For someone with a fox's patience, she was doing a terrible job of acting like it.
Chika's sandals made a soft tap-tap against the polished hallways of the Swordsman Corps headquarters, her pace halfway between a brisk walk and a restrained sprint. She tried not to let her expression change — Kitsune of Compassion, calm and collected, all that — but her heartbeat had long since abandoned the calm part of the job description.
"Kiome…" The name slipped past her lips in a whisper that didn't reach anyone's ears but her own.
It wasn't like him to just disappear without a word. Not after everything.
Her first stop was the library. The scent of aged parchment greeted her as she slid the wooden door aside. It was quiet — the kind of quiet that had weight to it — but it wasn't the right kind. She knew the particular brand of silence Kiome carried, the one that felt like a still pond reflecting moonlight. This was just the silence of empty tables and dust motes drifting in thin beams of light.
"Not here either…" She let the door close gently behind her, unwilling to disturb the librarian's fragile peace.
The training grounds were right down the hall, but she didn't even consider them. She'd just gotten out of there herself, and the last thing she wanted was to walk back into the smell of sweat and hot metal. Besides, if he was training, she'd have heard the faint ring of steel already.
Next was the infirmary. Rows of narrow beds lined the walls, white sheets folded with military precision. A few injured corps members lay resting, tended to by healers murmuring quiet incantations, but there was no sign of the man she was looking for. She lingered a moment longer than she needed to — the habit of a healer dies slowly — before slipping out.
The changing rooms were less peaceful. The smell of damp cloth and steam clung to the air, and the sound of distant laughter from the adjacent baths echoed faintly through the tiled walls. She checked each row, each bench, her sandals squeaking against the wet floor, but again… nothing.
She even passed through the hot springs themselves, the air thick and warm, curling with the scent of minerals and heat. For a moment, she wondered if she might find him here, letting the warmth undo the knots in his shoulders — but the springs were empty save for a few older swordsmen who eyed her curiously before going back to soaking.
Her breath left her in a sigh she didn't realize she'd been holding. Where could you have gone?
The answer came, at last, when she slid open the door to her own quarters.
There he was.
Sitting in the middle of her room, as if he had been waiting the entire time, sat Kiome arms wrapped around himself and for just a second, the tightness in her chest eased.
Part 2
The room was quiet, save for the soft sound of Chika's breathing. The gentle glow of candlelight flickered against the wooden walls, it was the only light that lit up the room although the sun was already out.
Here in the west wing of the Swordsman Corps, sunlight didn't reach until nearly midday. The world beyond her walls could be bright and alive, but in here… it still felt like the hour before dawn.
She stepped forward without saying a word. Her shadow stretched long across the floor, sliding toward him until she was close enough to feel the stillness around him — a stillness that wasn't peace, but something heavier.
Slowly, she knelt, her knees brushing the tatami. Her hands hovered for a heartbeat before they found him, wrapping around his shoulders with the kind of carefulness one uses when touching something both fragile and irreplaceable.
He didn't resist, but he didn't lean in either.
You must feel… She let the thought linger in her mind, tracing it like the shape of a wound she couldn't see. Like the air is too heavy to breathe. Like the ground might give way if you move even a little.
She could almost hear the things he wasn't saying. The way guilt clung to silence. The way fear hid behind composure.
Her arms tightened around him — not to shield him from the weight he carried, but to remind him he wasn't carrying it alone.
In her arms, Kiome trembled, not returning the embrace.
"Hey, baby. Hey." Chika's voice was barely above a whisper, soothing and warm. She brushed a few strands of Kiome's hair away from his face. "Is everything okay?"
Of course, it wasn't. That much was obvious. The way Kiome clutched at the fabric of his own sleeves, the way his breath hitched—he was trying so hard to suppress it.
Chika was not naïve enough to believe her voice alone could pull him from whatever depths he had sunk into. Words were only words. A fragile rope thrown into an ocean, hoping it reached someone before the waves took them under. But she still threw it. Because in the absence of a miracle, you reach anyway.
"Its nothing…" he said softly, eyes fixed on the ground.
"I can clearly see it's not nothing," Chika murmured. "Okay, honey, I understand if you want space, or if you don't want to talk to me about this, but I can see that there is most definitely something wrong, okay?"
Kiome tensed, his shoulders shaking, "He… I…I didn't… I wanted.." he stumbled.
"This is important, so I need you to slow down so I can clearly hear you and understand what you're telling me, okay?" She gently held his hands, feeling how cold they were. "You're too important to me for me to just let this go."
He turned his face to Chika, looking into her gentle and comforting eyes, but the only thing he saw was the man who failed to save the one he cherished most.
How could he have been so stupid to let him die like that. Micah's eyes in that final moment… how could I have been so stupid?
How many times had they agreed? How many times had they said it out loud — that if one of them slipped, the other would pull him back?
But when that moment came — when Micah began to fall — Kiome had only watched. Watched, and done nothing, as if his own hands had been shackled by fear.
Kiome did not pretend there was some noble reason for his failure. No grand tragedy or impossible circumstance that excused it. The truth was uglier: he had frozen. And when you freeze, you watch people die. That was all there was to it.
"I… wasn't…. We promised…"
"I need you to slow down, love. It's okay." Seeing Kiome falling deeper and deeper into the black hole of despair, she interrupted him. "Do you want to try again?"
Kiome's lips parted, but no words came out. He just swallowed hard and nodded.
Chika exhaled softly, giving him a moment. "I'm here for you, okay? You can communicate that with me."
He sucked in a sharp breath, his fingers curling into fists. "I… I don't…"
"Shh, it's okay," Chika soothed, rubbing gentle circles on the back of his hands. "Thank you for not taking it out on me. I care for you very much, and it does hurt me to see you this upset. I don't want you to have to feel these negative emotions."
It wasn't that her words erased the guilt. Nothing could do that. But they gave him something else to focus on, something real enough to keep him from slipping under completely. And in moments like this, survival could be as simple as clinging to the nearest hand.
Kiome closed his eyes, his breathing still uneven but slightly steadier. He leaned into Chika's touch, seeking warmth.
"Would it be okay if I stay here for a bit?" she asked softly.
A small nod.
Chika smiled, pressing a light kiss to the crown of his head. "Mm-hmm. I understand. If you ever need to be alone, just let me know."
"Can you…" he tried to speek but the words were stuck in his throat.
"Shh. It's okay, love. It's okay. I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. I promise."
Slowly, Kiome allowed himself to relax against her, his arms hesitantly wrapping around her waist. Chika responded instantly, holding him close.
"We can just hold each other until everything feels okay again. Come here, darling, come on. Just in my arms."
"Can you take some deep breaths for me? Deep breath in…"
Kiome followed her lead, inhaling shakily.
"We're both safe here together, We can just be comfortable in each other's embrace."
The tension in Kiome's shoulders gradually loosened. Chika held him as if he were the most fragile thing in the world, her touch never wavering.
"Nothing else matters right now, okay? No one's going to judge you. You're safe, and you're free to feel anything you're feeling. Your feelings and your emotions, they're all valid. And it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be upset, it's okay to be sad. All these emotions, they're natural."
Kiome let out a small, broken sigh. His grip on her tightened.
"It's only human. It's natural, and… you need to allow yourself to feel them. It'll help you feel better if you don't force yourself."
Chika felt the faintest nod against her shoulder.
She ran her fingers through his hair, humming softly. "Please let me be here for you. I don't want you to have to deal with all these unpleasant feelings by yourself. I'm here."
If Kiome thought she was going to flinch away from his rawness, then he didn't know her at all. There was nothing ugly in human emotion—not to her. Even the parts that made him avert his eyes, the parts he might have wished away—Chika wanted to see them all. Because in her eyes, his flaws weren't blemishes. They were proof he was alive.
Kiome's breath hitched again, but this time, it wasn't in distress.
He whispered something against her shoulder, something she barely caught.
"…Thank you."
Chika smiled, her heart aching in the most tender way. "I know sometimes it's embarrassing to have to feel certain things, and it feels like nothing can help."
Silence stretched between them, warm and comforting. The storm in Kiome's chest slowly calmed, though the weight of his emotions lingered. Chika didn't rush him, didn't demand anything of him. She simply stayed.
"You're so much stronger than you realize," she murmured. "But it's still okay to feel weak sometimes. There's nothing wrong with feeling weak. There's nothing wrong with showing your emotions and being vulnerable."
Kiome buried his face in her shoulder, his hands gripping the back of her kimono.
"It's okay. Shh, it's okay. It doesn't make you any less of a person."
That was the thing about comfort: it always sounded so much simpler than it was. To Chika, saying those words didn't come from some textbook on emotional care, nor from any belief that she could erase what Kiome was feeling. She wasn't arrogant enough to think her embrace could fix every fracture inside him. But she could be a steady wall for him to lean on, and if that was all she could offer, she would offer it without hesitation.
"When I say that I love you, I mean it, okay?" Chika whispered. "I love all of you. I love you so much. And all the feelings you're having will not take that love away. They won't push me away, because I'm here and I promise that I'm staying here. I don't want you to shut these feelings out, okay?"
The irony was, Kiome probably thought he was being weak. That by letting his guard down now, he was betraying the image of strength he'd always tried to live by. Chika knew that was the most dangerous lie people told themselves—that vulnerability was the opposite of strength. She wished she could burn that thought straight out of him. But she knew that wasn't how it worked.
A shuddering breath. Then, a quiet, "…Okay."
Chika held him tighter, rocking him gently. "As long as you need me here."
The way she said it wasn't a promise she'd need to repeat. Chika didn't operate in half-measures. If she said she would stay, she would stay, even if the world outside this room turned to ash.
The candles flickered, the morning stretching endlessly beyond the window. But within these walls, within Chika's arms, Kiome was safe.
"I love you more than all the stars in the sky."
It wasn't poetry; it was the plain truth, stripped of anything fancy. Words like that, they didn't need polish. They just needed to be said, and to be meant.
And finally, for the first time that night, Kiome let himself believe it.
"Love you."
Kiome's depression wasn't the kind you could see from across the room. It wasn't loud. It didn't throw chairs or slam doors or shout until the walls shook. No—his was a slow, quiet kind of rot. The sort that starts deep inside the beams of a house, invisible from the outside, until one day the whole thing gives way under its own weight.
He had made an art out of stillness. Outwardly, he was calm, composed, even gentle—especially gentle. Inwardly, every moment he failed to protect someone he cared about left another splinter in his chest. Every cut Chika ever suffered, every danger she ever faced while he was there—those weren't just bad memories. They were proof, in his mind, that he was failing at the one thing that defined him.
And sure, logic could argue. Logic could say, It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have stopped it. But Kiome didn't operate on logic. His responsibility wasn't written in cause-and-effect. It was written in something more stubborn and cruel: emotional responsibility.
Which meant that every time reality failed to match his ideals, something inside him eroded just a little more
"…I can't," he muttered, so low it almost didn't register.
Chika tilted her head slightly. "Can't… what?"
His grip on her sleeves tightened. Not to keep her close—though, maybe, that too—but to stop his hands from shaking. "I can't keep telling myself I'm protecting you when I'm not. Every time—every single time—you get hurt, it's because I wasn't good enough."
It came out in fragments, like he had to force each piece past a blockade in his throat.
"You're wrong."
"I'm not," he said immediately, too quickly, like he'd been rehearsing the rebuttal for months. "Every close call, every injury, every risk you've had to take—it's all proof. Proof I can't do the one thing I'm supposed to. You're… you're the person I'd destroy myself to keep safe, Chika. And if something happened to you while I was standing there—"
His voice cracked, and that was it. The words dissolved into something messier, heavier, uncontainable.
"Kiome," she whispered, shifting just enough to cup his face between her palms.
It was supposed to be grounding. It was supposed to calm him. Instead, it shattered whatever brittle control he'd been holding onto.
He broke.
Not in some neat, pretty way. Not like a single tear rolling down in cinematic slow motion. No—this was ugly. His forehead pressed into her shoulder, shoulders shaking, the kind of crying that steals your breath and makes your chest ache like you've been sprinting for miles. The kind where every gasp sounds like it might be the last before you choke on it.
"I'm not enough," he said between shallow breaths. "I'm not enough, I've never been enough, and I—"
Chika's arms wrapped around him like a vice, firm and steady, not letting him finish the sentence. "Don't you dare say you'd be better off gone. Don't you dare."
He flinched—not at her words, but at the weight of them, the unshakable certainty in her tone.
"I don't care how broken you think you are," she continued, voice thick now, but still fierce. "You are here. With me. That's what matters. Not your scorecard. Not your tally of failures. You."
For a moment, he wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her that the "you" she saw was a far cry from the one he knew.
"I should've—" He choked on the words, and it was ridiculous how much effort it took just to push them past his teeth. "I should've been faster. I should've seen it. I was right there, Chika."
Her hold didn't falter, but her brow knit, like she could already hear the direction his thoughts were going and hated it.
"Micah—" His voice broke on the name, and that was enough to gut him all over again. "He was—he was just smiling. Even then, he was smiling, and I—"
His whole body trembled, a violent, uneven rhythm that felt like it could shake him apart.
"I saw it coming. I saw it, and my legs still didn't—didn't move fast enough. I should've taken it. I should've been… not him. He—"
The rest of the sentence dissolved into static, the kind of sound you make when you're trying to speak through a sob and your lungs refuse to cooperate. His fists clenched against her back, not out of anger but as if he could anchor himself in the fabric of her kimono, as if she could keep him from drowning if he just held on hard enough.
"I can't stop seeing it," he said finally, in a low, wrecked whisper. "Every time I close my eyes, it's just—him. And I'm still standing here, breathing, while he—"
He swallowed hard, the taste of bitterness sharp in his mouth. "It's like… like I'm cursed to carry this. This weight that drags me down and won't let me be free. And no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try to atone or make up for it—it's never enough. Never. The more I try, the further away I get from forgiveness."
His hands loosened on Chika's kimono, trembling as if releasing the only thing holding him steady. "I don't deserve peace. I don't deserve happiness. I don't deserve to stand beside you or anyone else. Because I failed. I failed him. I failed you. I failed everyone who counted on me."
A broken laugh escaped him—bitter, ragged. "Maybe… maybe the only way to fix this is to stop trying. To disappear. To stop being a burden."
His head dropped, pressing further into Chika's shoulder, voice barely more than a whisper. "But even that feels like a failure. Because it means giving up on all the people I said I wanted to protect. And that… that scares me more than anything."
Chika's eyes widened by Kiome's confession. The sheer suffocating weight of the despair threaded through every word.
The human heart wasn't designed to hold that much guilt for that long. But Chika wasn't about to let it eat him whole.
"Kiome," she said, firmly enough that it cut through the ragged rhythm of his breathing. Her hands stayed on his face, keeping his gaze locked on hers. "Listen to me."
He didn't want to. Not because he didn't care—because he was afraid of what she might say. Afraid she'd try to tell him it wasn't his fault, that he could just "move on." He didn't deserve those words, and he knew it.
She seemed to read the thought in his eyes, because her voice didn't soften—it sharpened.
"Micah didn't die so you could waste away like this."
The sentence landed like a hammer. No preamble. No gentle lead-in. Just raw truth.
"If you let this consume you," she continued, "then what did he fight for? What did he mean to you, if all you do is use his death as proof that you're worthless?"
Kiome flinched—not because the words were cruel, but because they stripped away the excuse he'd been wearing like armor.
Chika's thumb brushed under his eye, catching a tear before it could fall. Her voice was quieter now, but it carried even more weight.
"You think his smile in that moment was a mistake? That it was ignorance? No. He knew. Micah knew you were there. He knew you'd do everything you could. And he wasn't afraid—because you were there. You gave him that."
His throat tightened again, but not in the same way. The image of Micah's smile burned in his mind, sharp and clear.
"You keep replaying the ending," Chika went on, "but you don't remember the middle. You don't remember how many times you shielded him. How many times you put yourself between him and danger without a thought. You've erased all of that just to keep punishing yourself for one moment. And if he were here, Kiome…" She leaned closer, her forehead almost touching his. "He would hate that."
Her hands dropped from his face only so she could pull him into her arms again, this time with the kind of grip that dared him to try and pull away.
"You keep saying you failed him. But failing him would've been not caring. Failing him would've been leaving him behind. Failing him would've been turning your back when it mattered. And you didn't. You never did."
Kiome's breath hitched—because part of him wanted so badly to believe her, and another part screamed that he couldn't.
"You think being alive instead of him is wrong?" she whispered. "Then honor him by living. By protecting the people still here. By refusing to let the thing that took him take you, too."
The candles flickered, their light trembling like the air between them.
"I'm not asking you to forget. I'm not asking you to pretend it didn't hurt, or that it's ever going to stop hurting. I'm asking you to stop letting the hurt be the only thing you carry. Because if all you carry is pain, then all you'll leave behind is more pain."
Her words lingered in the space between them, heavy but unwavering.
"You said you'd destroy yourself to protect me," she added, her tone firm again. "But Kiome… destroying yourself isn't protecting me. It's just losing you without a fight."
His shoulders shook harder, though he didn't try to speak this time.
"You've convinced yourself you're a burden," she said, her voice softening again, "but you're not. You never were. You think I'm here because I'm trapped? Because I'm obligated? No. I'm here because I choose to be. Every day. Even when you're quiet. Even when you're hurting. Even when you think you're nothing but the sum of your failures… I still see you. And I love you. All of you."
The words pressed against the cracks in him, not sealing them but holding them together—just enough so he wouldn't shatter completely.
"Micah's gone," Chika said, her tone gentle but steady. "That truth won't change. But neither will the truth that you're still here. And that matters. To me. To the people who still need you. If you can't believe it for yourself right now, then believe it because I do."
Her arms tightened again, pulling him impossibly close.
"Please… stop punishing yourself like this. Stop turning his memory into a weapon you aim at your own heart. He deserves better than that. You deserve better than that."
For the first time since speaking Micah's name, Kiome didn't feel like he was about to drown.
Feeling everything wash away, Kiome loosened his tension on his body, feeling his eye lids getting heavy.
He let him self fall asleep.
Kiome realized that Micah's death wasn't a wound meant to define only pain and failure—it was a brutal reminder of what truly mattered.
Not the impossible standard of "never failing," but the unbreakable bond between them, forged not in flawless victory but in shared struggle.
He had spent trapped in the echo chamber of guilt, as if honoring Micah meant carrying a weight too heavy to bear. But honoring him wasn't about endless punishment.
It was about living.
Micah's smile in that final moment wasn't a denial of the danger, nor a careless shrug of fate—it was trust. Trust that Kiome would keep fighting, not just for himself but for those still breathing beside him.
That trust was a torch passed on, not a chain to drag him down.
Kiome understood that to truly honor Micah's memory, he had to stop letting his death become a cage. Instead, it had to be a call to keep moving forward.
Because the people left behind—Chika, their friends, the bonds they'd built—were the reason to keep breathing, keep standing, keep trying.
Micah's life—and death—meant something beyond loss. It meant hope, fragile and flickering, but fiercely alive.
And Kiome, despite his pain and doubt, was still the one meant to carry it.
Chika quietly and gently lay Kiome down on bed, and laid beside him on his bed.
"You'll be okey."
Grooming his hair with her hand, she fell asleep next to him.