Chapter Text
Kazuma falls in love at thirteen, before he knows what it means to be too young to know what he’s getting himself into.
And then Urameshi dies.
*
Kazuma falls in love at fourteen. This time he knows what he’s doing. He’s older now. More mature. Wearing life experience like a badge of honour branded over his heart, like a necklace of ice shards hovering over his throat.
This time — he’s really been through it, this time. Years and years crammed into a few short months. Middle school is as good as a loss with all the days he’s skipped to catch trains going nowhere without paying the fare. He’s been getting in fist fights again, bloody knees staining his uniform again because not even the afterlife can contain boys with gun barrels for hands and bullet storm souls.
Right now, Kazuma doesn’t bother thinking about how all his paths seem to begin and end in a common factor. He doesn’t think about what it is or what it means. He let Urameshi use his VCR because he was curious, like how he lets Urameshi steal the last sip of his milkbox when they’re skipping, like how he lets Urameshi always walk a half-step ahead.
“Yukina,” he murmurs, something creaking inside his ribcage, probably his cracked ribs below where she rests her hand, so cold it almost burns. Her touch is so almost-hot that it distracts him from the way his bones feel like they’re curling in on his lungs and threatening to punch right through. “Please don’t hate us.”
Kazuma thinks he knows everything, now. He thinks he knows the sadness in her eyes when she looks at him, her chin down, her hands overlaid over his ribs trying to skewer him from inside.
“They’ll heal stronger,” she murmurs instead of replying. It’s not her fault. He’s already said the same thing three times, the plea in his voice rising each time like bile. It’s simply a fact — maybe you’re old enough know everything this time, but maybe there’s also a youkai kneeling beside you, touching you more tenderly than any human ever has, enough that it hurts because no one knows what that is like — to be held in the hands of something other and forced to stand in the face of a sentiment that you only every understood to be human. No.
No one knows what it is like to be looked upon by a youkai with pity. No one should.