Page 207

One person.

My hands are twitching at my sides as I turn slowly.

I look at Rei.

He’s Kento’s blood. His little brother.

Rei is standing there, pale as a corpse, his face ruined by hours of screaming.

It should be him. I shot Kento. I put him on that table. I have no right to walk through that door.

I drop my eyes, fidgeting while my boots stay glued to the floor.

“Rei,” I whisper, my voice shaking. “You… you should…”

“You go,” Rei says.

He nods, burying his face back into Dimitri’s shoulder. Alexei gives the back of my neck a final squeeze, pushing me forward before I can argue.

When I get there, in the center of the room, on a bed, is Kento.

He looks… diminished. Stripped.

His face is completely washed out, and a clear oxygen cannula is looped over his ears, the prongs resting in his nose.

I reach the side of the bed and collapse into the chair, my knees entirely giving out.

I’m terrified to touch him. Like if I lay a single finger on his skin, I’ll shatter whatever fragile thread is keeping him tethered to this world.

“Kento…”

I wrap both of my hands around his, lifting his limp palm and pressing it against my mouth.

I kiss his knuckles, burying my lips against the skin. Kento loved touching me, he could never keep his hands off me. He’d find any excuse to lace our fingers together, brush my hair from my face, or drag me into his arms just because he could.

Sometimes I’d pretend to be annoyed, and he’d only smile and kiss me again. But now his hand lies motionless between mine. His fingers don’t curl around my own. He doesn’t stroke my cheek or reach for the back of my neck to pull me closer.

And I keep kissing him, again and again, waiting. Because Kento has never once made me ask to be held. And now, when I need him to hold me more than I’ve ever needed anything in my miserable life, he doesn’t move.

“I lied to you,” I say, the words tumbling out in a rush, like if I don’t say them now the universe will steal the chance forever. “You know I’m a fucking liar.”

I press my lips harder against his bruised knuckles. “I don’t hate you,” I whisper, pouring every scrap of my shattered soul into the words. “Not even a little bit.”

The cardiac monitor skips a microscopic beat, but the rhythm remains steady.

I close my eyes, resting my cheek against his thumb, entirely spent.

There are no more tears left in me.

***

I drop into the plastic chair across from the ICU bay. I only stepped outside so I could let Rei see him too.

A frame drops onto the plastic chair to my left. Dimitri. He leans forward, and a second later, the chair on my right creaks under Alexei’s weight.

They sandwich me in. Neither of them says anything for a long minute. Then Dimitri clears his throat, staring down at the scuffed floor wax.

“So you love Kento.”