#the western approach is kind of nothing. sorry to western approach girlies

[vigilskeep]

in the western approach like man idk if i can finish all these sidequests with time being tight for beating the game !! and then i was like. wait. and remembered i literally dont care.

[camuslittlesister]

OA Archive: Me x Husbando Challenge

I used to be very active in Otome Amino back in the old days before 💩 hit the fan, and I loved doing challenges (kinda miss it tbh). I don’t really like the idea of losing a piece of my Otome history to having left one platform, so I will be re-posting the stuff from oldest to newest alongside more fashion posts and smutty fanfics. It’s all cute and fluffy and SFW, except for the self-deprecatory sense of humour.  Idk whether I would still pick the same guy for this challenge if I re-did it now (who am I kidding, of course it’d be Okita even if I’ve been crying over Gekkamaru in Nightshade for 1h20 min straight at time of writing), but he is still one of my favourite 2D boys and I’m big sad I’m not in Japan and couldn’t go to the stage events they’re running atm. 

Me x Husbando Challenge

Hello ^___^ someone resurrected the #mexhusbando challenge thread and since I was home alone tonight I thought why not write something? It’s my first time writing a short fanfic so I hope it’s not too long 🤞🏻

It’s from Her Love In the Force, but that’s all I’m giving away 😉 hope you enjoy it!

It was a Friday night, and I was bored to death at a trendy Western-style bar in Ginza, at one of Kurosawa’s group dates. I don’t know what possessed me to agree to another one of these. I guess I thought I’d be even more bored now I had no ongoing investigation, or Academy aide to torture. All I could see around me was a sea of groups like ours: men flashing their money and girls eager to throw themselves at them. I never flashed anything, it wasn’t my style: after all, I became a Public Safety officer instead of taking the helm at my family’s business.  Three people stood out in this place: they were sitting at the bar and looked foreign. I was curious: expats tend to hang around Roppongi, and bars like this are here so that financial workers can feel like they’re cosmopolitan and sophisticated. I got up with the excuse of getting a drink, but really I was dying to put my skills to use and observe the foreign trio. I approached the bar next to one of the girls at the sides. She had her phone in front of her on the bar, face down, with a cartoon T-Rex on the cover. “That’s a cute dinosaur you have there” I said in English, before my brain could even register what my mouth was doing. “That it is”, she replied, in Japanese tinted by an endearing accent, “I’m sorry, my Japanese isn’t as good as your English”. She turned to look at me with a faint smile: she had blue eyes you could lose yourself in, porcelain white skin and dark blonde hair that curved at the shoulders. I felt as if time had stopped. She raised her hand to attract the attention of the bartender, her nails the same soft red as her lipstick. “I’m so sorry, Mr Dinosaur, our conversation made you lose the spot in line. He’ll be here next” “Don’t worry. I’m Ayumu Shinonome, by the way” I replied with a slight bow. She replied with a really long name I couldn’t catch, but my attempts to figure it out were interrupted by the bartender: “Any drinks?” She gestured with her hand to me to go first, then I looked at her to see if I could buy her one too. Something inside of me was desperate to keep the conversation going, and it wasn’t boredom anymore. The bartender addressed her, enunciating her name slowly, as if he figured I didn’t understand it: “A top up for you, Alexis?”. “Yes, please, darling” she replied, and the bartender went. I panicked: darling was a term of affection and he must have used her first name, that’s common in the West even for people who just met in social situations, I knew that much. 

I observed him picking up a bottle from the shelf, it was an expensive whiskey. Neat whiskey seemed such a strong drink, the opposite of what I’d expect of someone with such a girly phonecase. It’s the kind of stuff that Hyogo drinks. I made a mental note of the brand to ask him, while hoping my beer didn’t make me look like a wimp. I knew nothing about her, but I was fascinated. I offered to pay, hoping not to meet the wrath of the bartender for hitting on his girlfriend. I was going to hide behind doing the gentlemanly thing. She thanked me with a bright smile, then sipped the drink. “Won’t your friends miss you if I take up any more of your time?”, she asked me, her voice genuinely concerned rather than a polite way to send me away. “They’re not my friends, technically” I replied, looking over my shoulder “the only one I know is the guy at the corner there. He organises the group dates and I go as a favour to balance the numbers”. She blushed: “A group date, uh? Aki told me about them but I didn’t believe him”. The bartender, who I presumed was Aki, interjected: “They’re really common in our culture, I don’t know why you were so sceptical. It was a success when we did it for the society fundraiser, even if I’m still surprised you went along with it”. She chuckled: “It seemed a better option than Mark’s kissing booth idea” then she turned to me “sorry, Ayumu...you don’t mind if I call you so, do you?”, I shook my head, “Aki and I were at university together. These two too” she said, tilting her head to her side, “I didn’t mean to cut you out”. She was so lively yet so considerate, and I didn’t want the night to end. In truth, I didn’t want her time in Japan to end. I had long forgotten the thrill of first meeting someone you like: for many years I had been hung up on my first love, but once she got married something inside me started to change. The women I met at mixers never captivated me enough to move beyond having a good time once and never seeing them again, but for the first time ever I was grateful to Kurosawa and even feeling some genuine affection for him. Just a little, and I would never admit to it anyway. 3 years have passed since that fateful night, and I find myself in Ginza again, but not for one of Kurosawa’s mixers...although he is one of the faces reflected in the shopping window with me (he invited himself along, of course). The other face was Aki: “Go with the sapphire, trust me. I’ve known her for ages, she’d say a diamond is too common, Kate Middleton didn’t get a diamond and Lady Thatcher didn’t have a diamond”. I listened to what he had to say, my hand on my face in the automatic gesture of when I’m thinking that she loves to mock. Diamond rings are expected, but my girl was never one to do what is expected. “Alright, a sapphire it is, but if she turns me down I’ll give you to Hyogo to do with you as he pleases”.

Thank you for reading! 💙

[zaney-hacknslash]

God from the Machine 9

Present Gojyo

             Taibo’s bar was just where Pitchfork said it would be, and it definitely looked closed. Like most of the other shops around town, the windows were boarded up and the lights were off. I stepped up onto the porch, feeling the boards creak under my feet like they were ready to give way, and stared through the window, trying to see a sign of anything even remotely promising through the cracks between the boards. It was dark as night in there.

           Rubbing my hands, I approached the door. Damn, it had gotten even colder. The wind was whipping and snow had started to fall, and I wanted to go home as soon as I could.

           Just a quick chat with this Willis dork, and then I could be on my way. Home was a long walk, but maybe I could stop at Keiun, and if I told Sanzo everything I knew, maybe he’d be a dude and let me stay the night there. I’d be dog tired by then.

           I pounded on the door so loudly I bruised my fist. “Hey! Willis? You in there?”

           The town was so quiet, not even my voice echoed back at me.

           “C’mon, you damn intellectual fuck! Open the door!”

           Still nothing.

           “I’m gonna break it down!” I gave the door a kick, but it didn’t give, and I just wound up hurting my leg.

           Stomping and cursing, I stumbled back to take a deep breath and reassess the situation. The building was shabby—there could be another way in, or they might all be locked up tight like this one. Whatever happened, I didn’t dare leave empty-handed. Like Sanzo said, this was serious. It didn’t matter that stupid Hakkai couldn’t see that or had stopped caring. I wanted to know what it was all about.

           “Willis!” I threw myself against the door again, beating for all I was worth. “Open this damn door!”

           Suddenly, the door sprang open, almost smacking me in the face, and I was staring down the barrel of a shotgun.

           “Fuck!”

           “Hanyou,” a voice hissed from the darkness. Fingers caught the front of my shirt, dragging me into the shadows.

           The door slammed shut again, cutting out the light, and I whipped around, panting, straining to see whoever was at the other end of the shotgun hovering in front of my face. All it took was for them to get a good look at me and decide they didn’t want to deal with whatever I had to say.

           I pressed back against the wall, heart slamming hard. “Wh-who are you?”

           “Who are you?” that hissing voice demanded. The muzzle of the shotgun nudged my chest. “Are you wild? Like the others. Did you come here from Tai-Ping?”

           “T-Tai-Ping? I don’t know what that—”

           The shotgun touched my chin. “Don’t lie to me, hanyou. I know what you are.”

           “Look,” I drew a shaky breath, but I didn’t know what to say to get myself out of this mess. “My name’s Gojyo, not hanyou. Got it?”

           The voice laughed lowly. “Am I supposed to care about that? Your kind are a scourge to the earth—that’s all that matters.”

           “I’m looking for Willis,” I said quickly. “That’s all I want. I didn’t come here to start trouble.”

           They seemed to hesitate. My eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, but I still couldn’t make out much aside from the shape of someone’s head, shorter than me, and just out of arm’s reach. The shotgun gleamed. I could only imagine the finger lying lightly across the trigger. It wouldn’t take much. Just me saying the wrong thing.

           “What do you want with Willis?” they wanted to know. It sounded almost like a woman’s voice this time.

           “I came to find Willis about the lab. Priest Sanzo from Keiun sent me to find out what happened there.”

           The dark figured stiffened, and suddenly they turned away, lowering the shotgun.

           Perfectly still, I waited while they rushed around the room, collecting something, and after a second I heard the sound of a match lighting, and a wavering light filled the darkness.

           I found myself staring at a woman not much older than I was. She was short and slim with her hair tied back in a messy bun, dressed in fatigues and a leather jacket with black gloves. She kept the shotgun pointed at the floor as she walked back over to me, holding her lantern up in her free hand. Her eyes were blue, and she looked like she was half-foreign. Western.

           “Priest Sanzo?” she repeated. “Priest Genjyo Sanzo?”

           “Y-yeah…” my mouth was so dry I almost couldn’t speak. “You know him?”

           “I know of him.” She frowned, looking me up and down. “What’s a hanyou like you doing running errands for a high-ranking priest like Gejyo Sanzo?”

           “Good question,” I muttered, lighting my cigarette. “Look…I don’t have time to chat. If you’re not gonna shoot me, tell me where I can find Willis, and I’ll get out of your way.”

           She let out a sudden laugh and suddenly hoisted herself up to sit on the bare table in the middle of the room, setting the lantern aside there. “You’re looking for Willis, huh? Well, you’re in luck, boy. Here I am.”

           I studied her skeptically. “You’re Willis? The scientist from the lab?”

           “We call it Hybrid-Tech Facility number 4, but yes, that’s me. Sandra Willis.”

           “And I’m just supposed to believe that? You don’t look like a scientist.”

           “Scientists don’t tend to have a look, but you look like a half-youkai, and not many people know what to look for in such a rare breed. How could I know that unless I’ve studied such things?”

           “I’ve met other people who know what a hybrid looks like,” I growled.

           “Oh, I’m sure you have. Educated people. Or people who have seen one born before. Other than that, the appearance of the children of taboo isn’t common knowledge.”

           Hakkai was educated—he said he’d read about hybrids when he was in school. Sanzo knew too, because he was a high-ranking priest. Other than that, she was right. People like Banri knew because they’d been around hanyou before.

           “Fine, so you’re Willis,” I agreed.

           “Go ahead and call me Sandra,” she suggested. “I think my life as a scientist is at an end.” She cocked her head, sizing me up. Her blue eyes were fiery and full of passion and the will to survive. “Explain to me why Genjyo Sanzo sent you to find me.”

           Taking another deep breath, I lit a cigarette, trying to calm down from the shock of being held at gunpoint out of nowhere. Hard to believe how much more nerve-wracking stuff like that seemed when Hakkai didn’t have my back. “My partner and I went to your…facility… Almost two months ago now.”

           Willis’ eyes flickered and her pink lips frowned. She lowered her head. “I see…”

           “What we found there… Sanzo wanted us to figure out what it was all about… We thought all the scientists went missing.”

           “They didn’t go missing, Gojyo,” she corrected. Something about that matter-of-fact tone reminded me of Hakkai, and I wished he were with me. I was afraid to miss all the details he’d normally pick up. “They were killed.”

           “Yeah, I saw that.” I tried not to think about that messy scene in the room where Hakkai found his time machine notes. “It looked like they were torn apart… Eaten.”

           “That’s right,” she agreed, still sounding way too calm.

           “Well, do you wanna tell me how it happened? That’s what I’m here for.”

           Willis sighed, sadly, and to my surprise she lit a cigarette of her own, laid her shotgun down so she could lean back on her arms, and stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know really. One day, the youkai members of our team just…lost their minds. I was lucky to survive.”

           “Wait a minute. You’re telling me some of your own team did that? Tore their buddies apart and just left them like that?”

           “It seems that way. I don’t know, exactly—I managed to escape in the middle of the chaos, and I never went back to see the aftermath, but based off what I did see… Yes. Those youkai attacked their human colleagues.”

           My stomach did a flop as I thought about what Hakkai and me saw again. He’d said it—it had to have been a youkai that did that—but I’d figured it was some experiment gone wrong, that the scientists sort of got what they deserved, not something messed up like what she’d just said. “Why would they do that?”

           “I’ve been trying to figure that out, Gojyo.”

           Again, she said it like I should have realized that by myself.

           “It doesn’t look like it. You’ve just been hiding down here, holed up in a broken-down dive.”

           She eyed me with some contempt. “You’re not very smart, are you? Most hybrids have a deficiency when it comes to intelligence.”

           “Hey,” I snarled. “I’m not dumb either. I just don’t know what the fuck’s going on around here. This whole town is freaky—I’ll give you that—but nothing I’ve seen so far has explained why a bunch of tree-hugging sciencey types would flip out one day and try to make their friends into lunch meat.”

           Willis gave a delicate, girly laugh. “Sorry, then. First of all, the scientists in facility four weren’t exactly tree-huggers. We did a lot of experiments that would likely make your skin crawl, and I can’t say it was necessarily for the betterment of humanity.”

           “Why then?”

           “There are some things we wanted to know,” she explained through a breath of smoke. “Boundaries we wanted to push. Rules we wanted to break. You might call it playing God. That is the nature of mankind.”

           Just like Hakkai and his damned time machine… He’d fit right in with those assholes.

           I couldn’t help wincing.

           Willis suddenly jumped down from the table and strode toward me, looking me over again, this time with more interest. “Tell me about your birth.”

           “What the hell does that matter right now?” Never mind that it wasn’t something I wanted to get into at all.

           “People are stupid. In many cases, hanyou are born out of some witless facsimile of love, or a perversion of instinct.”

           My face flushed.

           Before I could shout at her, she said, “But most of your kind are made in labs. Youkai and human women are artificially inseminated with samples from the opposite species, respectively.”

           “What in the hell for?”

           She shrugged. She’d gotten closer now and was making a half-circle around me, drinking in my every detail with a fascinated gleam in her eye. “For experiments, mostly. Again, it’s a boundary man naturally feels the urge to push. In some cases, they’re a request—the monstrously rich have been known to order a hanyou to keep as a pet, or a slave, or a sex toy.”

           A shiver ran down my spine. “That’s fucked up,” I husked.

           Giggling again, she said, “Seeing how you’re unfamiliar with such practices, I’m going to assume you’re somebody’s ill-fated lovechild.”

           Too bad Hakkai wasn’t here. I’d like to think he’d throw a fit to hear anyone talk about me like this, but since he’d decided it was cool to dump my ass and run into the past after Kanan, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it didn’t make any real difference that he wasn’t with me for this.

           “I didn’t come here to talk about me,” I told her roughly. “I want to know why those youkai attacked the other scientists. Was it an experiment gone wrong?”

           “No.” She ashed nonchalantly on the floor and let her hair down. She’d be really beautiful if she weren’t such a cold bitch. “I have no idea what happened to my youkai colleagues. It seemed they simply lost their minds one day, all at once. We’d noticed some strange behavior in them during the weeks preceding the catastrophe, but nothing telling. No real precursor to the horror in store for us. I don’t have an explanation for why that happened. Yet.”

           “You’re trying to find one though, right? Does asking me weird questions about my birth and telling me fucked up shit about my kind help with that?”

           “It could,” she agreed absently. “It’s possible youkai have something in their genetic makeup which humans lack that led them to go…berserk, so to speak. I wonder about you though. You don’t seem crazed, just a little scared.”

           “I’m not scared.” I tried to hide the shaking in my hands from her, but she’d probably noticed already. “What do you think you can learn down here?”

           With another sigh, she dropped her cigarette and stomped it out, only half-smoked. “Since the incident, this village has experienced a number of attacks like the one I saw that day.”

           “So the youkai scientists escaped and came down here?”

           She shook her head and whispered, “No, I don’t think so, Gojyo. According to the townspeople, their youkai neighbors suddenly lost their minds and attacked, just like my colleagues. Dozens of humans were killed, some even devoured. The youkai who survived fled into the woods and have been raiding the place ever since. I thought I could learn something by studying the bodies of the youkai who have been killed, but there’s nothing. No disease, at least. Nothing physical that can explain what’s going on. It’s been a useless endeavor, and I may as well leave, but…I must admit, I’m a little afraid to go off on my own right now.” She fixed a serious look on me. “This is a time of chaos. If I were you, I’d be very careful—you’re as likely to be attacked as anyone else. For all you know, you’re going to go berserk next.”

           My heart thumped all the louder. “Can I? Do you think? Hybrids…?”

           She nodded. “Before I came here, I was in a town called Tai-Ping. I might have been crazy to go there, but it’s a community of youkai and hanyou—not many humans are even allowed to visit—and they, like the youkai in this town, all went berserk, killed humans, and ran away. There were a few hybrids among them. I know at least one of them lost his mind as well.”

           I stared down at my hands, thinking. I hadn’t felt weird at all lately. Hakkai didn’t seem like he was acting weird, other than suddenly having an obsession for traveling back in time. I wondered about Goku. The kid had seemed normal the few times I’d seen him since we were at the lab, but maybe that was why Sanzo hadn’t asked him to deal with this after Hakkai bailed.

           “If I go to Tai-Ping,” I wondered quietly. “Do you think I’ll find anything else out? Do you think there’s anything the three different attacks have in common?”

           “I didn’t notice,” she answered flippantly. “If I didn’t, I seriously doubt you will.”

           “Oh, nice,” I snarled. “You know, I was gonna offer to walk you home, or at least help you get somewhere a little safer.”

           “I wouldn’t want to put my life in your hands anyway. You seem sane now, but you could turn on me.”

           “Fine.” I stomped for the door. “Good luck then, lady.”

           I heard her laugh again. “When you see Genjyo Sanzo again… If you see him again… Tell him to send someone a little smarter next time.”

           I slammed the door behind me.

           As I walked away from the bar, I fumed. Here I came down here to try and figure this mess out—to try and help—even without my partner, who happened to be the smart and capable one, and that bitch just treated me like a second-class citizen. Where did she get off, calling me stupid and telling me that fucked up shit about hybrids?

           Mom used to say people like me weren’t good for anything but sex. Since trying to get laid was how I spent a lot of my time ever since I was thirteen or fourteen years old, it must have sunk in somewhere, but I wondered if she’d meant the same thing Willis had told me—that rich purebloods bred us specifically for…

           No. I didn’t want to think about that. It was just too fucked up. Sleeping around a lot wasn’t like being raised to be a sex slave, getting raped every night as soon as you were old enough to…

           Stop thinking about this.

           I paused in the middle of the street to light a cigarette and try to get my bearings. The town was darker than ever, and there wasn’t a soul around. The sky overhead was black and starless. I wondered what Hakkai was doing right now. Most nights, he worked until dusk, and then he set up lights so he could keep working until he was exhausted. Once or twice I’d found him passed out in the snowy garden, shuddering and mumbling about Kanan, and I’d dragged him inside to bed. I worried he’d get really sick doing shit like that, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He wasn’t listening to me about anything, and that was nothing new. He thought he knew everything, and I was just a dumb hanyou who was lucky not to be bred as some rich fuck’s fetish…

           At least if Hakkai was here he could tell me to forget all that. He could say something that made sense. He could remind me that I was a person—he was good at that. Even if he didn’t know how, he always thought of some way to distract me so I could forget about it.

           What is going on with him? Why is he so determined to leave me?

           I didn’t want to think about that either. It was up to Hakkai what he did and where he went, and I couldn’t stop him. I wasn’t going to beg him to stay, but…thinking about how friendless and bleak life would be without him was too much.

           I turned around in the street suddenly, facing the direction where I’d seen the pillar of smoke earlier. I saw an orangey glow that way, and I could sort of make out the ashy cloud polluting the night air. The wind carried a foul smell. I decided I wanted to figure out exactly what was going on in this town before I headed back to Hakkai. It was a long walk anyway, so what the hell, why not?

           Navigating through the unlit streets at night was hard. The road was rough, and I kept stumbling in potholes or tripping over rocks, but it was easy to follow the fiery glow, and before I knew it I was at the edge of town, facing an open field, coated in crystalline white, and the wind whipped through the clearing, bitterer than ever.

           Most of the town was gathered there around a huge bonfire, like they were having a party, but nobody danced or drank or laughed. In fact, no one was even speaking. I heard some sobbing.

           Stacked off to one side, I saw a huge pile of bodies, thrown one on top of another, irreverently, and most of them had been stripped naked. All of them had the pointy ears and sharp claws of youkai. I even saw little children, crushed under the bodies of adults. Human men were picking up corpses one after another and throwing them carelessly onto the fire. The air was choked with the despicable scent of burning flesh.

           For the longest time, I just stood there and stared. Willis said the youkai in this town went crazy, attacked humans, and ran away. There were enough bodies there to account for the whole youkai populace. Did that mean the humans had hunted them down and dragged them all back here, or…? I mean, was it possible some of the youkai hadn’t lost their minds yet and their neighbors just killed them as a preemptive strike?

           The idea put an unshakeable chill in my bones and a sick feeling in my guts. That was way too fucked up. It was all too fucked up—eating people, murdering innocents, torching the bodies like some kind of ritual…

           Sanzo wasn’t kidding about this being a bigger deal than it seemed like.

           Someone gasped suddenly and shouted, “That man! The outsider—he’s seen us!”

           I blinked myself out of my horror-stricken trance and noticed a group of townspeople clustered together, faces drawn with terror, pointing at me. A few men rushed toward me—I even recognized several of the guys from earlier.

           The old man who’d had the pitchfork grabbed up a chainsaw and stormed toward me, his face ruthless with resolve. He yanked the starter, and the saw roared to life, filling the silence with a terrifying sound of certain death. Lugging it with him, he ran in my direction.

           Another man cried, “We can’t let him get away! We can’t let him tell!”

           “Oh, holy fuck, no,” I whispered.

           Tossing my cigarette, I spun around and ran back the way I’d come.

           I was fast, but I kept running into dead ends and getting turned around, and the mob closed in on me, shouting angrily and carrying torches. The guy with the chainsaw was surprisingly fast for his age, and it seemed like every time I looked over my shoulder he’d gotten a step closer, bearing down on me with the saw, eager to chop my body to bits.

           My heart slammed so hard I thought I wouldn’t even be able to run, but if I stopped they’d be on me. Staggering and sliding through snow and pitfalls, I cursed the darkened streets. Did they make it like this on purpose? So if someone dropped by and saw what they were doing they could kill them easier?

           The lunatics screamed for me to stop where I was. I didn’t know why they’d bother. Sometimes they insisted they just wanted to talk, but the hum of the chainsaw motor always reminded me I couldn’t take that chance.

           I turned a corner and dashed down an alley.

           At the other end, a group of men jumped in my way and surged at me.

           Behind me, the sound of the chainsaw bounced down the walls.

           “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

           I summoned my shakujou. The alley was so narrow I had to carry it vertically.

           Not understanding what it was, the men rushed at me.

           I whacked off one guy’s legs, and he collapsed in a heap, screaming and writhing. Hot blood sprayed across my shirt.

           The others shouted and paused.

           I plowed through them, shaking them off and racing into the street again. I recognized the tree with the fresh graves planted under it, just ahead.

           With a burst of speed, I leapt over the fence, crashed through the graveyard, and sprinted out into the woods and the night.

           It didn’t matter what direction I went, I just had to get away.

  Past Gojyo

             Hakkai woke me up a few times, like he said he would, once when the moon was directly above us, once when it was getting close to the horizon, and one more time when the sky was starting to brighten. Each time, he talked to me a few minutes, asking me questions like, “what’s your address and what’s your birth date”, and then he gave me some pills for my headache and some water, and told me to go back to sleep.

           That was easy since I felt so tired, and it was good to know he was close by, keeping watch.

           The next time, I woke up by myself, and it was already eight or nine in the morning. Hakkai was cooking something over his fire, and he greeted me quietly and told me to lie still while he finished making the food.

           “How do you feel?” he asked while I ate.

           “Better, I think.”

           “Does your head still hurt?”

           “Not so bad.”

           “And the dizziness?”

           I looked around the forest, but everything was normal. “It’s gone.”

           “You’re not seeing double or anything like that?”

           “No.”

           “Do your ears ring?”

           I shook my head.

           “Are you nauseated?”

           “No. I don’t think so.”

           He nodded. “You’ll be fine, I believe, but you should take it easy for a few days.”

           I didn’t know how I could do that. If I went home, I didn’t know if Mom would let me hide in my room for a few days, but I did know she wouldn’t let me lie around the house and watch cartoons. Jien couldn’t take off work to babysit me.

           There wasn’t anywhere else to go though. I couldn’t camp out for a few days—that wasn’t taking it easy at all.

           Suddenly, Hakkai got up from where he’d been sitting on the other side of the fire and came over to sit down in front of me, cross-legged. He looked seriously into my eyes, and his voice was gentle. “I want to discuss something important with you.”

           I blinked at him and popped some bacon in my mouth. “’Kay.”

           “I understand you only just met me yesterday, but please believe me when I say my concern for you is genuine.”

           I cocked my head and studied him. Maybe I was naïve, but Hakkai just didn’t seem like a liar, and he had a really honest face. “I believe you.”

           “Good.” He cleared his throat and clasped his hands together, staring down at them thoughtfully. “Last night, you told me something rather disturbing about the interaction between your stepmother and your brother. I somehow doubt he’s taken the time to talk about this with you… Well, why would he? I’m sure he’s ashamed of it.”

           “What’re you talkin’ about?”

           He sighed. “I just want to make sure you understand how…unnatural your home life is.”

           “’Cause she hits me, right? Other moms don’t hit their kids… Do they?”

           “Well, no, not as such. That isn’t precisely what I mean. If it’s true the two of them engage in…er…intimate relations…”

           He paused, and I realized he wanted me to tell him for sure whether or not they did. Last night, I hadn’t meant to babble that out, but there wasn’t any taking it back now. “Yeah…” I looked away. “Sometimes.”

           “That is not natural behavior for a mother and son—not by any means—that’s known as incest.” He sighed. “Not that I’m one to have much to say about incest in and of itself…”

           “This’s confusing.”

           “I know. I apologize. It’s a delicate subject. The important thing though—the thing I’d like to stress to you—is that Jien’s course of actions are not necessarily the most prudent. It could be there’s some very real emotional or mental ailment behind that behavior, particularly where she’s concerned, and it…” He paused again, and his expression hardened. “It’s wrong, Gojyo. A mother and son should not be doing that, and it distresses me to hear that watching them perform that action has left you feeling conflicted. Jien shouldn’t be doing that, regardless of the reason, and I don’t at all want you to grow up thinking you should try it next. She may not be your mother by blood, but regardless, there are healthy reasons to engage in sexual intercourse with someone, and unhealthy reasons. For example, things like love and respect are integral to sexual intercourse, and reasons like guilt, or shame, or insecurity would be unhealthy reasons.” He stopped suddenly, eyebrows knitting together, as if he were feeling somewhat confused himself. “Do you understand?”

           “I think so…”

           “I just…you’ll be a young man before you know it, and this misconception could be damaging to your development, and that concerns me. Furthermore, it absolutely is not okay to allow anyone in a position of authority to take advantage of you simply because it might make them feel better, and although I don’t know very much about this particular situation—I’m completely new to it—I assume that’s what’s happened to Jien.”

           I tried to remember the first time they’d done each other, but…it just seemed like something that happened before I knew it.

           Hakkai grumbled under his breath, “I’ve never had such a hard time explaining anything in my life… I feel as if I’m pushing a boulder up a hill.” He looked earnestly into my eyes. “Don’t sleep with your mother, Gojyo-chan. Don’t even consider the possibility that it might make her love you, because it won’t. This is not the way family is supposed to behave, and these are not the things they’re supposed to be teaching you. Being intimate with someone is worth more than a cheap distraction.”

           “I know.” I lowered my eyes. “I know nothing can ever make her love me…”

           “No,” he agreed quietly. “I suppose if she doesn’t love you by this time, she’s never going to. But there will be other people in your life who will love you. They’ll matter much more than any of this.”

           I couldn’t even imagine that. “Yeah right. When?”

           “Not too long.”

           I shook my head and lit a cigarette, repeating, “Yeah right.”

           “Gojyo.” He lifted my chin to look me in the eyes again. His were greener than the grass, and they burned with an intense expression. Again, I felt like I had to believe whatever he said. I felt like he wouldn’t lie to me. “I promise,” he said firmly.

           Meeting anyone who would actually care about me still sounded impossible, but I nodded. For all I knew, it could happen.

           “Good. Now, if you’re finished eating I think we should get you home.”

           My stomach squirmed. “Home… Really?”

           “Yes.” He stood up and started picking up his stuff. “If Jien is any sort of decent brother he’s been looking for you.”

           “My concussion though.” I couldn’t help feeling betrayed. I hadn’t thought he’d make me go back there after everything I told him.

           Hakkai hesitated and sighed. “I’m sorry, Gojyo. I wish I didn’t have to take you back there, but I don’t know where else you would go, and having a roof over your head is an important part of childhood.”

           “I could go with you,” I said smally.

           Hakkai smiled sadly. “Ah…that… If only I were going somewhere you could go as well.”

           “I can’t go with you to Cheng?”

           “I’m not sure I’m going to Cheng anymore.”

           “Why?”

           “It’s occurred to me that perhaps I should simply return home…if I even can.”

           I stared at him. He was really a weird guy. “How come you can’t go home?”

           “Oh, I don’t know yet if I can. We’ll see, I suppose.” He slung his pack over one shoulder, and Jeep hopped to the other.

           “Can’t I go home with you?”

           He faced me. “Do you really want to go with me? Do you really want to leave your brother and everything else you know?”

           That bothered me. On one hand, I didn’t have anything else in this town I cared about, but…Jien. I didn’t know if I wanted to leave him. I still felt like we needed to stick together. “I don’t know.”

           “Whatever you decide, I’ll be in town a while longer, I think, so there’s still time to figure something out.”

           I got up too, holding the coat he’d spread over me last night. I wondered why he was even wearing a coat in the middle of the summer. “You’re staying a while? Are you gonna keep camping out?”

           Hakkai shrugged and started to lead the way back to town. “Perhaps I’ll ask your mother if I can stay a few nights at your house.”

           I couldn’t help smiling as I trotted up to walk next to him. “Really? That’d be cool.”

           Hakkai just nodded. “Regardless of what I do, I want you to keep in mind what we talked about. Do you understand?”

           “Yeah, okay. I will.” I lit another cigarette.

           He added under his breath, “Also…perhaps you should consider giving up smoking. Jien may not have told you this either, but it’s considered to be quite hazardous to your health.”

           I took a deep breath of the tobacco. “I like smoking.”

           This time he chuckled and ruffled my hair, “I know you do, Goj.”