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Nezumi’s legs feel like jelly when he steps off the plane. He’s not normally a great flier, has discovered this over the past few years, and the turbulence coming into The Municipality Formerly Known As No. 6 had been hellish. Combined with the stale plane air—well, Nezumi’s just glad he didn’t eat too much this morning.
He heads out under the arrivals LCD board, which is mostly empty. He’d grabbed the last available plane out from No. 3, just before the swath of cancelled flights in preparation for the typhoon. It’s a little odd, maybe, that impending natural disaster was what finally galvanized him to book a ticket. Not that it’s going to be a natural disaster, of course; the forecasts all say the storm should deflect south along the coast as soon as it makes landfall. Not much more than the rain should reach this far inland.
The rain, for its part, has already well and arrived: when Nezumi grabs his bag downstairs, it’s in front of floor-to-ceiling windows crisscrossed by rivulets of it. The sky is a mottled gray, not too dark, like the sun is still up there somewhere.
Out past the huge windows, out the sliding glass door equally buffeted with rain, Nezumi hops on a shuttle into the city proper. Which feels—weird. Using public transit feels like something that belongs to New Nezumi. New Nezumi, who has an apartment in No. 3 after living in other places besides, who has a passport and pays taxes and can mostly always sleep through the night. The Nezumi who lived here might not even recognize him now. When he gets off in Lost Town, his boots look weird against the concrete.
The wind has picked up in the interim, and Nezumi’s hair gets whipped into his mouth as he turns to orient himself on the street. His coat doesn’t have a hood, so the rain falls heavy and cold on his head, running down the back of his neck. Karan’s bakery was up the hill, right?
He ends up looping the block and doubling back on himself before finally reaching the right place. He’d never been here, after all, had been working solely off the street map of the area he’d checked on the shuttle. Shion’s address is one of many mundane details seared into his mind forever, having opted for written correspondence all these years, and eventually that knowledge leads him true. He’s on his way to soaked when he reaches the front door, the hanging shop sign swinging a little aggressively in the wind.
Nezumi’s stomach had never quite settled down from the plane, and now his unease makes its presence known. There are rows of baked goods lining shelves inside, neat and orderly. A hysterical thought: what if Shion doesn’t live here anymore? They haven’t exchanged letters in months, who’s to say he hasn’t moved out? On its heels, another thought, a deeper ugliness that’s been lurking since he boarded the plane: they haven’t exchanged letters in months, Nezumi’s doing. What makes him think Shion will even want to see him?
Fuck.
He pushes open the door with a cold hand.
For a moment, he thinks the bakery is empty. It smells lovely, and a bell jingles as he hustles himself in out of the wind and rain.
Then, from what must be the kitchen behind the front counter, a voice calls, “One moment, sorry! I wasn’t expecting many customers in this weather—” And a person appears in the doorway wearing an apron.
Her eyes meet Nezumi’s and he freezes, caught out by the flash of recognition he sees there. It can’t be anything compared to the feeling in the pit of his stomach, though, upon seeing this woman. He doesn’t often think about 16-year-old brunette Shion, that boy that had existed for only a few hours in his memory, but now it’s as if he’s materialized out of time. Karan—obviously, obviously—tilts her head at him and smiles.
“I take it you’re Nezumi?” she says.
Nezumi’s mouth flattens, wary. “How did you know?” Does he talk about me?
Karan steps out from behind the counter. “People don’t normally come into my bakery looking quite so nervous. And,” her smile gets a little wry, a little rueful, “you haven’t changed too much since you were twelve. I remember the headshot.” Oh. Nezumi’s ears burn and he thinks of the grand house they’d had in Chronos all those years ago, Shion’s room bigger than this entire storefront.
“Well,” he says at length, a little strangled. “Um. I was looking for Shion.”
Karan blinks as if startled and says, “Oh, of course, I should tell you—Shion’s not here right now.” And just as Nezumi feels the bile rise in his throat, the oh god I was right, she continues, “He’s out in the West Block. Where you used to live, I believe. He said he was going to try and shore it up before the storm hit. He should be back soon enough, if you’d like to wait?”
He’s at the bunker? The first thing Nezumi feels is, bizarrely, a prickling possessiveness. He hadn’t considered Shion going back to that place without him, touching his books, rearranging things in the home that had kept Nezumi safe all those years. Frustrated at himself, he pushes the feeling down.
Karan’s looking at him with a gentle warmth, hands folded, and up close Nezumi can see all the ways she looks different from Shion. Her smile is a little different, her posture more confident, and the light crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes unfamiliar. Nezumi is filled with a single-minded need to see Shion.
“I,” he says, “I think I need to go find him. Thank you for letting me know, I’ll go, um. It was good to meet you.” He almost trips over his own feet turning around to get the door open.
“I’m glad to meet you too, Nezumi,” Karan says. “You’re free to come back here with him whenever you’d like.” That’s—Nezumi will have to unpack that later. He smiles and nods tightly at her, hand on the doorknob.
“Thank you.” And then, “Actually, could I leave my bag here?”
Parts of the wall are still there. That’s what weirds Nezumi out the most: the crumbling, hulking forms cut through with paved roads leading into the West Block. (The Area Formerly Known As West Block? He’s not sure what naming conventions people have settled with.) The edges look older than they are, mossy and worn, like some kind of ancient goliath had lumbered through here, instead of a few scrappy kids on a jailbreak.
The whole way down the hill from the bakery, water had been rushing in the street gutters, getting heavier and heavier. At the bottom, as Nezumi steps out into the West Block, comes the overwhelming sound of all of it pouring into the storm drains. And then, outside the city proper, the patchwork of old, shitty buildings that Nezumi remembers interspersed with fresh-looking infrastructure. There’s a network of paved roads now, but no sidewalks, so he starts plodding along the side of the street. There aren’t any cars that he can see, and he wonders who these roads are for.
The changes are almost so disorienting that Nezumi gets lost. So much had been destroyed by those final raids, and now it’s rebuilt taller, cleaner, stronger. Some of the buildings shine with their fresh concrete against the darkening sky, which is starting to roil with shadows as the rain pours.
Mostly the streets are empty, which is supremely unsettling, but at one point a kid zips past him on a bike with a case of plastic water bottles in its basket. “Where are you going?” the kid yells as he goes, “The storm’s coming!” He’s wearing shorts and flip-flops, and he looks back at Nezumi judgmentally but doesn’t hang around to hear his answer. So more of a rhetorical question, then. Nezumi has a brief moment of wondering whether or not the kid can tell he’s from here.
It takes maybe twenty minutes to get to the area he used to live in, on the outskirts amongst older ruined buildings from the pre-No. 6 days. He keeps thinking he’s going to see a familiar face on the way there, some meat seller or working girl or theater person, but either everyone’s gone, or they all share the kid’s caution and are barricaded inside.
On the news they really had only forecasted heavy rain, but the clouds look—
As if to laugh at him, a particularly strong gust of wind makes Nezumi turn and shield his face. The tops of his coat sleeves are soaked through to the skin. He picks up the pace, adrenaline thrumming under his skin. Why is Shion out here, in all this?
The buildings here aren’t quite as new as others had been closer to the wall, like development is a wave that hasn’t reached this far yet. They all have plywood over the windows. He follows a familiar path with his heart pounding, rounding corner after corner to get to the bunker through streets (unpaved) that have turned into muddy obstacle courses. He is not looking for faces anymore, too focused, peering through the onslaught of rain.
And then there it is, the shape of it, his old home. Just like he remembers, after all this time.
As Nezumi nears the crumbled foundations above the bunker, foreboding rises pungent and overwhelming in his throat. Just being here has all the muscles in his body tensing like he might have to run or fight at a moment’s notice. Slipping into old habits. His hair is plastered to his face and he swipes it back off his forehead. In all the rain, the path down to the bunker’s door has become a little waterfall tumbling with gravel, and Nezumi has to concentrate to keep his footing as he hurries down it.
The door is open. Shion? Nezumi pushes inside.
In the hall, the sound of rushing water echoes off the walls like the space is much bigger than it is. Shafts of dim blue light poke down from holes in the ceiling, especially down to the right, where it seems part of the corner has fallen in. Water floods through the holes. It’s up almost above Nezumi’s boots down here, swirling and murky and dark.
Down the hall, splashing, feet dragged down by the water with each step. The door to their old room is closed, and Nezumi has to throw his weight back to open it against the suction of the water. When he finally wrenches it free of the doorframe, there’s a swirl as the water levels equalize around a stack of sandbags that’s been propped up inside the door.
In the hall, enough daylight from outside had filtered in to be able to see, but inside the room it’s dark. Nezumi grimaces and clambers over the sandbags, blinking, urging his eyes to adjust faster. He can hear all the leaks in the ceiling hitting the standing water, drops and drops and drops all over the room, with heavier sounds coming from the direction of the bathroom. The bookshelves loom monolithic and vaguely threatening in the gloom.
Nezumi calls, “Shion?”
Nothing.
Heading in between the shelves, Nezumi navigates to the bathroom in the opposite corner of the room. Floating books knock up against his legs (the water is above his boots now, his socks fully soaked). He tries again, louder: “Shion?”
There’s a vague yell from the bathroom, and Nezumi bolts for it. Outside the bathroom door, the ceiling is crumbling, and a chunk of plaster falls right in front of him, nearly missing his head. A few scant beams of light pour through, but more than anything they reflect back off the roiling water around Nezumi’s legs, twisting and refracting and making him feel vaguely dizzy.
Inside the bathroom, just audible under the splashing, there’s a strained grunt and the sound of something bulky shifting. Nezumi stomps his way in and almost hits his head on—is that the shower stall, fallen over?
“Shion?” he says, panicked, and there’s a gasp from under the stall. It’s made of old plastic, shouldn’t be impossibly heavy, so Nezumi gropes for the edge of it and pushes it back towards the wall it had come from.
There, crouched in the water, is a human form, breathing loud in the claustrophobic space. Nezumi can see the pale outline of arms, face, stark white hair. A tremor runs through his biceps, still straining to hold the old shower back.
“Nezumi?”
Shion’s voice is—it’s deeper. Of course it’s deeper, idiot, it’s been five years. But he sounds, for a brief moment, just like that wide-eyed teenager Nezumi had rescued. Open. Heart on his sleeve. Idiot.
For all the times Nezumi had imagined this conversation, all the different things he might say, he’d never accounted for this particular scenario. He wants to extend a hand to help Shion up, he wants to drop to his knees in the water beside him, but—the shower.
As if his thoughts had jinxed it, there’s a cracking-rubble sound from over their heads, and a thunk as a chunk of what must be ceiling lands on the back side of the shower wall. Nezumi grits his teeth against a yelp as the impact reverberates above his head. His grip is slipping. “Fuck—Shion, can you—”
There’s splashing as Shion scrambles to his feet. The weight of the stall lessens as he adds his strength, and for a moment Nezumi just looks at him, eyes barely discernable in the darkness as cold water pours off the edges of the stall and down their necks. Then the two of them push it back into place. The curled old ridge of plastic at the top scrapes the ceiling, and little bits of plaster rain down, but then it rocks back into the cramped alcove it had come from. Water from the new hole in the corner pours down over where the floor drain must be. It’s climbing up Nezumi’s calves in here now.
“What the fuck are you doing down here?” Is the first thing that comes out of Nezumi’s mouth. He hadn’t meant, in any of his imagined reunions, to start off by yelling at Shion, but then he’d underestimated the sway of habit. “You’re going to get yourself electrocuted.”
Shion just stands, arms still outstretched to steady the shower stall, while he registers that question. Then there’s blurry movement as he shakes his head decidedly. “No,” he says, “there hasn’t been electricity down here in years.” He straightens, shuffles a half-step forward in the flood, says, “Nezumi—”
But then there’s a plop as another bit of ceiling falls, and Shion says, “Shit,” and whips around to start searching through the water for something. Nezumi feels off-balance, steadies himself against the wall. There’s a noise as Shion smacks something hard against his palm a few times. Then a blinding light as he turns on a battered-looking and apparently waterproof flashlight.
The bathroom looks like shit. Not that it ever looked amazing, but anything could be made worse with a foot of standing water, presumably. It’s the color of sludge, opaque, and Nezumi hopes the plumbing here has been shut off, too, or else he doesn’t want to think about what they’re standing in. Besides the newly-crumbling corner, water runs down the walls at a few other spots. The frameless mirror hanging over the sink is spider-web shattered, reflecting back the flashlight at a thousand angles. The cover of the toilet tank is nowhere to be seen.
“Nezumi,” Shion says, and he’s not even looking at Nezumi, instead peering around in the water wildly. “Good, you can help—where did I—the shower fell when I was trying to—here.” And then he’s handing Nezumi the flashlight and a roll of duct tape.
Uncomprehending, Nezumi takes them.
“Will you hold the stall back so it doesn’t tip over again?” Shion goes on, and proceeds to attempt to climb up onto the outside edge of the stall to get some height. Nezumi’s got his shoulder up against the shower wall to hold it before he can think.
“What are you doing?” he hisses again, but Shion just gestures with one hand impatiently.
“Can you shine the light up here? I’m trying to get this taped up.” As Nezumi swings the flashlight around, he notices what looks like plastic garbage bags in Shion’s other hand. Shion reaches up into the corner and stretches the plastic out over the hole. The hole which is currently pouring water like a spout.
Nezumi feels distantly like his brain is being spun around like a top. It takes him a moment to even find the words. “Shion,” he says finally, slowly, “are you trying to stop the leaks?”
“Tape, please?” Shion says, and then glances back over his shoulder when Nezumi doesn’t hand it to him. He squints down into the flashlight. His hair almost looks colorless slicked to his face like that. “I covered a bunch above the bookshelves already,” he says, sounding a little frantic. “I should’ve brought plywood, honestly, but it was hard enough getting the sandbags out here so fast. Actually—do you think we should go upstairs and cover this from the outside? If we put plastic down and then sandbags over it—oh, maybe if you stay down here and shine the flashlight through so I can see where the hole is—”
Nezumi drops the tape in favor of reaching up to grab Shion’s gesticulating wrist.
“Stop,” he says. “Look around you. Plastic bags and tape aren’t going to fix this, what are you saying?”
Shion wrenches his wrist away. “Tape, please?” he says again, voice a little ragged. When Nezumi just gapes at him, Shion crouches down to snatch up the roll where it had been floating. Nezumi watches him try and grapple with the geometry of the corner, the increasingly unstable edges, as wind whistles through the gaps from above.
After a moment, it’s too much, and Nezumi grabs the hem of Shion’s drenched t-shirt and tugs. “Come on,” he says, feeling a little crazy, “we have to go.”
Shion keeps trying, pressing a piece of tape fruitlessly against the sagging drywall. “I should’ve given myself more time,” he says. There’s a shiver in his voice, teeth chattering. “Stupid. I didn’t think it would be so unstable. If I’d come yesterday…”
“Hey—” Nezumi says, but he’s cut off by Shion yelping and stumbling down off the shower ledge as more ceiling caves in over his head. He crashes into Nezumi and they both tumble backwards out of the stall. Nezumi lands on his ass in the water, can’t get his bearings for a moment, half-floating half-sinking. And then Shion is next to him, and they grab onto each other to get to their feet. The flashlight is somewhere below them, giving the water an eerie glow.
As Shion leans down to grab it, Nezumi keeps a hold on his arm, and says, “This place isn’t that important. You don’t need to try so hard.”
Shion doesn’t shrug Nezumi off this time, just looks up and gives him a resolute glare. The flashlight’s back in Shion’s hand and it lights him up from below and reflects in his eyes and carves out his cheekbones. The sound of the downpour aboveground picks up, a white-noise rush. “Don’t say things like that,” he snaps, “of course it’s important, it was your home.”
“It was, but—wh—”
“—and all of your books are here, I should’ve moved them ages ago—”
“If I’d wanted them, I would’ve taken them! I left them behind, it’s okay!” That possessiveness from before now turned on its head, forcing distance.
“I know!” Something ragged rips through Shion’s voice as he yells. “I know, you left them behind.” And then they’re both just standing up to their knees in floodwater, clutching each other and taking heaving breaths.
“Sorry,” Shion whispers, after a moment.
Nezumi lets out a pinched approximation of a laugh, shaking his head. He puts a hand to Shion’s cheek. Stupid, that Shion is sorry, like Nezumi isn’t the one finally showing his face after five years just to try and tell Shion what is and isn’t important. But then, if he hadn’t come back now, who’s to say Shion wouldn’t have just drowned down here, dedicated to a fault, trying to patch up the walls with tape until the water—
Right. The water. Time for this later.
“We have to go,” Nezumi says, “before this whole place caves in on us.” He feels Shion’s jaw clench and unclench. “Shion. Please.”
Finally, Shion ducks his head and huffs. “Okay,” he says.
Out of the bathroom with more plaster falling behind them, out from the bookshelves, into the main room again. Nezumi takes one last look around, but it doesn’t really look like he remembers it looking, anyway. Shion hangs back, and for a second Nezumi is scared he’s changed his mind, but he’s just lingering by the nearest bookshelf, searching through the books. Nezumi can see his hands itching.
“Leave them,” Nezumi says. Throw it away. He lifts one leg to climb over the sandbags.
Shion snatches a book and then hurries to the front door. He gives Nezumi a look like he’s daring him to comment, but Nezumi just purses his lips and turns to make his way through the doorway.
Once they’ve both splashed into the hall, they wade down it quickly, past floating debris. Nezumi’s boot clunks against something heavy and he nearly trips. The door outside lets in only the dimmest light now, storm-yellow like Nezumi’s never seen it. When they get out into the open, the clouds above them are deep and dark.
The sloped path leading back out of the foundations has turned treacherous, and when Nezumi starts up it, he immediately loses traction and slams down onto one knee in the mud. He hisses as he hits a sharp rock.
From behind him comes a hand on his back. Shion has the flashlight turned off now, shoved into his pocket, and he clutches the book tight in his other hand. “You good?” he asks, having to raise his voice against the wail of the wind. Rain pelts them sideways.
“Fine,” Nezumi says, and tries again, holding onto the structural wall beside the path for stability. He makes it up with careful steps, then turns: Shion’s picking his way up behind him, but he only has one hand free.
Nezumi reaches his hand down for the book and says, “Give it to me.”
Without missing a beat, Shion complies.
Tucking the book inside his coat, Nezumi scans the area as Shion climbs the rest of the way up. It’s so far back to the bakery, and who knows what lurks in the in-between—downed power lines and mudslides and—
“This way,” Shion says. He takes Nezumi’s wrist and pulls him around the corner.
“Where are we going?”
Shion’s t-shirt is absolutely plastered to him. There’s a cut on his forearm, though it doesn’t look too deep. Is it a New Shion thing to be so unphased? He looks over his shoulder and says, “Inukashi’s.”
Inukashi’s hotel, Shion tells him on the way over, is in a new spot. A real building with real heating and blankets, a step up from their old place (“The water heater still shuts off at 10pm, though, and it seems like the place gets bedbugs every summer”). The dogs are mostly just for information-gathering now. Nezumi wonders idly if Shion still washes them.
The new place has the added benefit of being a little closer to the bunker. It’s not ten minutes before they arrive at the building, a broad 2-story with a cute cartoon of a smiling dog on a sign over the door. Nezumi snorts. He’s going to razz Inukashi good for that later.
The windows are all boarded up with plywood, and the door is made of steel. The two of them hurry to slip inside and let it slam heavy behind them.
“Jesus, do you have to be so loud?” comes an irritated voice. “Shion, is that you—?”
Nezumi turns to look across the cramped lobby. There’s a front desk—truly just a wooden desk shoved into the corner—and in front of it is a dog in a comfy dog bed, and behind it is Inukashi, staring at him all bug-eyed. Their hair is tied back, and it looks shorter than they’d worn it before. They look older.
“What the fuck,” they say.
“Hi, Inukashi,” says Shion quickly, stepping in front of Nezumi. “Sorry to track water on your floor, we—uh, we’ve been out in the storm—”
But Inukashi is standing up and heading towards them. They stop in front of Nezumi and cross their arms. They’re still short. Some things never change, at least.
“Well,” they say, squinting at him. “I don’t know if I ever expected to see your ugly face again.”
“Don’t know that I ever wanted to be in your flea-infested excuse for a place of business again, either,” Nezumi says, tilting his chin up.
“Um,” says Shion, “we just need a room.”
“Anything for you, Shion,” Inukashi says, loud and pointed and without ever taking their eyes off Nezumi. They have that icy glint in their eyes that Nezumi used to be able to read, to know when they were actually, dangerously pissed and when they were just talking shit to feel big. Now he’s not sure he can tell. “Though your guest seems like his standards aren’t being met. Perhaps he’s grown too used to life overseas.”
“God, can we not do this?” Nezumi groans. “Now, at this moment?”
“Oh, my apologies, I forgot that we’ve all been running on Nezumi’s Whims Standard Time for the past five—”
“Really? It seems like you’ve been doing just fine for yourself here without me, I don’t know—”
“Just a room,” Shion says louder, “and maybe if we could borrow some dry clothes thatwouldbegreat!”
“I’ll get you your stupid clothes!” Inukashi yells, flushed. They huff, and then tear their eyes away from Nezumi to stomp around the corner and out of sight.
Nezumi watches them go and grits his teeth against the look he can feel Shion giving him.
“They,” Shion says stiltedly, “missed you.”
Nezumi snorts. Then sighs. The dog by the desk, a big mean-looking mutt, stretches and yawns in its fluffy pink bed. It regards the two of them with what Nezumi interprets as baleful eyes. He looks back at it tiredly.
When Inukashi comes back into the lobby, arms full of clothes, they seem to have collected themself. They stride into the room and scowl. “You both look disgusting,” they say, which Nezumi acknowledges with a nod.
Shion winces and says, “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll mop in here in the morning.”
Unimpressed, Inukashi hands him the clothes. “And you will launder these.”
“Of course. Oh, one last thing though: could you send a message to my mom?”
Inukashi walks back behind the desk and slams their fist a few times on the bulky old computer monitor that sits there. “Yeah, internet’s still up,” they mutter, “I’ll ping her.”
“Thanks. Just tell her I’m safe, and I’ll be back tomorrow after the storm dies down.”
Inukashi looks up from behind the monitor, eyes flicking between Shion and Nezumi. “…Should I tell her you have company?”
Nezumi’s really starting to shiver with the sopping weight of his coat sucking all the heat from him. He wants to shower and pass out. “Sure, tell her we’re both okay,” he says. Then, at Shion’s look, “I talked to her before I came to find you. She told me where you were.”
“Oh,” says Shion, cheeks a little pink.
“Alright, sent.” Inukashi’s voice has a distinctly derisive tone, which Nezumi ignores. “Anyway–god, you really are dripping all over—here, here’s a room key, please try and fucking clean up after yourselves. I’ll charge you extra if you get mud anywhere on the bed.”
Inukashi makes them leave their shoes in the lobby on the front mat, and then shoos them off down the hall. The room they come to has an ugly rug covering an uglier laminate flooring, and Nezumi briefly entertains the thought of dripping sludge water all over the rug out of spite, but that’s very much an Old Nezumi thing to do and so instead he kicks it aside to stand on the easily-mopped laminate. The bed against the wall is about the same size as the one back in Nezumi’s apartment, which is to say, medium-small. The window is boarded up from the outside and the inside.
Shion, who had entered the room first, ducks into the bathroom to set down the clothes. His t-shirt was once white, it seems, and is now a truly disgusting mottled gray. His fingers seem to be too cold to function properly, and he struggles to pull off his socks as Nezumi watches.
“Take the first shower,” Nezumi tells Shion, “you look like you’re about to get hypothermia. Why aren’t you wearing a coat, anyway?”
Shion looks over at the boarded-up window. “I used it to plug up a crack in the bunker.” Which, of course he did. Nezumi suppresses a sigh, and Shion closes the bathroom door behind him with a careful click.
When the sound of the shower first comes on, it’s in fits and starts. Then it evens out, and blends with the sound of the storm outside until the buzz is deafening. Nezumi feels stiff and mechanical as he strips his coat off to hang on the back of the door. Then his socks, peeled off one by one, and then his pants, and then he sits on the floor in his underwear to inspect his knee.
The place where he’d fallen on the rocks is bruised and bloody, but as he wipes at it gently with his sleeve, the blood and dirt come away to reveal a comparatively small wound. Probably he should wait until he’s in the shower to poke at it anymore, for fear of lodging any dirt further in.
For just a moment, Nezumi draws his knees up to his chest to rest his forehead on them, closes his eyes, and listens to the water. He feels very young and very, very old. Under his bare feet, the low-pile carpet is wiry, and his hair sticks cold and clammy to the back of his neck. He allows himself the briefest of moments to be sad about all his books, left to drown.
What was he expecting to come back to? It wasn’t this, surely, but he can’t remember what he ever thought it would be. Something easy? Painless? Like he’d left this place a perfect time capsule and had finally come back to dig it up?
The last letter in the trail of their written correspondence was one that Shion had sent, maybe six months ago now. He’d told Nezumi about the flowering trees that had been planted around parts of the old ruined wall. He’d told him the about the developing public transit system to connect the inner city and West Block. He’d told him about a new recipe his mom had been working on, and how one of Inukashi’s mutts had had puppies, and a thousand other things that made Nezumi feel like his chest was too tight to breathe. It was like Shion was trying to give Nezumi the clearest picture possible of what he was missing, a replica fully to-scale so that when he came back, eventually, he wouldn’t feel lost, but—your voice is deeper and your shoulders are wider and you haven’t asked me a single stupid question this whole time—
Nezumi registers, belatedly, the shower shutting off, and he stands up so fast he feels a little lightheaded. Shion cracks the door slowly, and when he sees Nezumi’s legs he looks away blushing. Nezumi snorts. Truly, it’s nothing they haven’t already seen of each other from living in such close quarters, but if Shion wants to be a prude. Inukashi’s clothes are noticeably small on him, which does not bode well for Nezumi’s eternally lanky limbs.
Shion gestures to the bathroom behind him. “Water pressure’s spotty,” he says. “The other clothes are in there.”
“I don’t suppose Inukashi provides complimentary shampoo and conditioner, do they?” Nezumi mutters as he heads inside. He’s being mostly serious—his hair feels disgusting—but Shion rightly interprets his question as the spinning wheels of a mind that doesn’t know what else to say, and gives no answer.
Like the room, the bathroom is small and ugly. The sink jutting out from the wall has hairline cracks in the porcelain, the grout between the tiles is dark with grime, and the light overhead is a horrible green-yellow color that makes the Nezumi in the mirror look ten times as bad as he feels. He’s not doing the room any favors himself, either. He hangs the rest of his clothes over Shion’s on the towel rack, and turns on the shower as hot as it will go.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, when the skin has been properly scalded off his back and his hair is as clean as he can get it with the half bar of soap that had been left in the little well, Nezumi shuts the water off. He kind of just wants to stay in here all night instead of having to face Shion. What had he been thinking, going to the bunker with sandbags and tape? What kind of a priority was that? The entire bathroom is filled with steam, fogging the mirror. Shion had just gone out there, through the wind and the rain, to patch up the walls for—what, for an absent and barely reachable Nezumi? Or for himself?
But then Nezumi had shown up in the flesh. He’d bought the plane ticket and everything, no take-backs, which means he needs to get himself together and go back into the bedroom.
Inukashi’s clothes are indeed much too short: the cuff of the sweatpants hits him mid-calf and the shirtsleeves mid-forearm. They’re nice clothes though, all things considered, soft and mostly free of holes. Inukashi must be doing well, these days.
Out in the room, Shion is sitting cross-legged on the bed with a first-aid kit out in front of him, dressing the cut on his arm. Nezumi tugs the leg of his sweatpants up and goes to sit beside him.
“Enough gauze for me, too?”
Shion looks over at him, and when Nezumi meets his eyes the urge to bolt flashes down his spine again. Stupid. Shion turns back to his arm to finish bandaging it, saying, “Of course. I just grabbed this from Inukashi, they said we can use whatever we need.”
Nezumi raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Did they?”
Shion rummages around in the kit and hums. “Well. They said I can use whatever I need.”
“Perfect, then. Patch me up, Dr. Shion.” He bends his leg and shifts further onto the bed to let Shion at his knee.
There are a lot of silly little things that Nezumi will always associate with Shion. Things so mundane it frustrates him, like seeing a kid with their mother, like people who talk too much, like windows left open. But having a wound tended to by someone else has thus far been a rare enough occurrence that Nezumi thinks he can be forgiven for it, this time. When he works, Shion’s hands are gentle but confident, swabbing Nezumi with hydrogen peroxide (“Ow, fuck—”) and then ointment and a bandage wrapped around his leg. It’s raining so hard outside, and Nezumi wonders how high the water in the bunker is now. High enough for Shion to have left, if he’d been alone?
“Hey,” Nezumi mutters as Shion starts packing things back into the first-aid kid. “You know you don’t owe me anything, right?”
Shion gives him a weird look, mouth moving soundlessly for a second like he’s processing. Then he says, “You still think our relationship is about debt?”
Oh. Hot-cold shame flickers across Nezumi’s skin, for reasons he can’t quite articulate.
“It’s just—it would have been fine, if you hadn’t tried to save my stuff. It wasn’t your job, so it would have been fine. I’d never expect that from you.”
“I know that.” Shion looks away, frowning. “I didn’t try because I thought it was my job.”
Nezumi bites back a response and studies his newly bandaged knee. “Ugh,” he says after a moment, struck by a thought, “shit, wait.” He gets up from the bed and strides over to the door. His coat hangs heavy on the hook, and Nezumi reaches into the inner pocket.
The book is damp around the edges from the rain and the coat, but the pages don’t seem irreparably damaged. He hasn’t held this copy in years, and the arabesque pattern on the cover sparks déjà vu quick and visceral in the back of his mind. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says under his breath.
“I grabbed it without looking,” Shion asks from the bed, “what book is it?”
Nezumi holds the book up for him to see.
After a beat, Shion bursts into laughter. “It’s a little on-the-nose, isn’t it?” he giggles, falling backwards and grinning with his whole face. Nezumi laughs, too, the absurdity cutting the tension in his shoulders.
He looks at the book in his hands again: The Tempest. Shion’s right. It’s a bit much.
While Nezumi had been showering, Shion, in his infinite charming naiveté, had also apparently wheedled Inukashi into giving them some food. “I didn’t want to ask for too much, since they’re already doing us a favor,” he says sheepishly as he lays everything out on the bedspread. There are two single-serving containers of steaming instant rice, some beef jerky, and a half-empty bag of sweet hardtack crackers. Nezumi’s surprised there’s even two things of rice, really. Inukashi must really have missed him a little.
Shion hands one of the rice containers to Nezumi and then peels the plastic off the top of his own. Two pairs of dinged-up chopsticks rattle across the blanket as well, and they each grab one and dig in.
“Why does Inukashi have all this food and shit here, anyway?” Nezumi asks, and Shion glances up, his mouth full. “Is there a microwave hidden behind that desk somewhere?”
“Mm,” Shion says, “no, I mean, they live here. Upstairs.” Oh. For some reason, Nezumi had been picturing them going home to their old haunt this whole time. This makes more sense, he supposes.
He and Shion decimate the rations in no time, and with minimal conversation. Nezumi’s grateful for the food, hadn’t even been paying attention to his hunger, but the scene is so familiar and the silence so strange that it grates on him. Shion’s fingers are pruned, whether from the floodwater or the shower Nezumi couldn’t say, and his hair is cut a little different, a little shorter than he used to wear it. He looks tired in a way Nezumi’s never seen before–subtle, like he knows exhaustion like an old friend these days.
The plywood over the window shudders a little bit in a gust of wind, and Nezumi wonders what had gone through Shion’s head when he’d seen him at the bunker. Had he seemed like an apparition in the dark, the trick of a capricious god? Had he been happy to see him? Even now, cross-legged facing each other, Nezumi can’t tell. He thought he knew what he was coming back to, all those letters, but—
“Do you want to go to bed?” Shion asks, gathering up their empty wrappers. “I’m about to fall asleep sitting here.”
Nezumi watches him as he stands to dump it all in a garbage can in the corner. He moves like his knees are stiff from sitting, and he doesn’t seem to have combed through his hair at all after showering because it’s drying in disarray. He’s so unfamiliar-familiar and he keeps talking like none of this is weird, but still something settles in Nezumi’s chest at the sight of him.
He nods. “Yeah. Let’s sleep.”
The bed, while not large, is wider than the one in the bunker, and Nezumi’s not as restless of a sleeper as he used to be; they could probably get through the night without touching. Shion turns off the light and they crawl under the covers to the dull blue glow seeping around the edges of the window—it can’t be later than dinnertime, but it might as well be the early hours of morning for all Nezumi and his jetlag can tell. Everything seems louder in the dark, the scratch of the sheets against each other, the storm howling away outside.
For a minute, they lay there without speaking, Nezumi on his back staring at the ceiling. Then Shion says, “Nezumi,” and the quietness to his voice makes Nezumi think, thank god, I don’t have to be the one to say it first.
“Nezumi,” Shion says, “I’ve really missed you.” He’s lying on his side facing Nezumi. The window is at his back.
The first few months after he left No. 6, Nezumi missed Shion so much it felt like he’d broken some fundamental law of nature, like he was never supposed to have something that would make him hurt so strongly to lose. He had scraped and clawed at that feeling like if he could get it out of himself it would undo the damage, which never worked. For the whole plane ride over, he’d been thinking about how pointless and unnecessary that endeavor seemed now.
“I missed you too,” he says, because it’s true. “I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long.”
There’s a rustle as Shion shakes his head against the pillow. “It’s okay. You’re busy.” Which is so generous it makes Nezumi feel bad. “Do you still have that bookstore job?” Nezumi notices the careful present tense. And, well, Shion’s not wrong for it; it’s not like Nezumi’s just picked up and relocated back here. He still lives in No. 3. He can take time off work, but he still has rent due at the beginning of the month. He still has a plant he keeps forgetting to water on his windowsill. He didn’t come here with a plan.
“I do. All of my coworkers think they’re the only person to have ever heard of David Foster Wallace.” That gets a quiet chuckle.
“Oh, so you fit right in?”
Nezumi kicks at him halfheartedly, but he just pulls his knees up and laughs.
“You sound happier,” Shion says after a moment, and his voice is warm from smiling but it’s too soft, a little sad. And Nezumi thinks: does he? He hadn’t thought he seemed anything besides “wet and antagonistic” since he’d found Shion.
“It’s… comfortable,” Nezumi says, unsure. “Not being a wanted criminal and all.”
Shion hums and nods. “You never had much comfort here.”
Nezumi feels that odd possessiveness again that he’d felt for the bunker, but he can’t tell what it’s for now. No. 6? Surely not; the city lurks like a dark stain in his mind. He’s not nostalgic for it. But.
“I had some,” he says. He turns his head to look at Shion, the outline of him in the dark, the edge of his jaw in the storm light.
Shion is stock-still for a moment, and then he laughs quiet and small and ducks his head. “I really am sorry about the bunker,” he murmurs. “I feel like an idiot.”
“Did you go back there much?”
“Every once in a while, just to check on things. It felt wrong being there too long without you. But I knew there were a couple leaks, I really should’ve—” He stops himself before Nezumi can, and then starts again, an edge to his tone. “I suppose you think my priorities are off, huh?”
Nezumi shifts uncomfortably. Shion’s not wrong. “I don’t think I get to say shit about your priorities anymore,” he offers quietly.
“Wow,” Shion says, “you really are different. Five years ago, you would have given me a whole lecture about, like, living only for myself.”
Nezumi turns back to face the ceiling. His skin prickles.
“Nezumi. Can I ask why you came back now?”
“Um,” Nezumi starts. The prickling is behind his eyes now too, so he swallows and takes a second before going on. “I was just scared, for a really long time, that if I thought about this place for too long then it would suck me back in.” A beat. The rain and the wind outside. “So I tried not to think about it. And then I saw the storm forecast on the news and it just suddenly didn’t feel like that was a risk anymore.” None of this is false. It’s also not really a reason.
“How does it feel being back?” Shion asks, careful, like, were you right?
“It’s weird,” Nezumi whispers helplessly. His heart feels all crumpled. “You look really grown up, you know.”
“Nezumi,” says Shion, and then there’s a rustle and a hand on his cheek, and then Nezumi is being kissed.
It’s quiet and too-quick. Shion’s lips are warm. Nezumi’s eyes flicker closed on instinct, and when Shion pulls back he keeps them closed a moment longer.
“What kind of kiss was that?” he asks, when he can speak. Welcome back? I missed you? Sorry again for not saving your shitty old home?
Shion is still right there. His hand is warm too, and when he speaks it sounds like he’s smiling. “That one,” he says, “was just because I wanted to kiss you.”
Nezumi’s hands find the edges of him in the dark, wrist elbow ribcage, and he presses forward to hover an inch from Shion’s mouth—just for a moment—before he kisses him. Shion makes a little noise like a sigh and curls his fingers around the edge of Nezumi’s jaw.
He’s so soft, his lips, the all-over warmth of him. Nezumi missed him so much. And this, they’ve never kissed like this before, but he missed this too.
Their bodies are laying too far apart, and Nezumi has to turn and get his elbow under him to properly lean over. His bandaged knee gets pressed down into the bed as he rolls and it makes him hiss, pull back a little. Shion’s looking up at him, and at this new angle Nezumi can see well enough by the storm light to make out his eyes. Shion’s hands tug him in by the front of his shirt.
On the news, the forecaster had said we’re keeping an eye on this storm as it makes its way towards the coastline and pointed at a vortex swirling across a radar map, and Nezumi had thought I want to go back and it had felt like something real and true and trustworthy. Like something that had waited patiently, like something that’s time had come.
The storm’s path had played over and over, making landfall again and again and again. Nezumi forgets he needs to breathe and kisses Shion until he has to break away gasping.
They scramble a little to rearrange, Nezumi straddling Shion’s hips with the blanket kicked to the edge of the bed. Nezumi pauses sitting up for a moment, pushing his still-wet hair back out of his face. He is so used to holding his body carefully, sharp and controlled, like if this had been a knife you’d be dead. But Shion under him is all solidity and curved edges, the outline of his neck to his shoulder to the muscle of his arm, and Nezumi wants—
“Hey,” Shion says, gentle, and pulls Nezumi back down.
“I wanted to see you,” Nezumi says in bits and pieces against Shion’s mouth, “that’s why I came back. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Shion hums and slides a hand around the back of Nezumi’s neck. “That’s okay.” So understanding, so easy, as if he’ll just let Nezumi slip away again like water if that’s what Nezumi wants.
“Shion.” Nezumi feels a little hysterical. “You don’t have to just—you can be selfish.”
Shion stops in the middle of kissing down Nezumi’s jaw, where Nezumi can’t see his face. Quiet, he says, “I know, Nezumi. Live only for yourself, I know.”
“No, I—” Nezumi’s not sure he believes that, anymore. He’s not sure he wants to live by that. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
There are so many wants and fears twisted up in Nezumi’s chest that he’s not sure how to say any of them without having to just cut out his bleeding heart for Shion to see. He holds his body so carefully, all loose ends tied up so there’s nothing to pull to make him unravel. He meant: would you just let me go again? do you think I want to go again? did I make you afraid to hold me too tight?
He ducks his chin to press their foreheads together and says, “I just mean that you can—you can ask. For what you want.”
Shion breathes out and then in again. Slow. “I want you to kiss me.”
And Nezumi kisses him, because that’s a more accessible want. Shion’s mouth open against his, Shion’s hand clutching the hem of his shirt.
But he came all the way here, all the way back, with all the ways he’s changed in tow. So even though it makes him feel flayed open, Nezumi pulls back and looks at Shion in the dark. He says, “Do you want me to stay?”
A stifled sound as Shion swallows. “I… I don’t want to make you feel sucked back in.”
“You won’t. It’s not like that anymore.”
“Oh. Well.” Fingers curling in Nezumi’s shirt like Shion doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “Of course I want you to stay.”
It melts through Nezumi slow and warm. He feels it in his shoulders, his stomach, his fingertips. He covers Shion’s hand with his own and tips forward into him again.
When Nezumi kisses him, Shion sucks on his bottom lip with his teeth all sharp against it, and gravity swoops in Nezumi’s gut. Between kisses, he whispers, “Say it again?”
Shion’s legs shift under him. “I want you to stay.” Hands in his hair. Nezumi is molten with it. “If that’s what you want, obviously—you don’t have to if it’s not—”
“I know, I know,” Nezumi gasps, feeling lightheaded.
“But I want you to stay.”
Nezumi makes a noise against Shion’s mouth, and then he sinks further down on top of Shion and kisses him and kisses him.
The storm howls outside, never-ending. They lay there until Nezumi’s lips are bruised and sore. Shion’s hands skirt under the edge of his shirt but don’t go further, and Nezumi, for all that he feels hot and thrumming and hungry, needs sleep, too. He’s been awake for too many hours to keep track of, and he can feel it in his whole body. So eventually their kissing turns into something sleepier, slowed down and quiet in the rain-noise.
When they finally pull apart, Shion laughs.
“Sorry,” he grins, “I messed up your hair.” Nezumi brings a hand up to check: it’s mostly dry now, bunched up at odd angles at the roots. The work of Shion’s hands.
“It’s okay,” he says. He liked it.
“We should—” Shion’s jaw cracks in a yawn and his hand drops from Nezumi’s shoulder to cover his mouth. Nezumi smiles and rolls off of him to sit up and stretch out his neck. “We should actually sleep, huh.”
“Yeah. Probably shouldn’t go any further than that in Inukashi’s clothes.”
Shion makes a horrible groaning noise like he’s dying and says, “Oh, god, I forgot.”
Laughing quietly, Nezumi crawls down the bed to pull the blanket over them. He feels softer. Tired and crashing from the adrenaline of the day, the past half-hour. Shion next to him is sprawled loosely, but when Nezumi lays back down he shifts to make room.
It’s awkward for just a heartbeat, both of them laying there and mostly not touching. Then Shion tugs the blanket up and mumbles, “Hey, silly question.”
“Hm?”
“You wouldn’t have stayed if I’d asked the first time, would you.” It’s not really a question.
There are so many little balled-up feelings in Nezumi’s chest that he still does not know how to handle, how to gently pick them up and smooth out all their creases and look at them in the light. He’s been trying to figure that kind of thing out these past few years. He thinks he’s made some progress.
“No,” he says, “I wouldn’t have.”
Shion hums. “Yeah,” he says, “you had to go, huh.” Then he yawns again, laughs at himself, and scoots closer.
Nezumi smiles a little, in the dark.
“You can go wherever you want,” Shion mumbles as he tucks his head under Nezumi’s chin. “But I always like it when you’re here.” He sounds so much like himself, trying so hard to convey his sincerity. It seems kind of funny, in this moment, that Nezumi had thought him unfamiliar.
“Okay,” Nezumi says in a small voice. He curls around Shion, back into the warmth of him, and the exhaustion rolls over him like a wave. Feeling like he needs to give a reassurance, he says, “I’ll be here in the morning,” eyes too tired to stay open.
A snort. “I know.” (It’s definitely a New Shion thing to laugh at Nezumi so much, but that’s not the worst thing that could have changed.) “Goodnight, Nezumi.”
Nezumi had been able to nap on the plane for just a little bit, a brief in-and-out while they were going over the ocean. That sleep had been fraught with weird, fragmented half-dreams, an unsettled feeling clouding his thoughts when he woke up. Here, he falls asleep fast and sure, and doesn’t dream of anything all night.
Nezumi is made to mop up the hotel lobby the next morning. Dressed in his own clothes again courtesy of an early-morning visit to the coin-op laundry machines down the hall, he scrubs away all the mud they’d tracked in the night before. And, it seems, the mud of at least two or three more people after them.
“This isn’t a very hospitable way to treat a guest,” he complains loudly, leaning on the mop handle and looking across the room to where Shion and Inukashi are huddled around the desk. Inukashi cuts their eyes over towards him and he checks their expression to see if it’s okay to be joking around yet: they’re glaring but not yelling at him, so it can’t be that bad.
“You’re working off your board,” they say, “now shut up, we’re having a conversation.”
Shion (who had been the one to volunteer to mop, thank you very much—“Yes,” Inukashi had said when Nezumi had pointed this out, “but I need to talk to Shion. I don’t need to talk to you.”) is standing with his arms crossed and studying something on the computer screen. The two of them had congregated over there as soon as he and Shion had left their room.
“So if businessowners have damages,” he’s saying, “they should be able to get a lower-interest loan.”
“But not actual flood relief?” Inukashi asks.
“No, businesses can’t apply.” He’s frowning, eyebrows furrowed. In combination with the arms and the t-shirt and all, it’s kind of hot. “Which sucks. If a lot of people are affected, I can talk to Emergency Management.”
“Yeah, Rikiga’s saying it got bad at the markets on the edge of the district—you know how they’re at the base of the hill like that?”
“Ugh, yeah. Okay, I’ll see what I can do. And if they’re stingy, we can, like.” Shion scrubs at an eye with the heel of his hand. Nezumi thinks he is being too obvious, so he goes back to his mopping. “Set up some sort of fund, maybe. I don’t know. We shouldn’t have to fix it ourselves, but—”
“But we might have to,” Inukashi finishes dryly. “Not your fault.”
“You’re right,” Shion says darkly. “It’s theirs for not prioritizing getting that disaster mitigation program started. Won’t happen again, if I can make anyone listen to me.”
Through the open door, the breeze is pleasant and the sky clear, as they have been all morning. The lot in front of the hotel is full of puddles, but not completely flooded, and Inukashi had said earlier that there hadn’t been any reported injuries so far. The preparation Nezumi had seen on his walk over paying off, he supposes.
Before they leave, Inukashi disappears upstairs and comes back with breakfast: prepackaged sweet buns that they toss at each of them. “Message me when you get back,” they say flatly when Shion thanks them, “and tell your mama I say hi.” To Nezumi, without meeting his eyes, they say, “Hey, if you decide to stick around…”
Ah. Nezumi missed them. “I’ll see you soon, Inukashi,” he says. “Promise.”
It’s almost warm outside as the two of them head out. Birds chirp lightly and their boots splash in all the puddles as they walk. There are people on the streets this morning, out from their plywood-and-sandbag shelters, because this is an actual place that people live and not just the image of a neighborhood buried in Nezumi’s memory. Hmm. Nezumi tears the wrapper off his sweet bun with his teeth.
They’d decided, first thing that morning, to check out the bunker before going back to the bakery. Nezumi had pushed against that a little, just because he thinks it will make Shion sad all over again, but he kind of wants to see it too. Some voice in the back of his head wonders quietly if maybe everything will look the same as it used to, as if nothing had happened, but the need for things to appear how they used to has lessened since yesterday. Nezumi still feels weird in his good boots walking around here, but he thinks maybe there’s no way around that.
“You know,” Nezumi says conversationally as they round a corner, “I like it when you get all righteously angry.”
Shion blushes furiously, makes a vague noise, and takes Nezumi’s empty wrapper to shove along with his own into his pocket. When they’d woken up this morning, he’d kissed Nezumi softly and tangled their fingers together. He’d let Nezumi kiss him in the dim alcove that housed the laundry machines. Nezumi doesn’t know yet whether or not he’s going to stay—he has to go back to No. 3 in the short-term, at least, if only to get his things. But he thinks, as long as he’s using his vacation days, that he’ll stay here for a little bit and try to figure it out.
The weather stays too-pretty, but their surroundings get muddier as they get closer to the bunker. More of the buildings in this area seem to be empty, and a couple have visible flood damage. A cat lurks in the overhang of one doorway, pacing carefully to avoid getting its paws wet.
When they get to the bunker, Nezumi sees it first, and he stops at the top of the path. Shion stops short behind him, and Nezumi hears his breath catch.
“Oh,” Shion says.
The bottom third of where the path used to be is now underwater, the surface murky and still. Debris, leaves and sticks, float around lazily, and there’s a slight sheen of oil in some patches. And in the middle of it, the structure surrounding the front door has completely and totally caved in.
Shion brushes past Nezumi to go scrambling down the slope, and Nezumi shoots out a hand to stop him. “You’ll fall in,” he says.
Shion’s shoulder is tense under Nezumi’s hand. In the sunlight, the scar winding around his neck stands out, looking fresh and raw where it disappears under his collar. He says, “No, look, my jacket’s down there.”
Nezumi looks. Half-washed up on the rocks is a dark sodden lump that could feasibly be an article of clothing. He lets Shion go, but stays ready to yank him back at a moment’s notice as Shion makes his way down to the water.
It’s a rain jacket, dark blue. Shion wrings it out and the ripples travel slowly to lap against the crumbled bits of wall and roof.
If Nezumi had stayed here, he wonders how long he’d have kept living in this bunker. It was the first place that felt like a home, the place where he thinks he probably grew into the core of who he is. But it’s no more, so one way or another, he was always going to have to leave.
Crawling back up the slope, Shion sticks a hand out, and Nezumi grabs it to pull him up. They stand there and watch the water for a long while without speaking. Little water striders skate across the surface, enjoying the sun. Occasionally, from somewhere amongst all the fallen bits of foundation, there’s a drip and a corresponding ripple.
“Alright,” Shion says eventually, quiet. “You ready to go?” He looks lost in thought, but not too sad. When Nezumi leans to bump their shoulders together, he leans back.
Nezumi looks down at the foundation and, feeling a little goofy, thinks, thank you. And then he offers a hand to Shion, who takes it, and they turn and walk away.