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Draken dies to three bullets.
Chifuyu is in the middle of his shift at the pet shop when he receives the news through a curt text from Inui: Draken’s down. Takemichi is facing Mikey soon.
It doesn't make sense to him immediately, so he opts to dissect the message one by one.
Draken being down means the death of Draken means the death of a friend. In the span of two years, Chifuyu has had to attend two funerals of two people as close as family to him. Toman was gone, but its ghost refuses to be put to sleep. Does it stop when they are all dead? Chifuyu does not have a fucking clue. He processes the next thing.
Takemichi facing Mikey means fighting him, which means a fight he cannot win. Two years ago, perhaps Mikey would have been swayed by Takemitchy’s indomitable spirit. But Mikey is the aftermath of three—no, four family members dead. He used to be a brother to three, and then he became brother to none. Now that Draken is gone, there is no heart left tethering him from the raw violence that he'd left to slumber beneath his skin.
Chifuyu leans against the counter and slides down, hugging his knees to his chest. The basket he was carrying lies askew next to him. He squints his eyes shut. In the darkness, he feels the world spin in multiple directions. In here, he feels the ghost of Baji on his shoulder. He sees him next. He feels on his hands the cakey texture of Baji’s dried blood. He is holding Baji’s body one second, and then Draken’s after. There are three bullets in his body and there are no exit wounds. The next body makes him nauseous: Takemitchy’s body bruised and broken all over. He knows that Mikey will not be kind when he fights Takemitchy. There will be a niche in the space where his heart’s supposed to be, and there will be no room for mercy. There’s a voice in his head that tells him, over and over, all your captains die young, all your captains die young, all your captains die young—
All your captains die young.
Takemitchy did not die, but he was going to. Senju Kawaragi's divine intervention before Mikey could deliver the finishing blow spared him. In exchange for his life and theirs, she dissolved the gang she built from the ground up. The war of the three deities ended, and Brahman's goal of defeating the Invincible Mikey was left unfulfilled.
Truth be told, Chifuyu could give less of a fuck. Before him is a boy beaten near to death. This is nothing new. Chifuyu has learned long ago that Takemitchy is a person that exists permanently in a state of near-death, and that’s just something he has to learn to live with. The new thing is the doctor telling them, his neck nearly broke in whatever scuffle they retrieved him from, and from the looks of it, it’s a miracle he’s alive at all.
They almost lost him.
In a different room in the same building, they lost Draken. The doctors confirmed what they already knew. The pronouncement of Draken's death was mere formality; they all knew he was gone from the moment he bled out in that parking lot where his bloodstains remained on the pavement.
Takemitchy flits in and out of consciousness. Somewhere in this period, the staff at the hospital try to contact his family. His mother responds eventually: for one reason or another she cannot go. His father is dead. The rest of his relatives are either dead or unreachable, it doesn’t matter. Takemitchy’s room is a desolate place, and this is where Chifuyu really sees that his family is only family in name.
Somewhere in the same period, they make funeral arrangements for Draken. He is six feet tall and he fits in an urn that is only a few inches long in width and height. There’s a place near the brothel he lives in where they hold the funeral. He had a smaller room at first, until the rest of those who cared for Toman banded together and pitched in to get him a bigger one deserving of his title as their vice president. Chifuyu tries to stay long, but it reminds him too much of Baji’s own wake. When he leaves early, no one forces him to stay.
Takemitchy is placed under confinement for a few days. He does not get to see Draken’s body before the cremation, and he does not get to attend his wake. Mikey does not make an appearance either, but Chifuyu knows he likely lingered in the shadow, watching from afar. No one tries to look for him; a person that does not want to be found will not be found.
When Chifuyu visits Takemitchy after Draken’s wake, he feels a bitterness that is hard to swallow. Takemitchy did not tell him much, but he knows he returned from a future where everyone lived. He talked stiltedly about the paths they’d walked in that future, how far they’ve come from where they were twelve years from that period. For every name mentioned, there was none of Mikey’s. Not until Takemitchy mentioned that his return was not through Naoto, but through Mikey. How that happened, he would not know. But it did confirm things for him without Takemitchy having to say anything at all: he was here, again, because of Mikey.
How many times does it take before a person is saved? How many times before they aren't? How many times does it take before you put your foot down, and realize, sometimes there are people who are beyond saving. If Draken’s life was the price to pay for Mikey’s, then was it worth it? All the lives that were lost in this quest to save Mikey—were they worth it?
Chifuyu does not understand. He is angry and sad at the same time. Frustrated that he has to nurse another grief in his heart. They were all doing so well in the present. Pah-chin is running a real estate business with Peh-yan. Mitsuya is well on his way to being successful. Draken was happy with his job, and Chifuyu with his. They didn’t get into petty gang fights anymore ever since Toman’s disbandment, so why did things have to change? If they were well on the course for the best future possible, why did they have to be steered away from it?
Why did Takemitchy have to take that away from them?
Why did you have to come back?
“It’s your fault that Draken died!”
The weight of his words is immediate. Chifuyu covers his mouth with the palm of his hand, like it will undo everything he just said.
Takemitchy does not flinch even once. He is looking upwards, but not at anything, like he’s looking through everything instead. The blankness in his eyes reminds Chifuyu eerily of Mikey’s.
Chifuyu bows his head in defeat. He does not have the heart to beat a man who has already been beaten to death.
He apologizes, but his heart is not in it. Takemitchy must know too, because he says, “It’s fine, Chifuyu. You’re right anyway. It’s all my fault.”
He wants to say, no it isn’t, I was just saying shit that was meant to hurt, but he never gets the chance to. Takemitchy asks him to leave, and it’s all he can do at that moment, so he does. There’s nothing good he can say anyway. A heart heavy with hurt will do nothing but want to hurt. And he knows misplaced grief when he sees it. There’s an irrational part of him that wants to hurt Takemitchy and for Takemitchy to hurt—he shoves this part in a box and throws away the key. He will not hurt Takemitchy any more than he already has.
Whenever he's at a loss, there's only one place Chifuyu goes to. He visits Baji’s grave.
He pays his respects to the others buried with him, and then he sits and opens a box of peyoung yakisoba. He splits the noodles into two, eating one half and leaving the other for Baji.
There are two years between this day and the last that Chifuyu had been with Baji alive. Within those two years are twenty-four months of mourning. It was difficult in the first few months before it eventually got easier, but it never really becomes easy. What he knows about grief is that it doesn’t disappear, you just learn to live with it. Chifuyu has made peace with the fact that everything that reminds him of Baji will always hurt no matter how long has passed since. He and his mother now live in a household that houses two people and the ghosts they carry with them: Chifuyu’s father for his mother, and Baji for him. They’ve both lost the two people they have loved as their other half; they are still learning how to navigate a life with the permanent absence of another by their side. For a long, long time, it will always be this way.
But it’s not all bad. Of course this little tradition will never replace the afternoons he’d spent with Baji eating peyoung yakisoba after school, their uniforms dirty with sweat, Baji giving Chifuyu shit for his pompadour, Chifuyu giving Baji shit for his fake prescription glasses—but it’s what he has now. It’s nice that there are things that stay even after the passing of another, even if only in a pale imitation.
Chifuyu asks Baji’s ghost, what do I do now?
The dead do not answer, but he can almost imagine. Baji in his Toman uniform, as alive as he was two years ago, his long hair tied back in a ponytail from the heat. He'd tell Chifuyu, you fucked up bad, teeth glinting in his signature wolflike grin.
Somewhere in a place he cannot reach, Baji is watching them alongside Emma and Draken. If there's one thing he knows about Draken, it's that he is headstrong with the choices he makes. When he stepped in the way of Takemitchy's death, it was for a reason. Realistically, he'd get shit from his vice president for putting the blame for his death on Takemitchy's shoulders. He'd have said something about Takemitchy taking all the credit for his cool heroic sacrifice or some other stupid thing like that.
The truth, plain and simple: all the elements were in the right place, but ultimately they were all unhappy. Two years ago they lost Mikey, Takemitchy, and Toman in one sitting. They were forced without warning into a life without the gang they lived and breathed for in the years that truly mattered in their lives. Sure, they found good things to redirect their focus on instead of childish violence, but deep down he knew there was always a piece missing, an itch that cannot be scratched, telling them that something was wrong.
When Takemitchy returned, voice full of relief in the way he called Chifuyu's name, one of those missing pieces clicked into place. They were right in thinking that things were not as right as they seemed. And here was Takemitchy, probably on his way to do something that will set them back on the right course.
But in the end, it was too heavy a cross to bear. Draken's death and all others that preceded him are evidence that Takemitchy is not the key to making things right, he's just the guy who wants to make things right. He is not a means to an end for a better future—he's a friend.
Baji’s apparition doesn’t tell him shit about what to do with Takemitchy, but it's okay, he didn’t need to. Chifuyu already knows.
He finishes the few that remained of his half of the peyoung yakisoba, and leaves the rest behind.
Chifuyu bribes the nurse into allowing him to stay with Takemitchy past visitation hours. It doesn’t actually work, but the nurse lets him anyway because there’s no family to watch over Takemitchy in the night.
Halfway through the door to Takemitchy’s room, the nurse stops him. “I was there when you first talked to him,” he says. “I don’t know what you kids are up to, and I won’t pry, but what I do know is that there are things we say out of anger for the purpose of hurting others. Because you’ve said it, you can’t take it back. But don’t let it fester. For god's sake, you’re both just kids.”
After the nurse leaves, the shame of what he’d said sticks to Chifuyu’s tongue. The truth is that he knows there’s ultimately no one to blame for Draken’s death—Takemitchy most of all, who only made a choice he earnestly believed to be the best for everyone. Not even Mikey, for whom all this was done. He's right. They are just kids. Even with all the violence they get into, fist fights escalating into gun fights, they’re still kids. Revenge really is the most childish thing of all, someone once said.
For the most part, he watches Takemitchy’s face in the dark. The overhead lights are turned off in favor of the dim LED strip behind Takemitchy’s bed, softening the harsh sterility of the hospital room. A few days ago, Takemitchy looked as if death itself had come for him: cuts and bruises and bits of blood clung to his skin. Both his eyes were so swollen they were glued shut, and he had a brace supporting his neck. Chifuyu was used to seeing Takemitchy in that state. But Takemitchy’s face was contorted in a kind of grief that could not be named, and it had hurt Chifuyu to see, and it made him angry too.
(All the things that went through Chifuyu's head in the first visit where he stumbled and made a mistake: if you know the burden of death so well, then why can’t you prevent it? Why could you just not let Mikey be? Why did Draken have to die in his stead? )
In the days that Takemitchy spent in confinement, the bruises lightened, and the swelling lessened. The neck brace was the next to go. His face almost looks peaceful in sleep. Chifuyu clings to his hand and tries not to think of the clichéness of that action. There was a time when the thing he was holding was bigger than a hand: Baji’s body and the weightlessness of it. His ghost lingers even in this moment, clinging to his back, comforting and terrifying in one breath. He checks for Takemitchy’s pulse even when there’s a machine right there that tells him he’s here, he’s alive. He begs Baji’s ghost in silence, please don’t take him with you yet; I can’t bear to lose you both. The grief tries to claw its way out of his throat, but Chifuyu swallows it down. There is no death to grieve, so he will not grieve. Grief entails the loss of something. He has lost, but he will not lose this too.
Takemitchy wakes up later. Chifuyu does not let go of his hand.
“‘Fuyu,” Takemitchy says, voice rough with sleep. Chifuyu wordlessly hands him the glass of water sitting beside him.
After downing half of the glass, Takemitchy looks around him, as if in a daze. His eyes fall on their clasped hands, but he does not say anything.
“Isn’t it past visitation hours?”
“It is. Bribed the nurse into letting me stay—it didn’t work so I blabbed about your tragic backstory to get pity points.”
“You didn’t.” Takemitchy gasps. Upon seeing Chifuyu’s unyielding gaze, he places his other hand on top of Chifuyu’s. “Please tell me you didn’t. That’s so embarrassing I will literally die.”
“I didn’t,” Chifuyu says, grinning when Takemitchy throws a dirty look his way. “They probably know though, based on how they reacted when they asked your mom to visit and she said she’s too busy to fly here.”
Takemitchy groaned. “Yeah, I know. Sasaki-san kept asking me if I have any relatives to pick me up when I get discharged, and she had this look on her face when I said no.”
Chifuyu shrugs, but he gets it. There's probably an existing law somewhere that would put Takemitchy's mother in jail for neglect. If anything, the surprising part is that no one so far has stepped in to tell Takemitchy, hey maybe it's not okay that not a single one of your immediate family or relatives is willing to spend even a few minutes to pick you up from the hospital after nearly dying?
But what does he know. If there are any rules set in place for this, he's not aware of it. And in any case, Takemitchy is not without family; he has him, his odd circle of friends, Hina, and the rest of Toman. They're the ones who are with him beyond just a thin connection forged by blood.
Afterwards, they talk about lighter things. The latest update of a manga Chifuyu was reading that Takemitchy was watching the anime of (Chifuyu threatened to spoil the story for him until Takemitchy reminded him that he already knows how it ends), the weird tension between Sasaki-san and Tanaka-san, who Chifuyu learned was the nurse he had tried to bribe, the newest ramen flavor Chifuyu found in a konbini on his way here, Peke J and his new diet because the vet said he was getting a bit too ‘chonky’ (“She even pulled out a chonk meter!”).
They talk about everything, except for the ones that really warranted talking about. When they run out of things to say, Takemitchy switches the TV on to see which anime was still airing at nearly one in the morning. A nurse enters at one point to check Takemitchy’s vitals, but it’s no one they’re familiar with. The TV station soon plays the jingle they air when they’re about to close for the night. Chifuyu asks Takemitchy if he wants to split the ramen with the new flavor, but Takemitchy turns it down, saying the nurses would kill him if he eats anything other than what was given in his prescribed diet. Chifuyu shrugs, gets the other generic-flavor cup ramen he bought, and eats it uncooked.
Halfway through it, he says, “Tanaka-san said something to me earlier.”
“Oh?” Takemitchy sits up, adjusting the slope of his bed higher. “What’d he say?”
Chifuyu chews through a mouthful of hard noodles. “’There are things we say to hurt’, or something like that,” he says. “And another thing: that we’re just kids.”
Takemitchy says nothing. His eyes find his in the dark. Chifuyu swallows a piece of noodle stuck in his throat, and with it, the shame of all the other things he said prior. The things that were meant to hurt.
“That night, I was upset. In more ways than one. I was angry at Mikey, for letting things escalate to this point. I was angry at Rokuhara, for bringing a gun to a fight between kids. And I was angry at you, because Draken died.” Chifuyu breathes, fiddling with the powder sachet in his cup of ramen before chucking it into the trash bin. “But if I’m gonna be honest, I was angry mostly at myself. I could have done more, and I didn’t. I’m your vice captain—we die and kill for each other. In the end, I couldn’t do anything.”
“No,” Takemitchy says, his voice sharp, leaving no room for argument. “You did all that you could. I’m the time traveler here, the adult. When I saw you happy, I knew there was no way I could drag you into this, so I kept my plans away from you. I should have known what was coming. I didn’t, and because of that, Draken—” his voice breaks. Takemitchy’s eyes shine in the dim light.
There are words lodged in Chifuyu’s throat that want to be spoken out loud. You are a kid too, you bear the hero’s cape and all that it entails, and yet you cannot see yourself for all the good that you’ve done, you are not bigger than the universe even when you try to be. Things work and things don’t, that’s just how it goes. That’s just how the old tale goes.
Takemitchy holds Chifuyu’s hand with both of his, placing the half-empty cup of ramen to the side. “I have something to confess.”
Once upon a time, every one was happy. Mitsuya was a successful fashion designer, Hakkai was a rising model, Chifuyu and Kazutora ran a pet shop together, and Draken and Inupi had a motorcycle repair shop. Peh-yan was getting married, and Takemichi had a ring on his finger with a date for his own marriage to Hina within the same year. He had a suit for his wedding that Mitsuya designed himself. But Takemichi noticed something very odd about it all: they were all happy but there was something they’re not saying. Where’s Mikey? He asked them. A chef overseas, Draken said. He couldn’t make it because he’s busy but he sends his best wishes. Takemichi should be relieved, but the odd feeling refused to disappear.
In a dark alley, Takemichi was confronted by Baji’s ghost, except it wasn’t a ghost, it was Kazutora. I know how to find Mikey, he said. He’s not a chef, he said. And he’s not overseas, he’s here. So Takemichi went looking for signs of Mikey’s existence, from one dark corner to another until he found himself in an abandoned bowling alley high in an old decrepit building. There’s a gun to his head the next second. Turn around and I shoot, a voice said—Sanzu. His face was illuminated by the lights of Tokyo alive in the night. One breath later, Mikey was there.
The rest of it goes like this: Takemichi pleads for Mikey to go to his wedding, but what he’s really saying is come back, we miss you. Your family’s waiting for you. I’m waiting for you. Please don’t disappear again. There were twelve years between this moment and the last that Takemitchy had seen him, but to him, who had just traveled in time, it was only a few weeks. Twelve years was too much, a few weeks was too much; Mikey’s absence will always hurt the same. There’s a wall around his heart that remained immovable even in the face of Takemichi’s desperation. You saved us, Takemichi said, so I will save you too.
The speed of a bullet as it moves is faster than a breath. Takemichi would know. He saw it first in Chifuyu, and then in himself, that day when Kisaki shot him on the foot. He would know then what it felt to be shot in the chest—how the impact of the bullet will hurt, and how its pain remained secondary to the anguish of Mikey’s rejection. He did not want to be saved, so he tried to kill the only thing that would make him want to. Mikey climbed up the emergency exit towards the top of the building, and Takemichi could not remember what possessed him to follow, or how he did, but he did. He would follow him where he could, from one end of the world to another. The air was strong from that height. Takemichi could recall this moment with sharp clarity: how Mikey’s loose clothing billowed in the night, how his shadow swallowed the lights of Tokyo, how untouchable he seemed in that moment, and how terrifying it felt to want to hold onto something that even the light could not.
One breath later, Mikey was there. The next, he was not. Takemichi blinked and then there was a weight on his hand as heavy as the world and lighter than a boy. Tokyo came alive below, but it did not matter. All that he could see was Mikey, the awe in his eyes as achingly familiar as twelve years ago, when they were still kids with the world stretching into golden light ahead of them. He was not Invincible Mikey, he was not Takemitchy. They were just people that had a few seconds to spare and then none. Manjiro, Takemichi said, voice lined with despair and grief and a third thing: a promise. Tell me to save you and I will. As many times as it takes. As Takemichi’s vision darkened, Mikey’s hand slipping from his grasp, a little boy said, Save me. Fate sighed and rewrote itself again. From there, a new promise was born.
And here they were.
“In every important event altered, there’s a price to pay,” Takemitchy says, eyes cast downwards. “My debts piled up. I was supposed to be the cost of that return, but Draken stepped into the bullets that were meant for me, and so he paid the price. Fate went full circle.” Takemitchy laughs, but there’s no humor to it. “He was one of the first lives I saved, and now he’s gone. He had a good life ahead of him, and I took that away from him. I don’t know how I can give that back to him.” He holds his head in his hands, a wounded animal without teeth. “I don’t know how to get him back.”
The most important thing about every one of Takemitchy’s return to the past is this: the choices he makes. It’s a game, essentially, and every choice locks them into a certain route. But there’s no guide they can just pull up to see if they’re going the right way, they only have the vague objectives. Save Person A, but figure out a way to do this so that the rest do not suffer. Figure out a way to save a life without paying for it with another. Figure out what life you would be okay with not saving, which is never anyone. Every life that died in this journey, Takemitchy shoulders. Baji, Emma, Izana, Kisaki, and now Draken. Chifuyu carries Baji’s death on his too, but he is learning to understand that there are things bigger than ourselves and our hands. He held Baji’s body as he died; he holds his ghost even to this day, but tries to differentiate between the two. To hold and to carry are two different things. Baji would hate for Chifuyu to carry his ghost wherever he goes, so he tries not to.
But Takemitchy is more stubborn than him. In Takemitchy's eyes, there’s blood on his hands. He could be enough, but he ultimately isn’t.
The funny thing is that we spend our lives chasing the concept of being enough, but it’s not real. What measures ‘enough’? And what do we want to be ‘enough’ for? Lives are more than the weight they entail. There is no measurement for enough, so there’s no enough, so it’s futile to want to be, because you cannot be a thing that does not exist. You are just you.
Takemichi is just Takemichi. And what a wonderful and terrible thing that is to be.
”You act like god sometimes,” Chifuyu says. “I think we all do. When Baji-san died, the only person I could think of blaming was myself. He died because I could not be enough. When I went home, my ‘Ma told me, stop acting like you’re god. I did that when your father died too, and it wasn’t nice. She said, I don’t understand the logic behind hurting ourselves more when we already are, but that’s what we do. When the people around us are hurt, the love we feel for them takes on the shape of a knife, and then we point this to ourselves, as if it’s going to change anything.” Chifuyu takes Takemitchy's hands and places them in his. “Takemitchy—you keep on shooting yourself over every death, but you just made the choices you felt were right. That’s where your heart is, the right place. That’s what matters.”
Takemitchy shakes his head. His voice wavers as he speaks. “But Draken still died. I tried to make the right choices, but I don’t think I did. Does it matter that my intentions were good, if nothing good came out of it anyway?”
Chifuyu squeezes his hand. “Of course it does. Maybe it’s all that matters, even. When Draken took a bullet for you, he made a choice. When you took a knife for Draken, you made a choice. We all make the choices we think are right. Everything that comes after is the result of these choices. And we live with it, no matter how bad the hand we’re dealt with is.”
Takemitchy’s eyes are squeezed shut, the telltale sign that he’s holding back tears. Chifuyu holds his face between his hands and brings them close together. He doesn’t speak until he sees Takemitchy looking back at him. There’s grief in there, and light in spite of it, and Chifuyu holds onto that light, the way Takemitchy did back when it was the other way around, when it was Takemitchy comforting him through Baji’s death. “I blamed you for Draken’s death, I shouldn’t have. For what it’s worth, the choice Draken made means that you are still here. And I thank every fucking god I don’t even believe in for that. I held Baji-san’s dying body in my arms once. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to go through that again. Listen to me, Takemitchy, because I'm not saying this shit twice.”
“You’re more than the choices you make. You’re Hanagaki Takemichi, first division captain, and one of the most important people in my life. You don’t have to be anything to be anyone to me. So live, that’s all I ask. Stop killing yourself so that others would live; you are worthy of this life too.”
Don’t leave me, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to.
“Chifuyu, you fucking sap,” Takemitchy says. It comes out weak and shaky, and Chifuyu would laugh, except the tightness in his throat makes him want to cry, and he is not a crier. He feels the puff of air by his ear when Takemitchy sighs. “You know I'd never hold your anger against you.” Chifuyu knows, he was the type of guy who doesn't hold grudges. “I'm sorry I put you through that. You keep dealing with this stuff and it's not fair. I'm your captain, I should be the one protecting you. And I know, I know—” Takemitchy hurries to add when he sees Chifuyu about to flick his forehead. “—stop apologizing, and whatever else. But I just feel like I could be there for you better. And I want to feel that I could, because maybe I care about you more than anything in this world. And maybe wanting to be better for you is the one thing that I want to do for myself.”
If there's a word for the kind of love that fills every niche in his heart, every vein that pulses through his body, every crevice that warmth doesn't reach, then maybe that's just it, just love. Takemitchy will die for every person he knows and doesn't, but he will live for Chifuyu. He thinks, it goes both ways. He'd fight tooth and nail so he can live alongside Takemitchy too.
But he doesn't say it, and he knows there's no need to. Instead, he says, “Who's the sap now,” with a big smile on his face that hurts in the most pleasant way, even when Takemitchy socks him in the face (it was as strong as a baby's punch), even when he pinches Takemitchy's cheeks out of revenge, and even when Tanaka-san finds them later mid-brawl, whispering under his breath, I do not get paid enough for this, before physically untangling them from one another and leaving them with a stern warning to sleep or Chifuyu gets booted permanently.
Hours later, when Takemitchy's breathing has steadied from sleep, Chifuyu transfers to the more comfortable couch across his bed. He watches how the light from outside the window shifts on Takemichi's face. He thinks about how gently the morning embraces this larger-than-life person before him, how he deserves to have this tenderness not only this time, but always.
He thinks about how he was three bullets away from losing him, and holds that grief tight in his fists.
One way or another, he is always losing Takemitchy. He loses him when he gets into fights he can't win, he loses him when he returns from those fights, miraculously alive but battered, he loses him when he looks at Chifuyu like he's seeing an apparition instead of someone real, and he loses him whenever he returns to the future. In every loss, Chifuyu misses him. The Chifuyu in the future Takemitchy knows has spent twelve years being left behind. He wonders how he lived through that. He wonders how he will live through that, now that he is losing him all over again.
There are things they cannot avoid forever. For one, Draken is gone, and there's nothing they can do about it.
He was witness to Draken's portrait surrounded by flowers, his wake attended by all the people who love him, save for two—Takemitchy confined in the hospital, Mikey off to somewhere they don't know. Chifuyu knows intimately that love finds its way even in death. In the absence of a person, it fills the gaps of the shape they used to occupy. That's how it was with Baji. That's how Chifuyu knows that love goes somewhere, even in grief. But Chifuyu thinks about losing Takemitchy too, and he thinks, there is no comfort in knowing that grief finds a home despite everything.
He watches Takemitchy's figure in the dawn. Please, he begs in silence, may I never know where this grief will go when it is time for you to leave.