#I was feeling fine about it until I remembered the patch jacket that has occult designs on it

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

every day I keep remembering more times that blorbo from my bands has said something blasphemous or heretical (always confuse the difference) or worn a pentagram accessory and it just keeps getting worse. how can something that God has used for so much good in my life (improving my body image, getting me truly interested in writing again, giving me an outlet I have needed and words to relate to, etc) now be something I have to give up?

[k1ngtok1]

“What child doesn’t wish to fly”

Hi hello yes if you know me, you know I love me some winged!Roman. Hope you like it! Please give me some feedback! Reblogs and likes are appreciated and cherished! The word count is 2,603

Tw: Knife mention, blood mention, remus being remus, mild cursing, pain, 

Relationships: brotherly Creatitwins, platonic LAMP, prinxiety if you squint and put on glasses

Summary: Roman has wings. Let’s not shy around that. They were big, fluffy, brown angel wings, and they were awesome!

At least to him.

Roman sighed as he easily slipped on a hoodie that looked almost exactly like his tunic. It wasn’t a recording day, so he could wear something a little more comfortable than his usual outfit. Tucking his wings into said hoodie was the hard part.

“W-why won’t you just- c’mon” he grunted angrily, trying to tuck the lower feathers of his wings into his jacket or at least his pants. It would be uncomfortable sitting on them, but if it meant the other sides didn’t find out, then he would bear with it.

“Kiddo! Breakfast is ready!” Patton chirped from outside the door. Roman panicked a little, he couldn’t let Patton come in, lest he see.

“I’m getting ready! Be out in a moment!” He called, managing to get the feathers of one wing inside his jacket, by the way they were angled, he could tell they were going to hurt later. Just another price he would have to pay to keep his secret hidden.

“Ok! Don’t take too long though, wouldn’t want your eggs to get cold.” Patton replied, leaving Roman to assume he walked down the hallway into the kitchen. Roman could not let those eggs get cold. He increased his efforts, desperately swatting at his feathers before slowing down a little and finally being able to tuck them into his pants. The symmetry would bother him later, but all that mattered now was the his eggs stayed warm.

As Roman opened his door and started towards the kitchen, he thought about what this whole hiding-his-very-cool-wings thing was for.

This whole thing started because he was anxious. Wow, now was starting to sound like Virgil! But yes, he was ...anxious. He was scared, terrified even, of what would happen if he were to reveal his extra limbs to the others.

You see, Roman hasn’t always had wings. After the split, Roman and Remus were your average, actually, scratch that, your not-so-average run of the mill twins, in that they hate each others guts most of the time, but Roman would gladly stab an army of dragon witches to death for his brother, as would Remus.

Being Thomas’ more... wholesome creativity, he was the one who took over aspects such as hopes and dreams. And Thomas, like any child, miiiiiight have had a tiny, no, huge dream of being able to fly. So imagine 8 year old Roman’s surprise when he feels sharp pains below his shoulder blades. It wasn’t agonizing just yet, but it was enough for Roman to summon his worse half.

“Is this an occult meeting? Was I finally summoned by my loyal followers? Where’s the bod-“ Remus stopped talking when he saw his brother curled up on his bed. “Oh wow, you look like someone stabbed you with a bunch of knives and didn’t stop the internal bleeding when they patched you back up,”

Roman could care less about Remus’ description of him at that point, the pain was worsening. Small spasms of pure hurt were shooting though him.

Remus, finally realizing that yes this is real and yes his brother is in pain, ran over to Roman, having to crawl up onto the bed in order to properly reach him. “What’s wrong?” Remus said, seriously, for probably the first and last time in his life.

“...h-hurts....m-my back...” Roman managed to squeeze out between pants and rapid breaths.

“Uh.. uhhhhhh,” Remus said, eloquently. He really was great at comforting others, wasn’t he.

Luckily, Remus didn’t have to think of a way to help Roman, because now his red and white leach of a brother was clinging to his midsection and getting his outfit wet with tears.

After ten very long minutes of agony, Roman felt... weird. His brain felt as if there was an army of ants crawling through it. Little ants with jackhammers and megaphones, that is. He could feel the comforter below him, but his arms were still wrapped securely around Remus. He had long pants on, so it couldn’t be his legs. And what was that weight on his back?

“Woah,” Remus whispered, astounded. “Look... y-you...”

Roman shifted slightly, trying not to move his sore body any more than he needed to, and proceeded to gasp at what he saw he saw. He was NOT expecting to see feathers, much less connected to him!

“Rem?” Roman was starting to panic. “W-why ar- is t-there...” he trailed off, more tears starting to fill his eyes. What was that? Why did it come out of him? What in the name of Cinderella’s left slipper was going on!?

After Remus somehow managed to calm down Roman (a miracle, truly), he started to admire his new additions. Somehow already feathered (he didn’t question it), they were a burnt amber color, with small ember-like sparkles dusted in places. He tried to lift one of the wings, but only managed a few inches before stopping.“...Im still confused,” he said, quietly. “Why... why do I have wings?” He asked.

“Well,” Remus started, “we could ask Logan?” He suggested. “He almost always has an answer for everything!” He said, smiling.

Roman thought about it for a minute. “No,”

Remus’ smile fell a little, “Why not?”

Roman sighed “Logan hates things that are ‘illogical’, and I think this counts,” he chuckled, lifting his wing up a little bit again.

Remus persisted, “What about-“

Roman cut him off, “I don’t think I wanna tell anybody, Rem. They’ll look at me weird,” he explained. This was a very plausible outcome in the child’s mind, that or he watched too many movies.

Remus looked like he wanted to argue, but Roman stared at him with a pleading look, and he backed down. The two brothers spent the rest of the day researching birds and testing out his wings in the imagination. He enjoyed himself.

“Earth to Roman, come in Roman,” he saw a hand waving in front of his face. His eyes followed the arm the hand was connected to and eventually landed on a sleep deprived Virgil’s face. He looked around, noticing how somehow he was sat at the bar in the kitchen, and had been blankly staring at the marble counter for about 5 minutes now.

“Oh, sorry,” he apologized quickly, “Daydreaming,”

Virgil shrugged and went back to his food, allowing Roman to loose himself in his thoughts again. At least until Logan came into the room.

“Salutations,” he said, dryly. Not waiting for a response, he marched over to the fridge and pulled out a half full jar of crofters. During this, Roman remembered his eggs, which had cooled significantly, and started stuffing his face. Logan walked over to the seat on the other side of Roman, and sat down.

“Welp,” Virgil started, getting out of his seat and putting his dish in the sink, where Patton was washing them, “imma go mentally prepare for the day, see y’all in like, two hours,” he started walking out of the room. Passing Roman, he gave him a rather large pat on the back.

Right on one of his wings.

Roman’s eyes went wide. He sat strait up and dropped his fork as a weird tingling- almost painful sensation went down his spine. Everyone turned to look at him, Patton was concerned, and Logan had half his face full of jam. Virgil awkwardly pulled his hand away from Roman’s back.

“Are you ok, kiddo?” Patton questioned. Concern was evident in his eyes as he cocked his head slightly to the side.

“Everything’s fine, padre,” Roman assured the moral side, praying that no one questioned him further.

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Logan asserted. Roman was starting to internally panic.

“Seriously! I’m fine!” Roman racked his brain for an excuse, “Virgil’s hand was just really cold,” 

Virgil looked at him incredulously, “You’re wearing a hoodie,”

Fuck, Roman needed to work on his lying. He stood up out of his chair, “Thanks for breakfast, Padre, but I have some... script... stuff to work on,” he started to walk toward the hallway. Unfortunately Logan got there first, blocking the doorway.

“Not so fast, Roman. We know something is troubling you, and we are your friends, are we not? It would be emotionally beneficial for you to tell us, so that we may help,” Logan reasoned.

Roman was backed into a (metaphorical, he was really still in the middle of the kitchen) corner. “I told you, I’m fine!” He repeated. All he wanted was to get to his room and do something to make his wings stop feeling so uncomfortable.

“Bullshit” Virgil declared, ignoring the small ‘language!’ from Patton, “You’re hiding something, and it’s hurting you, so give it up you limp noodle!”

The limp noodle in question was very panicked at this point, slightly shaking. He couldn’t let them know, he couldn’t. That would only mean bad things. He needs to get back to his room. He needs Remus. If they know they’ll hate him. He doesn’t want them to hate him.

Apparently he wasn’t hiding his panic as well as he thought was, because Patton walked over with a concerned frown, “Oh, Roman,” he put his arms around his child and squeezed him in a large bear hug.

Patton’s arms were right on Roman’s wings.

Roman cried out and slumped against Patton, causing them both to fall to the tile floor below. He curled up into a ball, his breathing turning ragged. It hurt, it hurt just like the first time he got his wings. Only this time he didn’t have Remus. Apparently you’re not supposed to press down on the joints connecting the wings to the rest of the body.

Surprisingly, it was Virgil who was the first to act. “We need to get him to the couch. Patton, help me get his hoodie off, Logan, go get some heat packs” he ordered, thinking that Roman must suffer from back cramps or something similar.

Logan hesitated for a moment before rushing off, leaving the others to carry a slightly limp Roman to the couch in the living room. They tried to pull off the prince like hoodie, but because of the feathers tucked in haphazardly earlier, Roman cried out whenever they tried. Patton’s eyes lit up with an idea, and he rushed off to go find some scissors, letting Virgil sit there, holding the prince’s hand, trying to be a source of comfort for him.

Virgil was abso-fuckin-lutely freaking out internally, but he had to be there for his friends. Before long, Patton come back holding a pair of sharp scissors in his hands, taking care to walk, not run, like they tell you to do in school. He carefully snipped along one of the seams on Roman’s hoodie, silently promising to sew it back together later. He started to get confused when, among the red and gold of the prince’s t-shirt, there was a brown feather.

“Is that..?” Patton trailed off. He focused back on the hoodie. Soon, he had it all the way clipped, and was about to ask Virgil to help flip Roman onto his stomach in order to have better access to his back, when he saw more of those strange feathers.

“Virgil?” He looked toward the man in question.

The purple clad man noticed the feathers, alright. But he didn’t have time to wonder why Roman was keeping bird leafs in his jacket. “Help me flip him over,” he asked Patton, who nodded and set down the scissors.

Apparently Virgil DID have time to concern himself with the feathers in his friend’s jacket, seeing as those feathers were connected to said friend.“...I guess we know what he was hiding,” Patton chuckled.

This was the moment Logan decided to burst into the room carrying a multitude of heating elements. “I acquired some  heat packs, as well as the rice sacks you place in the microwa-“ he stopped short, noticing the large bird wings attached to Roman’s upper back. “...I’m not even going to ask,” he stated. And set down the electronic heat packs, before taking the others into the kitchen.

Roman was... confused, to say the least. The pain has lessened to the point where he could think again, but the others had seen his wings, hadn’t they? Why weren’t they disgusted? He-he thought-

“Roman, kiddo,” Patton said to the winged side, “how are you holding up?”

Roman started tearing up, but he refused to cry, lest Patton think he was in more pain then he was, “I-it still hurts, but not as much,” he admitted, a small smile (or grimace, that too) gracing his features.

Patton nodded and leaned down to pick up one of the heat packs, which he plugged in to a nearby outlet. “I have a heat pack, do you think I could put it at the base of your wings?” He asked.

Roman nodded, and Patton placed the device on his back. Almost instantly the pain lessened. It was still there, but Roman felt like he could breathe again. Logan walked in and wordlessly handed the now warm heating packs to Patton, before sitting on the ground in front of the couch next to him. Patton held up a heating pack, gently placing it near the bottom of the wing base.

“So...” Virgil started, awkwardly, “This is what you’ve been hiding?” Some of his panic from earlier was slipping into his voice. Roman grabbed his hand from where he laid on the couch, which to be fair, was a little awkward, but Roman wanted to comfort Patton’s dead gay son.

“Yeah,” Roman replies breathlessly, rubbing his thumb over Virgil’s knuckles. No one spoke for a while.

Logan was the one to break the silence, “How long?”

Roman replied simply, “since we were eight,” he looked down at the ground and stopped rubbing Virgil’s knuckles.

“You didn’t need to,” Roman perked up when he heard Logan speak. “What do you mean?” He questioned.

 “You did not need to hide this from us,” Logan assured, “These are beautiful. I have no idea why you would want to keep them hidden” he answered honestly.

Roman looked back down at the ground, feeling Virgil giving his hand reassuring squeezes. “Because... because I was scared,” he admitted, “I was scared you would think they were weird- think IM weird,” he felt Patton’s hand on his shoulder.

“We would never,”

No more words needed to be said. Roman looked into Patton’s eyes and knew he was telling the truth. These were his friends. His family. They care about him. They won’t reject him. They aren’t going to leave him. Remus was right. Roman started to tear up a little.

“Thanks, padre,” his voice shook a little, bit one said anything about it, “can you help me sit up?”

Patton nodded, before grabbing his shoulders and sitting him up so that his wings were spread out in a way that would not hurt them further. There was some pleasant conversation between the winged side and his companions. Roman started to forget about the ache in his shoulder blades.

“I’m going to need to study your wings, Roman,” stayed Logan, “I want to see how they work in the air,”.

Roman grinned, “sure, I’d be happy to,”. He felt content sitting with his friends. Maybe he should have reveled his wings sooner.

“Roman?” Roman turned to look in the direction of the noise, “Why is it that you have wings?” asked Virgil.

Roman chuckled before answering,

”What child doesn’t wish to fly?”

[xtreme-icecream]

stuff idk how to write: werewolves, hanamaru, angst stuff i just written: werewolf hanamaru with angst anyway idk how i feel about it yet but have a yohamaru werewolf story hhh

words: ~4400 (warnings: descriptions may be graphic, minor bg character death, also just pretend their bus has a tiny tv in th front i forgot to check for reality too late oops.)

After too long, Hanamaru comes back home. 

It’s late. She leaves mud in a trail behind her, through the door, up the stairs, into her room where at last her bones snap apart and back together, and her muscles burn as they tear and weave themselves back to familiar form and size.

When it’s over, she’s still exhausted. There’s a cold, heavy feeling in her stomach, like something’s wrong, but more than that she feels a thick haze in her head.

She can’t think. There’s school tomorrow. Her futon is there. She needs to sleep.

The morning news plays on the little TV at the front of the bus that Hanamaru and Ruby take to school. Hanamaru tries to tune out the report on the couple found dead in the thick of the small wood nearby.

Estimated time of death: between the hours of midnight and 5AM. There’s a lot of collateral damage in the area surrounding the corpses. The police say it points to an attack by a wild animal, but they’re hesitant to make a definite statement because there are no such animals wandering about Numazu.

Investigations are fast now, because nowadays they expect casualties like these. It turned into something of a nightly thing for them to send people out at night to prowl for dead bodies. The lack of them these recent few months had some hoping the deaths had ended.

Too bad about last night.

In any case, the report is fast and succinct. The camera work beats around the worst of the carnage and any descriptions on the damages and wounds the couple sustained are kept to a decent, broadcast-passable minimum. It seems it’s only the police and Hanamaru who might know about how the young lady died quickly from a messy bite to the jugular and not the impact to the back of her skull, or maybe how the young man’s leg was ripped off only after his spine had snapped twice, or that maybe, maybe if he just hadn’t pulled that knife out he’d still be—

“Hanamaru-chan? Hanamaru-chan, listen to me.”

Ruby is nudging Hanamaru’s leg with her knee. The news has moved on to something about rice imports. From the looks of the outside, they’re still a good ten minutes away from arriving at school.

“Hanamaru-chan,” Ruby says. Her voice is soothing. The skin under her eyes is a little darker than usual. “You looked a bit spaced out. You were watching, weren’t you?”

“Oh… Yeah. I was.” Hanamaru just keeps from tacking an apology on at the end.

Instead of saying anything, Ruby finds Hanamaru’s hand and squeezes it. “Just don’t dwell on it too much, okay? Everything’s going to be all right.”

She does a cute little nod at the end of that sentence, to prompt Hanamaru to agree with her or something like that. So Hanamaru does. Things are fine. It’s going to be okay.

When they arrive at school, Ruby strays from the routine path to the classroom for a detour to the student council office. It’s a quick errand for Dia, who has to stay at the hospital for a while to watch the new stitches on her leg for the wounds she got last night.

Hanamaru’s a touch grateful. If Dia hadn’t stepped in, it would’ve been Ruby on the news today.

The lunchtimes Hanamaru spends helping out at the library are her favourite times of the week. She was never one for noise, people, and noisy people, and the library at Uranohoshi provided her with just the perfect dearth of that. People visited the library often enough, but outside of the worst exam crunch times, there was never a soul who willingly stayed for any longer than five minutes.

There was one exception to all of that, though—a noisy person that Hanamaru really didn’t mind who actually stayed at the library to read for extended periods of time.

Yoshiko Tsushima arrives again today, this time with a stack of books she places at the counter with a heavy thump. “Done!” she says proudly.

Hanamaru pulls the stack close and skims over the titles on the spines. Save for one book about low budget gardening techniques, they all belong in the section for myth and the occult. They were also all borrowed on different days, and due for return on different days, with only about half arriving on the counter on time.

“And your late return fee comes up to… eighty-seven yen,” she says after a little math.

“Totally worth it,” Yoshiko says, reaching into her pocket for her wallet. There’s a self-assured smile on her face as she does so.

As Yoshiko digs around for the proper change, Hanamaru proceeds with the menial task of scanning and logging the books in record.

“What was it all about this time?” she asks.

The coins in Yoshiko’s change clink as she drops them onto the counter, and a timed beat later she places her hand on her chin and grins to herself. “I had taken this opportunity to educate myself on beings of the other world,” she says. “From the common dragon to the leshi, I’ve made sure to become familiar with a veritable legion of hellish beasts.”

Hanamaru smiles. “Got a new favorite?”

“No,” Yoshiko says. “Chimerae remain objectively superior, but if you’d like, I could share something about coeurls?”

Then Hanamaru indulges her, and they slip into old routine—storytelling after a finished collection of “forbidden tomes” and avid, eager listening.

Yoshiko was always a big person in many ways, but there was, apparently, something to be said about how good of an open ear Hanamaru was. At good parts her eyes lit up, at dull ones her shoulders would sink, her lip would curl when she had something smart to say, and there were some things, important things, that she would remember with her heart. It took a while to understand them, but those were things she never forgot, and somehow she remembered more about Yoshiko than Yoshiko did about herself.

And Hanamaru, in turn, didn’t know these things about herself, until Yoshiko came up to her one afternoon and told her that it was how she fell in love.

“We’re sorry we couldn’t cure you,” Dia tells her, leaning on the tea table of her house’s living room. “And sorry for… what happened afterwards.”

Hanamaru nods. They’re all sorry and all disappointed, but she honestly couldn’t ask for more than the kindness of the Kurosawa sisters with her issue. As confidants they were beyond trustworthy, and they took such huge risks for the sake of saving Hanamaru that it seemed unthinkable.

But as saintly as they were, they weren’t looking to be martyrs. By now they must’ve figured Hanamaru wasn’t worth the danger. Dia doesn’t look at her the way she used to.

“I’m afraid this is as far as we can go,” she continues. “We can’t afford to take any more risks. To ourselves or otherwise.”

“I understand,” Hanamaru says. “That’s how things gotta be sometimes, I guess. I’ll try to do things the way I was doing them before, then.”

“For now, that might be for the best.” Dia straightens up and bows, a little off-balance. “Again, we’re sorry for our shortcomings. We wish you the best, Hanamaru-san.” Then she walks away.

Hanamaru stays the ‘Thank you’ the end of her tongue in hopes that Dia won’t close the door on her, and she’ll turn around and say she has one more idea, another last chance for Hanamaru.

Dia doesn’t, of course, so Hanamaru goes home kicking herself over her ingratitude.

The ocean at night is cold enough to kill during the later weeks of fall. Hanamaru has to hide away in the thick of the wood again until sunset, and wait for the moon to stir the wolf awake.

And when it wakes, she suffers through the change again—snapping joints and tearing muscle, her jaw cracks to make room for rows of new fangs and jagged teeth, and the stretching her spine has to do to reach the height of the beast rips the feeling away from her limbs as it snaps in place, its revolting crackles muffled by flesh and rustling leaves. New eyes, muscle, bones, new skin, a new stomach that almost asks more for blood than meat.

The wood she hides in isn’t as dark in this form, and the smell of the sea mixing with the thick and teeming vegetation is so much crisper she can practically taste it. Though her mind is hazy with the aftershocks of pain, the world is so much more vivid. It’s always a shame she can’t experience it as she likes.

Her nose picks up strangers a short distance away, behind her, but she insists on running forward, to the ocean. Only then can she bear the sharp cold of the water.

She dives to hunt, because the wolf has to eat, or she can’t turn back. Somehow with just the scant light of the moon she hunts down a few dozens of fish that escaped the nets of the boats in the distance, and bites them whole, even if it takes hour upon tiring hour to eat her fill and the icy water mats her fur and weighs it down. It’s an ordeal, and she hates the feeling of grinding little fish bones and skulls between her teeth most of all, but compared to the real human lives she’d cost otherwise, it’s a bargain.

By the time she’s finished and dripping seawater back on land, the moon hangs high in the sky. Her body breaks back down to human size, her own, real skin, which prickles and almost stings at how cold it is.

Hanamaru digs through a specific patch of undergrowth for the dark canvas bag holding her change clothes, which she throws on as quickly and quietly as she can manage. It’s just her boots and the jacket left when she notices shadows moving.

The light is from behind her. She turns, a dangerous ache bristling in her jaw again, and then recoils at the sight of Yoshiko.

“Zuramaru?” Hanamaru can’t dare to look at her, but leaves crunch underfoot as Yoshiko approaches. She’s so close that Yoshiko has to turn her flashlight away from the both of them so Hanamaru doesn’t get blinded. There’s a firm, anxious hand on Hanamaru’s arm. “Zuramaru, it is you! What are you doing here—why is your hair so wet?”

There’s nothing but concern in her voice. Hanamaru knows she sees the bag and probably smells the blood and the ocean from her person, because Yoshiko is too keen around her. She wants to run, but her body just refuses to move.

So Yoshiko does. Amid all the warning signs blaring in her mind and fogging her thought, she can still hear a zipping sound. Somehow Hanamaru doesn’t resist putting her arms through the sleeves when Yoshiko holds her coat up for her, and she finds the warmth and weight so comforting she wishes she could just fall asleep already.

"Okay," Yoshiko says as she zips the front up for her, "you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but geez you're going to catch a cold... Ah, here, my scarf, it'll catch the water from your hair."

Yoshiko wraps it around Hanamaru's neck and shoulders so gingerly, like she has no clue what Hanamaru is or what she's done, at all. And then she has the audacity to wrap Hanamaru in a hug, where she's sure her face is pressed against sea-soaked, freezing cold hair.

What's wrong with her?

There's some warmth tickling her ear from Yoshiko's breath when she asks, "Hanamaru, are you okay? Can you at least tell me that?"

Hanamaru stays in Yoshiko's hold for just a little while longer, trying to keep from tearing up. "Yeah," she mutters eventually. "I'm fine, Yoshiko-chan. Just soaked."

Yoshiko squeezes Hanamaru one more time. "Okay. Let's get you home? You live in the temple nearby, right?"

Hanamaru nods into her shoulder, and Yoshiko pulls back, takes her hand, and leads them both off.

The path they take is nearly void of any other passersby, which Hanamaru appreciates of Yoshiko, but it’s also void of any conversation until after the woods and the short trail, when the guest entrance comes into view.

“You’ll be alright here?” Yoshiko says, squeezing Hanamaru’s hand. It breaks her out of a daze.

“Yeah,” Hanamaru says. “Yeah, it’s… warmer at home.”

“Good.”

They reach the doorstep and let go. Hanamaru takes her first steps inside, then makes to take Yoshiko’s scarf off when her hands stop.

“Will you want these back?” she asks. On her mind is how it’s soaked and probably smells strange, so she hopes Yoshiko says no.

“Ah, you can keep them for now,” Yoshiko says, probably forcing that grin on her face, “to wash and all, heh. I mean, that’s how courtesy goes, isn’t it? Er…”

“But then what about you, Yoshiko-chan?” Hanamaru asks. “You live far away, don’t you? How will you go back by yourself like that?”

Yoshiko shrugs. “Exams are coming up soon. I’d have gotten a cold anyway. But you…”

She’s looking at her like that again. It’s hard to see because the temple is dark and moonlight can’t break between leaves easily, but Hanamaru has always been able to feel it.

“Nothing,” Yoshiko says, turning around. “Take care of yourself, okay? I’ll see you soon.”

In lieu of saying goodbye, Hanamaru just watches Yoshiko walk away.

When she curls up in her futon, she remembers the look she gave her. Hanamaru knows what it means. ‘What’s going on with you?’ ‘Are you really alright?’ ‘Please let me help you.’

She hates it. She’s terrified of it. She wants Yoshiko to give up on her.

It’s not what she tells her when she sees her again at school and gives her clothes back, but it’s all she can manage.

“Don’t go there again,” Hanamaru says.

Yoshiko’s demeanor takes on a rare kind of gravity. It’s good that Hanamaru had the foresight to confront her after class. The room is empty aside from them and the sun sets early today, coloring everything red-orange. There’s dormant heat in the air, or maybe just in Hanamaru’s ever-eager imagination, but either way she’s glad no one is around to interfere.

“Why not?” Yoshiko says, standing up. “You don’t even know what I was doing there.”

“It doesn’t matter what you were doing there,” Hanamaru says. “You can’t go back. It’s for your own good.”

“My own good? Then what about you, Hanamaru?” Oh no. “Why were you out there, by yourself, half frozen to death? I worried about you every night after that!”

“Then stop worrying about me!” Hanamaru speaks louder to match, which makes her all kinds of uncomfortable, because it’s just not like her at all. “There’s nothing about me to worry about. Please, worry about yourself, Yoshiko-chan.”

“Nothing about you—that’s bullshit, how can you tell me to do that when you know how I feel about you? After I saw that? “

“That was nothing! Why won’t you ever just listen to me?”

Yoshiko’s hands hit her desk. “You never tell me anything! I know you need your privacy, but this? You could be in danger!”

Hanamaru grabs Yoshiko’s shoulders and looks her in the eyes. “You’ll be the one in danger, Yoshiko-chan! And you know why, so stop pretending you’re doing this to keep me safe. You can’t help me.”

Now, frozen under Hanamaru’s stare, Yoshiko can’t say anything. They don’t move, they don’t break eye contact, they’re not even sure they’re breathing, but slowly, maybe because she sees Hanamaru’s eyes welling up, the tension leaves Yoshiko’s shoulders.

“And if I told you I could,” she says quietly and unsurely, unlike herself, “would you let me?”

Hanamaru is exhausted. She lets her arms fall to her sides. “People have tried. Just stay away from me, Yoshiko-chan.”

But Yoshiko never listens.

She’s always been a little bit peculiar. Naturally rebellious to the norm. Midnight candle rituals, standing on the school rooftop on the coldest, rainiest days, downing hot sauce like candy syrup—the more absurd it seemed to be, the more likely Yoshiko was to do it.

Hanamaru finds this bold, eccentric spontaneity attractive in a way. So much so that she feared she might’ve even fallen in love with her because of it.

She still fears she loves Yoshiko, especially now that Yoshiko stands before Hanamaru with only a spray of blue flowers in her hand and a heartbeat loud enough for Hanamaru to hear even from ten paces away, over the rustle of leaves.

Hanamaru’s ears can only hear something like that through bones, muscle and skin because it’s something that she seeks out, along with Yoshiko’s shallow breathing, wide eyes, her cold sweat and trembling fingers…

But her heartbeat, drumming in her ears louder than rolls of thunder, is euphonious.

thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump

The thick coat Yoshiko wears is something Hanamaru comes to dislike almost immediately. It’s rough, and dry, and would just spoil her taste.

Her claws seem to bare themselves at it. And her teeth. Her fur bristles too, and something low rumbles from her throat.

But she does her damned best not to move, and hopes to everything she can think in her limited lucidity that Yoshiko finds a way to run where Hanamaru can’t get to her.

Naturally, Yoshiko does the exact opposite. She takes a step forward, holds the flowers out to Hanamaru, and shouts something Hanamaru can hear perfectly but not understand. She recognizes her name, “Hanamaru,” but the rest of it is just loud, maybe angry, and she takes it as a taunt.

It’s weak bait, but encouragement is encouragement, and Hanamaru is hungry. She pounces, and when she tastes blood, the last flimsy sliver of humanity slips out of her conscience.

And when it comes back, not too long later, it’s because she eats something wrong and horribly bitter. Her insides are burning, her throat feels raw, she can’t breathe, and her limbs feel like they’re being torn apart from the inside out.

When Hanamaru comes to next, there’s something that tastes like dirt in her mouth, and the stench of blood is so strong she physically flinches and digs her face into the warm mass underneath her.

It shifts, and coughs, and… holds Hanamaru tighter?

Yoshiko.

The blood.

Yoshiko.

Hanamaru shoves herself up. “Yoshiko-chan!”

It is Yoshiko beneath her, pale, bleeding from deep, frightening wounds around her right arm. Only the stems of the flowers in her hand remain, and her fingers only seem to curl around them from the cold now that her gloves are torn, but she’s breathing.

Then she coughs. “Zuramaru,” Yoshiko says weakly. “Hi. You’re back.”

Hanamaru sees Yoshiko’s mouth warped in a grimace for her, and she has so many things to say that she can’t speak at all, so she just crumples into Yoshiko’s chest and tries not to let her crying break into full sobs.

In these minutes she realizes she’s wearing a coat with end of the right sleeve torn and stained black, and between that, Yoshiko’s wounds, and the flowers being missing, Hanamaru pieces together what must’ve happened.

And despite what she’s done, what kind of pain she might’ve inflicted on Yoshiko, at that moment she can’t feel anything but selfish gratitude and relief because this time, this time, no one’s dead.

The thought echoes in her head for long moments after that, as Hanamaru, still dazed from everything, lets herself a minute of rest. With her ear pressed into Yoshiko’s chest, Hanamaru finds her heartbeat again. It’s calmer this time.

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

Thump. Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Yoshiko gasps hoarsely, and Hanamaru jolts up. “Yoshiko-chan?”

Yoshiko’s eyes are unfocused, but she manages to shove her phone into Hanamaru’s hand. The screen is lit, displaying the emergency contact number for the nearest hospital.

“Maru, listen,” Yoshiko says, out of breath and voice trembling. “Wolfsbane poison gets into wounds. Hurry.”

Her arms go limp, she starts coughing, and Hanamaru, as she sees this, wastes not an instant calling the hospital and telling them what she knows, as fast as she can.

If she’d really gotten better, if the wolf is really gone, she can’t let Yoshiko’s be the life it takes with it.

The paramedics have the courtesy to only ask Hanamaru about Yoshiko, and outside asking if she needs medical attention, too, the only effort they direct to her goes into words of reassurance. They can save Yoshiko.

They can save Yoshiko.

They save Yoshiko.

Days pass, then a week, then two. Since staying was too expensive, Yoshiko and her family decided to just move her home after several days passed and her condition stabilized enough. She hadn’t come to school since.

As far as their classmates knew, the most of Hanamaru’s involvement about Yoshiko’s “accident” was that she was just the first among them to find out. It was a piece of information they made and agreed upon by themselves, and Hanamaru made no effort to make them think anything otherwise.

She did volunteer to be the one to bring notes over, though, even if Yoshiko lived so far away from her own home.

Hanamaru knocks on the door to Yoshiko’s apartment, and steps in once Yoshiko voices her acknowledgement.

“Hey Zuramaru,” she says, eyes glued to her television screen. “You forgot about the bell again?” Even when part of her forearm and wrist is covered in medical wrap, she doesn’t seem to have much trouble with her game controllers. Good to know her hand wasn’t too impaired.

After shutting the door behind her, Hanamaru places a notebook at the foot of Yoshiko’s bed, and sits down next to her on the floor. “I think I like knocking better, anyway.”

Yoshiko hums. Hanamaru’s only seen her play a handful of times, but she can gather from watching that the next thing Yoshiko does is find a place to save before exiting the game and lowering the controller to her lap, where her stare lingers for a while.

“So…” she says, drawing the word out. “How about it?”

Hanamaru’s brow tightens. “Yeah. I think I’m ready to talk.”

“Okay. Uh…”

“First of all,” Hanamaru continues, hunching over a little, like the words are that heavy. “Never do something like that again, hear me? Especially not without telling me first.”

Yoshiko flinches. “H-Hey, in my defense, you would never have said yes—“

“Of course not! Handling poison, showing yourself in front of a-a werewolf, it’d be like asking you to die for me!”

“But it worked, and I didn’t, and nothing like that’s ever going to happen again!”

Hanamaru looks up. “That’s not the point, Yoshiko-chan. I know what you did worked, and I’m better now, and nothing like that’s ever going to happen to either of us again, but you scared me!” She pauses, glancing at Yoshiko’s dazed expression and back away, and then she takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I was terrified, okay? You came so close to dying so many times because of me. I don’t know how I’d handle letting that happen to someone I feel like this about.”

Her voice got quieter and quieter until she finished, and Yoshiko let the silence remain. Until one of them found it in themselves to speak again she moved to find the fist Hanamaru buried on her lap and wrap her fingers over it.

Then she squeezed it gently and said, “I’m sorry. For scaring you, I mean. Really reckless of me.”

“It’s okay,” Hanamaru says. “I think. It’s over now, after all.”

Yoshiko nods. “Yeah.”

“…And besides,” Hanamaru says, “it’s still kinda my job to keep you from doing dumb things like that.”

There’s a pause were Hanamaru glances back at Yoshiko again, shooting her a sort of half-smile. Yoshiko sees, returns it, and playfully bumps her elbow on her. “No kidding. I’d just be a mess without you around.”

“Oh, I doubt it’s anything like that. You’re such a veritable force of chaos that sometimes I feel like a buzz in your ear.”

Yoshiko chuckles darkly. “’Force of chaos,’ you say? I find that a high praise, even from a being of such holy light as yours.”

“Shut up, Yoshiko-chan.”

“Ah, the scorn of heaven—a most familiar burn.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Hanamaru shoves Yoshiko by her head, earning them both a faint chuckle, and Yoshiko shoves Hanamaru back a bit herself before deciding to lean on her.

“But seriously,” Yoshiko says. “That aside, I think I should start listening to you more often. You’re smarter about me than I am.”

“Maybe,” Hanamaru says. “And actually, even if I’m not a werewolf anymore… I don’t know, it doesn’t feel over.”

“What do you mean?”

Hanamaru wrings her hands. “They weren’t so many, but there were people that I… so…”

“It wasn’t you,” Yoshiko says.

“We can’t say it was anyone else,” Hanamaru says. “It’s all on me, Yoshiko-chan.”

Yoshiko looks away, to a corner of the room, and frowns. “So you say,” she mumbles. “I don’t know how that must feel for you, as usual for me, but at least this time you don’t have to deal with it on your own.” She shifts somehow closer. “There’s time for us to figure this out.”

Her words take time to sink in, but Hanamaru feels Yoshiko’s right. She nods, and Yoshiko smiles.

“So, anything else?” Yoshiko says.

“No,” Hanamaru answers. “I’m taking this a bit at a time. I’m not good at jumping into things all at once like you are.”

“Oh, guess it’s my turn, then!” With a sudden little burst of energy, Yoshiko sits up and spins around so that Hanamaru can see her smirk clear as day. “What’s this earlier about ‘someone I feel like this about,’ eh, Zuramaru? Feel like what?”

And seeing Yoshiko’s smirk, Hanamaru feels light, for the first time in a long while. “Yoshiko-chan, I think you’re just a little nasty, you know that?”

“Aw, what?”

Hanamaru can be honest now. There’s no reason for her to fear herself or how she feels.

So she tells Yoshiko the truth.