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“Ace?”
Ace looks up at her slowly, half asleep. He’s taken to staying at the salon like he does whenever he feels inhuman. Neon followed him anyways.
“Nago?” He asks. “Are you worried about me?”
“Yes,” Neon says. “Sorry for waking you. You want me to turn the light back off?”
“NO!” Ace shouts it. Neon takes a step back. Ace sits up, his body shaking. It hasn’t stopped since he came back, even if he hasn’t said anything. “…I’m sorry, Nago. May I keep seeing all of you?”
Neon nods. She joins him in bed, climbing on top of him and kissing him gently. Ace tenses, but he kisses back after a moment. His hands rub against the small of her back, they keep wandering there every time she’s close to him, stomach or back. She suspects they made her and the others into monsters, but she isn’t sure how.
A week later is too soon to ask. It took her a month to feel like she could breathe again when her reality came undone in her own mind.
“You heal fast,” she says. She runs her hand down the bandages on his chest, and the edges show healed scars where the incisions were. She doesn’t think she’ll ever unsee his body unmade and bloody in front of her. A website from a strange email.
Consider this punishment for the bitch and her monsters fighting us. We got a new sponsor.
It’s still bugging her. It’s like they think this isn’t new, but when have they shown up before?
“I am a god,” Ace says. He leans against the headrest. “And I’ll heal up. I promise.”
It feels like he isn’t really talking to her. Maybe he isn’t. Maybe he looks at her shocked that she is whole, and at Keiwa like he’s scared, and at Michinaga like his face is a faded memory.
Maybe he doesn’t know what to do with the real thing anymore.
“I didn’t heal,” Neon says. “Did I?”
Ace tenses.
“…the fake you didn’t heal,” he says. “Or age. Or live. Or die.”
“Well, that won’t happen, here,” Neon says. “…probably. That’s more Mikkun’s thing.”
“He died,” Ace says.
“…ah,” Neon says.
“…I knew it was fake, but I wasn’t convince until I saw the real deals,” Ace says. “I just need time to erase the fake years.”
“We know,” Neon says. “ I know. That’s why we can’t leave you alone.”
Ace hmms, intense eyes meeting Neon’s.
“You’re all stubborn,” he says. “It’s what I like about you.”
She’s sitting curled up on the couch of the Sakurais’ apartments, trying to take a break from the worry, the horror.
“What gets me, is they knew us,” Neon says. “Said they’d dealt with a goddess before. Isn’t that… weird?”
“It is,” Sara says. “There aren’t exactly that many people who know about the goddess of creation. The DGP? Even that’s old news.”
“…Somehow,” Neon says. She sighs. “I’m worried they’ll try again.”
“Then you’ll get him out again,” Sara says. “That’s what we did.”
Neon freezes.
The bitch and her monsters .
Did.
Did they mean Tsumuri? Sara and Win?”
“…what do you mean,” Neon says. “What do you mean, that’s what we did. ”
“…Nothing,” Sara says. “We took care of it. Please don’t tell Ace, Tsumuri didn’t want him to know.”
“I think he has a right to know,” Neon says. “Considering they took him too.”
She watches the horror Dawn in her friend’s eyes. Then the tears.
“We… we thought she scared them off,” Sara says. “Oh my god…”
They decide not to tell anyone else.
Yet.
Ace is back home that evening, staring out the window with the hand clenched that means he’s staring at the past he can’t let go of.
Neon stands next to him.
“I still wonder if it really would be better if you forgot me,” Ace says.
“I know,” Neon replies. “I know this isn’t a life I ever planned.”
“I’m making dinner.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Full course meal from all over the world.”
An eclectic collection of comfort foods, then?
“Sounds great.”
That night, Ace runs his hands all along her body in the darkness. Neon lets him, and she kisses his hand when it cups her cheek.
The night after that, he does the same thing.
The day after that, he’s back to being the god of creation, off to parts unknown.
Neon smiles. She supposes that’s Ace. Isn’t it?
Now what to do about the unsolved problem…