the stretch of grass between them and the edge of the trees. Considering for just a moment, he stands and offers a hand to Kuramochi. “C’mon,” he says. “We’re going for a walk.”

Kuramochi raises an eyebrow at him, then looks down to study his hand. “I thought you said I needed to stay off my foot?”

“That’s why I’m helping you, idiot,” Ryousuke chides. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about wanting to get some exercise?”

Kuramochi snorts, then reaches out to clasp Ryousuke’s extended hand firmly. “‘Course not,” he says, and allows Ryousuke to hook an arm behind his back while he throws his own over Ryousuke’s shoulders. “Just thought you’d never ask.”

With each day that passes, Ryousuke finds himself moving closer to the treeline, until finally he ends up at the edge of the woods. The snakes don’t seem any more concerned than they do in the middle of the village, which he takes as a good sign. It could also mean that the mushi is just waiting for him to step beneath the reach of its branches, but as long as he doesn’t go any further he’ll be fine.

There has to be some kind of weakness this mushi has that he can exploit. If it functions the same as a plant, it probably doesn’t like fire too much, but he doesn’t want to count on that theory alone to protect him and Kuramochi when they eventually do make their great escape from this place. He attributes their earlier luck getting through the forest to the area’s recent drought, assuming the lack of water has any effect on this place.

A cloud that’s been covering the sun moves away. The leaves rustle ahead of him, and the mehebi shift uneasily. Hungry, people. Come closer. Come closer! Ryousuke stays rooted firmly where he is, not letting the whispers of the forest urge him either way.

A breeze sends a chill through him as another cloud takes up the other’s place. It’s gray today, not in the sense that threatens rain, but he keeps an eye on the horizon anyways. If the drought really has been keeping them alive this long, the last thing he wants is to be caught on the wrong end of a storm while they’re trying to leave.

When he gets back to the elder’s house, Kuramochi is dozing near the stove. Ryousuke sits down to make note of his theories in his notebook.

Fares poorly in dry weather. Potentially pyrophobic. One thing he doesn’t want to test and one thing he needs to. Provided that it doesn’t rain within the next few days, he should be able to gather enough information in the remaining time it takes for Kuramochi’s ankle to heal to give them enough of an advantage over the forest that it won’t be able to catch them when they finally do set foot beneath its branches.

He’s thinking back to all his mother taught him about nurturing plants when Kuramochi rolls over and blinks awake, turning his sleepy gaze across the room towards Ryousuke. “You’re back,” he yawns, stretching out on his back. Ryousuke suppresses a smile at the other’s lethargy. “You learn anything new today?”

Ryousuke hums, turning back to his notebook. “Only confirmed my suspicions that the trees weren’t being externally motivated to attack people. Whatever this mushi is, it controls the trees from inside of them.”

“Or it is the trees,” Kuramochi points out.

“Or that,” Ryousuke agrees. “Either way, that creates opportunities for us. Since the mushi either is or relies on the plants, we can utilize the natural weaknesses of plants to our advantage. If all goes well, the drought should hold out a little longer, and I’m going to test whether the roots are averse to fire this evening.”

Kuramochi rolls up into a sitting position and stretches his arms over his head. “Sounds good to me. Anything you need me to do?”

“Just take care of your foot,” Ryousuke replies without looking up. “The easier we can move, the easier it will be to get through the trees. We’ll need as many advantages as we can.”

He gets a grunt in response. Ryousuke looks up. Kuramochi’s fiddling with the strap of his sandals, pointedly keeping his gaze away from Ryousuke.

Ryou-san, so insensitive! Nothing I can do to help? Ryou-san!

Ryousuke wills the snakes to silence–he can figure out what Kuramochi’s thinking without their help. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he says.

“You mean you didn’t mean to upset me with that,” Kuramochi counters, bitter. He continues before Ryousuke can ask what that means. “You’re… always like that, Ryou-san. Like you think I don’t know anything or I can’t do anything to help.”

Ryousuke frowns. “I don’t think that,” he argues. “You’re injured. The most important thing you can do right now is heal.”

“I don’t mean just that,” Kuramochi snaps back. “I’m talking about how you’re always so–so determined to figure everything out on your own that you never ask if I have any ideas. You just act like it’s all on you to get us out of things.”

Ryousuke blinks at him, a motion that Kuramochi can’t see beneath the layer of his blindfold. “It’s not that I don’t value your opinion,” he says, his tone heavy enough with sincerity that it sounds like an apology all on its own. “I’m your teacher now. It’s on me to know how to solve problems like this.”

“Not alone, though,” Kuramochi insists. He’s making eye contact with Ryousuke now, his expression set into something unreadable. “This is different than anything we’ve done before! You’ve always known what to do whenever we’ve had a job because you learned everything from Rei-chan, but now there is no solution already, and you still act like you’re the only one who can find it.” He leans forward, like that might help push his point. “We’re both clueless here, so you should put your student to use! Let me do some problem-solving too.”

His face is a little flushed by the end of his little tirade, but it looks to be more from embarrassment than from anger. Ryousuke feels slightly off-balance, all of a sudden. They’ve had petty arguments before, but Kuramochi’s never been so sincere before. It only takes a moment to collect himself again, but it’s a moment that even the mehebi don’t interrupt with their obnoxious commentary.

“Sounds like you’ve been meaning to say this for a while now,” Ryousuke quips.

Kuramochi’s frown deepens at his apparent flippance. “Ryou-san,” he groans, but Ryousuke holds up a hand to stop him.

“Let me finish: if you’ve felt this way the whole time we’ve been here, why didn’t you say anything until now?”

Kuramochi’s gaze flicks away uncertainly. “I didn’t wanna start anything,” he explains, hesitating. “I thought… maybe it was a stupid thing to bring up, now of all times.”

Ryousuke sits back, leaning on his hands. “It’s not stupid to know your own worth,” he says. “If you have ideas, you should tell me. I’ll try to… I won’t be condescending, if they suck,” he adds, tripping up over his own effort at sincerity.

Kuramochi seems to appreciate it anyway. His scowl eases back into something neutral, and he turns to look out the window nearest to him.

“You don’t think it’ll rain soon?” he asks, referring to the cloudy weather.

Ryousuke takes the shift in conversation in stride. “Rain will come, but I don’t feel it coming soon. We should be able to make it out before any of it hits.”

Kuramochi nods. There’s a moment of uncertain silence between them. Ryousuke opens his mouth to break it, but is cut off by Kuramochi. “Plants need light, right?”

The single comment sends Ryousuke down the whole line of Kuramochi’s thinking. “For photosynthesis, yes,” he breathes, running scenarios through his mind. “You’re suggesting this forest is more active on sunny days?”

“Or it sleeps at night,” Kuramochi replies instantly. He looks privately delighted to have his ideas taken seriously. Ryousuke makes a silent note to be less of an ass.

“It might be able to glean energy from the moonlight,” Ryousuke points out for the sake of covering all arguments.

“But it would still be significantly less active at night, right? When we came in the first time it was afternoon, but maybe if we leave at night it won’t even attack?”

It’s a good theory. A really good theory. The nagging thought that I should have thought of that gets shoved away while Ryousuke considers Kuramochi’s idea.

“I’ll test it tonight,” he says finally, picking up his notebook again and adding a third bullet point to his list of possible weaknesses the forest might have. “That’s good thinking, Kuramochi,” he adds, even as his own insatiable pride berates him. The smile Kuramochi offers him in response more than makes up for it.

The night they decide to leave is earlier than Ryousuke had planned. Kuramochi’s balance is still uneasy, but there’s a storm rolling in from the east that Ryousuke doesn’t want to chance. They pack up and head for the treeline at about midnight, torches in hand and one eye each on the clouds on the horizon.

Kuramochi had been right about the forest going dormant at night. Ryousuke had been able to probe beneath the canopy the past few nights in an effort to find the fastest way out until ultimately concluding that it would be safest to just go back the way they came. So they end up at the sight of their violent escape as the threat of thunder rolls in the distance.

“Poor timing,” Ryousuke mutters, trying to make out where the moon is behind the wall of the clouds.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kuramochi says. “It’s still far away. We can get through here before it hits.”

Kuramochi’s still got enough of a limp to slow them down, but Ryousuke doesn’t say anything about that out loud. Instead he raises the torch he’d fashioned out of splintered plywood and old, moth eaten kimono to cast light down between the looming trees. There’s no movement as far as he can tell, so he starts forward, stepping carefully over the roots tangled over the earth underfoot.

Kuramochi follows slowly, keeping his torch low to the ground to keep himself from stumbling. Every now and then, Ryousuke pauses to let him catch up. His senses are on end; the mehebi are restless, but they’re not saying anything, so Ryousuke’s certain that the forest is still asleep, at least.

Overhead, there’s a flash of lightning that barely breaches the canopy of the trees. The branches stir, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s the mushi or the wind. Ryousuke holds his breath and prays it’s the latter.

Minutes pass in tense silence. Kuramochi stumbles once at a sudden dip in the earth but recovers quickly. The trees groan in the wind.

“Ryou-san,” Kuramochi hisses. Ryousuke turns to see him leaning against a rock as he readjusts the weight of his backpack on his shoulders, one hand braced over the stone to steady himself as he keeps his balance off his bad foot.

“I know,” Ryousuke whispers back, sympathetic. “Try to hurry. We can rest once we’re out.”

Kuramochi nods in response and limps after him, his jaw tense as he swallows any kind of complaint. Thunder rolls ominously overhead.

They’re about halfway through when the unmistakable sound of rain falling against the leaves reaches Ryousuke’s ears. He freezes, listening closely for any indication that the forest is stirring, but it’s impossible to tell with the wind blowing as hard as it is. “Kuramochi,” he whispers, glancing over his shoulder. “We have to go now.”

“I’m coming,” Kuramochi replies. “Just give me a–”

The end of his sentence is cut of by a sharp clap of thunder that comes in time with a brilliant show of lightning. The snakes shift anxiously and begin to murmur inaudibly. Ryousuke doubles back to throw Kuramochi’s arm over his shoulder and tug him forward. “Now!”

The rain falls harder, and the ground begins to ripple as the roots of the trees awaken to take in the water. The torches hiss in protests where water makes contact with the flame. The snakes become more urgent, and now Ryousuke knows they’ve been caught. “Watch your feet,” he reminds Kuramochi as he stumbles again, pitching his voice to be heard above the roaring wind.

“I’m trying!” Kuramochi snaps, but he trips again, this time almost taking Ryousuke down with him. “There are roots everywhere!”

Ryousuke gets whipped across the cheek by a nearby branch and has to resist the urge to jump in the other direction. He tightens the hand hooked around Kuramochi’s waist and presses on, keeping his head down. “Just keep moving! We’re almost there!”

Sure enough, another flash of lightning illuminates the way ahead, revealing a break in the trees just in front of them. Ryousuke raises his torch to ward off the flailing branches, but with the rain coming as heavy as it is it doesn’t do much. After a second, he abandons the dying flame to the mud and grabs the hand Kuramochi has clasped on his shoulder to keep it in place as he redoubles his efforts to push them forward. They’ve nearly made it when a branch knocked free of a tree by the storm catches Ryousuke in the shoulder and sends both him and Kuramochi tumbling to the ground.

“Get up,” Ryousuke urges immediately, but he’s having trouble finding a grip in the mud. Kuramochi finds his feet before him and reaches down to help him up, but the forest is taking its opportunity. The roots of the nearest tree have sprouted free of the soil to wrap slowly around Ryousuke’s legs. Kuramochi tugs at his hand to no avail, his own weak ankle slipping beneath him.

“Go!” Ryousuke urges him, kicking at the roots and trying to mask his own panic as he feels himself being drawn down into the mud.

“Are you kidding? Fuck that!” Kuramochi retorts, and suddenly his still-burning torch is searing the roots away from Ryousuke’s legs. He feels their grip weaken and continues to struggle his way forward. “I didn’t spend years waiting for your smug face to show up in my village just to lose you to some dumbass tree!” The fire goes out and he starts to beat the remaining roots with the sharp end of the plywood.

Finally, Ryousuke manages to kick himself free, and Kuramochi helps him to his feet. It’s difficult to tell who’s hanging off of whom as they break out of the treeline and back to the base of the muddy cliff Kuramochi had fallen down a couple weeks prior. They trudge around the bottom of the slope and over a smaller incline until they reach a small, rocky ravine. It’s not until the forest is out of sight that they slump to the ground, spread out on their backs as the rain washes over them, staining their clothes with more mud than Ryousuke can ever remember seeing in his life.

They’re both panting. His shoulder aches, but he’s sure it’s nothing serious. He wants to check on Kuramochi’s ankle, but that’s not a priority right now. Even the rain soaking them to the bone doesn’t concern him as much as the reverberating echoes of what Kuramochi just said to him does.

Ryousuke turns his head to face him, watching as he squints his eyes against the downpour. “You waited for me?” he asks, laughing in spite of everything.

“Of course I did!” Kuramochi growls out. “You were the only interesting thing that ever happened in that shithole!” His face is bright red. He curses a lot when he’s embarrassed, Ryousuke notes with delight. “I don’t know, I… I guess I always knew I’d follow you outta there, someday.”

Despite the rain, Ryousuke feels warm at that. He laughs and raises a hand to his face to pull away the now-soaked blindfold off of his eyes. He feels more than sees Kuramochi’s gaze on him, so he keeps his eyelids shut and lets the rain wash over the rest of his face. “I suppose I always knew, too,” Ryousuke admits with a sigh.

“I’m glad I did.”

The bare honesty in Kuramochi’s tone catches Ryousuke more off-guard than the words themselves do, and he angles his head in the other’s direction, unable to keep all of his surprise off of his face. Kuramochi’s holding his gaze determinedly even as his face turns a deeper shade of red. Ryousuke doesn’t know what to make of it, for once, so he doesn’t say anything, stuck between his reluctance to ever offer a sincere expression of his own feelings and his desire to make fun of Kuramochi at any given opportunity.

He angles his head back towards the sky. Takes a breath. After a second he gets slowly to his feet, wiping water out of his eyes more from habit than for any actual need. Turning, he offers a hand to Kuramochi. “Come on,” he says, when Kuramochi raises an eyebrow. “It’s not safe to be out in the middle of a storm like this.”

Kuramochi only hesitates for a moment before reaching up to take his hand. Ryousuke pulls him to his feet, careful not to force weight on his bad foot. Once he’s sure Kuramochi’s okay, he leads the way down the ravine, in the direction that the mehebi assure him leads back to the trail they’d lost weeks ago.

“I’m glad you did too,” Ryousuke offers over his shoulder without turning. He hears Kuramochi’s steps falter behind him, then pick up again just as soon. The snakes settle in against his eyelids and whisper what they hear.

Ryou-san! Glad I met you, Ryou-san!

Chapter Text

Come winter, Ryousuke and Kuramochi make it to the coast. It’s not so much of an arrival as it is a gradual nearing marked first by the change of climate, next by the distant but ever-potent smell of salt on the breeze, and finally, finally, a glimpse of the glittering stretch of water from the vantage point of the final mountains in their way. 

Ryousuke hasn’t been this way before, but the mehebi have shown him the area, and he’s careful not to let Kuramochi catch sight of the ocean before they’ve reached what he’s decided is the best outlook around. It’s worth it. 

Kuramochi gasps out a stunned “Whoa!” before temporarily falling silent. Then he turns to Ryousuke, but only for a second, unable to keep his eyes off the horizon. “Are you seeing this? Is that the ocean? It’s so big! You can’t even tell where it meets the sky!”

Ryousuke holds back whatever instinctual taunt his brain comes up with in favor of preserving the look of thrilled awe on Kuramochi’s face. This is what he’d been looking for anyways, bringing them all the way out here. It’s a new sight for him too, in terms of location, further north than he ever ventured with Rei. The beach here is rockier, as far as he can tell, the nearest village a cobbled yet flourishing thing with vibrant history snaking its way down the cliffside almost up until the water’s edge. A fishing town no doubt, and not one with any obvious trouble that needs a Mushishi’s expertise. That’s alright though; Ryousuke hasn’t come looking just for work, this time. 

He lets Kuramochi drink in the sight of the sea before deciding it’s about time they headed off. “You want to see it up close, don’t you?” he asks when Kuramochi hesitates. That gets him moving, and within a couple hours they’ve made it to the shore. 

The breeze coming off the water is colder than Ryousuke’s used to, and he has to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering. The snakes don’t like the cold weather, and as far back as he can remember that’s given him a bit of an intolerance for it as well. He’ll have to find some heavier kimono if they’re going to be moving around the northern parts of the country this season. (Something to make note of if they decide to establish a route like Rei did. He’s not sure how cut out he is for a northern winter.)

Kuramochi, for his part, doesn’t seem to notice the cold, taken as he is with the massive stretch of ocean before them. The sun is low but isn’t quite setting yet, and it casts its glittering light out across the waves, so bright it would leave imprints on the backs of Ryousuke’s eyelids if closing them had any effect on his ability to see. As it stands, his vicarious vision remains unhindered as he considers the cut of Kuramochi’s silhouette against the horizon, awash in golden hues and the glint of refracted light until he appears almost unearthly, almost as evanescent as the mushi themselves. 

A wave crashes and stretches towards them across the sand as far as it can reach, and Kuramochi blinks the awe out of his face. A wolfish grin splits his lips. Kicking up sand in his haste, he throws one hand out to grab Ryousuke by the wrist and charges forward, discarding his sandals along the shore. 

Ryousuke can’t help the noise of alarm that escapes him. “What are you doing?” he demands. 

“C’mon, Ryou-san!” Kuramochi grins back at him, all blinding teeth and winning smile. “Let’s swim!”

“Are you crazy? It’s going to be freezing this time of year.” Ryousuke digs his heels in, but the sand offers less resistance than he needs to beat Kuramochi’s enthusiasm. “Kuramochi, I’m serious. Stop!”

He’s just able to drop his supplies and slip out of his own sandals before they hit the water and the tide trips them up, sending them tumbling forward into the icy water face first. 

It soaks his kimono through almost instantly. Ryousuke manages to slip his hand from Kuramochi’s vice grip and throws it out in front of himself, digging his fingers into the sand and forcing his head up and out of the water. He breaches the surface, gasping for a breath he hadn’t had time to take before he’d been so abruptly submerged, and whirls around to scowl at Kuramochi. 

Kuramochi erupts from the waves with a yelp. “So cold!” he wails, struggling to stand against the weight of his soaked clothes. 

Ryousuke splashes at him, unsympathetic. “I told you, you idiot.”

Kuramochi ignores him and falls right back into the water. Ryousuke clicks his tongue and gets to his feet. He turns around, fully intent on marching to shore and finding somewhere to dry his clothes, when a tug on the hem of his kimono pulls him back into the sea. 

He coughs when he comes up the second time, his nose and throat burning against the seawater. “Kuramochi!” he snaps, properly upset. 

Kuramochi, the cheeky bastard, just laughs. “What’s wrong, Ryou-san? It’s just water!”

“And I’ve half a mind to drown you in it!” Ryousuke retorts sharply, surging forward with a frustrating lack of grace. Kuramochi ducks out of the way as Ryousuke lunges after him, splashing at him with a mischief he couldn’t get away with on dry land. “When I get a hold of you, you’re going to wish you were never born.”

Kuramochi pales at that, at least. “Ryou-san, c’mon.” His laugh is nervous now. Good. Ryousuke lurches after him once more. Kuramochi tumbles back. “Ryou-san, wait, wait, okay I’m sorry—!”

“You’re going to be sorry, make no mistake about that.” 

Kuramochi is not, in fact, sorry. No matter how much he insists that he is, no matter how much he begs for mercy, he can’t hide the tells of his insincerity from the mehebi, who frankly aren’t too keen on offering him a way out either. Ryousuke gives Kuramochi a nice, sharp chop over the head and an extra shove for good measure once they’ve waded back to shore. It’s not nearly enough to alleviate his irritation, but he’s too tired to do anything more than find a dry stretch of land to set up camp as the sun begins to dip below the horizon. 

A little further up the beach, Ryousuke knows the sand rises into dunes held together with beach grass, so he points them north and leads the way to a destination Kuramochi won’t be able to see for another twenty minutes. He’s freezing; now that his clothes are soaked, it’s gonna take him even longer to warm up. His sandals chafe at his sandy feet, so he collects them in his free hand and tries not to let it grate further at his nerves. His kimono grow ever filthier as they walk, stiffening with the painfully slow drying of the saltwater, and he ignores that too. Kuramochi remains determinedly silent behind him. By the time the dunes are in sight to the average eye, Ryousuke’s calmed himself down enough to restrain the venom on his tongue. 

“We’ll stop here for tonight,” he says, and then he sneezes. 

Kuramochi blinks. “Aw, no, Ryou-san, tell me you’re not catching a cold.”

“And whose fault would it be if I did?” Ryousuke clips back. Kuramochi lets his gaze wander away in lieu of a response. Ryousuke sneezes again. 

They build a fire down the dunes where the grass thins out and hang their clothes up to dry. Kuramochi offers to try his hand at fishing, but he’s no angler and Ryousuke knows the fish won’t be biting tonight, so he tells Kuramochi not to waste his energy. Instead they sit awkwardly on opposite sides of the fire, stripped to their underwear and finishing off the last of their non-perishables. 

“There’s a village further north where we can restock tomorrow,” Ryousuke says. 

Kuramochi latches onto the olive branch with obvious relief. “I’m not sure we’ve got much money, or anything substantial for trade.” He leans back on one hand, eyes turned north towards a village he can’t see. “Think we’ll find some work?”

“It’s hard to say, but it’s more of a town, honestly. There’s always work to be done by the sea, even if it doesn’t get us paid.”

“Sure would be a lot nicer if it did though,” Kuramochi grumbles. He falls back onto the grass with a yawn. 

“Tired?” Ryousuke quips, suppressing a yawn of his own. 

“Physically, for sure,” Kuramochi answers, rolling onto his side to look out at the ocean again. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep, though.”

Ryousuke gets it. The first time he came to the beach with Rei, he was too excited to sleep. For anyone confined to a single small village in their childhood, Ryousuke imagines the sight of the ocean invokes much of the same existential wonder. 

“Don’t stay up too late,” is all he says. His top clothes are still soaked, but the thinner under-layer is about dry, if not warm. He folds it tightly around himself and crawls into his bedroll, back to the wind coming off the sea, determined to get warm enough to fall asleep. 

It doesn’t come easily. Even with what protection the dunes offer, he feels like the wind blows right through him. It’s annoying. The mehebi don’t like it. When he was younger, he would have complained, and Rei would have offered him her extra blanket. He’s an adult now, though, and there’s no one around to take pity on him. None that he wants, at least. 

Which is why, when Kuramochi settles his bedroll directly beside Ryousuke’s, he scowls and shoots him the best accusing look he can manage through his blindfold. “What are you doing?”

Kuramochi doesn’t even try to lie. “Come on Ryou-san, you’re obviously freezing.”

“I think ‘obviously’ is a bit uncharitable.”

“Who cares?” Kuramochi groans, flopping down beside him and ignoring the way Ryousuke practically bristles. “Look, I know you get cold easily, and I dragged you into the water earlier and your clothes are still all wet, so it’s like, partially my fault—”

“I would argue it’s entirely your fault.”

“—so I’m trying to make up for it, okay?” he sighs, not looking at Ryousuke’s face. “Just… stop being so stubborn for once and let me help. It’s not like we’ve never slept next to each other before.”

He adds the last part under his breath, and Ryousuke magnanimously pretends not to hear it. That isn’t the issue anyway.

Of course he likes sleeping beside Kuramochi. He’s been fairly forward with how he feels and what he wants from day one, in his opinion. That’s what makes it frustrating: Kuramochi justifies everything he does with some external excuse. Sleep together when they’re cold. Sit close when there’s no other space. Wash each other’s hair only when they’re already washing each other’s backs and it’s just more convenient this way. Reasonable. Not for Ryousuke’s sake, but for his own, because Kuramochi can spend months alone with him on the road but he can’t let himself think that it really means anything. 

…But Ryousuke is only human, or mostly so, anyways, and he’s not invulnerable to the things he wants so desperately. 

“Fine,” he mumbles, turning to face the fire again. “Do whatever you want.”

It’s warmer with Kuramochi blocking the wind anyway, and he’s the kind of person who exudes body heat like an electric radiator. With his shoulder pressed against Ryousuke’s spine, it’s better than Rei’s blanket ever was. 

There’s a hand rocking gently at his shoulder, and Kuramochi’s face comes into focus as Ryousuke’s pulled from his sleep. 

“Ryou-san,” he whispers, a quiet sound tinged with excitement. “Wake up!”

His head is foggy—definitely a cold then—and Ryousuke squints over at his companion with irritated confusion. “If you’re going to get me ill, the least you could do is give me the opportunity to sleep it off.”

But Kuramochi doesn’t even flinch, face bright under the shining light of the moon. Which… doesn’t make sense, Ryousuke thinks; the moon should be nearly new by now, barely more than a sliver of silver in the sky. 

“Believe me,” he breathes. “You’re not gonna want to miss this!”

He pulls Ryousuke, still waking up, to his feet, and he tugs them down the side of the grassy dune, kicking up sand in his haste. The mehebi are catching up with the rude awakening themselves by the time they come to a stop, and it’s the sudden brush of an unseasonably warm breeze against his face rather than his sight that tells him they’ve reached the shoreline. 

“What are they?” Kuramochi wonders, and Ryousuke’s sight at last expands in full, and he finds himself at a loss for how to respond. 

Cast out over the ocean for miles as far as both the eye and his snakes can see, millions of tiny lights glitter between the spectrums of gold and teal, like stars fallen to blanket the sea. As they watch, the lights ebb along the current of the wind, hanging low enough to graze the surface of the water until, much further out, they bend altogether up towards the sky as if following the curve of unfurled parchment. 

Awed, Ryousuke pulls off his blindfold and opens his eyelids, as if that could do any more to help him take it all in. The snakes shift peacefully, unperturbed by whatever the sight before them means. 

Without taking his eyes off of the horizon or responding to Kuramochi’s question, Ryousuke begins to strip out of his kimono. 

Kuramochi yelps. “R-Ryou-san! What are you doing?”

“Come on,” Ryousuke says, breathless, letting his clothes fall to the sand. “Don’t you want to see?”

The whispers of Kuramochi’s confusion barely reach him as he takes off out into the waves, this time mindless of the freezing bite of saltwater around him. The lights jump apart as he wades out, his teeth clenched against involuntary shivering. When he’s waist deep, he turns to see Kuramochi still on the shore, staring dumbly after him with an expression Ryousuke can’t parse. 

Ryousuke extends a hand his way. “Well?” he calls. “Are you coming?”

Kuramochi blinks, and he shakes that starstruck look off his face and replaces it with a brilliant smile. Ryousuke doesn’t wait for him to strip before turning out to sea again, wading out until his shoulders sink below the water, and swimming even further to the sandbank he knows lies just beyond the deep. By the time he steps up onto it, Kuramochi is splashing through the ocean after him. The water reaches Ryousuke’s naval, and he turns to see the dark trail he’s cut through the film of stars hovering over the surface. 

Not stars, he realizes as Kuramochi reaches him.

“They’re mushi,” he breathes. 

Kuramochi makes a sound that might have been an effort at Oh, wow. Ryousuke cups his hands and lifts a few of the lights to hold between them. As he does, they lift off the surface of the water in his palms, taking off weakly before ultimately falling back into the sea. 

And maybe it’s the snakes in his head, or maybe it’s something much deeper, much more innate, but suddenly, Ryousuke understands. 

“They’re carrying the water,” he tells Kuramochi, setting the remaining mushi in his hands back down. “Out there, see? That’s where the currents shift, and the air becomes warmer—they get carried on the wind up into the atmosphere where the clouds form!”

He barely spares a passing thought to the melting of his composure, too enamored with the sight before him. 

What happens when a river reaches its end?

A hand on his wrist turns Ryousuke’s beaming attention to his partner, who’s looking at him with that same glowing look in his eyes. He thinks he knows what’s happening before even the snakes do, and as another wave swells around their shoulders and pushes them momentarily off-balance, lifts them momentarily weightless, Ryousuke meets Kuramochi halfway, and they crash together as the waves crash against the shore, and the kiss makes Ryousuke feel so warm he’s surprised he doesn’t float off with the mushi up into the clouds. It’s about damn time. 

It begins with the upward journey of the rain.