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It's the week of chrysanthemums blooming, according to the traditional calendar, and the one blooming in Shiemi's garden had been a pain to exorcise, a mass of flowers of all shapes and colors that had refused to respond to Shiemi's inexpert attempts, had to be sent back to Gehenna with a double concentration holy water grenade (one of these days, it's going to burn him, but Yukio doesn't let himself think about that too much).
There are chrysanthemums on her kimono today, golds and oranges. Her hair is getting longer, sunshine yellow and held back with a clip. Her smile is sunshine bright, as she laughs at the pollen and flower petals covering him, picks a leaf off his collar with dirt-stained hands.
白菊の 目に立てゝ見る 塵もなし is the poem in his head, unexpectedly. He dusts yellow pollen off the black oilcloth of his exorcist's coat, brushes it out of his hair and off his cheeks. None of it landed on her.
There's a scratchiness in his throat that refuses to resolve, even though he's trying to keep talking to a minimum (but there's classes and planning for the school festival in a few weeks and a student council meeting and cram school lectures). A thermos of tea, herbal and almost thick with honey and too much lemon and it's unpleasant but it helps a little bit, he sips it between classes, between the bitter shots of energy drinks that let him keep his attention span under control.
The tea doesn't help the cough that starts that evening, as he sits at the table in Shiemi's house, looks over her study notes and thinks she's really improved, glances at her expectant face and something aches in the back of his mind, in the back of his lungs. He coughs into his sleeve, just slightly, and her expression turns to concern and he smiles, apologizes, brushes it off. It's fine.
Yukio is tired. It's because he's sick, because his pathetic immune system is picking now of all times to start acting up, and he hates it. The cough has settled deep in his lungs, dry and unproductive, interrupting his sentences and getting sympathetic glances thrown his way. It's the type of sick that fractures his attention, throws off his senses so every nerve ending in his skin goes overactive and the pressure of his clothing against his skin, the medical mask on his face, his glasses on the bridge of his nose make him want to lash out.
He's sent home from work, told to take a break and rest, not to come back until he feels better. He's not sure if he ever is going to feel better. Rin makes okayu for dinner, like Yukio's an elementary schooler with a headcold, and Yukio forces himself to eat, forces himself to make appropriately pleasant comments and conversation and say that he'll be fine, he's just a little under the weather.
He goes up to their room early, sits at his desk and tries to grade quizzes, struggles with Takara's handwriting more than he usually does, staring uncomprehending at the crumpled lines for too long, unable to resolve them into words. He needs to focus, but the cough makes it difficult, and there's a feeling in the back of his head like a set of song lyrics he can't get rid of, something caught right under the surface, not enough to be comprehensible but enough to scatter his thoughts. He'll think about that later.
He wakes to low voices, a quiet murmur outside the door of their room. The sunlight streams through the window at an unfamiliar late-morning angle. Kuro purrs next to him, wedged between Yukio's torso and his arm, cracking one eye open in a quiet sort of sleepy awareness. Yukio is both tired and knows he overslept. The sheets are scratchy, he's short of breath, his glasses aren't where he left them (he doesn't even remember going to bed last night, he was studying and then....)
In the hallway, the voices resolve themselves into familiar tones. Not words, they're too quiet for that, hushed because they're standing right outside the room of someone they think is asleep. But the rhythms are familiar, and the sounds. It's his brother, and Shiemi.
Something twists inside him, a rush of selfish jealousy, a spasm of actual pain in his lungs. He coughs, coughs and snaps out a response to Rin's concerned voice through the door, doesn't want to see his brother right now, doesn't want to think about Rin and Shiemi together in the hallway, matching concern for someone sick forging a bond between them.
The coughing is productive, this time. It hasn't been all week, it's just been dry and rasping, but now it knocks something loose in his lungs. He coughs, and something fills his mouth, catches between his teeth and gags him as it clogs the back of his throat. He scrapes it out of his mouth, stares uncomprehendingly at pieces of something like thick white paper but softer, and a heady, cloying scent fills his mouth, his nose. A scent like flowers, like gardenias growing along the side of the monastery wall, their fleshy petals dropping to rot on the ground, bruised brown lines where people stepped on them.
The when is obvious, three days ago, that flower demon in Shiemi's garden that refused to be exorcised by her, that waited for him before scattering into petals and a dusting of bright yellow pollen. The what and why is less obvious, he doesn't have a name for the demon, doesn't know what to do next, and Kuro's pawing at his hand, catching a petal in his mouth and chewing before Yukio pulls it away, scolds the cat sìth and crushes the flower parts in his fist, stands and throws them away.
He gets dressed, brushes his hair, puts on a mask in case this really is contagious, puts on a smile in case his brother or Shiemi worry. He turns her name over in the back of his head, something in his illness-dazed mind clinging to her, to sunlight on sungold hair, to dirt-stained nails and brilliant smile and cheerful laugh, decides he's thinking about her because he's concerned about her, settles finally on the memory of a white chrysanthemum and not a speck of dust, and he coughs again, brings up more petals. He throws them away.
...qui amat tacite...
It's in Latin, when he finds the explanation, buried in research library shelves. Of course it's in Latin, of course he has to take a step back out of himself and treat this as an academic problem, ten thousand kilometers away from his actual life to tables of declensions and dictionaries of a dead language to actually understand what's going on. Everything that's caused him pain has always been like that.
A greenman variant, uncommon because of its particular choice in targets for possession, because of the fundamental ease (impossibility) of its method of exorcism. The exorcism is simple. There's a secret, buried in his ribcage, caught between his teeth like flower petals. All he has to do is speak it. He can't do that. It needs to die, never be said aloud or even thought about too closely.
He closes the book, holds it in his hands, thinks about himself as someone who loves in silence. Thinks about Shiemi, the first time he thought oh, I think I---
It had been a few weeks after they first met. It was raining, softly. They were sitting at the table, in her house, with cups of tea in front of them and a plate with herb cookies sitting off to the side. Yukio had been too nervous to try more than a sip of the tea, too nervous to take one of the cookies. He didn't know how to be a tutor, didn't know how to help guide her to understanding, didn't know then that she never really needed him. Shiemi was leaning over her schoolwork, frowning slightly, trying to decide on her answers. Sunlight through the open door, despite the rain, made more by the rain, and a shaft of sunlight fell on her, caught the edges of her in golden glow, her hair a puff of dandelion petals, even her frown turned into something indescribably beautiful in that one sudden moment. And Yukio, thirteen and completely unsure of himself, unsure of anything at all other than the sudden realization that he was going to be in love with her for the rest of his life.
He's fifteen now. He's more sure of himself, more unsure of the world, more skilled and less prepared than he was at thirteen, sitting at the table with her and trying to breathe again after he lost his heart.
He's still in love with her.
He lets himself think it, standing alone in the library stacks. He's still in love with her. Something loosens in his chest, just a little bit, it could be demonic flowers or it could just be natural tension. He's still in love with her. He's never stopped being in love with her. He's going to be in love with her until the world falls apart. He can't ever tell her.
It's the week crickets chirp around the door, but Yukio's been too busy stifling coughs and trying to pass this off as seasonal allergies to listen for anything as mundane as chirping crickets. He shouldn't be annoyed that the lie is working, that his classmates in his day classes give him pitying glances but don't ask questions, that his cram school students don't complain about the breaks in his lesson. His brother doesn't even notice something's wrong, just grins and chatters on about how this kind of feels like when they were kids and Yukio would get sick all the time, and makes him the kinds of soup and porridge that Yukio doesn't want to admit to appreciating right now.
He can't take another sick day, his paycheck can't take that kind of hit, and he tries to avoid coughing at work, tries to look healthier than he feels. It works, no one asks him more questions than necessary, no one tries to overload his schedule more than usual. Even Sir Pheles somehow manages to avoid adding on any weird tasks (and that's terrifying, but Yukio doesn't have the energy to figure out exactly how this is going to come back on him later). He gets through one day, and then another. The coughing fits are mostly restricted to the worst times, like cram school lectures or passing by his students in the lunchroom.
Or tutoring.
Shiemi frets over him, frowning, and he sips tea and lies to her. He lies gently, because all his lies are gentle, because his gentleness has always been a lie and he's always lied to her. He lies to her now, sips tea and coughs less than he needs to, feels something burning and horrifying twist in his ribcage (but that's nothing new, there's always been something horrifying twisting inside him, the breaking out into flowers and twigs is just a new expression of an innate wrongness) and ignores it. He pretends that there is nothing to worry about, and she, for his sake, pretends she is not worried.
"Okumura-sensei," Moriyama-san says, when Yukio's almost at the door to the shop, and he stops. He doesn't want to stop, he wants to go back to the dorm and collapse into his bed and not get up until he can breathe again, but he goes still, tries to remember how to have the energy to have even the most basic of conversations after the last hour of so of tutoring Shiemi left him exhausted with the effort.
"My daughter tells me you've been sick."
"It's not contagious." He clarifies. If he were contagious he wouldn't be here, would have stayed away until there was no chance of getting Shiemi sick. He hopes she understands that, that he hasn't come across as the kind of person who would be that careless.
"I didn't think it was," she says, and gestures with her pipe towards a stool. "Take a seat. Shiemi, go outside, I need to talk to Okumura-sensei in private."
For a second, he thinks she's about to argue. There's a frown, a glint of determination in her eyes that makes things twist and bloom in his chest. But then she nods, turns, grabs both of his hands in hers.
"Yuki-chan," she says, and squeezes his hands, frowning up at him. He's made her worry. His chest aches, he can't breathe. "Please feel better soon."
She leaves, and he still can't breathe, coughing brings up wads of petals in his throat, catching in clumps between his teeth, a hand clapped against his mouth to block them from escaping. He swallows them, half chokes on the soft fleshy petals but manages not to throw up, and Shiemi's mother is still watching him, impassively.
"Take a seat." She says again, and Yukio sits, trying to make the movement look natural, instead of just falling down in exhaustion. She looks him over anyways, studies him from behind her frown, and he doesn't move. He's sick, he's exhausted, any scrutiny has the potential to make him fall apart, just shattered bits of lies and flowers.
"You smell like gardenias," she says, and he doesn't know what to say to that as she moves through the shop, selecting herbs and packaging them, silently and expertly as Yukio tries not to think of growing things, of plants with roots winding through his ribcage,
"Have you used herbal cigarettes?" She asks, handing him a box, a row of neatly wrapped twists of paper tucked inside, assembled with more speed and skill than his clumsy hands could ever manage. He stares at it for a moment, then shakes his head.
"I've prescribed them before, of course, but I haven't used them."
"Twice a day, but not more. They'll help with the symptoms, for now."
He takes them, with quiet thanks. If he were thinking a little more clearly, if he were less tired, if he were less focused on getting out of there before the petals clogging his airways choked him to death, he'd wonder how she knew that, how she settled on that particular blend of herbs without a diagnosis. But he doesn't have the ability right now to wonder.
"Is that why you've been coughing?" Rin asks, as Yukio frowns down at the herbal cigarette burning between his fingers. The air in his office smells like incense, and Rin's nose has been crinkled up since the second he walked in.
"No, Shiemi's mother made them for me yesterday." He breathes in the smoke again, takes it deep in his lungs and it aches, but this time he doesn't start coughing. "It's supposed to help."
"You think it will?"
To mistake Yukio for someone who has that kind of optimism is foolish at best, but his brother has always been a fool, stupidly hopeful.
No, Yukio doesn't say. I think I screwed up. I think I'm in trouble. I don't know how to fix this.
"It can't hurt," Yukio says instead. The smoke smells like burning leaves, like mint.
"You gonna come home soon?" Rin says, and Yukio's tired and sick but he knows that tilt to his older brother's voice, the forced casualness like avoiding an injury to avoid causing pain. He hates it.
"No, I have work in a little bit, and before then I have to finish these lesson plans." He says, like breathing doesn't hurt, like he isn't exhausted from the strain of flowers growing in his lungs, the strain of knowing what would actually cure him and being unable to ever take that step.
"Seriously?" Is what his brother says in response, of course. He's frowning, annoyed, his tail puffed and lashing behind him. "You're still sick, you haven't been sleeping good, you fucked up Shima's grade on that quiz yesterday, you know you shouldn't be here!"
He's tired. His chest aches. His head aches. He wants to go to sleep. Breathing hurts. He keeps messing up easy things because he can't focus, because every part of his body aches and everything is too loud and too bright.
"Do you want to eat next week, nii-san?" He asks, and he's being too harsh, too sharp, he knows it and he doesn't care. "Because I do. And there's no money in the bank account, because I had to get two new pairs of glasses, and you set your uniform on fire and had to replace the entire thing, and Kuro had his vet appointment, and so it doesn't matter that I still feel terrible, if I don't go to work we won't be able to buy groceries for weeks!"
Too loud, too harsh, too angry, and it sets off a coughing fit, not flowers but just his body rebelling against him, sandpaper in his lungs, his throat. Rin's staring at him, with an expression that might be worry or might just be confusion (how is anyone supposed to tell, really? He never knows exactly what Rin's thinking, even when he can make an educated guess. No one ever really knows anyone else.)
He wasn't supposed to tell Rin, he remembers too late, as he struggles to catch his breath. He was never supposed to tell Rin about the money. He'd decided that after Father Fujimoto's death, after Mephisto handed them a mockingly small amount of cash as a monthly allowance. His brother knows there's a budget, keeps costs as low as he can for meals, doesn't spend money foolishly, but he doesn't know how close they always are to running out. Yukio had decided not to tell him. There's nothing his brother could do about it anyway. It's Yukio's responsibility, his job to watch their funds, to make sure there's enough between paychecks, to lie about eating convenience store bento on days when he's working late and can't possibly justify the expense. It's not his brother's responsibility to know anything about it, it's Yukio's responsibility to keep him from worrying about it, and instead he's just thrown it in his face like an asshole.
"Sorry," he says, in the face of his brother's wide-eyed silence, and then just keeps going. "I don't want to be here either, nii-san. Just... stop bothering me, and let me finish this."
It's too much, too honest, coming out accidentally because he doesn't want to deal with this, he's too tired, he just wants to go back to the dorm and sleep and not think about work assignments or demonic influence or flowers in his lungs. He doesn't mean to make Rin feel like shit, but that's the expression on Rin's face right now, that hurt sort of shock that for Rin had always led to an angry outburst and for Yukio had always led to tears, at least when they were little. But they've both grown since then. Yukio isn't as much of a pathetic crybaby, and Rin just frowns, apologizes, and leaves with an expression of determination.
Of course, Shura shows up about five minutes later. Yanks his chair back, smacks his face with her ponytail as she sits on his desk, picks up the herbal cigarette from where it's burning on the ash tray (he found it buried in a back corner of the desk when he cleaned out the office and moved in, he should have thrown it away, he didn't then) and sniffs it before stubbing it out.
"Okay, four-eyes. Talk."
"Good afternoon, Shura-san."
"Don't 'good afternoon' me, kid. And don't pretend you're coughing like you got coal tars living in your lungs just 'cause of some allergies. Come on, what got you?"
"It's nothing, Sh--"
"Bullshit," she says, over him, and just keeps talking, occasionally poking him in the forehead despite his attempts at leaning away from her and swatting her hand out of his face. "You're coughing like you forgot how to breathe, you look like you're half dead already, you smell like a garden for some godforsaken reason, you've moved past trying to sleep it off to trying actual exorcism methods, and that isn't even workin' for you. Talk."
She isn't going to stop. He won't be able to keep her out of it, she's just going to keep prying, poking at him and not letting up because she's too nosy for her own good. He just wants to rest, but she's going to hound him until she gets an answer.
But what is he supposed to say? There's a demon literally destroying me from the inside because I can't work up the courage to confess a stupid crush? Shura will destroy him for that, he'll never live it down, and she'll take matters into her own hands and force something.
A stupid crush? It's not, is it, he really is--
Roots twist and flowers bloom and he coughs, chokes on flowers behind the thin paper of the mask he's wearing as his mind for just an instant slides close to the idea of what it really is.
Shura pokes him in the forehead again, frowning, as he catches his breath again.
"I didn't say think, four-eyes. I said talk."
He reaches past her, grabs the book out of the midst of the other books lined up neatly on his desk, and hands it to her, opened at the bookmarked page.
"Here."
"Latin? Seriously?"
"Aren't you based out of the Vatican?"
"Stop being an asshole, four-eyes." But she takes it, frowning over the letters, occasionally checking a translation app on her phone. She doesn't stop frowning as she closes the book, shoves it back into its former spot on his desk.
"You're not gonna beat this thing, kid."
"I didn't ask for your advice, Shura-san."
"I'm not giving you advice, I'm giving you a diagnosis."
"That's not a diagnosis, that's a prognosis."
She hits him in the shoulder for that comment, because he's being a stupidly pedantic nerd and they both know it. And they both know that she's right, that he's not going to beat this, the end of the page is looming closer, words he doesn't let himself think about, the inevitable outcome if he doesn't find a way around this or break down and say the thing he can't ever let himself say.
"It's Moriyama, yeah?"
".... yes." He hears himself admitting, almost without permission, like the exhaustion is getting the best of him and he just wants some kind of outlet. Something loosens in his chest, roots slipping free, and he can breathe just a bit more easily. Shura shakes her head.
"You confessing today or tomorrow?"
"What? Shura-san, that's not happening. I'm not going to--"
"Yeah, you are." She says, and kicks him in the shins as she hops off his desk. "Either that, or I tell her for you."
"Shura-san!"
"You've got twenty four hours before I tell everybody you know that you're in love with Moriyama, but too chickenshit to tell her."
"Shura-san!" He yelps, then doubles over coughing again, as she jumps out of his window before he can grab her.
He calls out sick. He shouldn't, he can't afford to, he yelled at Rin earlier about not being able to afford to call out sick. But he can't focus, can't catch his breath. And, like a coward, like some kind of injured animal seeking a hole to die in, he runs.
But there's nowhere for him to go. There never has been.
And somehow he ends up exactly where he shouldn't be.
The bridge is familiar, high and far away from everything. True Cross Town seems like a diorama, something fake and painted-on, the edges of the city fading out. The sun is already mostly gone, there are lights coming on in the houses, on the streets. The noise is a little bit too far away to seem real. Everything is.
He rests his hands on the railing and tries not to think about falling over.
He knows the house at the end of the bridge, the familiar glow in the near distance. The gardens, the smell of herbs, the feeling of a teacup held carefully in his hands. Shiemi, brighter and warmer than lights or tea. I love her, he thinks, with a sudden desperate rush of self-hatred. I love her, I love her.
The flowers spill out of him, fleshy white petals and cloying scent, slipping through his fingers and landing on the paving stones as he coughs and coughs, gasping for air.
"Yuki-chan?!"
He hadn't seen her there, hadn't noticed anyone walking up and he should have, and now it's too late. It's too late. She's there, green eyes wide and shocked in the lamplight, and as he stumbles back to run she grabs his hand.
"Yuki-chan? ... what's going on?"
There are flowers under her feet as she steps forward, as he steps back, his free hand pressed to his mouth. There are roots in his lungs, twisting and pressing against his ribcage, petals in the back of his throat. He can't do this to her. She pulls his hand away from his mouth, stronger than he expected, and flowers spill out, bright white in the dark.
"Sit down!" She says, panicked, and when she pulls at him he can't stay standing, slumps back against the railing and slides to the ground. She's scared. It's all his fault.
"Sorry," he says, and tries to breathe. "I'm sorry."
"Do you know what happened? Do you know what demon it was? I'll go get my mom, she might be able to help!" Her words are a rush.
"Don't---" He shakes his head. There are petals in his mouth. He lets them fall. "I know the exorcism method."
"Okay. What do you need me to do? Do you need Nee?" He wonders when she got this responsible, this protective. He always wanted to protect her, but.... it's amazing, how many people have passed him on the way.
"No, no. I have to--" He has to ruin everything. He has to take every good thing that's ever happened to him and throw it away, crush a friendship underneath the revelation of selfish desire. "I have to do something."
"Okay." She's holding his hands. She's worried, but more than that she's determined, focused with the intensity of a dragoon on a target, her hands shaking as she grips his. "Let me help you, Yuki-chan."
Yukio laughs, because he doesn't know how to cry anymore. He's exhausted. He aches. The one thing he never wanted was to involve her and now she's trying to force her way in, a dandelion splitting concrete.
"It..." his throat aches, the pressure in his ribcage aches, he's tired. "It's a demon that only targets people who are in love but who won't say anything."
It's a little easier to breathe, somehow. Shiemi's determination melts into confusion, and she squeezes his hands, worried.
"The only way to exorcise it is to confess."
Shiemi nods, half stands, starts trying to tug him upright. "Okay. Who do you need to go confess to? Can you go? Or should I go get them?"
He's laughing again as he tugs her back down to sit in front of him, petals falling from his mouth and landing on the stones between them. She's perfect.
"It's you. I'm in love with you."
The words fall unexpectedly into the space between them, and leave both the listener and the speaker shocked. She stares at him, frozen for a moment and he can breathe again but there's a cost, it's Shiemi's shocked expression and the way she lets go and pulls back, and it wasn't a cost he ever wanted to pay.
"L-- Love?" She squeaks, red and why is she embarrassed? He wouldn't be surprised if he caught on fire, if the last remnants of plant matter in his chest just burst into flames. But why is she red with her hands pressed to her cheeks like she just did something brave and too forward? "Yuki-chan's in love with me?"
"I'm sorry," and he says it but it's hard to be sorry when he feels this light, suddenly relieved of the burden that's been choking him for days, been sitting in his chest for years before the demon called it into flower. "I didn't want to tell you, I didn't want to make you uncomfortable."
"Me?" She repeats, going redder than a poppy, hands sliding to completely hide her face. "Is that okay? I mean... I know Yuki-chan's really popular, and all the girls like you, and I didn't think you'd be in love with-- with me!"
Something's... not exactly wrong but suddenly so far out of his calculations and plans, thousands of miles away from where he'd pictured this conversation going.
"Shiemi-san? Why wouldn't I be in love with you? You're--" oh, this is embarrassing, he feels himself going even redder, he can't quite look at her. "You're kind, and caring, and determined, and an excellent exorcist, and you've caught up in your schooling incredibly quickly, and you're... you're beautiful, and I've been in love with you for a long time now, I just didn't want to tell you. I'm sorry if I upset you, Shiemi-san."
"You didn't upset me! I just---" She lowers her hands, and her face is all scrunched up and determined in a way that almost makes him laugh, and her words are a rush as she grabs his hands and tugs. "I'm in love with you too!"
He doesn't say anything. He can't. This isn't what he expected, this isn't what he thought he would hear, it's too much for his unsteady heart and he shakes his head.
"Shiemi-san, you don't have to-- just because I said it doesn't mean you have to agree with me!"
"I'm not saying it just to agree with you, Yuki-chan! I'm saying it because it's true! You're one of the most wonderful people I know, you're smart and gentle and kind and you always try to help other people, and I really, really like you! I think I've liked you since the first day I met you!"
He's laughing. It's shaky, exhausted, but the relief is too much for him not to laugh. She likes him. Somehow, with all the worry and the sickness and the pain, he'd never considered that potential for even a moment. Impulsively, he pulls her into a hug, and she laughs too, hugging him back tightly as the night wind carries the scent of gardenias away.