Ink Stained

12: before it's too late*

それは手遅れになる前

Shin flinched, muscles clenching tight in spasms that shook his tall frame as he screwed his eyes shut.

Kouta turned to him at the abrupt movement, silently watching as Shin turned and braced his hands on the window sill that looked into room thirty-seven. His jaw was clamped tight and the veins stood out in sharp relief on his forearms. Kouta glanced down when there was a low squealing groan, and he saw that the metal frame of the window was bending and cracking under the pressure from Shin's hands.

Shin drew in one long breath, held it, then exhaled and slowly eased his death grip on the window frame. The whole time, his mismatching eyes remained focused on Pai's unmoving figure in the big white hospital bed. The contacts were only there to hide his unnatural red eyes from the humans in the hospital, but they were quickly dissolving. They were designed for human use, not Ayakashi.

Kouta wondered how long it would take Kanou to procure another set of them. He'd noticed the healer taking note of how quickly they were dissolving during their talk, watching Shin with a worry that was echoed by Kouta.

He leaned his shoulder on the wall next to the window as he crossed his arms over his chest, black leather jacket comfortably loose on his shoulders, and regarded Shin seriously. He noted that his canines looked sharper, pressing into his lower lip. He looked more animalistic than human, in this moment.

"How close is he?" he asked quietly.

"Pretty damn close," Shin managed through grit teeth, short and clipped.

'He' was Shin's True Ayakashi, an almost separate persona that dwelled deep within every Hengen. Every one was different for each Hengen, but they generally fell into three types; those that worked hand in hand to help their 'host' survive in a world filled with pitfalls at every turn, known as Hogo-Sha no Ayakashi. Others just wanted to give in to their primal instincts, to run wild and loose like how the Ayakashi did before humans claimed the world for themselves. They were Ayakashi Satsugai; once released, all they knew, all they wanted, was to kill.

Others, yet rarer still, wanted nothing more than to spread horror and terror to humans, the weakest of all without their machines, the bottom rung of the food chain. They were the most fearsome for how rare and mysterious and chaotic they were thought to be, and how little was actually truly known about them – the Kaosu no Ayakashi.

Kouta had it easy. His True Ayakashi was Hogo-Sha, typically wanting to help – whenever he deigned to be bothered by anything, at any rate. The desire was not only towards protecting himself, but extended to all the Tengu and those he considered his charges. Kouta's father said that it has been the same for every Tengu who had ascended the throne of the Sojobo; something of an inherited trait for the Akiyama's, who had ruled as Sojobo for a long time indeed.

Shin, however, was of the third; Kaosu no Ayakashi. His True Ayakashi loathed being leashed – and he was strong, too. That was one of the reasons Shin's eyes, in their usual deep blue, almost always seemed to glow, even if only faintly. Shin's True Ayakashi rode closer to the surface than anyone else's.

It made Shin the perfect Daitengu, able to react faster, strike harder, fight better. But in the heat of the moment, it was hard to control him, to talk sense into him. It was hard to get Shin to listen to reason in those times, and far easier for him to go much further than he intended to.

The last time Shin was like that, so in sync with his True Ayakashi and out of it with the outside world, he'd wiped out nearly half an army with no remorse, bathing in the blood of those who thought to hurt his people. It was one of the only times Kouta found himself afraid of Shin, his best friend.