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Tip, tap. Tip, tap. Tip, tap.
They walk timidly, quietly, anxiously out of the house and into the humid summer night, stifling like syrup. They are unsure whether they have really bested it; unsure if something is behind them, ready to lunge; unsure what is ahead. Crickets chirp loudly, out of rhythm. Off kilter. They pad through the dark along the overgrown grasses they can hardly see up to the roads aglow. Teru, Akane, Aoi.
Teru leans against Akane’s shoulder, using him as a crutch as they approach the sidewalk. He is bone-tired, blurry, bleary. He shuts off his brain so that it processes only what is in front of him, shoving everything else down as quickly as he can. His right knee was busted when he fell into the water. The ache in his body serves to drown out his last remaining thoughts.
Akane silently thanks whatever must have been looking out for them that evening. He doesn’t know if he believes in God, but he had prayed fervently for Nene, for escape, for life as he fought. It had been a rough battle. They’d been in the house for the last 3 hours and 27 minutes, as his clock keeper’s perception tells him. He wonders if the prayers were heard. He begins to wonder if the soul stays after exorcism, if anywhere, and where a certain two underclassmen are. If not in that… well. He stops as the girl in front of him does the same.
“Oh!” She says.
Looking back at the two boys ahead of the streetlamps shining bright, illuminated from the back by warm light in the blue, blue night, Aoi remarks, “She told us we should just go home. She found a way in without us.”
Akane blinks. “Huh?”
“Nene-chan texted us. She found a way into the boundary,” Aoi explains, holding up her illuminated phone. She is spent as well, but quietly driven, taking charge. She is scared, sad, and so confused, but she has to step up if no one else will. “She says we won’t be able to follow her in, so there isn’t very much we can do from here. Teru-kun, do you live nearby?”
Teru is broken out of his haze a moment. Mouth agape, breath speeding–
“I can’t go home tonight!”
He sways against Akane. Where is the third child, his worried parents will ask. Where is your brother? Where is Kou?
It clicks in Akane’s head.
“Do you… want to stay at my place?” Akane asks him hesitantly. He adds, “My parents aren’t home, and that way we can all walk together.” He dares not mention the real reason for his proposal, leaving it to hang in the air, known by all but admitted by none; he doubts Teru will even make it home if he speaks the truth and cements it into this reality.
…Even if it isn’t fully cemented yet, he thinks. Instinctively reaching into his pocket with his free hand to feel his watch, he remembers a second too late he had entrusted it to Nene. He then looks to where the school would be. It’s momentarily obscured by looming silhouettes of shops and apartments, and he can only hope Nene is doing something right.
Out of the corner of his eye, Akane notices his sullen nod. Teru has crawled back into his shell, clearly not letting his emotions get the best of him.
Aoi blinks. She turns back and begins walking. Teru and Akane follow.
Tip, tap. Tip, tap. Tip, tap.
“I guess this is it,” Akane murmurs as they reach Aoi’s house. Akane’s isn’t far past it. Aoi, now walking beside the two, stops as they do. She, turning toward them, searches their eyes. She wants to stay strong, but she feels so lost and needs a pointer, a direction, any piece of knowledge these people from another world may have to share with her.
Well, anything Akane-kun has to share. Teru-kun is… catatonic.
She opens her mouth to say something as Akane does, and an awkward string of “you go”s and “sorry”s ensues. They both stand silent for a moment, before Akane abandons his post beside Teru to sweep her up in a hug.
The hug is a reassurement, an apology, and a farewell. Akane doesn’t know any better than her what could change in the morning. He doesn’t even think she will know the difference if she exists there. It could be goodbye to this Aoi, just as lovely as the one he knew in his old timeline. He breathes in her distinct floral scent. It's tarnished by a whiff of char from the fire they had driven away the monster with. Surprised, Aoi winds her delicate arms around him after a moment. Akane’s heart beats in near tandem with Aoi’s, and it pangs with longing.
He gently rubs her back once, twice, thrice, and then they are apart. He doesn’t look back at her as he and Teru pass by, since he knows what could be his last memory of her would be her back and not her face. She wouldn’t turn around for him.
They limp towards Akane’s door.
Though usually bitter towards his parents’ lack of attendance at his home, Akane finds himself grateful as he clumsily jams his key in. The lock finally turns after a few tries, and the door creaks open. He steps inside to flick on a light in his foyer. The coolness of the residence is a slight relief from the heat outside, and he lends Teru a hand again as he shuffles inside.
“Do you want a drink? Something to eat?” Akane inquires as he steers his president toward his kitchen. He plunks him down on his kitchen chair, light from the entrance faintly illuminating the room. Teru shakes his head again, and Akane sighs. It’s not like Akane himself can stomach food at the moment, but he wishes he could see inside his silent upperclassman’s brain. Teru is trying to keep a wall up. While it is one Akane’s painfully accustomed to, he never thought he’d see it crumbling with each tick of the clock. It’s not a wall to keep up a fake persona like Aoi, however. It is more so one to avoid hard conversations and harder feelings.
It’s not like Akane is far from those hard feelings, either.
Teru looks down at his hands lamely. He knows Akane is worried about him, but he can’t just say what’s on his mind. Surely Akane understands. Besides, food may be impossible for a while. He feels unwell, from his throbbing knee to his churning stomach to the buzz in his brain. It reminds him of flies…
Like the flies that were on–
I’m not there anymore, he tells himself.
Keep it together for now.
He crunches forward as nausea becomes his chief complaint. It is almost as though the world spins around him as he futilely avoids his own spiraling.
Clink.
A jarring noise startles him from his thoughts. He glances up to notice Akane had gotten him water, though he’d said he wasn’t thirsty.
Setting the cup down, Akane realizes he is tired. He is extremely tired. Tired, but he absolutely does not want to sleep. Sleep will bring nightmares, and it will bring in the new day sooner. He doesn’t know what will come next, just that it will be arduous. He isn’t ready. He hopes Aoi will be there.
Akane continues watching Teru, waiting for him to do something. To take a sip, maybe.
He decides that sleep can wait, for he is helping Teru. Serving others is what Akane does best. (Maybe, however, it is just what he does most. He doesn’t care to find out the difference.) He's finally found a fair reason to avoid it. Besides, on this lonely night, there are two less people to serve.
“Hey,” Akane declares. “Look at me.” He crosses over to Teru. He grabs his chin, tilting his face up to inspect him. They make uncomfortable eye contact. It is solid for exactly 13 seconds, the silence a dead weight in the chilled, half-lit kitchen.
“Where’s your bathroom?” Teru asks. Those are the first words he’s said since leaving the house. Akane scrunches his brows. He lets go of Teru to point the way.
Teru runs in and throws up.
Akane stares, bewildered, at the sudden speed of the injured president until he hears him vomit. His lip instinctively curls up, and he steels himself as he pads closer. He has never been good at comforting people. Hell, when Aoi tried to leave to the Far Shore, he had just made her cry. His heart rate spikes. Tenseness oozes up from his chest, squeezing his throat and silencing his voice. What is there to say, anyway?
He breaches the entrance of the compact bathroom and flicks on a light to find Teru hunched over, breathing heavily. Teru, mortified, keeps his head down to avoid Akane’s piercing eyes. Teru’s stomach now flips for a different reason than sickness.
Keep it together.
He repeats this mantra thrice in his head, before feeling a sudden weight on his back. Warmth seeps through his uniform.
It feels gentle. It feels grounding.
It feels like the same hand on his back after he had seen–
“Do you want to talk about it yet?”
Akane regrets the words as soon as they echo back at him within the small enclosure. They seem impatient and unwelcoming. He doesn’t mean to come off that way, but Akane has never been one to share many of his worries with others. He is direct and he is not scared to speak his mind, but he has never seen the point in venting his feelings out if the other person can’t do anything to change them. He just knows that doing so helps other people, and he wants to help Teru for once. It’s almost absurd how much he is worrying about the boy who had strung him up near-daily for so long.
Teru turns his head, and stares at Akane like he has grown a second one. He’s acknowledged it. The truth is out.
Why in the world would I want to talk about it? Teru thinks. He blinks before leaning forward to flush the toilet. (He suddenly worries that he is a burden. Teru Minamoto, beloved child exorcist, hunched over a toilet in the early hours of the night trying not to break down.) His hand comes up to fiddle with his tie as he shrinks back.
“You know what?” Akane asks abruptly. He decides the best thing for both of them at the moment is to tell Teru to “just go take a shower.”
Akane sits stiffly on his neatly made bed as he waits for Teru to finish showering. It is mostly dark in there, lit by a singular lamp on his nightstand. He is anxious. He’s anxious for what will come after today, for if Teru is okay alone, and for whether Aoi has gotten to sleep yet. He glances out his window, to see her light off. Doesn’t mean much as to her state of consciousness after such a rough night, though.
For once, he doesn’t feel like breaching first contact between them. He wants to stay alone, contemplating, meditating. He takes a deep breath in, trying to purge the noxious scent of fire that seemingly hasn’t left him since they left the Red House. The air is clear here, but maybe it’s just burned into his nose like the sight of the well is burned into his retinas, like the sound of the president splashing into the cold, black water after a brutal hit from the monster is burned into his ears.
It’s been 10 minutes and 50 seconds. He grabs a shirt and shorts he hopes will fit Teru before changing into some comfier clothes himself.
Click.
The door opens, and a wet Teru comes through, his waist draped in a towel. Akane averts his acute gaze for once, gesturing toward the clothes he had laid out for Teru, but not before noticing the gash on his knee. He notes to himself that he might as well patch it up once Teru is dressed. His limping gait leads Akane to ponder the odds of it being broken. He hopes it isn't.
Teru emerges once again. He is dressed in Akane’s plain cotton shirt and sweats this time, grateful for time spent not under scrutiny in the shower. His underclassman can see right through him sometimes; it makes him nervous that he will fail to uphold his family’s honor around him more than he already has. The half-supernatural is a liability to Teru, an entrancing exception to every rule he holds close. He takes a shaky step toward the boy sitting on his bed. Akane asks him bluntly, “Are you bleeding on my pants? I should bandage you up, you know.”
Teru observes his leg. He had been ignoring the sting in it, like all the other things he’s ignoring to keep himself functioning. Sitting down on the bed, he rolls up his right pant leg to reveal the injury. It is by no means a pretty sight. It seems to be mostly done bleeding, though. It’s all purple and red and pink. He grips onto the pants tightly even when he is done rolling them up.
Akane asks impatiently, “Well? Do you want me to get some gauze?”
Teru, in his dissociated state, absentmindedly hopes he isn’t causing Akane too much trouble. “I don’t know,” he mumbles.
“..Pres, really? Of course you know. It’s an easy question.”
“Well, I…” Teru is dazed, too dazed to monitor what he says. All he can focus on is keeping his eyes from growing wet. “I don’t want anything if he’s not in this world.”
They are both silent. Akane’s heart drops. That tenseness is back. He has no words.
He turns and leaves the room to grab bandages.
He returns, and Teru is still blankly staring at the door. Akane wordlessly kneels down and begins dabbing at Teru’s knee with a wet washcloth. Teru appears to awaken from his fogginess a second as he suddenly inhales, and Akane peeks up at him. As Akane resumes working, Teru keeps an eye on him, hands still grabbing at the seams of his– Akane’s– pants.
It isn’t until Akane is finished cleaning up Teru’s wound that he finishes workshopping what he will say next. Nothing really sounds right. He tentatively affirms, “We will find one where he is.” Teru stares through Akane’s face. He adds haphazardly, “In this world, I mean. Okay?”
Teru’s lip quivers. He nods. Akane looks at him a tad too concerned and Teru hates it, hates the enigma of the clock keeper at his feet, hates the uncertainty surrounding this entire mess. The foundation of the dam he had carefully and time-consumingly built up has been dismantled piece by piece since he arrived in this timeline. Both his parents being present. Kou. The eyes currently boring into his soul. Those eyes are his last straw, the final branch unlodged. His own eyes begin to burn, and he knows the jig is up.
Years of acting. Years of hard work, years of exhaustion, of…of…
“Don’t look at me,” is all he can get out before tears pool in his eyes.
“Oh, Pres…”
Akane feels his own eyes moisten as he rises and envelopes Teru in a hug. He has no reprieve to offer, no solution. All he has to offer is trust. He holds Teru tightly as he shudders. Teru needs to trust in Nene to fix the world. He needs to trust Akane so that he can be fully sincere to himself and let everything out. He needs to trust himself to do the right thing, and to know that he couldn’t have done anything to save Kou.
“If… if only I had gotten there sooner, he wouldn’t… K-Kou wouldn’t be…”
…Apparently he hasn’t gotten the memo. Akane sighs, pulling Teru down so they sit side by side, still together. He caresses Teru’s hair and gently shushes him. “It’s no one’s fault,” He explains between Teru’s sobs. “...And have some faith.”
After some time, Teru begins to quiet, and Akane loosens his embrace. He waits for Teru to pull away first, but he only nuzzles himself in Akane’s neck. He persists in his soothing petting.
“You know, I, uh… I was really scared back there,” Akane offers, filling the silence between Teru’s shaky inhales in the dark room. “I didn’t think we would make it out. My will to live took over everything else, I guess. I... I begged whatever higher powers existed for us to live as I fought. I gave control up to them. Silly, huh?
“We’ll find a way back, okay? You shouldn’t put this all on yourself. I’m here to figure it out with you. Can you trust me, Pres?”
He feels Teru begin to pull back, and his hands fall into Teru’s as they look at each other. Their eyes link for another 13 seconds, Teru’s glossy but clear, Akane’s always astutely observing. This time, it’s not uncomfortable.
“Okay,” Teru mumbles, voice scratchy. Akane tells him it’s rare to see him so complacent, and Teru smiles a little and rubs Akane’s hands. He blinks three times, each time slower than the last, before finally, his eyes stay closed on the fourth. He tilts forward, and Akane catches him before he falls off the bed. Lying him down, tucking him in, Akane smirks at how easily the blond’s fallen asleep. He wonders when Teru’s last restful slumber was.
He continues to scrutinize the dozing president as his own drowsiness trickles in, akin to how the lulling wake of a boat grows stronger as it nears. He notices Teru’s eyebrows turn inward and his mouth mutter something as he shifts away from Akane. It seems to be a bad dream already. Akane sighs, letting himself fall sideways on the bed, arm situated around his president. Teru stops twitching, and Akane feels Teru’s breath grow slower, steadier. Rhythmic, regular. Its even tempo lures Akane himself closer to the brink of sleep before long, and for a second, he fears it.
…He reminds himself of what he had just told Teru. Whatever happens, however out of control it is, they will figure it out together.
In, out. In…
And out.