FINGERS CROSSED, yuzuha usagi

CHAPTER THREE

Ikehara had always been ready to go. Anywhere, if he had to be honest. He didn't settle for things to grow onto or whispered secrets through door cracks, not even looked back once he'd turned around. It didn't hurt to damage and stay silent, to build a shell over eyes and hearts; it became a habit, a way to let people that meant every word they spoke know he didn't, and so they shouldn't either, but the thing was he didn't have the time to hate, love, nor like people as others did. And yet it still called him. The caring, the wanting of closeness chased any mark he left behind, always finding him back.

That could've been the reason, after all. The answer to why his forearm crushed collarbones, and his hunting knife rested over another man's jugular.

"Where is she?" Ikehara asked. He just needed someone to tell him, open up and spit a truth, a lie. It didn't matter, the only words he wanted to hear were her name and everything would cease. The pain on his chest. The guilt. The suffocating prayers insisting it was okay to leave when he knew it wasn't.

"Please," From the corner of his eye, he noticed a figure standing up, grasping the van's walls in support. She held her hands up and ventured ahead a little closer. "We—"

A drop of blood tainted the blade.

"One more step and you'll have to carry a dead body with you." Their eyes met. Too deep, too shallow, too sensitive, too cold-hearted, too much. He could've let it be, let the world end and began again in the morning; he could've forgotten who Kuba Yasuko had someday been, and let his mind rot until it wasn't his mouth who called her name in the night, but his soul, desperate of a burial carved by her hands. He couldn't fight being there anymore, losing the round over her image paralyzed on the projector screen in the back of the van, because he cared. "Next time I won't ask nicely, where the fuck is she?" He pushed his body weight harder into the other's thoracic chest, watching him swallow with some difficulty by the space closing up.

Ikehara's pulse was steady, yet his worry paced inside his gaze like a hungry lion on his little cage. At The Beach, he would've waited for an order, a look that told him to wrap the business up, but then, he didn't need a green light. Setagaya was bloodied streets, Kaito had long ago stopped breathing, Yasuko was nowhere to be seen, and he was starting to lose his last drop of patience. The solution was easy: if they didn't talk, he'll make them talk.

The guy's eyes widened at the change on his semblance, and suddenly, it all fell onto place by itself. Not him for God's sake, he furrowed his eyebrows. Ikehara noticed him scrutinizing every detail of his body at reach: the dragonfly tattoo on his forearm, the scar on his jawline, the bracelet's number fading on his wrist.

"I know you." Arisu's voice came out as a sigh, as if he was testing it out, an immediate reaction he couldn't control under the pressure of Ikehara's arm and the blade of his knife slowly going down towards his stomach. "I— I saw you once, outside Shinjuku Natural Botanical Garden, my..." Nothing else came out. Ikehara didn't miss the hesitation sinking in, the acceptance. Though, before he could analyze it any deeper, he corrected himself. "I played a Seven of Hearts game there." He licked his lips, "You were also at The Beach, but I didn't see you again after Hatter's death."

"Shit went down pretty fast," He said between his teeth, not moving an inch away from him. On their right side, his partner tried to sneak behind him, though Arisu's gasp at the blade cutting through his flesh made her stop abruptly. "I didn't want to get involved in whatever that was coming."

"I don't understand, you three were close, you could've been Aguni's support, you could've talked with him—" Ikehara bit back a groan as Arisu spoke.

Again, and again, and again. He always came back to the first square, to them. To Hatter, to Aguni, to The Beach, to the unresolved nightmare that hadn't let him sleep in peace since the utopia delusion started.

"Staying wouldn't have changed anything!" He finally snapped. Both of them flinched. "Back then, after Hatter was murdered, I got only two options."

"And you chose the running-away-like-a-coward one?" Arisu couldn't help himself to take it a step higher, twist the wound, whether it had escaped from his lips as a reflex or as a meaningful thought meant to hurt.

"No," He stared at him angrily, teeth clenching, "I chose the easiest one."

"You left behind people you cared about to save yourself the trouble of facing the truth."

"And you've always been a little wolf in sheep's clothing." Ikehara's eyes crackled in a new light the moment he felt his breathing fastening. How sentimental, he almost grinned. "Did something ring a bell, Arisu?" He whispered just for him to hear.

Before they even noticed it, the van's door was fully opened.

"Cut it out."

Yasuko's voice left a flavor of gunpowder on the air. The contrast of brightness and shadows from outside and inside the caravan morphed into heavy steps and lightheaded trails of red prints that pooled at her feet. The three of them couldn't look away from it. It was all over the entrance, dying her shirt almost completely, going down her pant's elastic band.

"Yasuko?" Usagi mumbled in shock.

"We have a little problem."

A sudden vibration over the area was enough to get them alert. Arisu pushed Ikehara away, as he turned all his attention towards a window. The King of Spades blimp floated right on top of them.

One by one, they got out of the caravan through the diver's seat, avoiding the best they could the bullets fired at them. Yasuko was the first to go for the run despite seeming to be the most injured, looking back from time to time to catch them splitting up.

She tried to not let her eyes wander, afraid of choosing, of throwing a dart in the dark and hoping it would land where her heart wanted. Usagi, Arisu, Ikehara. Each drawn by the same past. The second she heard their steps reaching her spot, she knew she wouldn't have to think about it twice; she'd already made a decision the moment she stepped into the van.

Usagi shoved her off the King of Spades' way just as he lifted his gun up to her head. Another pair of gunshots joined somewhere close to them, saving them time, and her body moved automatically from then on.

"Get up!" She pulled Ikehara up the ground, almost ripping his shirt from the back, consumed by the desperation to not get him shot.

She wasn't going to let it happen. They weren't going to die, and definitely not in the woods.