2.19: Where We Break, Where We BeginWe watched Aika leave with varying emotions.Relief. Resentment. Amusement. Arousal.

  But there was something bugging me about our fight.

  This wasn't a victory. I’d even failed to protect Rui.

  Rui quickly darted to the front door and smmed it closed with too much force. She twisted the lock so hard it clicked like a gun cocking.

  CLICK

  Natalia-sama tilted her head, her ears flicking. “Doesn’t she have a key?”

  Rui puffed up indignantly. “Most likely. How else could she have gotten into my office?”She marched across the ruined battlefield that used to be her living space and grabbed the window frame. It overlooked the fire escape.

  I followed her, clutching at my sore lower torso and peered over her shoulder.

  It looked standard. Somewhat bent metal grating, rusted railings, old cigarette butts caught in the grating. I wondered who the smoker was. Surely not Rui.

  I eyed her suspiciously.

  She gave the window a hard jerk.Another.Then nodded to herself like a general verification of the integrity of a fortress wall.

  “She didn’t sneak through this window,” Rui concluded, crossing her arms over her ft chest thoughtfully.

  “What about that secret room? Is there anything in there she could have used to get in?” I asked, a sharp pang tightening beneath my ribs and I winced.

  “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

  Rui crossed the littered room… broken dishes, spilled spices, torn manga pages, slime trails, puddles on the tatami and wood floor… with a mixed expression of anger, suspicion, and the exhausted resignation of someone who had screamed out all their rage ten minutes ago, which she had.

  I followed quietly, one hand kept on my stomach, my breathing shallow.

  We reached the sliding bookshelf, still pushed aside from Aika’s dramatic entrance earlier, revealing a dimly lit room. Rui flicked a light switch just inside.

  A soft glow filled the space.

  The interior was like another world.

  A workshop of sorts, that much I could figure out, but it was also a bedroom and a retreat.Shelves filled the walls. They were stuffed with old books with cracked spines and sleek modern occult manuals as well as an assortment of jars of unidentified powders. There were piles of notebooks stacked with frayed bookmarks peeking out.

  A small television sat in the corner atop a leaning tower of dusty VHS tapes.A futon y neatly folded on the tatami, though the floor around it was anything but neat… piles of convenience store drink cans and bottles y on their sides, forming uneven metallic cairns. A mountain of spent instant noodle cups and torn wrappers sat beside them, evidence of many midnight meals.

  There was also a basket full of undry. On top rested an almost pristine pair of panties.

  A single window, square and slightly cloudy, sat open.Cool air waved the curtain inward and outward like a ghost was breathing on it.

  Rui’s eyes widened slowly… painfully.

  “Dad’s workshop, maybe,” she whispered. “I didn’t know this existed.”

  The air felt heavier. I took a hesitant step inside, taking in the scent of dust, old paper, miso, metal and a faint perfume in the air that had probably sunk into the tatami.

  “Wasn’t this room central to your dad’s work? Why wouldn’t you have learned about it?” I asked gently.

  “It probably was exactly that,” Rui murmured. “But he was secretive even with his family. I wonder how she knew about it?”

  “He probably told her,” Natalia-sama said softly, folding her hands. “She was likely the only one he trusted with certain knowledge.”

  “What?” Rui spun, her hair whipping. “You’re telling me my dad would choose that screwup over me?”Her hands flew to her hair and she tugged in frustration.

  Ume stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Rui from behind, her cheek pressed to Rui’s shoulder. “Not entirely. You were the one who stayed. She left.”

  “That’s not entirely true.”Akuchi padded around in her civet form, her nose twitching. She picked up one of the spent noodle cups, sniffed it, then wrinkled her muzzle. “This was eaten… just st night.”

  Rui’s jaw dropped so hard I heard her teeth click against each other.

  “...She was living back here?” Rui breathed. “But how?! I didn’t hear anything! She just disappeared after our parents died.”

  “Apparently, this was where she disappeared to,” Natalia-sama said, her expression thoughtful and grave.

  “But I didn’t hear a single peep!” Rui insisted.

  Ume tapped her chin. “You probably had the volume cranked up too high watching anime most of the time. But I wonder…”She walked over and patted the part of the bookshelf that peeked out. “This bookshelf might be lined with soundproofing. If your dad wanted this room hidden even from his family, he may have made it impossible to hear anyone in here.”

  Rui paused, her lips pursing in reluctant acceptance.“…That does sound like Dad.”

  Without another word, she shot toward the window and wrestled with its frame.

  “Help me out, Sumire!” she demanded.

  I nodded, clutching my stomach as another pang hit, and hurried to her side. I cupped my hands together, forming a stirrup for her. Rui stepped up… light as a chibi feather, and leaned out the window, peering around with sharp eyes.

  She gasped so loudly I nearly dropped her.

  “Is there a dder back there or something?~” Ume asked, leaning sideways with curiosity sparkling in her eyes.

  “No…” Rui breathed. “There’s just a bunch of air conditioners hanging out the side of the building.”She twisted to look down the line of metal units jutting from the wall.

  “They form roughly a path if you jump from unit to unit that would reach up here.”Her voice rose into a shriek of outraged revetion.“This is how she did it! That rat!”

  We returned to the main room of Rui’s office and home… if it could still be called those.

  The pce looked like a crime scene, an exorcism site, and a natural disaster site.

  Tea, water and Akuchi slime stained tatami.Her broken mug with a shard mostly depicting the two girls kissing on it, the heart frame broken.

  The sight of it affected me almost as much as Rui. It was really cute. My teeth clenched.

  Akuchi’s slime puddles and water puddles were everywhere here and there.There were scraps of paper scattered around, torn up and some soggy.A broken kotatsu.And a television that Ume had unplugged just in time before it started a fire. It would be useless now.

  Ume took one slow look around… then turned to Rui with an expression overflowing with sympathy.She hurried to Rui and threw her arms around her.

  Ume had more courage than me.

  What could someone like me do to comfort her?

  “Would you like a soothing cup of my tea?” she asked, her voice soft, warm and almost motherly.

  Rui inhaled sharply through her nose.Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears as she surveyed the wreckage that was once her carefully kept sanctuary. Her vision lingered on each broken item like it was what was left of beloved pets.

  She clenched her teeth so hard her jaw popped.

  “We’re not here to rex,” she decred, her voice trembling with fury and heartbreak. “Everyone fan out. Look for anything that might be useful. We need to know whether there are any other relics like Dad’s jade bracelet.”

  Her gaze, sharp as a bde, locked onto me.

  “Aika was right,” she said ftly. “You aren’t strong enough! It takes too long for you to get fighting. If you’d fought just a little harder from the start, half of this wouldn’t have happened.” She was screaming at me by the end.

  Her words hit like a sledgehammer.

  My eyes widened.My breath stalled.My heart clenched painfully.

  Ume’s arms slipped off Rui as her expression darkened with concern, her new impulse to comfort now aimed entirely at me.

  Natalia-sama’s ears twitched downward, her tail drooping with sympathetic tension.

  Akuchi poked her civet head out from under the wrecked kotatsu, her pupils narrowed. “Mistress… Just ignore her childish tantrums. You did nothing wrong,” she whispered, but even she sounded unsure about that.

  “Oni…” I whispered, running shaky fingers through my hair.

  She was right.She was brutally, undeniably right about me.

  I was too weak.Too slow to take fights seriously.I was too soft as I was.

  Incapable.

  What am I even doing?

  My stomach clenched… sharper, hotter than the pain from Aika’s kicks. It felt like something was twisting inside me, scraping against my raw nerve endings as humiliation and physical agony tangled up in me.

  I clutched at my stomach, my brow furrowing, my breath hitching.

  So much physical pain.More than I’d ever felt.My stomach cramps knotted tight.A deep ache spreading downward.And worse… I was emotionally destroyed.

  I’d lost.

  No matter how the fight ended… It was a loss for me. Aika had walked away unscathed in every way that mattered, and I…

  “BAKA!” Rui roared at me, her eyes filled with tears. Her accusing eyes made me shiver.

  I’d finally started to feel I was finally good for something… useful, able to contribute in a meaningful way.

  But fighting Aika had ripped that illusion of competence that I’d gained from fighting Ushi apart.

  I wasn’t strong enough.I wasn’t fast enough.And I wasn’t brave enough when it counted either.

  The truth stabbed into my stomach like a hot bde.Twisting.Dropping.A blooming heat.It was a different kind of pain altogether.

  And not one that would stop at bruises.

  I clutched harder, my fingers tightening into the fabric of my shirt, clenching my teeth against the pain.

  I’d started to feel like I was finally good for something……but fighting Aika had taught me differently.

  I’m the same loser that I always was.

  I colpsed to my knees.

  My legs gave out entirely, folding beneath me… spreading in a way far too exposing, not like the old me, despite how little I had changed. It felt natural to sit this way, so much that I didn’t even bother to correct it. My arms braced against the tatami, my elbows trembling. Tears streamed down my cheeks in an endless, shaky flow I couldn’t control.

  I couldn’t stop sobbing.

  It was the same kind of crying that tore me apart when I learned Reiko had died.The same kind that convulsed through me when I first saw her face… my face… staring back in the mirror.The same that flooded my entire holding cell until it was a glistening ocean of my shame, slowly crushing me.

  Only this time… it wasn’t noh-crying.

  The world did not warp.The floor did not fill with my tears.It was just… my normal usual crybaby torrent of tears.

  Human tears.Raw.Small.Pathetic.

  Ume rushed to my side with a gasp, her hand hovering over my back before freezing there. Maybe she wasn’t sure if touching me too soon would break me further.

  I shook, squeezing my eyes shut.

  What good am I to anyone… let alone myself?

  Natalia-sama crossed the short distance in an instant, her dress whispering around her ankles as she knelt in front of me. She cupped my cheek gently and pressed a warm, reverent kiss to my forehead.

  The touch was soothing… and warming.Sacred.Soothing in a way that made my chest break open all over again, my eyes widening.

  “You are not a failure,” she whispered with a firmness that brooked no argument. “You fought bravely. Brilliantly. It was a far cry from the old you.”

  Then, without looking away from me, her voice hardened like tempered steel.

  “Rui.”

  Akuchi scurried out from beneath the ruined kotatsu in her civet form. She scrambled into my p despite the wreckage, pnting herself there deliberately, letting my tears soak into her fur without flinching. Her tiny paws rested on my p as if guarding me from everything Rui had said.

  “You went too far,” Natalia-sama continued. “You would be lucky if she stays at your side after that.”

  Rui winced as though she had been physically struck.

  “It’s fine…” I sniffled, wiping at my cheeks only for more tears to spill over. “She’s r-right… I… I… it’s my fault. I need to be stronger so I can protect her properly.”

  Natalia-sama blinked… surprised and touched… and then smiled softly, brushing a strand of hair from my face.

  “Stop crying then,” she murmured. “Work hard. Grow stronger. I have some ideas about how to make that happen.” She punctuated the promise with a pyful wink.

  “I…” I swallowed, nodding weakly. “Okay… I will.”

  Ume tilted her head, licking her lips in concern. “Oh my…” she breathed. She stroked my back lightly, her touch feather-soft and trembling with sympathy.

  “I’m sorry…” Rui said at st, and this time her voice wasn’t sharp or theatrical… it was genuinely contrite. Small. “I was out of line. I took out all my frustration at Aika on you… and that’s not okay.”

  Natalia-sama beamed, although her expression was still worried and thoughtful. “Good girl.”

  Rui’s shoulders sagged in relief at the praise.

  “In that case,” Natalia-sama continued as she rose gracefully to her feet, “I have another announcement. Everyone… Please lift your faces.”

  We all did.Even Akuchi raised her head from my p, her whiskers twitching.

  Natalia-sama’s expression brightened like the sun breaking through storm clouds.

  “Your office is an absolute mess,” she said gently, “but it isn’t the end of the world, RuiRui.”

  Rui hiccupped.

  Natalia-sama slowly clenched one elegant hand into a gentle fist and her smile radiated warmth through the entire wrecked room.

  “I would like to offer my old home to you,” she said. “The very house we visited briefly. It has no caretakers now aside from the priests who clean it periodically. Since I am their enshrined kami, it is still mine to give. With your permission, we will make it your new SSDS headquarters.”

  Rui blinked several times, stunned.

  “I will furnish it,” Natalia-sama continued, “and provide everything you require and more. I believe in you both. And we will discuss Sumire’s training soon. An old friend of mine in the yōkai world may be quite helpful with that.”

  Her confidence poured over me like a warm spring.

  Yet somehow… my stomach kept twisting violently.

  A sharp cramp struck.A hot pressure radiating downward.A yanking sensation deep inside that made my breath catch.

  My body felt screwed up… too wound up, too hot, too sore. An ache that was different from all the bruises from the blows Aika had nded.

  “I…” I croaked. “I think… I need… an… ambunce…”

  Relwing