(no subject)
Title: Hallowmas [2/2]
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3098
Notes: Special guest appearance made by Ikuta Toma as a Mandragora. You will note I call him copper-haired. This is because his hair in HanaKimi struck me as coppery, and I like his HanaKimi hair. So nya. Also, there are a lot of things I left unanswered. I do have all the answers; the question is if I will ever write them down.
Ninomiya was asleep in the clinic bed, blanket pulled up to his chin, when Ohno and Aiba finally came power walking in. At least Sho and Jun had to assume he was sleeping. The doctor who’d been given his case still hadn’t come to see them. Aiba was already firing questions at Jun and Sho so quickly that neither could understand him. Possibly something about what on earth had they been doing, weren’t they supposed to have been shopping?
A few nurses walked purposefully passed the room door, giving them professionally cold glares. One stopped in the door way to remind them that yes, they understood how worried the boys must be, but this is a clinic so please don’t run.
As neither Ohno nor Aiba seemed inclined to pay attention to her, Sho took it upon himself to placate the nurse.
Besides, he didn’t have any answers, and he couldn’t bear to see the nearly vacant look on Jun's face.
“What happened?” Aiba finally cried, distraught.
“He was trying on clothes,” Jun said, clenching his hands around the yellow shirt that the imp had been wearing. “He passed out in the fitting room.”
Sho closed the door on the nurse and joined the others by the bed. He and Jun had panicked once they realized the imp wasn’t waking up. That panic alerted a near-by clerk, who’d immediately run off to call an ambulance. It had been absolute hell trying to come up with information about Nino - did imps even have blood types? - and the imp was on record as a cousin of Jun’s only because one of the medics had suggested it.
They still didn’t know what was wrong with him.
Ohno studied the imp in the bed, his eyes focused on something far away - or inside himself. The other three watched him, hopeful that maybe he’d know something. They’d seen this look on him only a few times before. Then Ohno pulled the blanket slowly back from the imp’s chin, unveiling first the Gucci shirt he’d been trying on, then his hand. It was as white as the sterile sheets he lay on.
Sho frowned. White? The rest of him wasn’t that white.
Deliberately, Ohno grasped Nino’s left wrist and picked the appendage up carefully. Sho felt the breath stop in his throat. Beside him Jun made a choked noise of horror.
Nino’s hand was see-through.
Sho couldn’t actually see the imp’s fingers.
“What is that?” Jun asked softly.
Aiba whimpered. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Ohno replied, quietly. He put Nino’s arm back down gently on the bed. “I don’t know what this is. I’ve never dealt with imps before him. Just ghosts.”
“So what do we do?” Aiba repeated.
“I don’t know,” the oldest snapped. He relented almost immediately, shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. Get him out of here? My mom might know something more.”
The door opened, admitting a doctor with his head still buried in a chart. Ohno scrambled to cover the imp’s fading hand with the hospital blanket. The doctor muttered something to himself and looked up.
“Matsumoto Jun?”
Jun stood. “Yes.”
“This is your cousin?”
“Yes.”
“Ninomiya?”
“Yes.”
“And he passed out in a fitting room.”
“Yes.”
“And you have no idea why?”
“No!” Jun said, clearly trying to hold onto his temper, “This is everything we’ve said before.”
“Have there been any changes since you brought him here?”
There was the briefest of hesitations, where the others could see that Jun wanted to take off the doctor’s head. Of course, he couldn’t very well tell the doctor that the imp was fading. Nobody would believe that.
“No,” the youngest said grudgingly.
“Oh? He was fading before then?” the doctor asked.
The whole room went suddenly very tense. Jun’s knuckles turned white around Nino’s yellow shirt. Sho clenched his fists in surprise, so hard his nails dug crescents into his palms. Only Ohno continued to be mostly unaffected. He stared appraisingly at the doctor.
“You’re not a doctor.”
“Ohno!” Sho said automatically.
“Oh ho! So you’re the one who caught him. I wondered,” the man said.
Before anyone could ask him what that was supposed to mean, he pulled off his glasses. His face changed behind the passing of his hand - what had been a middle aged man became a youthful boy with vaguely red hair. Three voices yelped as one, but the redhead ignored them.
“Poor Nino,” he sighed. He made to take a step closer to Nino, but Jun stepped neatly between them. There was a moment of pause where the stranger actually shrank back under the force of Jun’s glare. Then the boy frowned and drew himself back up. “Okay. Look. I’ve got us off on the wrong foot. Sorry. But he’s going to disappear if you don’t let me help.”
“You’re an imp,” said Ohno.
Sho thought his eyes might bug out of his head. Aiba didn’t look much better.
“Close enough. My name’s Toma. A friend of his. And this is All Hallow’s Day, and you let him outside unprotected.”
The room erupted in questions.
“What?”
Aiba looked confused. “All Hollow’s?”
“All Hallow’s,” Sho corrected automatically.
“What’s that?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Don’t you know anything?” Toma asked, exasperated, “It’s All Hallow’s Day! All Saint’s? Hallowmas? The day when - ”
“The dead are venerated, yes,” said Jun impatiently.
“ - the dead are made to go back to the other side, don’t interrupt me!” Toma snapped.
Jun fell back, confused. Sho had to admit that he’d never thought he’d see a glare worse than the younger boy’s - especially not on a face that was as jovial as Toma’s. The not-quite-imp glared at all of them briefly as though to assure their silence. Then he took a breath.
“Hallowe’en invites the spirits of the dead to mingle with the living. The barrier opens and they come through, so they can see how they are venerated and missed and cared for, but only for the day. They are meant to return today, and at midnight tonight the barrier closes. But all the spirits don’t want to go back. So they look for ways to stay.”
“Stay?” Aiba asked hesitantly.
“Stay with their living relatives, stay just to stay, stay because they think they can live again. Things like that. Nino’s a source of staying-power. We all are.”
“We?”
Toma made an impatient noise, “We. Imps. Mandragora. Faerie. Everything that exists in myth and legend and stories but isn’t supposed to be real. God, they don’t make you like they used to. Did he seriously let you summon him?”
He sounded exactly like Nino had. It was that more than anything else that the redhead had said so far that made the tension of distrust start to dissipate. Aiba even cracked a smile.
“How does it work? How do they stay?” Sho asked.
“They feed on the life of a host.”
Ohno looked down at the imp, lying still and pale in the clinic bed. He didn’t see anything, and said as much.
“Of course not! These are vengeful dead, not your average pity-me-I’m-a-ghost dead. They’ve been staying here by existing on hosts - they know how to hide. If they’re strong enough they don’t even need to be near their host. They’ll drift off and come back when they start to fade or feel the pull of the dead who have passed on. The host lasts longer that way.”
“So then what happened to Nino? Why’d he collapse? Why is he fading?” Aiba asked.
“If you’d let me through, I might be able to figure it out,” Toma said slowly, as thought he was facing a crowd of six year olds.
That made Jun clench his teeth. “How do we know that you don’t want to hurt him?”
Toma bristled. The lights in the room suddenly dimmed, and Sho let out a cry. Aiba hunched in to himself, eyes growing wide with fear. Ohno put his hands on Toma’s shoulders.
“Please don’t.”
The red head sighed and the lights went back to normal. Ohno shot a look at Jun, who reluctantly backed down and moved quickly to a spot near Aiba. The tallest of them grabbed Jun’s hand reassuringly.
“Can you help Nino?” Ohno asked.
Toma sighed. “Probably.”
“Probably?” Sho echoed, his tone worried.
“Probably. It depends on exactly what happened. But I don’t want to do anything here. It’s too noticeable, and the space is too small and unprotected.”
“But they won’t let him out,” Aiba started, “Will they?”
“Sure they will,” the red head said, grinning shortly, “They can’t argue with a doctor. Or a distraction they don’t know is a distraction.”
Aiba started to say something - he was probably going to echo ‘distraction’ if the pattern of echoing the words of mythical beings was anything to go by, Ohno thought. But then the lights in the whole building started flickering. Machines that beeped started beeping in unsynchronized fashions, much louder than anything Ohno’d ever heard in a clinic.
“What are you doing?” Sho asked fretfully.
“Nothing that will hurt anyone. The machines aren’t necessary ones. Now come on. Which one of you can carry him?”
Ohno looked at Aiba, who looked at Sho, who looked at Jun. Toma growled impatiently. Jun and Sho moved forward as one. Jun pulled the blanket down and Sho gathered Nino into his arms, lifting him carefully. The imp’s hands were both gone and his arms were starting to fade below his elbows.
“He’s ... He weighs nothing!” Sho breathed.
“Literally?” Toma asked, his face contorting in worry.
“It’s like ... it’s like he’s insubstantial.”
The red head muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse under his breath. He spun on his heel and started moving rapidly towards the door. He opened it and gestured sharply for the others to follow him.
“Get moving. No more arguing, there isn’t time.”
“What’s going on?” Ohno asked, even as he started after Toma.
“He’s being drained. We’re going to the roof.”
From somewhere behind him, Ohno heard Aiba asking, “What?”
Toma didn’t even look back. He slid around people - or maybe people were sliding around them - with ease, making a bee line for the exit. “You heard me. The roof. There’ll be more privacy and there’s no time to go anywhere else.”
“Isn’t there an alarm?”
“Not anymore.”
Ohno and Toma were the first two out onto the roof, yelling back to the others to hurry. The red head threw a piece of chalk to Ohno, and looked relieved when Ohno didn’t ask him where he’d gotten it.
“What’s the most complex barrier you know?”
“Um ...”
“Good, start working on it. Work around me.”
And with that, Toma turned away and began drawing something on the ground. Ohno stared at him for a beat, then put his chalk to the ground and began to work. It was a barrier his mother had taught him, one specifically for keeping things on the outside out.
Jun arrived moments later, holding the roof door open. Sho and Aiba come through it seconds after. The door closed with a slam that none of them payed attention to. Toma didn’t even look up, just pointed to three of four markings he’d made on the roof.
“Put him down in the middle, then stand on these points. Ohno, when you’re done with that barrier, stand on that one.”
Sho placed Nino carefully down, chewing on his bottom lip worriedly. Then he took a place on one of the markings. Aiba and Jun stood on a marking each, their faces drawn with fatigue and concern. Ohno couldn’t say he blamed them. They’d had a late night just the night before, trying to wrap their minds around the sudden appearance of an imp and now they were apparently about to lose said imp to negligence. But they hadn’t known. There wasn’t any way for them to have known.
Ohno finished drawing the barrier and took a spot across from Sho. He looked down at Nino, then to his friends, following the lines drawn by Toma. They were on the points of a five pointed star. He looked down his feet considering-ly.
“Seimei?” he murmured.
“Give the boy a gold star,” Toma said. He stood, brushing his hands off on the doctor’s coat. “Seimei is legendary for a reason.”
“You mean he could -”
“Not now, Aiba,” Jun snapped.
“Sorry,” Aiba said meekly.
“I’ll give you all the history you want after we finish this,” the red head said.
“You were - ”
“Aiba!”
“Sorry.”
Toma looked down at Nino, shaking his head with a fond smile on his face. “You and I are going to have a long talk when this is done. And we are going to discuss your taste in humans first.”
Nino didn’t answer.
Toma sighed and held out one hand, palm down. The other stayed by his side. He didn’t chant; his eyes grew half lidded. Ohno’s eyes traveled back and forth, looking from Toma to the others, only to find the others looking back at him. The air around them grew heavier. Ohno could feel it weighing down on his chest, making it harder to breathe. He felt light-headed.
He was starting to see things. The air over Nino was shimmering.
No.
Nino was shimmering.
Ohno’s brow furrowed.
“You.”
“Toma?” Ohno whispered.
Or he thought he did. The copper haired boy didn’t appear to have heard him. He didn’t give any indication of it. But Toma was shimmering, too. Ohno blinked. What on earth was going on?
Sho dropped to his hands and knees.
Ohno’s vision blurred. He tried to move, but he couldn’t.
What was wrong with Sho?
What was that dark shape over Nino’s body?
Ohno blinked again, rapidly. Had the light gotten dimmer? Was it night already? Probably. His head felt like it was weighed down with lead when he tried to move it to check. He really couldn’t move. His heart pounded in his chest.
“I will have him.”
“You will leave.”
Toma?
“He belongs to me.”
“He is theirs now.”
Aiba was swaying badly. He’d fall soon. Jun was pale and sweating.
Ohno’s eyes crossed. He couldn’t get them to focus. Was Nino even there anymore? Who was trying to take him? Who was there? He’d summoned Nino. The imp was his responsibility now; he’d asked Nino to stay. This thing couldn’t have him.
“I didn’t release him. He is mine to take.”
“You died and left him trapped. He was freed. You will go on without him.”
“I will not.”
Ohno’s vision was all but gone. He could barely breathe. The presence of the thing, or maybe it was Toma, weighed too heavily on his chest. He pushed himself to stay on his feet, grabbing at the shape weakly.
“You can’t stay here anymore. The day of the dead is done.”
“Ohno, stop.”
“No. Nino stays with us now. Leave him.”
“Ohno - ”
“You think you can frighten me?”
“We can get rid of you.”
“You have no power over me. You’ve no power over the imp.”
“We summoned him to us.”
“He is still bound to me.”
“He is bound to the apartment,” Ohno said through gritted teeth, “I own the apartment.” His hand clutched convulsively around the shimmering and he pulled. “So let him go.”
Something was pulling the shape away from him. Things were pulling the shape away from him, in different directions. Ohno yanked on it blindly. It couldn’t get away. It would keep draining Nino if he let go. That couldn’t happen.
His mind felt like it was being stretched.
His chest felt suddenly light.
Something tore.
Toma was yelling.
Ohno blacked out.
Ohno came to feeling warm and content. There were finger tips passing gently through his hair, and there was an arm thrown over his chest. He was on something soft, and there was music playing softly - a familiar song that had been stuck in his head for a while. Aiba snuffled softly in his ear.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Ohno blinked. He tipped his head back. “Sho?”
The younger boy smiled and saluted casually. It had been Sho carding Ohno’s hair; the fingers stopped moving when he saluted.
“Yo.”
“Where - weren’t you - what?”
“We’re back at your apartment.”
Ohno sat up, knocking the arm off his chest in the process. Jun frowned in his sleep, made a noise of displeasure, and rolled over. Aiba didn’t notice the commotion, sleeping soundly through it on Ohno’s other side.
Ninomiya was nowhere to be seen. Ohno’s heart beat a little faster.
“Where’s Nino?”
Sho’s smile drooped. “He’s not here. I’m not sure how we got here. I woke up and we were back.” he paused and poked Ohno’s forehead, “You still look exhausted.”
“I’m fine,” the older boy said, attempting to stand. His legs wobbled underneath him, and he just made it to the couch before he collapsed onto it. He smiled sheepishly at Sho. “All right ... I’m mostly fine.”
The younger boy joined him on the couch, sitting sideways and draping himself over the back. “I think we all are. Aiba woke up earlier. Made it to the toilet and fell asleep at the sink.”
Ohno and Sho shared a brief grin that was cut short by the sound of the front door slamming. They jumped in surprise, staring at each other with wide eyes.
Who? Sho mouthed.
Ohno shrugged.
They looked to the living room door simultaneously. From below, Jun made a sleepy noise of annoyance.
“Whadd’ya want? Sleeping.”
“Not us, Jun,” Sho corrected automatically.
“Eh?”
Jun pushed himself into a sitting position and rubbed at his eyes irritably. He smacked Aiba’s arm. When the taller boy made no indication of being awake, he shook him.
“Oi. Someone’s here.”
Seconds later Toma appeared in the doorway, a smile on his face. “Oh, good! You’re all awake.”
Before the copper haired being could even blink, there were four boys on their feet and yelling questions at him, mostly about where was Nino and how the hell had they gotten back and what had happened on that damn roof. Toma raised his hands as though to ward them off.
“Hey, hey! One at a time! I can’t talk that fast.”
“Please, you’d talk all day if anybody gave you the chance.”
The talking stopped all at once.
Toma didn’t even bother to make noises of protest; he was smiling too widely. From behind Toma stood Nino, carrying multiple shopping bags in each hand and weighed down under many layers of borrowed clothes. He smiled cheerfully at them.
“How do you eat, Ohno? There’s nothing in your ‘fridge.”
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3098
Notes: Special guest appearance made by Ikuta Toma as a Mandragora. You will note I call him copper-haired. This is because his hair in HanaKimi struck me as coppery, and I like his HanaKimi hair. So nya. Also, there are a lot of things I left unanswered. I do have all the answers; the question is if I will ever write them down.
Ninomiya was asleep in the clinic bed, blanket pulled up to his chin, when Ohno and Aiba finally came power walking in. At least Sho and Jun had to assume he was sleeping. The doctor who’d been given his case still hadn’t come to see them. Aiba was already firing questions at Jun and Sho so quickly that neither could understand him. Possibly something about what on earth had they been doing, weren’t they supposed to have been shopping?
A few nurses walked purposefully passed the room door, giving them professionally cold glares. One stopped in the door way to remind them that yes, they understood how worried the boys must be, but this is a clinic so please don’t run.
As neither Ohno nor Aiba seemed inclined to pay attention to her, Sho took it upon himself to placate the nurse.
Besides, he didn’t have any answers, and he couldn’t bear to see the nearly vacant look on Jun's face.
“What happened?” Aiba finally cried, distraught.
“He was trying on clothes,” Jun said, clenching his hands around the yellow shirt that the imp had been wearing. “He passed out in the fitting room.”
Sho closed the door on the nurse and joined the others by the bed. He and Jun had panicked once they realized the imp wasn’t waking up. That panic alerted a near-by clerk, who’d immediately run off to call an ambulance. It had been absolute hell trying to come up with information about Nino - did imps even have blood types? - and the imp was on record as a cousin of Jun’s only because one of the medics had suggested it.
They still didn’t know what was wrong with him.
Ohno studied the imp in the bed, his eyes focused on something far away - or inside himself. The other three watched him, hopeful that maybe he’d know something. They’d seen this look on him only a few times before. Then Ohno pulled the blanket slowly back from the imp’s chin, unveiling first the Gucci shirt he’d been trying on, then his hand. It was as white as the sterile sheets he lay on.
Sho frowned. White? The rest of him wasn’t that white.
Deliberately, Ohno grasped Nino’s left wrist and picked the appendage up carefully. Sho felt the breath stop in his throat. Beside him Jun made a choked noise of horror.
Nino’s hand was see-through.
Sho couldn’t actually see the imp’s fingers.
“What is that?” Jun asked softly.
Aiba whimpered. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Ohno replied, quietly. He put Nino’s arm back down gently on the bed. “I don’t know what this is. I’ve never dealt with imps before him. Just ghosts.”
“So what do we do?” Aiba repeated.
“I don’t know,” the oldest snapped. He relented almost immediately, shoulders slumping. “I don’t know. Get him out of here? My mom might know something more.”
The door opened, admitting a doctor with his head still buried in a chart. Ohno scrambled to cover the imp’s fading hand with the hospital blanket. The doctor muttered something to himself and looked up.
“Matsumoto Jun?”
Jun stood. “Yes.”
“This is your cousin?”
“Yes.”
“Ninomiya?”
“Yes.”
“And he passed out in a fitting room.”
“Yes.”
“And you have no idea why?”
“No!” Jun said, clearly trying to hold onto his temper, “This is everything we’ve said before.”
“Have there been any changes since you brought him here?”
There was the briefest of hesitations, where the others could see that Jun wanted to take off the doctor’s head. Of course, he couldn’t very well tell the doctor that the imp was fading. Nobody would believe that.
“No,” the youngest said grudgingly.
“Oh? He was fading before then?” the doctor asked.
The whole room went suddenly very tense. Jun’s knuckles turned white around Nino’s yellow shirt. Sho clenched his fists in surprise, so hard his nails dug crescents into his palms. Only Ohno continued to be mostly unaffected. He stared appraisingly at the doctor.
“You’re not a doctor.”
“Ohno!” Sho said automatically.
“Oh ho! So you’re the one who caught him. I wondered,” the man said.
Before anyone could ask him what that was supposed to mean, he pulled off his glasses. His face changed behind the passing of his hand - what had been a middle aged man became a youthful boy with vaguely red hair. Three voices yelped as one, but the redhead ignored them.
“Poor Nino,” he sighed. He made to take a step closer to Nino, but Jun stepped neatly between them. There was a moment of pause where the stranger actually shrank back under the force of Jun’s glare. Then the boy frowned and drew himself back up. “Okay. Look. I’ve got us off on the wrong foot. Sorry. But he’s going to disappear if you don’t let me help.”
“You’re an imp,” said Ohno.
Sho thought his eyes might bug out of his head. Aiba didn’t look much better.
“Close enough. My name’s Toma. A friend of his. And this is All Hallow’s Day, and you let him outside unprotected.”
The room erupted in questions.
“What?”
Aiba looked confused. “All Hollow’s?”
“All Hallow’s,” Sho corrected automatically.
“What’s that?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Don’t you know anything?” Toma asked, exasperated, “It’s All Hallow’s Day! All Saint’s? Hallowmas? The day when - ”
“The dead are venerated, yes,” said Jun impatiently.
“ - the dead are made to go back to the other side, don’t interrupt me!” Toma snapped.
Jun fell back, confused. Sho had to admit that he’d never thought he’d see a glare worse than the younger boy’s - especially not on a face that was as jovial as Toma’s. The not-quite-imp glared at all of them briefly as though to assure their silence. Then he took a breath.
“Hallowe’en invites the spirits of the dead to mingle with the living. The barrier opens and they come through, so they can see how they are venerated and missed and cared for, but only for the day. They are meant to return today, and at midnight tonight the barrier closes. But all the spirits don’t want to go back. So they look for ways to stay.”
“Stay?” Aiba asked hesitantly.
“Stay with their living relatives, stay just to stay, stay because they think they can live again. Things like that. Nino’s a source of staying-power. We all are.”
“We?”
Toma made an impatient noise, “We. Imps. Mandragora. Faerie. Everything that exists in myth and legend and stories but isn’t supposed to be real. God, they don’t make you like they used to. Did he seriously let you summon him?”
He sounded exactly like Nino had. It was that more than anything else that the redhead had said so far that made the tension of distrust start to dissipate. Aiba even cracked a smile.
“How does it work? How do they stay?” Sho asked.
“They feed on the life of a host.”
Ohno looked down at the imp, lying still and pale in the clinic bed. He didn’t see anything, and said as much.
“Of course not! These are vengeful dead, not your average pity-me-I’m-a-ghost dead. They’ve been staying here by existing on hosts - they know how to hide. If they’re strong enough they don’t even need to be near their host. They’ll drift off and come back when they start to fade or feel the pull of the dead who have passed on. The host lasts longer that way.”
“So then what happened to Nino? Why’d he collapse? Why is he fading?” Aiba asked.
“If you’d let me through, I might be able to figure it out,” Toma said slowly, as thought he was facing a crowd of six year olds.
That made Jun clench his teeth. “How do we know that you don’t want to hurt him?”
Toma bristled. The lights in the room suddenly dimmed, and Sho let out a cry. Aiba hunched in to himself, eyes growing wide with fear. Ohno put his hands on Toma’s shoulders.
“Please don’t.”
The red head sighed and the lights went back to normal. Ohno shot a look at Jun, who reluctantly backed down and moved quickly to a spot near Aiba. The tallest of them grabbed Jun’s hand reassuringly.
“Can you help Nino?” Ohno asked.
Toma sighed. “Probably.”
“Probably?” Sho echoed, his tone worried.
“Probably. It depends on exactly what happened. But I don’t want to do anything here. It’s too noticeable, and the space is too small and unprotected.”
“But they won’t let him out,” Aiba started, “Will they?”
“Sure they will,” the red head said, grinning shortly, “They can’t argue with a doctor. Or a distraction they don’t know is a distraction.”
Aiba started to say something - he was probably going to echo ‘distraction’ if the pattern of echoing the words of mythical beings was anything to go by, Ohno thought. But then the lights in the whole building started flickering. Machines that beeped started beeping in unsynchronized fashions, much louder than anything Ohno’d ever heard in a clinic.
“What are you doing?” Sho asked fretfully.
“Nothing that will hurt anyone. The machines aren’t necessary ones. Now come on. Which one of you can carry him?”
Ohno looked at Aiba, who looked at Sho, who looked at Jun. Toma growled impatiently. Jun and Sho moved forward as one. Jun pulled the blanket down and Sho gathered Nino into his arms, lifting him carefully. The imp’s hands were both gone and his arms were starting to fade below his elbows.
“He’s ... He weighs nothing!” Sho breathed.
“Literally?” Toma asked, his face contorting in worry.
“It’s like ... it’s like he’s insubstantial.”
The red head muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a curse under his breath. He spun on his heel and started moving rapidly towards the door. He opened it and gestured sharply for the others to follow him.
“Get moving. No more arguing, there isn’t time.”
“What’s going on?” Ohno asked, even as he started after Toma.
“He’s being drained. We’re going to the roof.”
From somewhere behind him, Ohno heard Aiba asking, “What?”
Toma didn’t even look back. He slid around people - or maybe people were sliding around them - with ease, making a bee line for the exit. “You heard me. The roof. There’ll be more privacy and there’s no time to go anywhere else.”
“Isn’t there an alarm?”
“Not anymore.”
Ohno and Toma were the first two out onto the roof, yelling back to the others to hurry. The red head threw a piece of chalk to Ohno, and looked relieved when Ohno didn’t ask him where he’d gotten it.
“What’s the most complex barrier you know?”
“Um ...”
“Good, start working on it. Work around me.”
And with that, Toma turned away and began drawing something on the ground. Ohno stared at him for a beat, then put his chalk to the ground and began to work. It was a barrier his mother had taught him, one specifically for keeping things on the outside out.
Jun arrived moments later, holding the roof door open. Sho and Aiba come through it seconds after. The door closed with a slam that none of them payed attention to. Toma didn’t even look up, just pointed to three of four markings he’d made on the roof.
“Put him down in the middle, then stand on these points. Ohno, when you’re done with that barrier, stand on that one.”
Sho placed Nino carefully down, chewing on his bottom lip worriedly. Then he took a place on one of the markings. Aiba and Jun stood on a marking each, their faces drawn with fatigue and concern. Ohno couldn’t say he blamed them. They’d had a late night just the night before, trying to wrap their minds around the sudden appearance of an imp and now they were apparently about to lose said imp to negligence. But they hadn’t known. There wasn’t any way for them to have known.
Ohno finished drawing the barrier and took a spot across from Sho. He looked down at Nino, then to his friends, following the lines drawn by Toma. They were on the points of a five pointed star. He looked down his feet considering-ly.
“Seimei?” he murmured.
“Give the boy a gold star,” Toma said. He stood, brushing his hands off on the doctor’s coat. “Seimei is legendary for a reason.”
“You mean he could -”
“Not now, Aiba,” Jun snapped.
“Sorry,” Aiba said meekly.
“I’ll give you all the history you want after we finish this,” the red head said.
“You were - ”
“Aiba!”
“Sorry.”
Toma looked down at Nino, shaking his head with a fond smile on his face. “You and I are going to have a long talk when this is done. And we are going to discuss your taste in humans first.”
Nino didn’t answer.
Toma sighed and held out one hand, palm down. The other stayed by his side. He didn’t chant; his eyes grew half lidded. Ohno’s eyes traveled back and forth, looking from Toma to the others, only to find the others looking back at him. The air around them grew heavier. Ohno could feel it weighing down on his chest, making it harder to breathe. He felt light-headed.
He was starting to see things. The air over Nino was shimmering.
No.
Nino was shimmering.
Ohno’s brow furrowed.
“You.”
“Toma?” Ohno whispered.
Or he thought he did. The copper haired boy didn’t appear to have heard him. He didn’t give any indication of it. But Toma was shimmering, too. Ohno blinked. What on earth was going on?
Sho dropped to his hands and knees.
Ohno’s vision blurred. He tried to move, but he couldn’t.
What was wrong with Sho?
What was that dark shape over Nino’s body?
Ohno blinked again, rapidly. Had the light gotten dimmer? Was it night already? Probably. His head felt like it was weighed down with lead when he tried to move it to check. He really couldn’t move. His heart pounded in his chest.
“I will have him.”
“You will leave.”
Toma?
“He belongs to me.”
“He is theirs now.”
Aiba was swaying badly. He’d fall soon. Jun was pale and sweating.
Ohno’s eyes crossed. He couldn’t get them to focus. Was Nino even there anymore? Who was trying to take him? Who was there? He’d summoned Nino. The imp was his responsibility now; he’d asked Nino to stay. This thing couldn’t have him.
“I didn’t release him. He is mine to take.”
“You died and left him trapped. He was freed. You will go on without him.”
“I will not.”
Ohno’s vision was all but gone. He could barely breathe. The presence of the thing, or maybe it was Toma, weighed too heavily on his chest. He pushed himself to stay on his feet, grabbing at the shape weakly.
“You can’t stay here anymore. The day of the dead is done.”
“Ohno, stop.”
“No. Nino stays with us now. Leave him.”
“Ohno - ”
“You think you can frighten me?”
“We can get rid of you.”
“You have no power over me. You’ve no power over the imp.”
“We summoned him to us.”
“He is still bound to me.”
“He is bound to the apartment,” Ohno said through gritted teeth, “I own the apartment.” His hand clutched convulsively around the shimmering and he pulled. “So let him go.”
Something was pulling the shape away from him. Things were pulling the shape away from him, in different directions. Ohno yanked on it blindly. It couldn’t get away. It would keep draining Nino if he let go. That couldn’t happen.
His mind felt like it was being stretched.
His chest felt suddenly light.
Something tore.
Toma was yelling.
Ohno blacked out.
Ohno came to feeling warm and content. There were finger tips passing gently through his hair, and there was an arm thrown over his chest. He was on something soft, and there was music playing softly - a familiar song that had been stuck in his head for a while. Aiba snuffled softly in his ear.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Ohno blinked. He tipped his head back. “Sho?”
The younger boy smiled and saluted casually. It had been Sho carding Ohno’s hair; the fingers stopped moving when he saluted.
“Yo.”
“Where - weren’t you - what?”
“We’re back at your apartment.”
Ohno sat up, knocking the arm off his chest in the process. Jun frowned in his sleep, made a noise of displeasure, and rolled over. Aiba didn’t notice the commotion, sleeping soundly through it on Ohno’s other side.
Ninomiya was nowhere to be seen. Ohno’s heart beat a little faster.
“Where’s Nino?”
Sho’s smile drooped. “He’s not here. I’m not sure how we got here. I woke up and we were back.” he paused and poked Ohno’s forehead, “You still look exhausted.”
“I’m fine,” the older boy said, attempting to stand. His legs wobbled underneath him, and he just made it to the couch before he collapsed onto it. He smiled sheepishly at Sho. “All right ... I’m mostly fine.”
The younger boy joined him on the couch, sitting sideways and draping himself over the back. “I think we all are. Aiba woke up earlier. Made it to the toilet and fell asleep at the sink.”
Ohno and Sho shared a brief grin that was cut short by the sound of the front door slamming. They jumped in surprise, staring at each other with wide eyes.
Who? Sho mouthed.
Ohno shrugged.
They looked to the living room door simultaneously. From below, Jun made a sleepy noise of annoyance.
“Whadd’ya want? Sleeping.”
“Not us, Jun,” Sho corrected automatically.
“Eh?”
Jun pushed himself into a sitting position and rubbed at his eyes irritably. He smacked Aiba’s arm. When the taller boy made no indication of being awake, he shook him.
“Oi. Someone’s here.”
Seconds later Toma appeared in the doorway, a smile on his face. “Oh, good! You’re all awake.”
Before the copper haired being could even blink, there were four boys on their feet and yelling questions at him, mostly about where was Nino and how the hell had they gotten back and what had happened on that damn roof. Toma raised his hands as though to ward them off.
“Hey, hey! One at a time! I can’t talk that fast.”
“Please, you’d talk all day if anybody gave you the chance.”
The talking stopped all at once.
Toma didn’t even bother to make noises of protest; he was smiling too widely. From behind Toma stood Nino, carrying multiple shopping bags in each hand and weighed down under many layers of borrowed clothes. He smiled cheerfully at them.
“How do you eat, Ohno? There’s nothing in your ‘fridge.”