Ink Stained

102: the future*

未来

Pai was sleepwalking again.

This time, Shin was prepared for it. He had been expecting this to happen again, in all honesty, what with all the revelations that had come to light over the past few days. Ever since last time he'd been keeping an eye on Pai, watching for any sign of it, especially now that he knew who it was he'd seen through Pai last time, and the meaning behind her broken pleas for forgiveness.

Kuniumi.

His immediate goal wasn't to rouse Pai from her half-slumber. He wanted to get answers, if he could, while she was stuck in this strange subconscious state akin to hypnosis. She didn't have those answers that they both needed, but there was one person who did.

The strange woman had shown herself once before to him.

She'd spoken through Pai before and, much as he hated it, he knew that he needed that woman to find out anything he could from her. Now, with Pai in this in-between place where she wasn't entirely sleeping but not fully awake either, he knew that this was a chance to at least try to speak directly to Kuniumi again.

He wasn't sure it would work. Pai had told him how taciturn and almost childishly playful Kuniumi was with the way she taunted Pai with all the things she knew and wouldn't reveal. He knew there was a high chance she would do the same with him, but he still had to try. He could not bring himself to just sit around waiting for something to happen, not with Pai's life on the line.

Of all the things that were happening to them now, it was the very real possibility that Pai might die that scared him most. He could accept that she was Hanyou, with an [ability] that mimicked Ayakashi powers. He could deal with the fact that she'd had to do things that hurt her and others just to survive what So Fu did to her, even if she couldn't deal with it herself yet. He could, grudgingly, accept Kuniumi's presence, even though it killed him that she was an unknown factor he didn't know how to protect Pai from.

He didn't understand why Pai was so calm about Kuniumi, either. She looked like she had resigned herself to the fate of living with a strange presence in her mind for the rest of her life, and that irked him. After seeing how tired she got when she used her [ability] with Kuniumi's help, and the spike of true fear and malice in her darkened eyes when Kuniumi briefly flared up inside her to prove her existence to him, he'd been in a stressful, almost never-ending state of constant worry about it. Kanou still hadn't turned up anything useful in figuring out who Kuniumi was, or what she wanted with Pai.

The not-knowing aspect of the whole situation, coupled with the strange fact that he couldn't get through to some of Shinigami's memories that remained foggy and just beyond his reach – almost like Shinigami was still separate from him and teasing him with what he knew even though they were one now – drove him mad.

But the one thing he didn't know how to come to terms with, wasn't sure he'd ever be able to, was that Pai was dying.

She was the home he wanted to come back to, the only love he could ever have, the star he enjoyed gazing at, the butterfly he yearned to touch. He didn't know what he would do if something happened to her. Even as Kamigami, he didn't know if he could survive what was coming to steal the only one who mattered from him. The uncertainty of whether or not Pai would come back didn't help.

At the moment, the only one he saw who could possibly answer the myriad of questions plaguing him was Kuniumi.

Pai said that Kuniumi had mixed feelings about him. Sometimes she liked the things he did that made Pai happy. Other times she grew annoyed with his increasingly hostile attitude about her very existence. He didn't care how Kuniumi felt, never bothering to hide his dislike or mistrust of the woman.