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No—that’s not honest.

I hate how easily he gets under everything.

And that is exactly why I need him away from my mess.

Over the next few days, he does not text me at all.

Which is great. Amazing. Exactly what I asked for. I am a man of principle. I said block you. I said shoo. And look at that. The universe listened. The parasite went dormant. Evolution works.

I check my phone anyway.

Not for him. For the time. And the weather. And one email from Bloodburn about a mandatory assembly I will not be attending because I am busy being emotionally victorious.

There is nothing from my parasite.

Good.

I lock the screen hard enough that the case clicks. Then I unlock it to make sure the click did not accidentally deliver a message I missed. It did not. The last thing sitting there is still Die better, which I have not deleted because deleting it would mean I looked at it long enough to delete it, and I am not doing that. I am above that. I am so above that I am in the atmosphere. I cannot breathe up here.

Day one, I tell myself he is sulking.

Day two, I tell myself he is busy doing crimes. He is a Kazuma. They have meetings. They have people to intimidate. Or whatever he does when he is not ruining my nervous system on purpose.

Day three, I walk into the boxing hall like a normal person who is not scanning the back rows for black eyes.

He is not there.

I last forty minutes before I ask, very casually, “Has anyone seen that insect?”

Dimitri squints at me. He already knows who I mean. “Why.”

“I don’t want to see him,” I say immediately. “I want to confirm he is alive so I can continue not seeing him with a clear conscience. I’m charitable like that.”

Alexei looks at me for one long second. I hate that second. It has too much information in it.

“No,” he says.

Helpful. A fucking poet of words.

I go to class. I do not take notes. I take inventory of every doorway like Kento might fall out of one and say did you miss me in that voice, and I can say no with my whole chest. He does not fall out of any doorways. Rude. I had a line prepared. It was excellent.

My hand throbs under the sleeve. Yesterday, my brother decided to have another session with me. This time, apparently, he’d discovered the exciting new concept of using a hammer. Very innovative. Five stars for creativity, zero stars for the experience.

For some reason, I suddenly think how Sasha laughed in the quad yesterday with her head thrown back, and how Kento was not even there, and my brain still went: ah. Yes. That tracks. He is probably fucking Sasha.

Is there evidence?

No.

Do I need evidence?

Also no.

I open our chat and type you’re dead to me, and then delete it because that is a text, and texts are how this starts, and I am not starting. I am ending. I already ended.

I wanted him to stop.

He stopped.