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She comes back to the flat she shares with Atsushi to clothing laid out for her on her bed: silken and elegant kimonos, always freezing to the touch. Sometimes, Kyouka slips the kimonos on, as if to indulge a phantom presence. Others, she sets her mouth in a flat line and folds the cloth away. If she blinks her eyes when she dresses, her hands reach by a trick of not-quite-instinct to tie the obi in the front.
The last time she saw Kouyou, the corpse was displayed on a table in a morgue and Demon Snow had pierced through her throat in a clean line—two mothers dead; an odd bodycount. The last time she saw Kouyou, she’d laid a hand over her shoulder and whispered, Kyouka, reflection distorted and longing in running water, bright parasol a jagged edge bleeding into the river. Atsushi had asked why her gaze kept catching on the water, and she’d looked at him for a long moment before responding that it was nothing.
The case today is an ability user with the power to make ghosts tangible, visible. She’s meant to go with Atsushi to the scene of the crime, but she stills. Crumples the clothing at her thigh with a hand, then says quietly, “That wouldn’t be wise.” She would like to go. She wouldn’t. She thinks of the kiss of sharp-edged metal she can feel at her throat at night.
Dazai assesses her, face melting from his playful smile for a split-second, and he says, “No, I suppose not.”
He doesn’t say, Ane-san, like he misses her, but he does once in a blue moon, only when his face is hidden; Kyouka doesn’t tell him that Golden Demon follows her in her dreams, but he looks at her as if he knows. Atsushi’s face fills with open concern, and Dazai redirects by tossing Tanizaki in his direction. Naomi places her mouth in the crook of Tanizaki’s neck and whispers something that makes him blush and that makes Atsushi look away uncomfortably. Kyouka sits where she is, fabric knotted in her hand; Atsushi comes home seeming faint in the evening, with the voice of the orphanage director still ringing in his head. He smiles at Kyouka in weary cheer and goes to bed.
In the morning, she wakes before the sun rises. There’s a woman painting her face at the mirror of the apartment. Jars of cosmetics are spread out before her. It’s a not-unfamiliar sight, or it wasn’t years ago— Kouyou, donning make-up as if armor, slipping on the layers of her clothing as if a shield and weapon, dressing herself into composed refinement.
Kyouka sits up. A demon with a porcelain face points a sword at her, catches her skin at the hollow of her throat.
Kouyou’s smile is a slash of red when she turns to face Kyouka. She looks like she did every day of Kyouka’s time in the Port Mafia, speaking in her ear and giving directions for the next kill and telling her like siren-song, don’t be foolish, you can’t leave; no one can. Her windpipe bleeds openly. The blood stains fabric as it whispers down. “I’ve been so worried about you." Her voice is lovely. "My beloved Kyouka, a delicate flower left amongst the beasts of the Agency.”
The demon lifts the sword, folds it away. The touch of the cold lingers. Kyouka looks back at Kouyou. Thinks, for a moment, whether she can pierce through the already-open wound again.