My palm slides against yours with the added lubrication of your blood, and all you do is tighten your grip and grind your jaw against the pain. A gasp escapes my mouth but you shrug it off without shrugging at all, and the “accumulated trash”, as Yuko puts it, whispers sinister things to you that only I can hear.

By the time I finish protesting too much and trying to process this inkling that’s sneaking up on the not–as–panicked portion of my mind, the snake–guardian–spirit–thing has swallowed the black–prophecy–summoned–demon–thing and you’re wrenching me over the railing and back onto the roof. There’s relief in your stoic eyes, and it bewilders me because the snake–thing is rounding back on us, and then I remember you can’t see a damned thing and that’s relief because I’m on solid ground. But before I can catalogue that we can’t move and I panic again and you make running, idle commentary again, but Yuko’s voice echoes an incantation through the earphones on the other side of the roof and the snake–thing snatches them up and disappears.

We’re safe, but you’re still bleeding. I watch you cradle your arm, your bowstring arm, and belatedly realize you’ve got a meet in two weeks. You were concerned over my spirit–sickness and I can still hear the slight twinge in your voice when you told me it must be pretty terrible to sense ghosts even as your posture reeked of nonchalance; I feel that hint again followed by a remembered strain of Yuko’s laughter and suddenly I hope to god you like sushi, because I’m making you lunch tomorrow.

Then you make a comment about my brain being as funny as those earphones, and I want to throw you off the roof I’m so angry, but I can still feel your blood staining my palm, the space between my fingers, your fingerprints smeared into my wrist. It’s sticky and it’s warm and it’s one more tie to someone I’m not even sure I like, but it’s there all the same.

Like Yuko says, I guess it’s all hitsuzen.