Yuki skipped lightly to get in step with him. He suddenly stuck out a hand toward Yiran’s groin.
Yiran recoiled. “What the heck are you—”
“Relax,” Yuki replied, retracting his hand. “Do it yourself, then.”
Yiran looked down. Something metallic was about to fall out of the front pocket of his jeans.
Tesha’s glove.
She’d made it for him to help control his spiritual energy whenever he tried to cast a spell. Even though he couldn’t use it anymore, he still carried it around like a weird security blanket.
“I don’t recall us arranging to meet,” Yiran said, trying not to sound flustered as he pushed the glove deeper into his pocket. “I can’t hang out today—or any other day. We’ve played this game for long enough. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m done.”
“And here I was, thinking you enjoyed our little dates,” Yuki teased.
“I don’t,” Yiran lied.
Hurt flashed in Yuki’s eyes. And it made Yiran feel worse. Did Yuki really think of their outings asdates? Despite Yuki’s constant flirting, there’d been nothing physically romantic about their relationship, not after that lone kiss on the dormitory rooftop. Yuki had kept his vow—and his lips—to himself.
“How about this? Come with me to the Winter Market,” Yuki proposed. “We’ll eat, watch a midnight movie, go to a club, whatever—I don’t care. We’ll pretend we’re two ordinary teenagers doing whatever it is teenagersdo, and then I’ll tell you what you want to know. We can part ways at sunrise. Forget about each other and move on.” He paused, as if genuinely surprised by what he’d just said. “Wow, that makes it sound like a breakup, doesn’t it?”
Yiran ignored the sudden awkwardness between them. “You said you’d tell me what I want to know the first time we met, but you didn’t. Why should I trust you now?”
“It’s not like we ever trusted each other,” Yuki said, his smile looking almost sad. “But I mean what I’m saying now. I’ll tell you what I heard.”
“What you heard?”
“The others don’t notice me much when I’m around. Sometimes I hear things. It’s not that I’m eavesdropping; it’s because I don’t matter to them. I’m different—I don’t feed the same way they do, and I can’t fight very well. They value strength, and to them, I’m a weak link.”
There was a pinch in Yiran’s chest. Yuki’s blunt assessment of himself felt too familiar. Aloysius, the Hybrid that Rui had killed on the highway, had been so contemptuous of him, acting like Yuki was an insignificant pest.
“So?” Yuki placed his hand on Yiran’s cheek, fingers grazing the scar he had left. A mark Yiran had to acknowledge every time he looked into the mirror. “Will you pretend for me?”
Yuki was trouble—fataltrouble. But Yiran couldn’t help himself. He sighed, cursing his own weakness. “Let’s go, then.”
The food at the Winter Market was better than Yiran remembered. After stuffing their faces, he and Yuki wandered aimlessly through the city until Yuki got bored and insisted on crossing the river to a neighborhood on the west side.
Yiran had called in a favor from Theo, who promptly agreed to be his alibi for tonight. An impromptu slumber party with a bunch of other gamers wasn’t anything unusual, so he didn’t expect his grandfather tokick up a fuss over his absence from home. He raised a dubious eyebrow at his surroundings as they emerged from the subway station. He wasn’t familiar with this neighborhood.
Blocks upon blocks of apartment buildings squeezed next to each other with few open or green spaces. It was claustrophobic, as if someone was trying to wall people in. Yiran supposed that someone was the city government trying to squeeze all the affordable housing in one place to makeefficient useof the land when, in reality, it was all about protecting the property values in the glitzier districts.
They got into a creaky elevator at one of the apartment blocks, and Yuki hit the topmost button. They had to take the remaining flights of stairs to the rooftop, where a locked metal door stood in their way.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Yiran said, his voice echoing in the musty stairwell.
Yuki rolled his eyes as he took a bobby pin from his hair and twisted it with his fingers and teeth. “For a juvenile delinquent, you can be awfully straitlaced sometimes. Relax, it’s not my first time picking locks.”
“It’s not?”
“I wasn’t born in the lap of luxury like you, Song er shaoye,” Yuki said, his tone suddenly biting.
Yiran didn’t understand Yuki’s change in attitude. He’d laughed with more abandon than usual all night, but something changed once they’d arrived here.
“I did what I had to do to survive on these streets,” Yuki went on, glaring at the padlock. “You need to nurture skills, and being clever with your hands is always useful. Besides, breaking and entering isn’t the most unsavory thing I’ve done.”
“But I thought—”
Yuki cut him off with a dramatic flourish. “I’m full of marvelous tales, stories punctured with holes. Fill them up as you wish. What’s true and what isn’t?” He paused briefly, a dark look crossing his features. “Choose the one that eases your conscience.”
