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"What do you mean, you won a trip?" Takako demanded, her eyes flashing dangerously. "It's exam week--you can't leave school during exam week!"
What was the big deal? Hyoue thought. A couple tests in classrooms filled with humans stinking of stress and failed occult spells, like he didn't have enough work to do *already.* But the trip had to be made, regardless of the fact that it happened to be in the Virgin Islands--quite a fabulous bit of luck, the gambler in Hyoue couldn't help but notice smugly. (Like *you* had anything to do with that, he could hear Amane scolding him. He was *lucky,* what could he say?) But the wedding was one that had been in the making for centuries, and the power families had to make an appearance to congratulate the happy couple. Or else.
So he smiled at Takako in a way he hoped was *so wildly* charming that she'd have no choice but to let him and Amane off the hook. If they were lucky, they could pack tonight without worry of a freakout from Amane. They'd have time to get there, take in the sights, get souvenirs and gifts to take back.... Plenty in time for the wedding the next week. The only problem was Takako: she was Amane's main source of instruction on how to live life as a normal schoolgirl, and going directly against a serious mandate would be extremely hard for Amane to just shrug off.
And with one look at Takako, he could tell that Amane's stupid best friend was having none of Hyoue's charm. Her grip on her juice box was indicative of just how vehement that conviction was: Hyoue would have slunk away from this particular fight just from the way her juice soared in that clear, delineated arc over the roof railing to splatter the unlucky sob standing below, the one who was clearly a substitute for *him.* But being a koma-oni had its hazards, and this was just one of the many things that Hyoue clearly needed extra pay for and never got.
Surprise! Hyoue thought sourly as he heard the substitute target do an unhappy dance of the wetly miserable-surprised.
His master's mouth was at a firm and definite un-curve. That was the look he hated--that look that meant she was preparing herself for the decisions that she had to endure. Hyoue could feel a sinking realization in the pit of his stomach that all wouldn't be smooth sailing when he hooked an arm around Amane's waist, trying to draw her closer to his warmth and also somehow over to his point of view. Instead of feeling her grow more relaxed, though, Amane's back straightened up and her brows furrowed in worried consternation.
Takako looked like she wanted to say something against the display of affection, but Hyoue glared hard enough that she remembered she had bigger things to yell about.
Fucker. Nothing was going right.
"Look," he said firmly. Better to try and head this off at the pass. "Amane has an extremely important member of her family getting married, and she really can't afford to miss going. Winning the tickets to go were just a lucky coincidence." Now they had extra funds from the village to toward some fun expenses, if Hyoue planned things right.
"What you don't seem to understand is that this is *exam week. * As in, these tests will determine if you'll advance to the next year of school or not! There is absolutely no way you can afford to miss next week without serious consequences," Takako said, her complete exasperation clear in her voice. Then she noticed that she was waving around a suddenly juice box. "Huh," she said, obviously contemplating getting a new can from the vending machine.
What *you* don't understand is that some very important people are getting hitched, and if we're not there to represent the Kamori name, we are going to be in Deep Shit, Hyoue unfortunately couldn't say.
"Takako, it's alright," Amane said calmly, stepping away from Hyoue. "We won't go. We'll stay and take the exams."
"Finally! The girl sees reason!" Takako said, glaring at Hyoue even as he squawked. Amane gave him an obviously quelling look, saying *later* silently, with her eyes. *Fine, * Hyoue sighed, and when the bell rang, he slunk as only a dejected koma-oni could when he knew his master was headed toward extremely foolish waters.
Later, at home, Amane *finally* turned to him and said, "Don't worry, I have something you need to do."
"Oh, great--something *I* need to do," he grouched, but he was secretly relieved.
Then she was so distracted, she tried to wash the rice with soap. She hadn't done that since the first time she tried to cook, and that's how Hyoue knew this wouldn't be easy on either of them. Then she said that she needed to conserve her energy so she couldn't feed him just yet, which didn't do much to make him worry less about his stupid master. And also, he was *hungry.*
"I hate to ask, but how the hell are we going to get to Kirkegaard Hill--which happens to be in the Virgin Islands, and we're stuck *here,* taking exams?" Sometimes, a koma-oni's prerogative was to be snotty.
"Wait," she said, as if that made any sense at *all.* Hyoue really knew that Amane would be the last person to take this lightly, but this wedding was important. The pending energy made the hair on his arms and neck stand on end. It made him edgy, and he didn't *like* this feeling; it made him want to crowd protectively around Amane as if just the vague suggestion that they might miss the event would hail all the bad energy on their heads before it even had the chance of happening.
They didn't really eat, and it wasn't because of the food because Hyoue happened to know he made the best grilled fish *ever. * After dinner was when Amane started to prepare. She left Hyoue out of it, which drove him *crazy*. He purposely hovered around her shoulder until she used kotodama to order him out of the room and *stay. *
And okay, it wasn't the smartest thing he could have done to keep on top of what Amane was up to, especially since whatever she was up to took the rest of the night, and she came out her room with dark circles under her eyes and a severe drop in her energy levels. Hyoue had been pacing the length of the floor the entire night, so he knew she hadn't slept a wink.
"Ready to go to school?" she asked, and Hyoue gaped.
"*No,*" he said, meaning, No, you can't do this. You can't leave me out like this.
"Well, you have twenty minutes to get ready, and then I'm leaving without you," she said, completely missing the point--not aware that there was a point in the first place.
"That's not what I meant!" he heard himself yelp, his voice embarrassingly high. "I'm your koma-oni; you haven't fed me yet so you could go off and do your own little mystical rituals that have a very high effect on both of our lives without even bothering to let me in on what's going on, let alone involve me with it, and now you come out looking like death warmed over and you just expect me to get ready to go to school with you?"
Amane blinked. "Don't worry. It's your turn tonight. Oh, and I'll feed you after lunch. I should have enough energy by then."
And then Amane took Hyoue's flabbergasted silence as assent and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Hyoue was still standing frozen with disbelief when she came back out, and true to her word, she waved him goodbye and left first when she saw that he wasn't ready.
***
School happened. Hyoue was too busy chasing after Amane to appreciate the details, but it turned out that he had agreed to three dates and gotten a severe warning from a teacher for...something or another but would have to write a sufficiently apologetic letter of reflection for.
He had to wait until they got home for Amane to give him some sort of explanation, because she'd been infuriatingly closed-mouthed the entire day.
"Takako said that I was being cruel to you," she started, and while Hyoue wanted to jump in and say something like--like--well, he didn't even *know* what he even wanted to *start* to say, so he stayed quiet, vibrating. "But... Well, I'm sorry," Amane said.
Hyoue nodded.
"But I figured that this wedding.... It was a perk that we got the tickets to go to Kirkegaard Hill, but it's not necessary to actually go there physically. Strange enough that it takes place outside Japan, but the neutral ground makes it so that it's easy on all parties to get there, however they manage to travel."
"Wait," Hyoue said. "A different way to travel?" That sounded both ominous and promising at the same time. Coupled with the fact that Amane had kicked him out and looked like she hadn't slept.... "--You've been feeding something your *dreams*?" he shouted.
Amane nodded. "I wanted to make sure to make contact, and the entity I contacted likes absolute privacy. But they agreed and so I just wanted to make sure... Well."
Hyoue understood, but he didn't feel a whole lot better for the fact that Amane still had acted the way she had.
She continued, "And I'm sorry, but tonight, it's your turn. It's the transportation price to get to the Hill in time for the wedding." Her eyes still looked bruised, and the quick sip of power he'd taken from her at lunch to appease her made him feel even more guilty now.
Dreams were powerful stuff, and to give over the spindling raw essence of your self to someone else.... It made Hyoue shudder in sympathy, because he knew that the first night was the worst, where the most initial power had to be sacrificed. And he knew that he couldn't have been the one to do it, even though he would have; he would have given anything of himself if he could to ease her burden, but this had been Amane's show, her spell to construct.
"How many more nights do you need? I'll do them all," Hyoue said. He didn't even care who he'd be giving his dreams to; it was already done. Amane had started it.
"Just one," she said in reply, and paused. "Don't you want to know to whom you'll be giving your dreams to?"
Hyoue just glared.
"I'm sorry, Hyoue," Amane said again, more gently this time. In a rare gesture, she came closer and laid a hand on his shoulder, and he couldn't help but arch into her touch, her warmth. First and foremost, she was his master, and he would do everything in his power to protect and serve her, as dense and boneheaded she could be most of the time.
"So?" he asked, relenting. "Who is it?"
"Our patron," she said. "This is part of our tribute to him, the gift of our dreams in return for transportation to the venue."
Hyoue's eyes widened. "All right," he said. "Will I keep ownership of the dreams, or...?"
"Of course," Amane said firmly, her voice forceful with conviction. "But you don't need to do this until the night before the wedding. We'll both have enough energy by then."
Hyoue still didn't like it, but he agreed. And for the next week, he endured: he went on the three dates; he wrote the letter of reflection; he studied for his exams; he pretended to listen to Takako's advice; he tried to think of dreams he could offer to feed an entire mountain spirit. But time shifted in a strange way, where events seemed to happen out of order sometimes, such that much sooner than he thought would happen, Hyoue went to bed and woke up on the plains of a grassy plain, one regal mountain his only counterpart.
And still, that's how Hyoue found himself at a loss on which dreams to feed to the spirit of Kirkegaard Hill of the Virgin Islands. It was a misty presence: immense, grounded, yet mysterious as well, and he found himself feeling microscopic in comparison to this huge presence surrounding him.
"What do you wish to give me?" the mountain asked of him, and Hyoue found himself replying effortlessly.
"My most cherished dreams, my most cherished thoughts, freely given and in exchange for transport to the celebrations to take place between two most important personages," he said formally.
And Hyoue felt Kirkegaard Hill give him invitation to start, and he did, of things he hadn't even thought to he'd be able to give so freely:
Images of Amane, first of all: first and last, really. Images of her as a child, dark and serious and blossoms and smiles behind the cracks in her mask where she was his...*friend*, but more than that, his *master* as he knew only she could be. Even with her sitting so still and solemn in the center of her family barricade, even as himself being the outsider, the failure, he knew this sense of familiarity, of belonging.
Amane smiling at him in an expression so soft and warm that he almost didn't recognize it--except he did; it was a rare expression, not an impossible one, of soft curling lips and crinkled corners of sparkling eyes. "Good job," and "I...you," a word lost in between where Hyoue didn't even need to know what was said exactly, because he *knew* anyway.
The future, of them together, stretching out forever and forever into infinity as if such a thing existed.
Those, and so much more, spiraling into the ether of immense proportion, and Hyoue didn't regret airing these dreams out to someone else at all--or at least, not to a being as solid and benign as the spirit of Kirkegaard Hill.
When it was over, he opened his eyes to see the congregation of incorporeal beings starting to take shape as he and Amane similarly began to phase into dream-being. Hyoue couldn't help but start--he could have sworn that he had only begun to relate his dreams to the mountain spirit, that Amane hadn't even started her spell yet, even, and yet there they were.
"What's important is the intent," Amane murmured to him as they witnessed the cloud maiden kiss the lake groom, promising each other eternity. "The purity of emotion."
Hyoue started. "It's over already?" he asked, dismayed.
Amane laughed. "No, look," she said. The cloud maiden waltzed in, looking radiantly happy and blushing at her lake groom, decked in lovely koi and the thousand reflections of sunsets past. "We're in dreams, Hyoue; time sometimes doesn't mean all that much in here, even if you're a lucid visitor."
She stopped, and the entire wedding stopped with her, it seemed. At least, Hyoue couldn't bear to look away when she looked at him. It was the same look he had described to the mountain, almost unbearably lovely, enough so that she started to look like something other than his master. Hyoue almost made himself shake his head to clear it, but he stopped, because the curve of her lips and the warmth in her eyes drew him in as it always did. He never had defenses for her.
"Thank you, Hyoue," Amane said, and she drew him into the crook of her arm and he breathed in the scent of the dream of a thousand beings, of which he knew his was the best one.