Chapter Text
There was heat lightning in the sky that evening. Kaburagi kept pointing at it as they pedaled up the mountain road, giving occasional shouts and whoops as a particularly impressive one rumbled in the distance. It wasn't close, which was the only reason Danchiku had agreed to travel up here with him tonight. There was an overlook off the footpath, and watching the clouds light up the sky over the city lights did sound interesting to watch. They'd taken this path before dozens of times.
They rode their bikes to the highest point on the road, passing a few parked cars on their way. They left their road bikes behind when started up the narrow footpath. The sun was behind the distant clouds, and everything was much darker than usual at this time of day. Kaburagi had a flashlight, but navigating the path was getting difficult. Danchiku had just suggested that they start to head back when they heard the screams.
They both froze on the spot, facing toward the noise. It didn't sound close, but it didn’t sound particularly far away, either.
“Wh...what is that?” Kaburagi asked, holding his flashlight straight out in front of him. Thunder rumbled at that moment, masking another sound behind it, shrill and clear.
“I...I don’t know,” Danchiku replied. The cries were intermittent now, but he could still clearly hear loud, frantic crashing through the underbrush. He couldn’t tell if it was coming closer or not.
“Is it a bear?” Kaburagi asked, starting to sound panicked. “Should we climb a tree?”
“No, bears can climb trees, too - "
“What about our bikes? We can double back...should we run?” He looked over at Danchiku. “Maybe we could outrun it…”
"Maybe...if we’re going downhill - "
A third voice interrupted them.
“No. Don’t go that way.”
There was someone else on the path. Kaburagi turned his flashlight on the figure, who brought up a hand to keep the light out of his face. Danchiku could make out dark, wild hair sticking out in all directions. He looked a little taller than them, but not by much.
“There’s a spot...up farther." His hand lowered, revealing a young face - he didn't look much older than a high schooler. His eyes were dark-rimmed and angular, his pale irises flickering between the trees and the ground by their feet."We’ll be safe from bears up there.”
"Are you sure?" Kaburagi asked. His flashlight beam had moved to his torso. His arms were thin, ghostly white in the harsh light. He wore a striped shirt and ripped jeans.
"Yes." His voice wasn't very loud. He gestured up the path and turned away from them, glancing over his shoulder. "It's this way."
Kaburagi gave a concerned glance back at the screams still coming from the woods, fainter now, then quickly fell into step behind their mysterious guide. Not knowing what else to do, Danchiku did what he'd always done - he followed Kaburagi.
Eventually, the noises behind them faded entirely. Danchiku was suddenly very conscious of the sound his own group was making. He tried to adjust his footsteps and avoid the dead leaves on the path - but Kaburagi didn’t seem to notice, and was stomping along, making enough noise for the both of them. Their companion, on the other hand, was walking with silent steps.
"So…" Kaburagi asked. He tried to keep his flashlight forward to help navigate, but their guide seemed to have no trouble finding his way on the narrow path. "Are you up here hiking too?"
"Yeah."
Now that he was closer, Danchiku noticed that the stripes of his shirt seemed to be...off, a bit. After careful staring, he realized that one of the sleeves had been torn, making the stripes on his arms uneven.
"Do you live around here?" Kaburagi kept the conversation going.
"No. I'm visiting."
"Oh...okay," he jumped at a sudden noise, far behind them. "What was that? It sounded like a howl!"
"It's probably a bird," he said. His voice was flat - it reminded Danchiku of a disinterested student, picked to read out loud in class. "Some of the owls around here can sound like that."
"Really?" Kaburagi said. His flashlight danced across the figure's back. Danchiku noticed grass stains on his elbows. "You know a lot about nature."
"Thanks."
Danchiku took a longer look at the dirt caked around the cuffs of his jeans with a sinking feeling.
“You said...you’re up here hiking?” Danchiku asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a good area.”
“Then why…” Danchiku swallowed. His mouth felt too dry, suddenly. “Why aren’t you wearing any shoes?”
The group kept moving, but Danchiku received no answer. Instead, the stranger looked over his shoulder, the grin on his face stopping Danchiku in his tracks. His teeth were jagged, like broken eggshells.
Then, he looked over at Kaburagi . “Come on. It’s not much farther.”
Kaburagi followed him. Danchiku, after a pause, followed Kaburagi . Neither of them had been this way on the path before.
The boy led them into a small clearing, their footfalls growing quieter as the terrain changed over from dead leaves to pine needles. Danchiku could smell it in the air now, too, conifer trees encircling the open area. Danchiku glanced at the nearly-full moon poking just above the treeline. It was glowing orange, and it silhouetted a small structure up ahead.
There were no walls on the building, only wooden columns to hold the roof up. A few more steps across the clearing and they were underneath it. He stepped under the overhang onto concrete, glancing around at tables and benches, built into the floor.
“It’s just a picnic place,” Kaburagi said, craning his head back to look at the open scaffolding of the ceiling. “How’s this supposed to keep us safe from bears?”
“It’s not,” Danchiku whispered, noticing that the other boy had stopped moving completely.
He was facing him. His head was lowered.
“Oh...you figured it out." It was nearly pitch black under the pavilion, but Danchiku could see the glint of teeth in his smile. He was still speaking slowly. “You know something’s wrong. Don’t you? You’ve known for a while. I could tell that...”
He breathed in through his nose so sharply that his entire head pulled back. The exhale shook his body.
“Oh...it's getting stronger. That scent is...it's getting stronger.. ."
He was breathing raggedly, sniffing hugely through his nose each time. It looked strange, unnatural - Danchiku had never seen someone breathe like that, faster and faster, like he was trying to get himself worked up. The boy stepped forward, his sharp eyes widening, and for the first time Danchiku noticed that they glowed yellow.
"I can smell it. You're so scared ."
Danchiku's hand brushed one of the tables as he stepped back, but the other boy just followed him into a shaft of moonlight, his grin widening. He tilted his head, cocking an ear toward him.
"Can you hear it? Your pulse?” His shoulders were moving up and down, rapidly, with his odd breathing. Somehow, he'd gotten within arm's reach of him. “Your heart is going so fast . Faster...faster...listen, can you hear it? Can you? Listen! Every second...I can feel it!”
The hand moved out lightning quick. It grabbed Danchiku’s wrist and squeezed , thumb pressing just below his hand, hard enough for Danchiku to feel his own heartbeat through it.
"I can….feel -”
In one jerky motion, he lifted Danchiku’s wrist up to his face and ran his tongue along the vein, licking a stripe up the underside of his arm.
Kaburagi grabbed him. A blur out of nowhere, slamming into him from the side and locking his hands in his shirt, yanking him off. They struggled at arm’s length before both of them hit the ground. The other boy rolled over until Kaburagi had his back to the floor, then leaned over him, head dipping down to his neck, and then Kaburagi was screaming like Danchiku had never heard before.
Danchiku felt cold concrete throbbing against his palms. He was on the ground, too - he must have fallen back, although he couldn't remember that happening. From this angle, Kaburagi's face was hidden behind the other boy's mass of hair, his head wrenching in place just above Kaburagi's shoulder. He was still screaming, a raw and desperate sound with no words.
Danchiku couldn't move.
And then, the screaming cut off as abruptly as if someone had yanked out a stereo cord. The figure kept moving.
Danchiku couldn't do anything more than a video camera that had been dropped on the ground. He felt compelled to watch, record everything in front of him, his eyes as unblinking as a camera lens. He couldn't hear anything except his own pulse thrumming in his ears. It was too silent. Someone had muted the scene in front of him, and now it felt even more wrong than before.
The boy picked his head up.
Dark liquid dribbled out from between his teeth. It was already coating his mouth, splattered over the lower half of his face, running lines down his neck. He made no move to wipe it off. Instead, he raised his chin and looked over at Danchiku with bright yellow eyes. He let that same, broken grin split his face. His expression looked euphoric.
Slowly, in a way that looked almost careful, he leaned back over Kaburagi's shoulder. It was too dark to see what he was doing, but there were noises this time. They were quiet, and wet - he heard something that sounded distinctly like the smacking of lips. The silhouette of his neck was visible, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.
He kept doing this. Kaburagi's limbs were twitching before, but they had stopped now. The other boy kept moving his head. His arms and legs leaned closer, like he was trying to get a better angle. He made noises with his mouth that sounded like someone chewing their gum too loudly.
And then, a figure appeared to his right, crashing out of the treeline like thunder.
Danchiku’s eyes could barely follow what happened next. There was a person, a long-haired silhouette that hurled itself at the stranger and twisted, midair, into something else entirely. Their shape instantly became something bigger, something with four legs and teeth, and the stranger barely had time to raise his arm in defense before the beast landed on him.
It sunk its teeth into his outstretched arm and yanked him off Kaburagi with one sharp twist of its head. Danchiku could see the whites of his eyes as he struggled back, kicking out and clawing with his remaining limbs. He could just barely make out the shape of a dog with pointed ears and a tail in all the commotion, and heard a sudden, very canine-like snarl.
One of the blows finally connected with the dog's face, breaking the hold, and the boy rolled over in the pine needles, trying to get away. But before he could manage to stand up, the dog bit down hard on his leg and dragged him back down, shaking him like a ragdoll. It reminded Danchiku distinctly of when his own tiny dog at home had gotten hold of a chew toy and was shaking it, back and forth, its head a blur.
He kicked out again, and the wolf released him. He scrambled on fours until he got back to his feet, shaking off the limp, and ran like the devil was chasing him. The dog stayed right behind him, his jaws audibly snapping at his heels as they both disappeared into the woods.
The crashing through the underbrush gradually died off. When it was gone completely, the night felt eerily silent - as if for one moment, none of it had ever happened. But a glance downward at Kaburagi's body jolted Danchiku back to reality.
It took him another moment to stand up, to remember that his legs could work and that he wasn't just a pair of eyes, watching everything. He felt a pit in his stomach growing deeper with every step.
He didn't want to look.
Every slow, deliberate step, an eternity until he was by his side. He could finally see him clearly.
"Issa… "
There was a gaping hole where his throat should have been. His mouth was open, his chest moving up and down, but no sound came out of him. He looked like a fish pulled out of the water, silently gasping for air.
Danchiku reached out for the wound on his neck, knowing vaguely that he had to help him, but not knowing how. The blood felt warm under his fingers. There was something he had to do with pressure that he couldn't remember right now. He had to do something.
"Issa," he said again, the word tumbling from his mouth, "Issa… ."
The blood kept leaking out of him, between Danchiku's fingers. There was a mess of gore around his shoulder, too, and the concrete was stained with it, a dark pool slowly growing wider.
"Issa… "
A shadow fell over his outstretched hands. He looked up and was startled to see the dog had returned. It took his breath away to see the animal up close - he'd never seen something this big that wasn't behind the bars of a cage. But here it was, wild, a huge hulking mass of hair and hot breath, blood staining its white muzzle. Its eyes were amber, and locked on him.
He realized then that it wasn't a dog, but a wolf.
A golden wolf.
"Stop. You can't help him now."
It took Danchiku a moment to realize the voice had come from behind him. At the same moment, he felt hands over his wrists, gently pulling him back. His weight shifted and he stumbled backwards, his head bumping the chest of the figure crouching behind him. He heard a low voice from above his head.
"Are you going to try?"
Danchiku craned his head enough to see the profile of the figure above him. Long, dark curls curtained his face. His black eyes were looking straight ahead.
The wolf made no movement, but the man made a click of his tongue like he'd understood.
"Okay." The grip around his hands tightened as he started to pull Danchiku to his feet. "Come on. You're not watching this."
He got one final glance at the wolf, poised like a statue over Kaburagi's body, before the man steered him away back toward the forest path. Danchiku walked beside him like his body was on autopilot. In no time at all he was back in the tree cover, the pavillion just a memory behind him.
Danchiku could only hope his new guide was more trustworthy than the last. The man kept looking over his shoulder, scanning the path in front of them. Outwardly, he looked spooked, unsettled, stands of wispy hair nearly standing on end from his head. Danchiku couldn't get a guess on his age - anywhere from college student to 30s felt likely. His jacket was just as dark as his hair, and Danchiku didn't take his eyes off him for fear of losing track of him in the darkness.
"Is...is that…" The man shot him a dark look the second Danchiku started to speak, but he couldn't stop himself from asking. "Is that wolf going to help Issa?"
It felt ridiculous to say out loud, and he couldn't explain why he felt it. It was something about the way the wolf had looked at him, looming tall from Danchiku's position on the ground. It had stayed over Kaburagi like some sort of guard.
"Yes, but…" the man seemed distracted. His eyes kept scanning the path. "He'll try."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing. Better if you don't know." He took another look at Danchiku's shell-shocked expression and quickly added, "Er...I'll tell you more when we're out of here. Promise. But we have to get off this mountain first."
Danchiku swallowed the rest of his questions. Instead he asked. "Who are you?"
"Teshima Junta," he said, looking back over his shoulder with a smile that was horribly out of place. "Bad circumstances, but...nice to meet you anyway."
"Nice to meet you," Danchiku mumbled, his lips forming the words on habit. He could barely focus on the path. His thoughts had stayed behind in the clearing.
The strange man, Teshima, shouldered off a backpack and started to dig around in it.
"I forgot - here, rub this on every inch of you that you can. Skin, clothes, hair…" he gave Danchiku a handful of a leafy, wild-looking plant. "It'll make you harder to track."
Danchiku did as he was instructed. The smell wasn't pleasant - it reminded him of the candles his mother would light on the porch during summer nights to keep the mosquitos away. Teshima gestured for him to throw it aside when he was done.
"Come on," he said, encouraging Danchiku up the path. "It's more important to move quickly than to move quietly right now."
Danchiku fell into step behind him, bent double, the summer air pressing down oppressively on his neck. It felt like the night itself was chasing them.
He jumped nearly a foot backwards as two red lights suddenly appeared in front of him, blinking twice. Teshima mumbled a "sorry" and put the keys back in his pocket, heading around to the side of the pickup truck that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Danchiku climbed into the passenger side, the metal of the car door still feeling warm under his hand. The air inside was hot and stagnant.
Teshima locked the doors the second he was inside, before he has even started the car. The radio switched on as the engine rumbled to life under him. Teshima cursed quietly and quickly cut the sound off. As Danchiku trained his eyes along the road, a thought struck him as suddenly as if it had dropped out of the sky.
“Our bikes,” he said.
Teshima was already steering the car onto the road. “What?”
“We...we left our bikes up here. Along the road.”
Teshima was looking at him strangely. “We’ll come back for them when it’s light out,” he spoke, slowly, before turning his eyes back to the road. Danchiku felt his throat constrict - it hurt to swallow. He couldn’t explain why it felt so important to get them now, in spite of everything. It just seemed wrong to leave them there.
Their bikes.
Issa’s bike.
He kept his eyes on the road all the way down, but he never saw it.
He had no idea how long the drive lasted. Time didn't seem to feel quite real, like the moths that kept appearing in the headlights and smearing themselves on the windshield. The familiar road had long since changed into something stranger, one he didn’t know. Teshima must have been taking side roads and staying in the woods. It was only after a particularly large bump that he realized he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He reached for it automatically, with limbs that were strangely heavy. He was distantly aware that his palms still felt cold - like some part of him was still lying on the concrete in the pavilion. He brought his icy hands together after the seatbelt clicked into place, and realized his fingers were sticky.
"Oh shoot," Teshima said, leaning over to the glove compartment by Danchiku's knees. "In here, there's...napkins, I think...get that off your hands."
He'd forgotten about it, somehow. He wondered vaguely if he'd gotten any blood on the car door, or on the upholstery. He felt queasy as he tried to rub the stain off his hands. The napkin stuck to it and tore.
"I've got some water...somewhere…" now he was digging around in the backpack on the middle seat. "Here, you should be able to get it off with this."
Danchiku rubbed the damp napkin over his hands robotically, feeling a weird guilt he couldn't explain. It almost felt like he shouldn't wash the blood off his hands, that it would be bad luck…that maybe, this was the last piece off Kaburagi he had left.
He balled up the dirty napkins and shoved them into a cupholder like he was shoving his own thoughts from his head. Teshima was checking between the mirrors somewhat obsessively. Danchiku wanted to ask him more questions, but some part of him felt almost afraid to - like the wolf was some sort of fragile magic, and that it would fall apart if he kept picking at it. And so he spent the rest of the journey silent, picking at the dried blood that remained under his nails.
Just as the road was getting so bumpy Danchiku thought for sure the teeth would be knocked out of his head, the car stopped. He thought he saw Teshima breathe a sigh of relief as he turned the key.
Danchiku couldn't get a good look at the house as they walked up to it, even as the porch light automatically switched on. It just looked like a small cottage, with flowering plants framing the door. The aroma made his head feel fuzzy, like walking through an aisle of scented candles.
The house was fairly small on the inside too. An open layout showed the kitchen in front of him, couches and chairs to his right. He could see glass cabinets stacked with small, shining objects. Teshima threw his backpack somewhere and steered Danchiku over to the couch.
"Put that throw blanket on," he instructed as Danchiku dropped himself onto the cushions.
He automatically moved to grab the blanket off the back of the couch, but still asked, "Why?"
"Because you're in shock. Er...how about some tea?"
Danchiku wrapped the flannel blanket around his shoulders as Teshima made himself busy at the counter. He didn't seem to have much room - he had to keep moving things around, muttering indistinctly to himself, but also didn't seem to have much trouble locating things in the clutter.
"Oh," he said, as if the thought had just struck him, "Is anyone expecting you home tonight? You should text them...maybe make something up about staying at each other's houses…?” He grabbed something from a jar and sprinkled it into something on the stove. “Just don’t tell them where you were hiking. I don’t think the other poor hikers made it out alive, and that's bound to be on the news soon.”
Danchiku took the phone from his pocket mechanically. The lockscreen showed that he had few new notifications, and a text from a classmate. There hadn't been any signal on the top of the mountain, and the thought that someone was commenting on his photo at the same time Kaburagi was getting his throat ripped out made him feel very, very strange.
He started to type out the message to his mom - staying over at Issa's house - knowing that she trusted him enough that she wouldn't bother to double check. It wasn't unusual for him to send a similar text to Kaburagi's mother, either, since half the time Kaburagi forgot to do it himself. He was about to hit send on the second message when the screen suddenly blurred sharply. He blinked hard to clear it and felt a tear run down his cheek.
He wasn't sure what had set him off - maybe seeing his mother's number. Or just the normal act of texting, as if there had been anything normal about this night. It didn't matter- all at once he was crying, and he couldn't stop, eventually setting his phone down so he could hold both hands to his face.
He heard a soft clink of something in front of him. Teshima had set a saucer on the table.
"Here," he said, softly. "This should help."
He reached out for the teacup with shaking hands. It felt warm, and he tried to focus on that. He breathed in the steam and smelled chamomile and mint. It took a lot of shaky breaths and tearful gulps before he was ready to take a sip, which burned. But the warmth running down his throat and filling his stomach did make him feel a little better.
He wiped his nose on the blanket. Tears were still clinging to his eyelashes. He hated that he was crying in front of a stranger. "Is...is Issa going to be okay?"
"Maybe."
In the time it took Danchiku to collect himself, Teshima had gotten some tea of his own. It was different than the one he'd served his guest - deep red, and smelling of spices. He stirred it carefully as he continued.
"Aoyagi is going to try and help him."
"A-Ayoagi is the...uh…"
"My big golden friend, yes."
Danchiku sipped more of the tea. Each swallow seemed to give him more courage for the questions he didn't want to ask. "What...what do you mean, try to help him?"
Teshima seemed to be looking for answers in the ceiling. "I'm … murky on the details myself. I know he thinks he can save him, or he wouldn't have stayed behind. But I don't think it's something he's done before."
Danchiku felt like Teshima was talking to him in riddles. Feeling slightly light-headed about it, he leaned forward and set the empty saucer back on the table. His own breathing was still shaky, but at least the tears had stopped.
The wolf wanted to save Kaburagi. He'd chased off the other mysterious stranger, and it had stayed behind with him. Maybe it was still there, even now, standing by his side.
"I didn't help him," he spoke, suddenly, as if the words had leapt out of his throat of their own accord.
Teshima tilted his head. "What?"
More words tumbled out. He wasn't sure why he was saying all this, especially to someone he’d just met, but now it was a rush he couldn't stop. "The whole time that guy was…was...hurting him, I just sat there. I didn't do anything. I couldn't do anything. I….I..."
"That's normal." Teshima said, staring intently at the cup in his hands. There was a chip along the floral-patterned rim. "Everyone always says 'fight or flight', in regards to traumatic situations...but that's not always true. It’s fight, flight, or freeze." He looked up at Danchiku. "A lot of animals do that - like a deer in headlights. It's an automatic response. It's not something you chose to do."
The words soaked into him slowly. It felt like his thoughts were buffering, a loading wheel blinking behind his eyes.
An automatic response... but that meant that Kaburagi hadn't chosen his response, either. He'd protected him without even thinking about it.
Danchiku gripped his head in both his hands, as if he could crush the guilt out of his skull.
"Are you feeling all right?" Teshima asked, sounding cautious. Danchiku shook his head, not looking up. He should be the one bleeding out in the woods right now. Not his best friend.
"You should lie down," Teshima said, his voice sounding more distant than before. Danchiku shook his head again and looked up. Teshima's dark eyes seemed to bore into him.
"I should have done something," Danchiku said.
"Wouldn't have mattered. Even if both of you had fought back, he was stronger than you, much stronger. Someone like you or I...we can't stand up to creatures like that."
Creatures…Danchiku remembered again the figure sprinting out of the woods on two legs and attacking on four. The shape of the transformation twisted in his head, spinning and spinning.
"That boy...the one that attacked Issa…" he shook his head, but it didn't stop the spinning. His thoughts felt like they were running slow.
"Is he...a, um…"
Teshima spoke up for him.
"Ah, yeah. He's a werewolf."
Danchiku couldn't keep his eyes open. His blurry vision travelled to the empty teacup on the table, then to Teshima's knowing expression.
As Danchiku slipped into unconsciousness, he had the final thought that maybe this person he'd followed home wasn't so trustworthy after all.