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“What do you mean I’m not human?” Natsumi asks. Her grandfather exits the room a bit too quickly, which she currently does not have the brain space to deal with.
“A human using my powers kills them,” Kivala replies, far too happy about the prospect. “I knew I liked you!”
Natsumi stumbles back. Yuusuke catches her.
Right. Yuusuke. And Tsukasa.
It’s not like she’s the only one here who isn’t (fully) human. It’s not like she’s ever held it against them. Takumi, Wataru, Mayu… it’s nothing new.
(It’s just strange, to realize it about herself, reminds her of the questions without answers she has for her grandfather.
Reminds her that she has a World, far away. One that she doesn’t know the fate of, when the premise of their journey had already been a lie. Friends and innocents still trapped on the edge of absolute annihilation.)
“Does that make her a Fangire?” Yuusuke asks, as Natsumi gratefully pushes herself back to standing. Kivala giggles.
“Nope,” she says. “Natsumi doesn’t taste like another demon, she tastes like fruit!”
“Why do you even know what demon tastes like?” Daiki questions.
“I’m a cultured lady,” Kivala replies, explaining nothing. “I just figured I should tell you, since we’ve worked together so much.”
“Then my World was…”
“Perhaps less normal than you thought,” Tsukasa replies. “For a certain definition of normal.”
Natsumi sighs, sits next to him on the couch. He immediately places his legs on top of her.
(A small part of her thinks, quietly, that she’s slightly glad. Maybe her World had a Rider. Maybe it really is okay now.)
(Another part considers: maybe that’s why a twin of her World was taken over by monsters.)
She hopes it isn’t the conversation that spawned it, but that night she wakes up to Yuusuke tossing and turning in the night. Between him and Tsukasa, she’s the first to wake, so she wakes Yuusuke in turn as Tsukasa and Daiki stir behind her.
He jolts awake.
“Tsukasa,” he says before his brain can catch up with him. “Oh…”
“Are you okay?” Natsumi asks.
“Y-yeah,” Yuusuke replies. “Just a nightmare.”
He doesn’t have to say what of, not when his silence gives that away. It haunts all of their nightmares still, she thinks.
(The Rider War.)
But then, Natsumi had not been forced into or cast in the role of a monster. She had even been the victor, she supposes.
(She wonders, does she have such a form, such abilities? Was it genetic or had her grandfather done something or both?)
(She wonders, like she always does when the thought comes to mind, if her grandfather really is her grandfather.
But, like always, she pushes it from her mind.)
He’s clinging to her, with shaking hands. She lets him. It’s easier sometimes to hold on, calm, not talk about it. If he chooses to, they’ll all listen.
He doesn’t, though he lets Tsukasa come around the other side to hold him. No fears, only the pain, and the knowledge that it wasn’t the end, was okay in the end.
For Natsumi, selfishly, it’s a distraction. Her sleep so shallow that this feels easier.
She doesn’t think she sleeps at all, the rest of the night.
“You still thinking about what the bat said?” Daiki asks. Natsumi turns in surprise. Daiki’s smirking behind her with knowing eyes.
“I’m fine,” she says. “It’s not… new.”
“Probably a shock, though,” Daiki says. “Seems your World’s a bit darker than you thought.”
He’s projecting, and she knows it, but the words hit home. She still misses her World, though Tsukasa can’t find it. But to find out her World, perhaps, had more darkness than she knew… a worrying thought.
“I guess so,” she says. Daiki still hasn’t moved, though his expression softens.
“You’re still the same Natsumelon,” he says. “I wonder what treasure is hidden on your World, though.”
I’m sure you’ll return one day. I hope it goes better than it did for me.
Natsumi smiles, slightly. Daiki pushes himself from the wall before she can thank him.
“Well, I’ll be going then,” he says, with a wink. “See you soon, Natsumelon.”
Oh, he’s going off. That would explain why he hadn’t left with the others.
“Come home safe,” she says. Daiki smiles the off-kilter one he still gets at honest affection.
“Naturally,” he says.
They finish in this World. A World of heroes, safe in their own story. She wonders if any World will ever feel like those first nine, maybe ten eleven twelve, like a tiny key to the story of the small World she’s built in place of the ones they’ve all lost in different ways.
Like… connection, inherent and long lasting.
Her hand freezes on the backdrops’ chains. Tsukasa and Yuusuke look to her.
“I feel like we’re close to something,” she says simply. “I can’t explain it.”
“Should we wait?” Yuusuke asks. Natsumi shakes her head.
“It’s probably nothing,” she says. She’s still off-kilter from the non-human conversation, probably.
The next World they visit is civilian.
For the first time in years, Natsumi wakes from a dream she knows to be prophecy. A Rider, black and yellow and a red stripe through one eye. A machine, with darkness flowing out…
She watches, and the darkness turns, inexplicably, to rot.
She wakes slowly from it, unlike Yuusuke just one night previous, and she wonders why the thought makes her want to cry.
She’s probably overexaggerating though - it was far less clear than her dreams of the Rider War, after all.
She hears shifting beside her.
“Natsumikan?” Tsukasa asks. She blinks, in the darkness of night. She’s always seen far too well in darkness. “Is everything alright?”
“I don’t know,” Natsumi admits. She can see the sheen of his eyes. He takes her hands.
“Then we’ll find out later,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Natsumi says once more, before sighing. “Let’s just go back to sleep for now, okay?”
“… of course.”
She hopes he doesn’t pry too much, in the morning.
They spend nearly a week, relaxing in this World, before they move on.
And Natsumi senses it immediately: something has been set in motion. She just wishes she knew what that something was.
“I’m gonna head off,” Daiki says. “Can’t spend all my time following you guys around.”
Natsumi nods.
“Stay safe,” she says, with more weight than she usually does.
“I alway do,” Daiki replies.
And Natsumi looks at the chain of the backdrops and thinks… I don’t know if any of us do it enough.
(It’s just a normal World, for now…
The meaning will come later.)