Chapter Text
Keiko stood on the beach and stared out at the setting sun with tears in her eyes. Her friends were gathered on the sand behind her but, as she vented her frustrations to the silent ocean, she was barely even aware of their presence.
“This is the end,” she yelled, “I’m tired of waiting for you, Yusuke! Half my life I’ve waited for you to come around. Even when you were here you weren’t really! You weren’t here for me! Go on fighting, but it’s time I get what I want!”
Her voice cracked, the tears that she’d tried so hard to keep at bay finally trickling down her cheeks.
“I want someone I can depend on,” she whispered, “I want someone who trusts me as much as I trust him. I want someone who … someone who keeps his promises.”
She sank to her knees, burying her face in her hands as she began to cry in earnest.
“I waited, Yusuke. I waited for three years, just like you said. Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you come back?”
She shouted her final question as loudly as she could, but nobody answered.
***
An overcast afternoon had turned into a dismally rainy evening and promised to turn into an even more unpleasant night. Most of the lights in Mushiyori South Elementary School had been extinguished long ago, but they continued to blaze in the security guard’s booth near the main entrance and in one lonely classroom on the second floor.
Keiko sat at her desk and poured over her lesson plans for the next few weeks while heavy raindrops battered the roof tiles and howling winds rattled the windows that her class had painstakingly decorated with paper butterflies last spring. It was late – her colleagues had left hours ago – but there was no point in rushing home. Jiro wouldn’t be back from his business trip until Sunday and, with her fiancé out of town, the little apartment in the suburbs that they shared was far too quiet and far too lonely to be worth rushing back to.
(Sometimes, it was a little lonely even when Jiro was with her.)
She turned the page and paused to stretch, then picked up her pen to make a small correction to her notes for next Tuesday. Even over the sound of the pounding rain, she could hear footsteps in the hallway outside. It could only be Tomasu. The elderly security guard often came to check on her in the evenings. She’d lost count of the number of cups of tea they’d shared since she’d started working at the school and, if he’d finished the ramen that she’d made for him yesterday, he probably wanted to return the bowl and give her yet another friendly lecture on the dangers of working too hard.
“I’m sorry,” she called out, “I know it’s late, but I’m nearly finished, I promise!”
Receiving no response, Keiko looked up. Her heart plummeted like a stone. There wasn’t one figure in the open doorway but two, and neither of them were Tomasu.
One of them was, at first glance, almost human. There was a fresh scar on one side of his otherwise handsome face, twisting his lips into a grimace, but only the ram’s horns curling out of his golden hair betrayed his supernatural origins. His companion, on the other hand, with his gleaming black eyes and his green skin, could only be a demon. When he fixed her with a mirthless smile, a pair of wicked fangs stained with red flashed at her.
Hidden behind her desk, Keiko slipped a discrete can of pepper spray out of her bag and concealed it in her hand.
“Is this her?” asked the handsome demon. “Urameshi’s girl?”
Keiko recoiled from that name as if she’d been struck. She knew, logically, that she should be afraid, but instead she felt only anger. How dare they break into her school, invade her life, and mention that name? Her grip on the pepper spray became firmer and, although her heart was beating faster with the first rushes of adrenaline, she felt curiously calm.
“Oh, yes! She’s all grown up now, but I still recognise her from the Dark Tournament.”
“You’ve got the wrong person,” Keiko responded, getting to her feet as she calculated the distance to the door and wondered if she could make it through before they caught up with her. Demons were generally a lot faster than humans, but if she surprised them by jumping over the desk, if she locked the door behind her, if they underestimated her, she might stand a chance. “I’m not Yusuke Urameshi’s anything. I haven’t seen him in nearly ten years.”
“But I’m sure he remembers someone as pretty as you, sweetheart,” purred the green demon, striding into the classroom and closing the distance between himself and Keiko. She moved around the desk as he approached, doing her best to keep it as a barrier between them, but there was nowhere for her to run, not with the second demon closing in on her other side.
“And even if he doesn’t,” the handsome demon added with a laugh, “He’ll remember when he hears all about your tragic death.”
“Tragic and violent, I’m afraid. We have a message to send to that arrogant half breed. Are you a screamer?” the green demon asked, sidling up behind her, “You look like a screamer. I love it when humans scream.”
In her haste to escape him, Keiko almost ended up in the arms of the other demon, crowding in on her from the front.
“That’s no way to speak to a lady,” he said to his companion, grabbing Keiko’s chin and tilting her face towards his, “Be patient. We’ll find out the answer soon enough.”
His grip was like iron, cold and strong. She couldn’t have pulled away from him if she’d tried. He’d left her arms free, though, and that was all that Keiko needed. She aimed a burst of pepper spray directly into his cruelly handsome face. He roared in surprise and pain and released his grip, striking her across the face with a backhanded blow even as he staggered back and clawed at his stinging eyes. Keiko was thrown backwards, hitting the window with such force that the glass shattered, raining down around her as she fell, dazed and dizzy, to the floor. She managed to stagger to her feet just as the green demon reached her, emptying the rest of her canister of pepper spray into his face and, without waiting to see how much damaged she’d caused, racing as fast as she could for freedom.
She made it out of the classroom, pausing just long enough to slam the door and lock it behind her. The broken glass had cut her palms to ribbons and her hands were sticky with blood, but she managed to turn the key and drop it into her pocket. She’d made the mistake of leaving her phone in her bag, but there was nothing to be done about that now. Tomasu would have one in his booth. She could warn him and call for help at the same time, and then they could either try and make it to her car or find somewhere safe to hide until help arrived.
At the bottom of the stairs, Keiko heard the sound of splintering wood somewhere overhead. The demons must have recovered from the pepper spray and broken through the classroom door. She ran on, as fast as her legs could carry her, clearing the last few steps in a single jump and then sprinting out into another corridor. Motion-activated lights switched on and off in her wake, revealing her path to her pursuers, but it was the fastest way to get to Tomasu.
The main door into the school was already open. She raced out into the rain and headed straight for the security booth. As she got closer, she could hear faint traces of music from Tomasu’s rusty old radio, but there was no sign of her friend. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have worried her, but tonight, with two demons walking around the school, it terrified her.
She had to find him, but she needed to call for help first. If she could just avoid her attackers for a little while longer, she might survive long enough for her friends to reach her.
Ducking into the booth, she picked up the phone and crouched down out of sight. Despite her trembling hands, but she managed to dial Kuwabara’s number on the second attempt.
She could only hope that her old friend wasn’t on a date with Yukina tonight. When he was with his beloved ice maiden, he was aware of nothing else, including his phone.
The ringing seemed to last for an eternity, fraying Keiko’s fraught nerves even further. Despite the crackle of the radio and the hiss of the rain outside, the noise seemed to echo around the tiny booth.
She held her breath for one heartbeat and then another, then, mercifully ...
“Hello?”
“Kuwabara!”
Laughter – almost hysterical with relief – bubbled up in Keiko’s chest, but that relief was short lived. Before she had a chance to speak, a clawed hand gripped her hair and yanked her up and out of the booth. She dropped the phone as she struggled with the green demon and his friend, his eyes swollen and weeping from the effects of the pepper spray, stamped on it with his heavy boot. The last thing that Keiko heard before the phone was crushed under his foot was the sound of a confused Kuwabara calling out her name.
Her scalp burned as she was dragged out of the booth and back into the school, clawing desperately at her captor’s hands but unable to break the skin or force him to let go until one of her wildly kicking legs caught him in the stomach. He released her with a growl and she scrambled to her feet, making a dash for the reception desk – she remembered, vaguely, the receptionist boasting about a taser her police officer brother-in-law had procured for her – only to stop abruptly, clasping her hands over her mouth.
Poor Tomasu lay on the ground behind the reception desk in a slowly expanding pool of blood, his eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Keiko realised, with a sickening thrill of horror, exactly why the green demon’s teeth were stained red.
Choking down the urge to be sick, she opened her mouth to scream, but the horned demon caught her around the throat, choking the noise before it could escape. He didn’t look handsome now. His bloodshot eyes gleamed maniacally and the way that he licked his lips made Keiko tremble in fear.
The demon lifted her up with ease. Keiko kicked, struggled, flailed desperately and furiously until the lack of oxygen began to blur the edges of her vision and the darkness started to close insistently in on her.
Then, suddenly, the pressure on her throat was released. She was flung, unceremoniously, across the room, but a pair of strong arms caught her before she hit the wall. For the briefest of moments, Keiko’s eyes met a pair of familiar – very familiar – brown eyes, but then she was set gently on the ground and her saviour whirled around to face her assailants.
“Hey,” Yusuke shouted, crackling with rage and with demonic energy that made Keiko’s skin prickle, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, you cowardly bastards?”
The ensuing fight was over quickly. At least, Keiko assumed that it was. She didn’t watch. Her throat was aching and swollen, making it hard to draw breath, but she managed to half stagger, half crawl over to Tomasu, searching for a pulse that she already knew she wouldn’t find. She was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness by the time Yusuke found her slumped against the desk, clutching the old man’s hand.
“Keiko? Take it easy, ok? I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Her hands were shaking, both from the shock of Tomasu’s death and the shock of being thrust so abruptly and brutally back into a life she thought she’d left behind, but she still succeeded in raising it. She wanted to slap him – she definitely raised her hand to slap him – but she ended up cupping his cheek with a trembling hand instead.
“Yusuke?”
“I’m here, Keiko. It’s gonna be ok, I promise.”
He picked her up and cradled her to his chest. The last thing that Keiko remembered was a soft kiss pressed to her temple but, when she finally regained consciousness, she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it or not.
***
When she woke up, Keiko was lying in one of the spare bedrooms in Genkai’s temple. The room itself was unfamiliar, but she had spent enough time there to recognise the view out of the window. It was morning, the dark clouds of the previous evening having given way to clear blue skies, and her hands and throat were as good as new.
Before she opened her eyes, she actually wondered, just for a moment, if she’d dreamed it all.
It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time that she’d dreamed about Yusuke – it wouldn’t have been the first time that those dreams had been nightmares, even – but her clothes were still stained with blood. Her blood and – she let out a horrified sob, burying her face in her hands as she sat up abruptly – the blood of poor Tomasu.
“Puu!”
The spirit beast, in his more diminutive form, had been standing vigil over her from the windowsill, but he flew into her lap immediately when she started to cry. She gathered him into her arms, burying face in his warm feathers and cradling him close.
“Oh, Puu!” she breathed brokenly, “He came back. He came back.”
He came back and it was awful.
Before that night on the beach, the night when she’d finally given up waiting for Yusuke to come back to her, she’d imagined their reunion too many times to count. In her fantasies, especially the ones that she’d only indulged in when her parents had been out and which would bring blushes to her cheeks even now if she allowed herself dwell on them, it had always been romantic and exciting. Despite everything that she knew about the Demon World and everything she’d guessed about the sort of life Yusuke would have lived while he was there, it had been tender and warm and … stupid. It had been stupid. She’d been a stupid girl dreaming stupid dreams and now she was going to have to deal with reality.
She might have finished with her old life – with demons and tournaments and a handsome boy who had returned from the dead when she kissed him – but her old life wasn’t finished with her.
“What are we going to do, Puu?” she asked the spirit beast.
“Puu,” said the little creature, and Keiko hugged him tightly.
He might not have an answer for her, but Puu still managed to make her feel better, somehow. He always did. She still visited her feathered friend at least once a month. (He had visited her just as often before she and Jiro had moved in together, but he didn’t seem to want to come to her apartment now.) The more time that passed, the more difficult it became for Keiko to reconcile her new life – her classroom and her students and her apartment and her reliably boring fiancé – with her old life, the life that Yusuke had been a part of, but she could never abandon Puu. Not when he missed Yusuke almost as much as she did.
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, drawing comfort from Puu’s familiar warmth as the birds outside the window struck up their noisy morning symphony. She knew she couldn’t hide forever. What she didn’t know was if the person that she was hiding from was even still there. There was always a chance that Yusuke already returned to the Demon World, disappearing as quickly as he’d reappeared.
The thought of not getting to see him again was the only thing worse than the thought of seeing him.
Eventually, she left Puu on the bed and got to her feet to wash up as best she could at the sink in the corner. Someone – it must have been Yukina – had brought her a change of clothes, which was fortunate because the ripped and blood-stained outfit that she’d been wearing was beyond repair. She changed into the jeans and the soft green sweater and scrutinised her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her hair was a hopeless mess that she couldn’t hope to detangle with her fingers, although she’d certainly done her best. She looked every bit as tired and as drained as she felt.
Her appearance didn’t match up with her teenage fantasies any more than the rest of their reunion, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Are you ready to go, Puu?”
“Puu!”
“Well, ok then.” She smiled – watery and a little shaky, but genuine enough – and picked him up, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Let’s go!”
With Puu still in her arms, Keiko stepped out into the hall and then out into sunshine. There was no sign of Genkai or Yukina, but the person she both wanted to see and dreaded seeing was lying on a bench at the edge of the courtyard, his arms crossed behind his head as he gazed up at the sky.
He didn’t look exactly like she remembered, but it was much closer than she’d expected. He still looked human.
He wasn’t the boy that he’d been when they’d last seen each other. He was a man now, tall and lean and, annoyingly, maybe even more handsome than in her memories. Only the tattoos on his arms would have been out of place on the streets of Sarayashiki. Even his hair looked more or less the same.
She held Puu a little tighter and, at the sound of her approach, Yusuke jumped to his feet abruptly. The look on his face when he turned to her was exactly the sort of look he’d worn as a child when she’d caught him doing something that even he knew he shouldn’t have been doing.
Before Keiko really knew what was happening, before Yusuke had a chance to speak, she’d released Puu and ran forward, throwing her arms around Yusuke’s neck.
“You jerk!” she exclaimed as she crashed into him with so much force that he staggered backwards, “I’ve missed you so much!”
With her face buried in his chest, Keiko missed the way Yusuke’s eyes widened in surprise as she clung to him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her back just as tightly, burying his face in her messy hair.
“I’ve missed you too,” he said, so quietly that even Puu, flying in low circles above their heads, couldn’t hear him. Only Keiko could hear him and each word felt like a dagger to her heart. Just as suddenly as she’d hugged him, she pushed him away and took a sharp step backwards.
“If you missed me so much,” she demanded, “Why didn’t you come back?”