Six

"Terasaki-san." I walked over to the man who was standing by the window and looking out at the night. He turned to me in response.

"You're not asleep?"

"Well, neither are you." I pointed out, shrugged and went to stand beside him. He returned to staring outside.

"Is this about Miyazono-kun?"

I chuckled sadly. "This is about my current life after death."

He let out a breath and spoke in a kinder voice. "I truly am sorry."

"Stop apologising, please, Terasaki-san." I shook my head. "I owe you this life after death."

"You didn't deserve this."

"Hardly anyone really deserves what they get." I was trying to be optimistic but who was I trying to fool?

"For what it's worth," he pushed his hands into the pockets of his pants and turned to look at me. "Chiyo and I will never desert you."

"Terasaki-san..." The way that he was looking at me knocked on the door to my heart. I felt like crying. "Thank you." I smiled instead. "But I came here now to ask you something else."

"What is it?" He asked.

"Teach me to take care of myself and... those around me." I said. "Please."

"You want me to teach you to use your spirit?"

I nodded.

"So, this is about Miyazono-kun after all." He sighed. I would have been lying had I completely denied that though, so I kept quiet. He held out a hand to me. Confused, I gave him my hand. He turned it, palm facing up, and placed it on his hand. He then placed his other hand over mine.

"Terasaki-san?" What was he doing?

He said nothing. He locked eyes with me, compelling me to seal my lips and wait. After a few seconds, I began feeling as if something was pouring out of my hand and into his. The flowing sensation made me look down at my hand before raising my eyes to his again in amazement. He smiled lightly. "Feel that?"

"It's... warm." I said, the warmth making me smile.

He nodded. "Do you know why that is?"

"Is this... my spirit?"

"Yes." He said. "It's warm because that's how you are. Your existence is warm."

"Oh. How... am I... are you doing this?"

"This is me." He said. "I'm doing this."

"You can do this?"

"Only because it's you." He said. "We share our life force. We are essentially one."

"So, you can manipulate my spirit?" I couldn't say that I completely understood how that worked.

The feeling of warmth died out. The moment he took his hand off mine, a wave of fatigue washed over me. I felt weak. In that instant, I felt my knees buckle. Terasaki-san was ready to support me by my arm.

"You're not ready." He said. "Just this much took everything out of you. And it was me who actually did the work. That's because you're not at peace."

"Not at peace?" I asked, even though I already had an idea of what that could possibly mean.

"You need to strengthen yourself mentally before you can wield your spirit. It'll kill you as you are now."

"Oh." I did not realise that it actually took that much. Basically, even Chiyo was mentally stronger than I was. Too much had happened for me to simply steel myself against everything though. "Is that so?" I looked down.

I would never be able to get close to Shibata-kun without troubling Terasaki-san if that was the case.

I raised my hand to my neck which had started to ache again and looked away. His eyes fell to my neck. "Does that hurt?"

"A little." I said. "Is it not supposed to?"

"Fifteen years have passed since the day I saved you. Your own life and spirit have manifested but you have mine within you. It reacts to your distress."

"That's why it hurts? It started from before I came here though."

"You were nearing twenty. Your own spirit was in turmoil. It was natural."

"The night you came to get me, it hurt so bad that I nearly cried." I told him.

"That's because I came to you."

"Oh." So, it was a reaction to his presence.

"I..." He began saying but trailed off as if thinking better of it.

"You...?" I asked.

"It... probably hurts this much because there's so little left trying to fill up a big void."

"So, what, I used up the rest?"

"In a sense. Your spirit needed the base to manifest itself."

"And now my spirit is a mix of yours and my own?" I was completely lost again.

"Think of it as a tree. Mine would then be the soil that yours is growing out of."

"That makes sense." I nodded.

"Now consider the soil running out of the nutrients required for the tree to grow." He said.

"Oh." That was what it was then. And when I was feeling distressed, that bit of his spirit was trying to do damage repair. "That's why it hurts so much, especially if I cry."

He nodded.

"Then... you can do something about it, can't you?"

"I can."

"What?"

His eyes fell to my neck again. "Do you remember how I did it last time?"

"How you..." I thought about it. "I was five and everything's hazy but... I think-" I pursed my lips when it occurred to me. I raised my hand to touch my neck as the blood rushed to my face. If I remembered correctly, after he'd pulled me out of the rubble, it was as though... someone had kissed me there. "No way." Why did I even remember that so vividly even though I was at the brink of death?!

"It's the only way." He said, understanding that I had figured it out.

"C-C-Couldn't you have done something else to save me then? O-Or chosen a different part of my body like my palm...or f-forehead or something?" Why there? The thought of Terasaki-san nudging his face into the side of my neck gave me goose bumps. "B-Besides, it doesn't hurt as much anyway."

"You did not see yourself that day." He said. "A few more seconds could have killed you. You were too weak for me to have tried anything else. And as for the rest of your body... There was hardly anything left."

Was it really that bad? I knew that my parents too carried the trauma of the day with them and that that had caused them to check in on me very often. Just how bad a shape was I in?

"There's no rush. If it hurts only a little, you still have time. I won't do anything you don't want me to."

D-Don't say it like that! "T-Thank you."

"Akane, go sleep." He turned back to the window, a frown settling on his face.

"What about you?"

"The night is restless. I'm keeping watch." He replied. "Don't worry about me. Go sleep."

"You're keeping watch? I can't just go to sleep when you're doing all this to keep me safe. I'll keep watch with you."

"Are you going to obey off your own free will or do you want me to put you to sleep?" He reached out and placed his hand at the back of my neck. I remembered how he'd managed to knock me out the day that he'd taken me away from home and stepped away, lowering my eyes to the ground.

"Y-You don't need to do that but..." Given my current state of mind, it'd probably be easier had he put me to sleep. "I really can't fall asleep."

He sighed, then walked away from the window and towards the bedroom. "Come."

"Eh?" Terasaki-san? I followed him. He stopped next to the bed on which Chiyo was sleeping.

"Climb on."

"But that's your-"

"It really would be better for you to just listen to me at this point, Akane." He interjected. I did not want to mess with him but more than anything else, I did not want to cause him any more trouble than I already had. Reluctantly, I climbed onto bed and lay next to Chiyo. He wasn't going to listen to me anyway. He was probably planning to stay awake the entire night too. It would be okay for me to use his bed then, right?

To my surprise, even after I had tucked myself in, he did not leave. Instead, he sat down on the bed next to me and placed a palm on my forehead. The warmth of his palm made me calm down instantly even though it had sent the blood rushing to my cheeks. Whenever I got scared and could not fall asleep when I was younger, my mother used to do the same thing. He had probably picked it up from watching me all these years. However, I was painfully aware of the fact that the palm on my forehead was not my mother's but that of a grown man.

And yet, after a little time soaked in silence passed, I found myself a lot more at ease. Eventually smiling to myself at how childish all this seemed, I turned towards him. I was allowed to bask in this sense of security a little while longer, was I not? "Terasaki-san?"

"Hm?" He responded without looking at me.

"Thank you." I said and closed my eyes.

"Just go to sleep already." He said after a brief pause and stroked my hair gently. The comfort that that gave me was very close to home. Choosing to focus on the warmth of his hand, I pushed everything else to the back of my mind.