Ink Stained

64: kyoto, day six (2)*

京都市、6日目

Pai realized too late that she was more nervous than she ought to be, and not for the right reasons – by then, she was already standing in front of Shin's quarters, already here. She couldn't chicken out now.

And she was suddenly panicking over the stupidest thing.

She was not worried about Shin seeing the chaotic swirl of her confused emotions about anything regarding him. It wasn't that he had never done that thing with his Ability with a human before. No, her hands were clammy and her stomach clenched with nerves from only one thing; she was about to enter Shin's room – his room – for the first time.

Never mind that it wasn't his room at Ayashi House, which they all considered home. She'd never been in that room, either. But this was still his bedroom, the place he came back to at the end of the day to sleep, to relax, to be alone. She was about to enter this private space of his, under his own invitation...and she truly had no idea how to feel about it.

Logically, she understood that his room was the best place they could meet. It was private – as Daitengu, he enjoyed the privilege of having a lock on his bedroom where everyone else didn't, which was something Pai was highly uncomfortable with.

No one would disturb them. In her room, it was always possible that someone would disrupt whatever it Shin planned to do to help her remember. There was no such possibility if they did it in his room.

It was also quiet. His room was just on the other side of the bridge from Kouta's own bedroom. There weren't quite as many attendants rushing around in the private quarters of and near the Heir's rooms as there were in any other part of the Palace. What was more, Shin would most likely find it more comfortable to do his thing – however he did it – in the familiarity of his own room rather than elsewhere in the Palace, where anyone might see them.

The bruised thing beating in her chest didn't quite understand the mysterious language of Logic, and continued to thunder painfully away in her chest like it cared exactly nothing for her emotional well-being. What made it worse was that it was still edged in breaking glass from the memory – no, no, it was a dream, it was a dream until I know otherwise – of Midori in Agent's uniform, and from seeing her on the streets the other day, mere feet away, and still losing her again.

That was what bothered her the most about it, besides the fact that Midori was the one who ran off. It wasn't just that Pai had lost her, but that she'd lost her again, and hadn't been able to do anything about it. Just the same way she clearly hadn't been able to do anything about her entire family's disappearance, or how she couldn't find them now.

The misery and sorrow of seeing Midori and the flighty anticipation of entering Shin's room rumbled in her stomach uncomfortably.

She smacked her cheeks, hard enough to leave her head ringing. Blinking as she rubbed her stinging cheeks with a hand, she bent down with a heavy sigh, balancing carefully on the balls of her feet so that she didn't topple over. She looked straight into the green-yellow eyes outlined in black of Sato the cat.

He sat on his heels, regarding her with a look she could definitely say was human, though she still was unsure of whether or not he was Ayakashi. She didn't think so, but with so much heat from all the Hengen around her all the time, she couldn't trust her own innate ability to sense Ayakashi as well as she did on ordinary days.

Maybe if she knew how Aihara did it, she could too.

She hastily shook her thoughts from trampling down that road – she refused to think about Aihara, and what the nurse wanted to say to her, until the time came for it. Her brain was already so clogged up with too many worries. She didn't think she could take it if she added another to the growing pile.