Snow came to Kogarashi before anyone had thought to invite it.
Thin grey flakes crossed the ridge and caught in the dead grass and the broken stone, and the mountain kept its silence the way a wound stays shut when something is pressing it closed by force.
Ryo Kenzaki stood at the foot of the slope with a sword that wasn't his.
It was pale, and cold enough to ache through his fingers, and the balance of it sat wrong in his hand. There was nothing weak about the blade. It simply refused to fit him, the way someone else's grief never quite fits the hands you try to carry it in.
Yua should have been here. The thought arrived once, whole, and he breathed it out before it could take root.
"She isn't," he said, to no one.
At the top of the slope, Kyou Ren watched him through eyes that had been split open with gold.
The Kirameki had changed. Eight fractures ran out from each pupil now, branching like lightning caught and held under glass. The gold had stopped shining somewhere along the way; what was left of it only judged. Behind him the six-legged wolf crouched low against the stone, ink-dark fur rippling along seams of molten light, paper talismans turning slowly through its mane. Zansenmei trailed off Kyou Ren's shoulders in thin ribbons of flame, and where the falling snow touched the fire, it simply ceased to be.
He looked down at Ryo for a long moment before he spoke.
"You came alone."
Ryo lifted the pale blade. "Yeah."
"That's always been your ugliest habit."
"Really?" Ryo said. "I thought it was stealing fries and pretending I forgot they weren't mine."
Kyou Ren didn't smile.
"You send everyone away before the cost arrives. Then you stand in front like sacrifice is a personality."
The grin on Ryo's face thinned out at the edges.
Kyou Ren took one step down the slope. "The Ametsuchi have a word for that."
Ryo waited.
"Waste."
The mountain held the word as if it meant to keep it.
"You were born with a body that could have stood above this age," Kyou Ren said. "Above the Hunters. Above their paper ranks. Above men who call fear law because they can't bear looking at the sky." The wolf's claws scraped against the stone. "And you bent down."
Ryo said nothing.
"You bent down to shopkeepers, schoolchildren, old men with shaking hands, girls falling out of heaven. Temporary lives. Borrowed lives." The gold brightened. "You pour yourself into cups with holes in them and call it kindness when you end up empty."
"You practice that?" Ryo asked.
For half a second something twitched in Kyou Ren's face.
"Still joking."
"Still you."
"No." His voice lowered. "That's where you're wrong."
The wolf moved. Ryo moved with it.
Cold met fire halfway down the slope and tore the snow outward in a ring. Ryo slid back across the stone. He caught the first strike, then the second — and the third came too soon. Gold flashed. Fire opened a line across his shoulder.
"You're slower," Kyou Ren said.
"Long day."
"You're carrying too much."
"Somebody has to."
"No," Kyou Ren said. "You say that because it lets you stand in the center of everyone's grief and call it duty."
Ryo attacked. The pale blade carved a white arc through the air, and Kyou Ren turned it aside before it had finished arriving. Their swords locked, and in the gold of Kyou Ren's eyes Ryo could see his own face broken eight separate ways.
"These eyes see the shape beneath things now," Kyou Ren said.
"Let me guess. It's shaped like you being dramatic."
"Hierarchy." The word came out soft and landed like a stone dropped down a well. "Who was born to stand. Who was born to kneel. Who was made as the summit, and who was made to stare up."
Ryo's jaw set. "There it is."
"What?"
"The voice they buried in you." He held the lock a beat longer. "You used to hate people who talked like that."
"I used to hate mirrors," Kyou Ren said, "before I understood what they were showing me."
"You understood nothing. You found a prettier way to be hurt."
The gold flared. Kyou Ren drove his knee up into Ryo's stomach, and the wolf came in from the left in the same instant; Ryo dropped under its jaws and dragged frost across one of its legs, and then fire tore across his back and the pain went white behind his eyes.
For one breath they weren't enemies. They were two boys in a classroom — one of them ready to bolt for the door, the other too stubborn to let him go.
"Do you remember what you asked me?" Kyou Ren said through the locked blades.
Ryo's breath came rough. "After you tried to disappear during lunch?"
"The first day."
"Forty-one," Ryo said.
The corner of Kyou Ren's mouth bent. "You asked what number school this was."
"And I told you to make it to fifty."
"You said you wanted proof you knew me before I became a round number."
"Still funny."
"I thought that was kindness."
"It was."
"No." The edge came back into his voice. "It was arrogance. You saw a stray thing and thought feeding it made you good. You never asked what I was. Never asked what height I had been cut away from."
He stepped forward into the lock.
"I am Ametsuchi."
The name landed like a struck bell.
"The world forgot what that means because weak men survived long enough to write weak histories. But my blood remembers. My soul remembers." He pressed in. "We were not born above men. We were born where men look when they pray."
Ryo studied him through the snow.
"That sounds lonely," he said.
Kyou Ren's expression hardened. "Not powerful. Not holy. Not chosen."
"Lonely," Ryo said again.
Kyou Ren vanished.
The first strike broke Ryo's guard apart. The second drove him down the slope. The third opened his side, and the fourth would have taken his throat — except Ryo froze the air solid between them, and for one held breath even Zansenmei went still. He stepped into the gap and slammed his forehead into Kyou Ren's.
The crack of it rang across the whole mountain.
Ryo laughed once, short and breathless. "Still works."
And for half a second Kyou Ren was seventeen again.
Then his face twisted around it. "You still think this is a fight between friends."
Ryo's laugh faded.
"It isn't," Kyou Ren said. "It's proof."
"Of what?"
The gold in his eyes shook. "That I should never have sat beside you."
The wolf threw back its head and howled, and the mountain answered it.
By the time the sound reached the towns below, it had stopped being sound at all. It was a hand going still over a pot. A breath catching in the middle. A heart that understood something before the mind had been given permission to.
In a kitchen two towns over, Kujuro Kenzaki set dinner down on the table, steam curling up from two bowls. On the floor Rumi sat bent over a drawing — three figures under a wide blue sky, one of them with messy brown hair she'd colored a shade too dark.
"Papa," she said. "Do you think brother will be late?"
Kujuro stirred the pot once. "Your brother is always late."
"He says sorry every time."
"He means it every time."
Rumi smiled and reached for another crayon, and her hand stopped, the brown tip hovering just above the page. Something cold opened up underneath her ribs.
She looked up. "Papa?"
He had gone still at the stove with his back to her.
"Papa," she said again.
He turned. The moment he saw her face, his own changed.
Rumi tried to take a breath and the breath broke in half. The tears came down without any sound at all. Kujuro crossed the kitchen and knelt in front of her, and she grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt.
"Something happened," she said.
He pulled her in against him and looked past her shoulder at the empty place set at the table. Then he closed his eyes.
"I know."
Across Serenia, Mei's shin snapped tight against the heavy bag.
Jab. Cross. Pivot. Kick. Again. As long as her body did what she told it to, the world stayed a thing that could be handled. Jab. Cross. Kick —
Her leg stopped an inch short of the bag.
Around her the gym went on exactly as it had. Nothing in the room had changed, and that was the thing that turned her stomach over.
She set her foot down. "No."
"Mei?" someone called.
She was already pulling her jacket off the hook. "What happened?"
She didn't answer. She was already moving, and by the time she reached the street she was running — chasing nothing with an address to it, only the place inside her where something had just gone quiet.
Outside the little church at the edge of town, Hiroshi pressed a seedling down into dark soil while Yuna crouched beside him with the watering can held in both hands.
"Now?" she asked.
"Not yet."
"You always say not yet."
"Because you always try to drown them."
"I water with passion."
"You water like you're avenging someone."
Yuna frowned. Hiroshi smiled and set another flower into the dirt, and then his hands went still in the soil.
Yuna noticed first. "Hiroshi?"
He didn't answer.
"Are you okay?"
He looked down at the flower between his hands. Soil had worked in under his nails. The small white petals shivered in the wind. His mouth opened, then closed. Then he nodded, once.
"Yeah." He kept his eyes on the dirt. "I was just thinking about my best friend."
"Is he nice?"
"The nicest idiot in the world."
Yuna lifted the can. "Then this one is for him."
The water came down over the flower, soft and steady, and Hiroshi kept his hands buried in the earth.
On a bench near the park, Satoshi sat beside Ami while she played. A bright phrase climbed up out from under the bow, careful and brave at the same time. The note rose. Held.
Then it stopped.
Ami lowered the bow. Satoshi turned to her, and she was already looking back at him.
"Satoshi…"
He shook his head, once. Whatever she had been about to say, he couldn't stand to hear it put into words. They sat there together in the evening quiet and let it stay unnamed.
In a cramped apartment across the city, Tsubaki sat straight up off the floor.
Sōma cracked one eye open. "What?"
Tsubaki's hand went to his own chest. "You feel that?"
By the window, Banri stood with one hand flat against the frame.
"Something just dropped," Tsubaki said.
The room went still. Banri didn't turn around. For a long moment he said nothing at all.
Then, flatly: "He lost."
The expression went out of Tsubaki's face. Sōma shut his eyes again, and after a moment he nodded.
Nobody asked who. Nobody needed to.
Above all of them, past the city lights, Kogarashi waited under its wrong-season snow.
Ryo's knee hit the stone. Blood spread out beneath him. Kyou Ren stood over him, breathing hard for the first time, the gold in his eyes guttering like a flame in a draft.
Ryo's hand shook around the pale blade. Its cold had settled in somewhere behind his heart.
"Stay down," Kyou Ren said.
Ryo huffed a laugh under his breath. "Bad plan."
He pushed himself back up. His legs nearly quit on him.
"Why?" Kyou Ren said.
Ryo lifted his eyes to him. "Because you're still up here."
What came after wasn't beautiful. It was two boys at the end of everything, cutting pieces off each other because neither of them knew how to set the sword down without becoming the one who'd lost.
Ryo's blade laid frost across the wolf's jaw. Kyou Ren's fire went through Ryo's side. Ryo hit the stone and rolled, and Kyou Ren was already there. The gold read the mercy in him before he'd finished deciding on it. Ryo's sword came up high.
Too high.
Kyou Ren saw the opening before Ryo had finished making it.
For one second the mountain held completely still. Then Kyou Ren stepped inside his guard, and Zansenmei went in under Ryo's ribs, all the way to the guard.
The breath left Ryo all at once. The pale blade slipped out of his hand and struck the stones.
**CLANG.**
The sound ran down the mountain.
In the kitchen, Rumi buried her face in Kujuro's shirt. In the street, Mei ran harder. In the church garden, Hiroshi's fingers closed around wet soil. On the bench, Ami's bow slid out of her hand and tapped against the wood. In the apartment, Banri lowered his eyes.
On Kogarashi, the ringing was the last thing to fade.
Kyou Ren stared.
Ryo looked almost surprised. There was no fear anywhere in it — only the bafflement of a boy handed an answer he had checked twice and still hated the arithmetic of.
His hand came up slowly and closed, weakly, around the front of Kyou Ren's jacket.
Kyou Ren didn't move. Behind him the wolf had gone still. The fire was thinning out.
"Hey," Ryo said. The word barely made it out of him.
Kyou Ren's lips parted. "Ryo…"
"Look at me."
Kyou Ren shook his head, once.
"Look at me, Kyou."
The gold in his eyes trembled, and somewhere underneath it Ryo found the boy.
"There you are."
The words did what none of the blades had managed to. Kyou Ren's face broke.
Ryo drew a thin breath. It caught partway in.
"All that talk…" He swallowed. "Blood. Height. People beneath you." His eyes stayed level on Kyou Ren's. "That's not you."
"You don't know what I am."
"I do."
"No. You know what you wanted me to be."
Ryo's grip tightened on the jacket. "I know the kid at the crosswalk."
Kyou Ren froze.
"You dropped your bag. Strap tore. You looked more offended than scared when I grabbed it." Ryo's mouth moved toward something. "You asked me why."
"Stop."
"I told you your face looked like it had a whole bag going under a truck." A breath. "You were so mad somebody helped."
Kyou Ren's eyes squeezed shut. "Stop."
"And I know the kid in the classroom."
"No."
"Forty-one schools. Bag under the desk. Shoes pointed at the door." Ryo's hand began to slip.
Kyou Ren caught it before it could fall.
Ryo looked down at their two hands. "You stayed."
Kyou Ren shook his head.
"That wasn't blood. Wasn't fate. Wasn't the Ametsuchi waking up." His voice softened all the way down. "That was you choosing a seat."
The gold started to go out. One fracture at a time.
Kyou Ren dropped to his knees. The blade stayed where it was, between them.
"I saw it," he whispered.
"I know."
"I saw the opening. I knew where it would go."
"I know."
"I still did it."
Ryo's eyes never left him. "I know."
The third time was the one that broke him. Kyou Ren's arm came around Ryo, desperate and clumsy, holding him upright as though enough strength could push time back the other way.
"I've got you," he said, and it came out young. "I've got you. I'm not letting go."
Ryo leaned into him. "Good."
Rain touched his cheek. The snow had turned to rain.
Ryo blinked, and the mountain blurred. "Yua."
Kyou Ren went still.
"When you find her…"
"Tell her yourself."
Ryo's smile almost reached. "Yeah. That was the plan." His voice thinned. "Tell her I'm sorry I'm late. Tell her I was coming." Rain slid down his temple. "The whole time. I was coming to her the whole time."
Kyou Ren bowed his head. "Don't make me carry that."
"You can."
"I can't."
"You can."
His face twisted. Ryo's fingers pressed weakly against his chest.
"And you…"
"No."
"Kyou."
"No. Don't."
Ryo breathed once. Then again. The last of him gathered the way a hand closes slowly around a small light.
"You kept saying everything is borrowed." His voice was thinning, but it didn't shake. "People. Names. Days. Homes. Even the body. And you're right. Most things come with an ending. People leave. Cities fall. Families break around empty chairs."
Kyou Ren shook his head.
"But dreams are different." Rain ran down between their faces. "A dream isn't something the world lends you. It's not a title. Not a throne. Not a bloodline. Not some holy place above everyone else where you can finally be tall enough to stop feeling small."
Kyou Ren's mouth opened. Nothing came out of it.
"A dream is the part of you that still speaks when everyone else is done naming you." His hand pressed once against Kyou Ren's chest. "It's the voice under the blood. Under the family. Under every cruel thing they taught you to call pride."
The tears on Kyou Ren's face ran into the rain.
"So live that one." Ryo looked at him the way he had across that classroom. "The real one. Not the Ametsuchi dream. Not the one that needs people under your feet so the sky feels closer. Not the one they carved into you and called inheritance." His breath came thinner. "The one you had before they made you ashamed of wanting to belong."
Kyou Ren folded down over him, and still Ryo kept talking.
"Climb if you want to climb." His voice went quiet. "But don't climb over graves and call it height."
A broken sound came out of Kyou Ren.
"Go higher than all of them. Higher than the name. Higher than the mountain. Higher than the part of you that thinks being alone means being chosen." His eyes softened. "And when you get there…"
The rain came down harder.
"Look down." Kyou Ren held him tighter. "Look down and remember us. The loud ones. The weak ones. The borrowed ones. The people who sat beside you when you thought you were only made to leave."
Ryo's mouth trembled up into one last smile.
"You were never above us." A breath. "You were with us."
The words took the last of the gold out of Kyou Ren's eyes.
Ryo's hand rose with whatever strength he had left and came to rest on Kyou Ren's shoulder.
"One more thing."
Kyou Ren shut his eyes.
"Don't let my dream end here because I did."
Kyou Ren broke. Quietly, which was worse — the way a thing breaks when it finally understands there is no enemy left anywhere to blame.
Ryo watched him through the rain.
"Go be everything you were supposed to become…" His breath went out of him. "…brother."
His hand went still.
His eyes stayed open.
For a while Kyou Ren waited. For another breath. For Ryo to cough, or laugh, or curse, or say something stupid and ruin the moment the way he always did.
Nothing came.
The rain fell. The last of the gold died in Kyou Ren's eyes. Behind him the wolf lowered its head and came apart into wet ash.
He pulled Ryo in tighter. "No." It was barely a word. "No."
He pressed one hand to the back of Ryo's head. "You said he was still in here." The rain ran down his face. "You always said it. Every time I went cold. Every time I tried to make you hate me." His fingers curled into the soaked jacket. "You said you could just look at the face."
He pulled him closer. "So look."
His voice came apart. "Look now."
Ryo's eyes had gone somewhere Kyou Ren was not able to follow.
At the treeline, Theron Brandt stood with his hat in his hand, the rain darkening his coat. He did not come any closer.
"I kept hoping you'd lose, kid." His voice was rough. "Just once. Fall on your ass. Curse the whole mountain. Limp back down angry and alive." Rain dripped off the brim of the hat. "But some names don't know how to lose clean." His eyes went to Ryo. "So they call it winning and take everything."
There was nothing after that but the rain.
Then footsteps came up the slope. Too late.
Rinka reached them first and stopped like she had walked face-first into a pane of glass. Kurobe came up behind her, his face refusing the whole scene.
"No," he said.
No one corrected him.
Shinrō Takaori came last. The long black umbrella hung closed in his hand. The rain had soaked through his hair and his coat. He looked at Ryo. Then at Kyou Ren holding him. Then down at the umbrella he had carried for sixty-one years and never once opened.
His voice stayed level.
"I brought this through every kind of weather." Nobody moved. "Storms. Ash. Snow. Heat that split stone." His hand tightened on the handle. "Never opened it once."
Rinka had started to cry.
Shinrō's mouth tried for a smile and didn't get there. "I was saving it for him." The rain came harder. "For the day he came back down this hill talking too much. I was going to open it over his head and tell him not to drip on my floor."
Kurobe turned away.
Shinrō looked at Ryo. The umbrella stayed shut. "Not today."
Kyou Ren finally looked up. His face was empty in the particular way grief is empty just before it becomes a sound. Shinrō met his eyes, and there was no hatred in them anywhere.
That hurt worse than any hatred could have.
Kyou Ren looked back down at Ryo.
The rain washed the snow off the stones and carried the red down into the grass, and the grass carried it down the slope, into the lives that were waiting below.
Kujuro held Rumi while the dinner went cold, her drawing left unfinished on the floor, the brown crayon come to rest beside Ryo's half-colored hair. Mei ran through the streets with her jacket only half-zipped and tears on her face she hadn't noticed yet. Hiroshi stayed in the church garden with dirt on his hands and a single white flower planted for the nicest idiot in the world. Satoshi and Ami sat on their bench with an unfinished song between them. In the apartment Banri watched the city, and Tsubaki stared at the floor, and Sōma kept his eyes shut, because opening them was not going to change the answer.
Then the rain came back to Kogarashi. Back to the dead grass. Back to the pale blade lying among the stones. Back to the boy who had climbed the whole mountain to save his friend.
Snow had become rain. Fire had become ash. A dream had become a burden.
And Kyou Ren, who had wanted so badly to stand above everyone, bent down over the only person who had ever sat beside him, and did not move again.
The rain kept on falling long after there was anyone left on the mountain strong enough to call it unfair.
🌀 END OF CHAPTER 86