Chapter Text
When Kusuo awoke, the sun was just a hazy blot of orange, barely peeking through the dense, volcanic smoke that shrouded the sky. The chair that Kokomi had sat on just hours ago was now empty, the vacant space that she left behind making the room appear larger than it was.
He recounted their conversation in his head over and over again, a self-indulgent torment that he cocooned himself in, poring over every word and detail as if he could’ve done something more—said something better to change her mind.
All this wasted effort. All the trouble, the worry, the gnawing anxiety that propelled him to go and look for her. Did that mean nothing? She hadn’t even given him time before she just made a decision on her own, and he hadn’t been included in her choice. In the end, he didn’t even get to voice any of that.
This was the reality. He must’ve passed out from overexertion, slumped against the bedframe like an old, beaten-up pillow. His skull throbbed with a headache that pulsed against his eyes, a wound-up tension building inside. His muscles strained when he tried to move, too stiff and locked from having slept upright. Worst was the pressure against his throat, as if there was a hand squeezing his neck.
Kusuo looked to his left, where a cup of water sat on the nightstand. He tried to use his telekinesis—but the cup only wobbled in place, refusing to move.
He focused, straining against the weight, but it was like pulling on something heavy from the other side. What should’ve been just pure instinct before now left him gasping for breath, his headache pounding in his ears. The pressure against his throat tightened, and Kusuo coughed into his hand, staining his fingers with blood.
He paused from his endeavor wearily, sweat coating the new tunic he had been lent, instead reaching forward to grab the cup—but his hands trembled and the glass slipped past his hold, shattering on the wooden floor and spilling water everywhere.
Kusuo laughed at himself, a stuttering breath that escaped his mouth like a miserable sigh.
“Pathetic.”
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When Shun opened the door to Kusuo’s room, he found the psychic sprawled on the floor, struggling to push himself up.
He didn’t know how to react at first. The sight left him dumbstruck, as if he’d just walked into a scene that he wasn’t supposed to witness—to see the man who had stopped a volcano from imploding just days ago now struggling on the ground, the pained expression in his face unrecognizable from his usual bored apathy.
Shun only snapped into motion when Kusuo began to cough, his chest shuddering as he gasped for air. But when he tried to help, the psychic stubbornly turned away from him, slowly raising himself up by his forearms and leaning back against the foot of the bed.
“What happened?” Shun asked in a small voice, crouching on one knee. “Are you alright?”
“I’m… fine.” Kusuo rasped out, though the force of his fall earlier had nearly knocked the wind out of him, causing him to see doubles of Shun’s figure.
Shun paused as he noticed the psychic’s eyes for the first time. He had gotten so used to the green lenses that he thought Kusuo’s eyes were actually green too, but instead they were a startling shade of amethyst. “Your glasses…” he commented without really thinking. “I don’t think I’ve seen you without them before.”
“Kokomi took them.”
Shun’s expression visibly relaxed. “Ah, so you’ve seen her? We were looking for her this morning. Aren went outside to go find her.”
“Don’t bother,” Kusuo scoffed. “She’s gone.”
Shun’s brow scrunched. “Huh?”
“She left.” Kusuo said again, his words hard and punctuated, like there was a weight behind them.
“I don’t understand… where would she go?”
“Back to her palace.”
The revelation caused Shun’s lips to part open, his confusion turning to dread. “But… why would she go back? Didn’t she run away?”
“She didn’t give specifics. Just that it’ll help.” Kusuo spat out the last word with so much derision that Shun nearly flinched. He noticed the empty chair by the bed, and it was only then that he realized that Kokomi must’ve visited Kusuo last night before she left.
“But… just like that?” Shun murmured. He chanced another look at Kusuo, whose eyes were red-rimmed despite the rigid severity of his face, jaw clenched tight like he was fighting to keep something locked inside. Shun saw but made no comment, the quiet heaviness in the room overpowering whatever words of comfort he otherwise wanted to offer.
Instead, he gave a sigh, running a hand through his hair as if it didn’t already stick up in odd angles by itself. “I… I didn’t even realize what she was thinking. Still, to go back to such a place… she must’ve felt like there was no other choice.”
Kusuo’s eyes locked on him, his stare so intense that Shun almost wanted to take back what he said.
“Did she think me so helpless?” Kusuo said, a needle of vulnerability cracking through his resentment.
“I… I just meant—” Shun paused, swallowing back his rushed, panic thoughts as he tried to compose his next words carefully. He could understand why Kusuo was angry. They had gone through so much effort to try and rescue her. He must’ve felt some sense of betrayal, loneliness… as if she didn’t trust any of them, even after everything. But still, Shun wanted to believe in her intention. He had seen it on her face himself. “That first night out of the volcano… you were completely unresponsive. Your pulse was so slow and weak, we all thought the worst would happen. Especially with what Mikoto predicted.”
“Well it didn’t happen, did it?” Kusuo sniped, quiet and bitter.
“It didn’t happen because she took care of you,” Shun noted gently. “She was by your side all night. She was scared. We all were.”
Kusuo ground his teeth, his eyes stinging. He understood what Shun was trying to say, but logic refused to calm his mind, and instead, a hot flash of shame and frustration roiled through him. He wasn’t usually like this. He wasn’t used to this whiplash of emotions, feeling unsteady and completely out of his element.
He was overwhelmed. Tired. Sad. Such a simple word, yet it cast a large shadow over him, holding him underwater. “I just got h—” Kusuo paused, licking his lips. Correcting himself. “She just got back.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Shun said, folding his hands together. He could’ve added more, rationalized her decision, tried to put it into his perspective—but Kusuo wasn’t stupid. He understood.
There was an uncomfortable pressure that built in Kusuo’s chest, crawling up his throat until it became too difficult to breathe, and he was coughing again. He closed his forearm over his mouth, tasting the now familiar trickle of blood coating his tongue.
Pain suddenly split his skull, and he had to crush his eyes together just to bear it. He thought he heard voices—but it was different from the usual thoughts he would hear. This sounded like jumbled up whispers instead of anything tangible or coherent.
Kusuo’s eyes flashed open, and the chair next to the bed suddenly flew past Shun’s head, smashing against the wall and erupting into broken pieces of wood.
Shun stared at the wreckage, blinking. That could’ve been his head. He didn’t even have enough time to react before another dull thud resounded, and Kusuo’s body slumped to the floor again.
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“What the hell happened here?” Aren said.
He heard the noise as he was climbing up the stairs and sprinted to the room, thinking there had been some kind of attack. But as he opened the door to Kusuo’s room, all he saw was Shun bent over the psychic’s collapsed body and the debris of broken wood littering the floor.
He tried to look at Shun, but the silver-haired man still wouldn’t meet his gaze. Not after he had blown up and walked out on him. Perhaps he thought he was being subtle about it, but Aren could tell.
“The chair—it just…” Shun trailed off, still in shock, though he took a pause to gather his thoughts. “We were talking, and Kusuo got upset, then the chair just flew across the room.”
Aren tried not to get too impatient, but Shun was only telling him bits and pieces of the story. “Why was he upset?”
Shun bit his lip, eyes finally facing him after some reluctance. “Kokomi left to go back to her palace.”
“What? Why?” Aren couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They had just narrowly escaped their deaths, and now she wanted to go off on her own? He felt stupid for even looking for her this morning, ignorant that this was what had been brewing in her mind all along. Why did no one here just talk about their fucking feelings?
“… She just wanted to help.” Shun added in a smaller voice.
“Yeah, leaving us really helps.” Aren scowled, unable to hold back the ire in his tone.
“She must’ve not had a choice. The whole army here would probably be looking for her.” Shun said, getting defensive. “With us like this… we wouldn’t be able to escape.”
Aren was quiet, noting Shun’s stance. He wasn’t surprised that he would take the runaway princess’s side, but he made no comment on that—knowing that things were still tense between them. Instead, he stifled his frustration with a sigh. It was true that they weren’t safe here in the Western Kingdom. Essentially, with the psychic unable to teleport, they were cornered. She must’ve been thinking the same from the moment they set foot in her kingdom. That—or she left because she had no use for them anymore, but Aren refused to let the thought dwell any longer in his head. It wasn’t the time to speculate other people’s motivations right now.
Aren scrubbed his face, studying the dent in the wall and the broken pieces of wood. Sooner or later, someone would come and ask about the noise.
“… do we have enough left to pay for the damages?”
At this, Shun shook his head with a grim-looking frown.
“Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
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Kusuo awoke again, staring up at the ceiling in a daze. He could see Shun somewhere in his peripheral, hovering like a wasp, while a new figure—Aren, judging by the loud stomping on the floorboards, darted back and forth in the small room.
“Kusuo—you’re up!” Shun brightened. “Um, how are you feeling this time? You just collapsed again.”
Again. He was beginning to hate that word.
“Wonderful.” His voice scraped out. He sat up gingerly, clenching his jaw against the aches that shot up his spine and emanated to the rest of his body, like he was a rod that had just been struck by a hammer.
His eyes drifted to the wreckage on the other side of the room, where the broken chair lay in pieces. The sight brought on a different kind of headache.
“I don’t suppose you can fix that.” Aren said somewhere behind him.
Kusuo’s brow twitched at the slight dig. “I could try.” He wanted to see if all his abilities were affected and to what extent, but Aren only considered him with a dubious frown.
“No. There’s no time, we should just leave.” The blacksmith said after a moment, waving it off.
Disregarded so easily, just like that. Kusuo was too stunned to even throw a retort. It was insulting that he couldn’t even try to use his powers anymore. He opened his mouth to insist, but Aren was already moving to the corridor, so the frustration stayed coiled and tucked away inside his ribcage.
It was easy to pack up their things again, considering they barely had any. Aren scrounged around the place, taking a few blankets and trinkets that they could trade for good measure.
“Where are we going?” Kusuke asked.
“Out.” Aren grunted. He unfastened the rope around the wooden beam and re-adjusted Kusuke’s bindings, taking notice of the dried-up leg wound. He hoped the blond man would have slowly and miserably died from an infection, but even that small bit of hope had been squashed.
“Did my brother have an accident?” Kusuke prodded again, a laugh escaping his lips.
Aren tightened the bindings around Kusuke’s wrists, making the man wince. “Shut up and go, or I’ll drag you.”
Kusuo inwardly flinched, having been within earshot of the exchange. Even when he wiped away Kusuke’s memory, his brother still instinctively knew how to get under his skin. An accident. He hadn’t heard that in a century. He had devoted so much time trying to control his powers, but his dedication had been so easily dismantled by the lure of the Panalyze Stone. He should have long known there was no easy fix to his circumstance. He put himself at risk, thinking he was always the exception to the rule. How arrogant it seemed now, in hindsight.
Kokomi left to give them time to recover, and here he had already managed to put them out on the streets.
They managed to sneak outside of the inn, blending amongst the waiting customers blocking the front desk, but they weren’t the only ones who looked like they had nowhere else to go. More villagers swarmed the city as the lava from the volcanic eruption flowed down to the nearest towns, destroying houses and harvests in its wake. Even now, the inky smoke blotted out the sky, the ashes continuing to fall.
Shun helped Kusuo walk, holding his arm around his shoulders. The psychic’s recovery had taken a turn, but at least he had regained consciousness. He seemed better yesterday, but with Kokomi’s departure and the haphazard use of his telepathy, his strength had drained him again.
“Are you alright?” Shun asked gingerly.
“M’fine.” Kusuo gave a short grunt.
“L—let me know if you need to stop.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Is this pace fine—?”
“Shun.”
The silver-haired man nearly jolted, so unaccustomed to hearing his name from the psychic’s mouth. “Uh, what is it?”
“Stop it.” Kusuo had nearly snarled, though he was too tired to put any real glower behind it.
“Ah, I—I’m sorry…” Shun flushed. This… camaraderie, for a lack of a better word, was new. He didn’t really know how to look after the psychic himself. Just a few weeks ago, the man had threatened to behead him, and now he was playing caretaker? It was strange without Kokomi here to help make small talk, so he grasped at other subjects. “Your friend… Reita, was it? He’s a medium?” Shun tried to hide the skepticism in his voice.
“An acquaintance.” Kusuo corrected, preferring this change in topic. “You have your contact with the occult, I have mine.”
“Where is he, again?”
“He lives at a temple, a bit north of here.”
“How far up north?” Aren joined the conversation.
Kusuo became quiet. “I’m not sure… I’ll know it when I see the mountain ranges.”
“So is that the grand plan? Just walking to the nearest mountain range?” A new voice interjected—Kusuke. “How many days is that?”
Aren shot the blond a glare, but even he couldn’t say anything about the comment.
“Maybe we can take horses?” suggested Shun.
“A ride costs money.” Aren said. “Money that we don’t have. Do we?” He chanced a glance at Kusuo, but the psychic gave a slow shake of his head.
“I’ve…” Kusuo hesitated, his voice somewhat sheepish. “I’ve never had any use for it.”
“Never?” Aren echoed incredulously.
“People usually give me what I want.” Kusuo admitted. “It comes with the reputation.”
“You don’t have even a single coin?”
“… no.”
Both Shun and Aren stared at him, speechless.
“Good thing you’re a psychic, I guess.” Aren muttered under his breath. “Else you’d just be some penniless vagrant wandering around.”
Kusuo frowned. “I can teleport—”
“No.” It was Shun who immediately shot down the idea, surprising them. “It’s… it’s too dangerous.”
“And you’ll collapse again.” Aren added more bluntly. “In our state, we can’t carry you around.”
Kusuo’s lips twisted, their blatant words adding salt to an already sensitive wound. He hated being like this. He wasn’t used to feeling so… so helpless. Coddled. A burden.
You can barely stand on your own.
Kusuo held in a grimace as he remembered what Kokomi had said. It was a brief comment, a quick jab to prove a point, but it stuck in his chest like a thorn. He felt like a kid again, a hundred and some years back, when his mother had put a hand on his shoulder and gently told him—because of your powers, you have to be better. Helpful. Chivalrous. Benevolent. Good. All the grand and noble words. As if the value of being a good person only extended as far as one could be useful. And if he wasn’t, then what was he?
What is he supposed to be now?
I’m not… human.
Then what are you? A goat?
There it was again. Whispers in his ear, overtaking the voices from his memories and using it against him. A part of his rational mind knew this, and yet he couldn’t fight back. Kusuo felt light-headed, his vision spinning as he lost his grip around Shun’s shoulder.
“H—hey…!” Shun called as the psychic staggered forwards unsteadily. “Kusuo, what’s wrong?”
The psychic let out a hiss, clutching his head against the throbbing pain that emanated from the center of his skull. It was happening again. He put a hand out against a nearby tree trunk to steady himself, and suddenly flames leapt out of his fingers, snaking up the tree until the embers set the branches ablaze.
Shun drew back in shock.
“Shit.” Kusuo cursed as he gazed up at the burning tree, the wild color of the flames disorienting him. Did he do that?
“What the hell is happening?!” Aren shouted.
“We can’t leave the flames to spread. The air’s too dry.” Shun said. “Just a passing wind can burn the whole forest down.”
They both turned to look at him expectantly. Waiting. And that niggling voice wormed its way back to the forefront of his mind again.
So because my powers are unstable… I’m not useful to you anymore?
Kusuo’s head continued to pulse, but Shun was right. If they let the flames spread, it would attract too much attention. He touched the trunk again, and in a blink of an eye, the flames were gone. The pressure coalesced in his head, and he bent over the tree’s overgrown roots, vomiting the scraps of food he’d barely eaten that day.
Kusuo shivered, wiping his mouth as he crouched beside the tree. He flexed his fingers, trying to steady the tremors in his hands. He really couldn’t control his powers anymore…
There was a slow clap, startling him.
“Marvelous,” Kusuke said in an easy voice. “Did you use restoration? Quite remarkable.”
For a second, Kusuo could only stare—before he belatedly realized. His brother had played them again for fools.
“You can see… can’t you?” Kusuo rasped weakly.
“I thought you all would figure it out earlier,” Kusuke gave a disappointed sigh, shifting back his hair to reveal a sliver of his eye. The wound there was still angry and red, but it was healing. “I was getting rather tired of pretending.”
“But how…? I struck you blind.”
Kusuke tilted his head. “Perhaps you hesitated. Had a last minute change of heart for your older brother?”
“No, I’m sure I didn’t hesitate.” Kusuo snarled at him.
“I knew there was something off with him.” Aren said, narrowing his eyes. “The wound on his leg had healed too.”
The comment snagged a piece of Shun’s memory, bringing the hidden workshop with the strange mechanisms and the drawings to the forefront of his mind. In the center was a small, green orb—perfectly round, like it had been manufactured.
“… He has another replica of the Panalyze Stone on him.” Shun said, almost breathless.
“Another one?” Aren echoed.
“It’s the only way that makes sense. He must be using it to heal himself.” Shun explained.
Aren took a step forward, pulling on the rope that bound Kusuke’s wrists together. “Then we only need to take it from him, right?”
But Kusuke only laughed. “Again, what simple-minded creatures you are. Unfortunately, it won’t be that easy to take. I grafted one inside my body years ago.”
The revelation caused the other two to pause, their eyes widening in shock. But Kusuo was able to digest the surprise much quicker, having long wondered how his brother had sustained himself thus far.
“Is that how you’ve stayed alive for so long? I assume you’ve figured out a way to separate the negative effects from the original.” Kusuo concluded, his low voice cutting through everyone else’s bewilderment. Kusuke’s gaze snapped to him, his shock evident but concealed, before a smirk slowly unraveled from his lips. No wonder why he still felt drained—his own brother was leeching off of his energy. Kusuo could almost laugh. How apt.
“What makes you think that?”
Kusuo gave him a knowing look. “If you’ve felt even an ounce of what I’m experiencing—you wouldn’t have chosen to graft it in your own body.”
Kusuke’s smirk pulled into a grin, teeth bared like a knife fully unsheathed. “That’s fair. Your assumption is correct. I’ve managed to only transfer the stone’s beneficial properties by cutting a small shard and distilling its essence into a replica—as you call it. Each one contains a fraction of the stone, but it’s more manageable and stable. A give and take.”
“And how many people have died during that give and take?” Shun spat.
Kusuke barely spared him a glance, sighing. “This again? Those strangers you pity—they aren’t all good people, you know. Some were outright criminals. Most were considered rabble, outcasts even in their own villages. But all of them chose to come to me themselves.”
“Because you were selling them lies.”
“I gave them an opportunity.” Kusuke said, and his words flustered Shun—the implied accusation hitting too close for comfort. “Before I came, the Dark Reunion was barely a presence. Just a group with a laughable name. They kept the Panalyze Stone in their archives, but didn’t even know what it was. How to use it. But I gave them purpose. After all, don’t pretend this adventure isn’t everything you’ve dreamed about. Did I make you abandon your sad, mediocre life? No. You did. That’s why you left and joined us, isn’t it?”
Shun balled his hands, his mind whirling and his eyes stinging. Before he could even form a retort, a figure flashed past him as Aren rammed a fist against Kusuke’s cheek.
“I’m a simple person. I don’t like big words, and I don’t like bullshit.” Aren snarled.
“Aren.” Kusuo’s voice suddenly called from his spot by the tree.
“What?” The blacksmith snapped, still too incensed to try and rein in his temper.
“See if you can find some coins on him too.”
The unexpected request made Aren pause, enough to jolt him out of his anger, and then he let out a cackle. “Finally, a plan that makes sense.”
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The Western Kingdom’s palace shimmered under the sun, its white marbled towers and spires almost too bright and painful to bear straight-on. Kokomi had to squint her eyes just to gaze upon it. Here, the sky was too blue and unbidden, free of smoke and the congested smell of packed crowds, as if there were no signs of trouble outside the city perimeter.
For several passing seconds, Kokomi couldn’t even process the peaceful silence that encapsulated the city in a bubble. It was almost jarring, like she had left the real world and taken a step into a fairytale book, as if she hadn’t been sleeping on the forest floor just a day ago or wrung a towel in a basin filled with Kusuo’s own blood. But the pulsing drumbeat of her heart kept her alert, her stomach swirling with dread as she considered how to make an entrance.
The carriage ride here from the inn was a long enough journey, using up the last of her coin. She had been too restless to sleep. When Kokomi closed her eyes, she could still see the utter look of betrayal on Kusuo’s face, pained and twisted as if she had taken a knife and stabbed him with it.
Walking out of that room was harder than running away from the palace. How was she supposed to willingly walk back into this gilded cage and cram herself into the role of a dutiful princess, when now she had experienced what it was like to be so much… more?
Was she supposed to just cast that away, knowing that she had abandoned and hurt her friends, and slip on a facade to play up a role for—for how long?
How long could she do this? Was this her life now, again, after everything?
Suddenly, it was hard to breathe. A jolt of cold panic shot through her ribcage, icy fingers wrapping around her thundering heart as she thought of facing her brother again. Kokomi leaned against the exterior wall of a building, her lungs pulling in shallow gasps of air as she tried in vain to calm herself.
She was alone now. Her decision. She needed to pull herself together.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she reminded herself to focus on the singular goal she came here to do. It seemed like such a brilliant plan just the other night, but now that she was within walking distance of the palace, it felt impossible. Hollow. A strung-up, half-baked thought. How could she trust that the drugs even worked? Did she really leave to do this? Her goal seemed more and more the silly imaginations of a little girl.
When she closed her eyes again, she thought of what Kusuo had told her, his gaze raw and unyielding, an unspoken promise despite everything seeming to fracture around them. In that moment, she couldn’t tell whether she had been talking to a petulant teenager or a vengeful deity.
I won’t let you go… if you don’t tell me when you’ll be back.
“Just fifteen days.” Kokomi whispered to herself, believing desperately in her own lie. She needed it. Needed to lose herself in it.
After all, what was the real difference between faith and delusion?