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Himeno’s one good eye is filled with death the first time Aki sees her. Her iris reflects the sky, a greyish blue shot through with just enough violent teal to show signs of life.
She turns to him slowly. “See those crosses?” She raises the arm that isn’t in a sling to point out at the graveyard.
Aki nods.
“They weren’t good enough. They were pathetic, so they died.” Her voice is blunt, her tone flat and sharp, but Aki knows that feeling; she’s grieving. Maybe not the same way he does, but he recognizes the hardness in the way she speaks for what it is: a defense mechanism.
He’s the same way.
A glass knife: sharp, but fragile.
“You’d better not die on me like they did,” Himeno says flatly. It’s almost a warning.
Aki feels the sword he carries on his back hanging over him, like an executioner’s axe. “I won’t,” says.
Himeno laughs raucously, like a seagull, full of the almost-infectious joy of living.
(Not that Aki has time to think about joy. He’s here to kill the Gun Devil.)
She slings an arm over his shoulders. “Come onnn, Aki, have a drink with meee~!” Her words are already starting to run together at the edges, drink in hand.
“I’m a minor.”
Himeno pouts. “Aw, right. Well, someday later…” She trails off, head on Aki’s shoulder. Her breath is hot on his neck, and it reeks of cheap beer. Soon she’s snoring.
Aki realizes, as he practically drags her out of the bar, that he has no idea where she lives, nor does he have a key to her place (wherever it might be). Oh, well.
He dumps her on his apartment couch when he gets home and goes to collapse on his own futon. He can feel the adrenaline from their fight that day completely ditching his system, and he wants nothing more than to close his eyes and pass out.
But. It would be rude to leave his partner without a blanket.
Aki drags himself to his feet reluctantly and shuffles to the closet, taking out one of the blankets from the top shelf. The ceiling fan flutters the edge of it as he unfolds the sheet and tosses it over Himeno.
She shifts and grabs the edge of the blanket with one hand, her eye fluttering open a crack. “Huh… whas… going’n?” she mumbles.
“Go to sleep,” Aki says, too tired to put any inflection into his voice.
Himeno giggles—or is it a hiccup?—and smiles. “You’re not so bad,” she says, the words getting muddled with sleep.
Aki brushes her hair out of her face. The moonlight illuminates her eyelashes falling across her cheek like a fan. Aki can picture her with a paper fan, one of the old-fashioned ones with watercolor flowers painted across the folds…
He slumps back to his room and falls onto the bed. He’s so tired. But it’s not a bad feeling.