The corner of Eighth and Mishima was a known one.
Banri and Sōma had walked past it three times this week without incident.
Three was the number that meant known. Anything fewer was coincidence. Anything more was acceptance.
Acceptance was the thing the Hunting Realm had taught them to never give to a corner where men were standing for a reason.
There were five of them.
Local. Late teens to mid-twenties. The kind of group every city had a version of, the kind that lived in the small economic shadow of a city that did not know it had a shadow.
Two were leaning against the wall of a closed laundromat. One was sitting on an overturned crate. One was on his feet near the curb, watching the street the way men watched streets when they had decided the street was theirs.
The fifth was the one who counted.
He was the one with the chain hanging out of his jacket pocket. He was the one the others looked at before they spoke. He had a thin mustache and a thinner smile.
Sōma saw the count first. Sōma had seen the count first since they were nine and ten years old, respectively, in a Hunting Realm dormitory hallway with two adult men coming the other way.
"Five."
"… Mm."
"Eighth and Mishima. Same corner as Tuesday."
"Different group?"
"Same group."
"Mm."
They did not stop walking. They did not speed up.
The Hunting Realm had taught them that speeding up was how you told a corner you were afraid of it. A corner that knew you were afraid of it owned you for the rest of the time you lived in the city.
Slowing down was a different kind of fear-tell. The only correct walk past a watching corner was the walk you had been doing before you noticed the corner existed.
They walked past.
The fifth one spoke.
"Well, look at this."
His voice was loud enough to be heard. His voice was the voice of a man who wanted his voice to be heard. The other four turned toward Sōma and Banri with the slow choreographed turn of men who had practiced the choreography.
"Two of you. Out here. Where you don't belong."
Sōma did not look at him. Banri did not look at him. They kept walking.
"I'm talking to you, n…"
The word landed.
Banri's left hand made a fist in his coat pocket. Then unmade it, deliberately, finger by finger.
Sōma did not visibly change.
Sōma was the older brother. Sōma's face had been a closed book since he was twelve and had decided, on a particular afternoon in a particular Hunting Realm corridor, that his face would never again be the thing that gave him away.
They kept walking.
A small chorus from the others now. Variations on the same word. The flavor changed. The word did not.
There was a particular sound the word made when it came out of the mouths of men who looked nothing like the man they were saying it to. The kind of men who had decided that the word was a tool they could use because the tool had been left lying around for long enough that nobody had stopped them yet.
Banri's jaw moved once. It set.
"Hey. Where you running off to. Slow down. We just trying to talk."
"Yeah. We trying to put on. Why you walking like you better than us. You ain't better than us."
"You walk like you forgot what you are."
That last one was the fifth one. The one with the chain. He had stepped off the curb. He was not in their path yet. He was close enough that not in their path yet was a thing he could change in two steps.
Sōma stopped.
Banri stopped a half-second after, because that was the agreement.
Sōma went first. Banri went second.
The half-second was the time it took for Banri to reposition his weight. It was a number neither of them counted out loud anymore. They had been counting it for fifteen years.
Sōma turned.
"… Brotha."
"What?"
The fifth one grinned.
"I called you brotha. So you ain't gotta act like I'm out of pocket. We family, right? We the same."
"… No."
"… No?"
"We're not the same."
The fifth one laughed. It was a laugh the way a knife was a laugh.
"Oh, here we go. Look at this. Look at this. Walking around in your nice coat and your nice boots and your nice hair, ain't even gonna acknowledge a brother on the street. Damn, n, you really think you that …"
"I don't know you."
"…"
"We're not brothers. We're not family. You don't know me. I don't know you."
A pause.
"You see somebody on the street who looks like you and you decide we have to share something. And the thing you've decided we share is the worst word in your vocabulary."
"…"
"And then you get mad when I don't want to share it with you."
"…"
"That's not brotherhood. That's just you being lonely."
The fifth one's grin had not moved. The grin had been rehearsed. The grin did not know yet that the conversation had gotten away from it.
"The fuck did you just say to me."
Banri spoke for the first time.
"He said you're lonely."
"…"
"He's right. So am I. Most people are. The difference between us and you is that we don't drag other people into our lonely by calling them slurs. We just live with it. Like grown men."
Two of the others laughed. They covered it. The fifth one heard them.
The fifth one's hand went to the chain.
Sōma's hand did not move.
Sōma did not need it to.
Sōma had walked out of a Hunting Realm corridor at nineteen with three bodies behind him. The way he stood now, on Eighth and Mishima, was the same way he had stood then.
The fifth one did not know what he was looking at.
The fifth one knew, on a level lower than knowing, that his hand on the chain had become the dumbest decision he had made all week.
He took his hand off the chain.
"Whatever, man."
"Mm."
"You think you better than us. Walk on."
"We will."
"Walk."
They walked.
Banri did not look back. Sōma did not look back. They walked the four blocks back to the apartment in silence. Banri's left hand made a fist in his coat pocket twice on the way and unmade it both times.
Inside, with the door closed, Sōma sat down at the kitchen table.
Banri did not.
Banri stood at the window for a long time looking at the November street.
"… Sōma."
"Mm."
"You good?"
"… I'm good."
"…"
"You good?"
Banri laughed once. It was the laugh that came out of a body that needed to laugh for the body to keep being the body. It was not a happy laugh.
"… No, brother."
"Mm."
"… Not yet."
"Mm."
They sat with it for a while.
-----
They had been called the word before. Many times. In the Hunting Realm there had been adults who had used it the way adults used hammers, which was the way adults used most things, without thinking about whether the hammer noticed. They had been called it on the road out of the Realm. They had been called it in two cities before this one.
The word, by itself, did not break them.
The word had stopped being able to break them around the time they had buried the second of their original four.
By then, Sōma had figured out the arithmetic of words and wounds. He had explained it to Banri once, on a different corner in a different city, in approximately the following way.
The word is not the wound. The word is the noise the wound makes when other people use it to point at you. The wound is the thing that made the word possible. You don't fix the wound by hitting back at the noise. You fix it by living long enough that the noise stops being able to find you.
Banri had nodded.
Banri had been seventeen.
The word had not stopped being able to find them. They had stopped being able to be moved by it. Those were two different sentences.
What the word did do, every single time, was remind them that the world had categories for them that the world had built before they were born.
The category called brother by a stranger on a corner was a category that wanted them to be small in a particular way.
The wanting was what the brothers refused.
The wanting was always what they refused.
They were not going to be the small the corner wanted them to be.
They were not going to be the small anyone wanted them to be.
That was the whole point.
That was why they had left the Hunting Realm.
That was why they had, at fifteen and sixteen, decided to walk out instead of be promoted to the kind of operatives whose names did not appear in the records but who were the records.
That was why they were not gangsters.
That was why they were not Hunters.
They were rogues. The word rogue was their word. They had chosen it. They had earned it. They had not let anyone else hand it to them, and the corner on Eighth and Mishima could keep its words to itself.
-----
Ryo Kenzaki was at the bench when they got to the courtyard the next afternoon.
He was alone. The Kizugami was across his knees. He was trying to draw a single thin line of frost along the edge of the blade, and the line kept breaking.
His right hand was wrapped in pale blue. The wrap was darker than yesterday around the knuckle.
The cold in the air around him was beginning to be a thing other people in the courtyard could feel without being told.
Banri and Sōma sat down on either side of him.
Banri offered him an apple slice.
Ryo took it.
"… You guys good?"
"…"
"… I heard about Eighth and Mishima."
"From who."
"From Hiroshi. Hiroshi's mom heard from a vendor who was watching from the noodle shop. Hiroshi's mom told Hiroshi. Hiroshi told me."
"Mm."
Ryo looked at them.
"Are you guys okay?"
It was a quiet question. It was the kind of quiet question Ryo asked, which was the kind that did not assume the answer. Most people who asked Banri and Sōma if they were okay assumed yes and asked anyway because asking was the polite thing. Ryo asked because he wanted to know.
Sōma looked at him for a moment.
"… You're a strange kid, Kenzaki."
"…"
"I mean it as a compliment."
"…"
"You ask the question like the answer matters to you."
"… It does."
"I know."
Banri smiled. It was a small one. It was the smile he gave when one of the few people in his life he respected showed him, again, why he respected them.
"Kenzaki. We're alright. The corner didn't get us. The corner doesn't get us. The corner has been trying for a long time, in different cities, with different mouths, and it doesn't get us. But thanks for asking."
"… Okay."
Ryo went back to the frost.
The three of them sat on the bench. The November sun was lower than it had been an hour ago. The yard was emptier.
After a while Sōma spoke without looking at him.
"Kenzaki."
"… Mm."
"You're going to win."
"…"
"I know what you're carrying. I know what your friend is bringing. I know what's coming up that road. And I'm telling you. You're going to win. Not the fight, necessarily. The thing under the fight. The thing the fight is about."
"…"
"Because you ask people if they're okay. Because you mean it when you ask."
A pause.
"The kind of person who means it is a category of person the world has been short on for a long time. The world is hungry for more of that category."
"…"
"Your friend is going to swing at you with everything he has. And the thing he's going to find when he swings is somebody who meant the question."
"…"
"That's a thing you can't cut down with a sword, Kenzaki. You can break the sword. You can break the body. You can't break the meaning. We've watched men try in two realms and a hundred corners. They fail. Every time. They fail."
Banri nodded.
"… Sōma's right, Kenzaki."
"… Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Ryo did not say anything. He went back to drawing the frost line. The line broke again. He started over. The line broke again. He started over.
The third time, the line held the length of the blade.
Banri made the small mm sound. Sōma did not say anything.
The cold in the air around the bench was very visible now.
The brothers sat with him in it.
-----
East of the city, on the shoulder of a low hill the locals called Hagi-no-Ne, two figures stood against the late-afternoon sky.
The hill was bare. The grass was November-yellow. The sun was lowering toward the western horizon over Serenia, and the city in the distance was lit in a thin gold strip the way cities were lit in the last hour before dusk in autumn.
Theron Brandt stood with his hands in the pockets of his long coat. The wind moved his hair. He was not speaking.
Beside him, Kyou Ren Ametsuchi looked at the city.
The pale steel of the blade he had grown was sheathed at his hip. The dark cord-knots on the hilt caught the late light. The gold fractures in his irises were quieter than they had been in the rain world but had not faded. The indigo coat moved in the wind.
He did not move.
He looked at Serenia.
He had once known the shape of every block of it.
He had walked east on those blocks every day after school for two years with a boy who had thought must be lonely in an intersection and meant it.
He could see, from this hill, the rooftop of the apartment that boy lived on. He could see the courtyard where they had trained. He could see, faintly, in the distance, the hospital where the boy's mother had died.
He did not blink.
Theron, beside him, finally spoke.
"… You can still walk away, Ametsuchi."
"…"
"From the boy. From the city. From what you're about to do. The Hakushin took. Your blade is yours. You don't owe anyone the rest of this. We can leave east. There's work for you that doesn't require you to swing on the only person who ever called you friend."
"…"
"I'm not asking you to. I'm saying it's possible."
Kyou Ren did not look at him.
"… Theron."
"Mm."
"I am not walking away from the only person who ever called me brother. I am walking toward him. There is a difference."
"…"
"And the difference is what is going to make this hurt."
"… Mm."
The wind rose. The grass on the hill bent. The thin gold strip on the city's western edge began, very slowly, to bruise into the November dusk.
Kyou Ren spoke again.
His voice was quiet. The kind of quiet that had been sat with for a long time before it was let out.
"Theron. You asked me once, in your house, what I thought a Hunter was."
"… I did."
"I told you I didn't know."
"You did."
"I know now."
"…"
"A Hunter is a child the world taught how to hold a knife before it taught the child how to ask for help."
"…"
"A Hunter is a name the system gives the people it has used up the most."
"…"
"A Hunter is a word that sounds like a job and is actually a sentence."
"…"
"Every one of us is somebody's last witness and somebody's first weapon. The order is never the order the system claims it is."
"…"
"My friend wants to change what the word means."
"…"
"He wants to be the kind of Hunter who is also a person. Who is also a son. Who is also a brother. Who stops at the apple stall in November because somebody he loved liked them. Who stays soft in a job that has been sanding people sharp for a thousand years. He thinks he can carry the blade and the boy at the same time."
"…"
"He's wrong."
"…"
"And the thing that hurts, Theron, is that I don't think he's wrong because he isn't strong enough."
"…"
"I think he's wrong because the world isn't kind enough to let him be right."
"…"
"He's going to try, and he's going to bleed for it, and the bleeding isn't going to teach him anything. Because he's Ryo. And Ryo is the kind of boy who walks into the same fire twice if he thinks somebody warmer than him is in there."
"…"
"So I'm going to teach him."
"…"
"Since the world won't. Since the system won't. Since nobody else in his life is going to look him in the eye and say it."
"…"
"I'm going to take his vision of the kind of Hunter he wants to be, and I'm going to put it on the ground in front of him. And I'm going to break it, while he watches, with the blade I grew out of my own blood."
"… Ametsuchi."
"I'm going to break it because I am the only friend he has left who knows him well enough to do it. The rest of them are going to tell him he can be the boy he wants to be. I am going to be the one who tells him the truth."
"…"
"And when he stands back up, if he stands back up, he will be a Hunter the world cannot use. He will be a Hunter the world will have to meet. And the world has not had to meet a Hunter in three hundred years."
"…"
"That's the gift. That's the only gift I have left to give him."
The wind dropped.
The thin gold strip on the city's western edge was almost gone.
Kyou Ren turned his head toward Serenia. The gold fractures in his eyes caught the last of the light.
His voice was no louder than before.
The line he gave the November air was the line that would be remembered, by every Hunter still alive on the day Arc 1 ended, as the line that announced what was coming.
"… They call us Hunters. They forgot we were children first. I am going to remind them. With the body of the only friend who still believed it."
Theron did not answer.
He did not have an answer.
He stood beside the boy on the hill.
The boy on the hill was not a boy anymore in the ways the word boy used to mean.
Serenia in the distance was beginning, very faintly, to feel cold in a way the November dusk could not account for.
Kyou Ren stepped off the hill.
He walked west.
The blade at his hip hummed once.
In the apartment three kilometers west of Hagi-no-Ne, Ryo Kenzaki on his rooftop turned his head toward the east, very slowly, the way a person turns toward a sound they have been listening for since they were nine.
The sound had arrived.
We Are What Remains.
And What Remains.
Will Decide Everything.
🌀 END OF CHAPTER 80