Ink Stained

96: you are not the enemy*

あなたは敵ではない

Kouta figured the gig was up as soon as the Shin walked into Kanou's infirmary and saw Pai's ashen face as she stared woodenly at the ground while Kanou bandaged her wounded feet.

Of the other three people in the room – himself, Shiori, and Kanou – no one said a thing when Shin crossed the space from the door to the bed Pai was sitting on in two seconds flat and enveloped her in his arms. He held her close as she weakly hugged him back and hid her face in the front of his shirt. She'd been looking half-dead, dully answering Kanou's inquiries when he fixed her up in a monotone. But she visibly brightened, if only minutely, at Shin's appearance, the tension ebbing out of her body at his touch.

Shiori's jaw dropped straight to the ground.

It was quite a comical sight, and Kouta would have loved to snap a picture of her looking like that to tease her endlessly about it, if not for the tension stiffening the atmosphere in the room. Kanou raised his grizzly eyebrows sky-high before stepping back with a gentle pat on her knee. He recovered much faster than Shiori.

Then again, he was old. He'd seen a lot of things. Kouta doubted there was much that surprised the healer.

"There," Kanou said with a kind smile. "Just be careful not to walk around too much, and when you have to, use these," he reached for the crutches he'd set against the headboard of the bed she sat on. They clattered as he laid them on the bed beside her. "At least for a day or two. The glass cut your feet quite deep. Put too much pressure and you'll split the wounds open and make them worse."

Pai nodded absently, eyes glazed over. She clung close to Shin, who didn't look like he'd be letting go of her any time soon. "I understand. Thank you, Kanou-san."

He nodded, turning and walking over to his desk. He sat down heavily in his chair and immediately opened up his notebook and started scribbling something in it. Kouta arched a brow at the nonchalance. Kanou seemed to know that whatever it was Pai wanted to tell all three of them, it would be happening now, in his infirmary.

Admittedly, after Pai's disturbing reaction to the news report only ten minutes before, what better time was there to do it?

Shiori swung her astounded gaze to him. The question in her eyes was obvious. Kouta shrugged. Obviously, he knew about their feelings for each other – he wasn't dense as she, thank you very much – but he acknowledged that it was their news to tell. Not his. He respected Pai and Shin both enough to afford them the courtesy of revealing what they were to others when they were ready to do so themselves.

He could only imagine how irritated Shin would be with him if he ousted them without their approval. What with how Shin was becoming Kamigami now, Kouta knew the man could make him very sorry during their trainings together. He got enough bruises on a daily basis without that added lingering threat.

Of course, that didn't stop Shiori glaring daggers at him for not telling her anything. As he pondered all the creative ways Shiori could pay him back for that one (it could be really, really good, or really, really bad. There was no in between), his hand trailed up to his hair. It would probably be a good idea to hide his only hair tie and hope she didn't get Ryu to find it. The boy was terrifyingly good at that.

"What happened?" Shin asked her as he tucked her head under his chin, pointedly ignoring everyone else in the room. It was obvious that whatever had happened to Pai, he knew more about it than the others.

"Fujikage...they burned it down," she murmured back in a dull voice. "They burned it down."

Kouta frowned. True, the fire was tragic, with now six people found dead, and the number of casualties climbing. But he hadn't thought she could react so strongly to it. There were worse things she'd seen reported on the evening news. Why did this particular one get to her so?